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New Musical Express, February 4, 1989
1977 August 6
1977 September 3
1977 November 5
1978 January 7
1978 April 8
2015 Special Edition
Sunday's best for Elvis
Elvis Costello has announced details of his first tour for more than two years, following last week's news of his long-awaited new album.
Costello will be playing a total of 16 shows, including four consecutive Sunday nights at the London Palladium.
He will be performing solo at all shows, and special guest on the tour will be old cohort Nick Lowe. Elvis and Nick will play a few numbers together at the end of each concert.
The full itinerary reads London Palladium (May 7), Liverpool Royal Court (10 and 11), Manchester Apollo (Concert 1989-05-12 Manchester|12]]), London Palladium (14), Belfast Opera House (16 and 17), Dublin Stadium (19 and 20), London Palladium (21), Newcastle City Hall (24), Edinburgh Playhouse (25), Glasgow Pavilion (26), London Palladium (28), Cardiff St David's Hall (June 8) and Bristol Colston Hall (9).
Prices vary from venue to venue. but all tickets go on sale this Friday (February 3) from box offices and usual agents.
More details of Costello's new album Spike, released on Monday, have emerged. Some of the songs will be familiar to the audience of the Elvis and Confederates shows at the Royal Albert Hall two years ago.
The full track listing reads:
Side One: "This Town"; "Let Him Dangle"; "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror"; "Veronica"; "God's Comic"; "Chewing Gum"; "Tramp The Dirt Down."
Side Two: "Stalin Malone"; "Satellite"; "Pads, Paws & Claws"; "Baby Plays Around"; "Miss Macbeth"; "Any King's Shilling"; "Last Boat Leaving."
The cassette and compact disc versions contain a 15th track, "Coal Train Robbers."
The album was recorded in London, Dublin, New Orleans and Hollywood, and was produced by Costello together with T-Bone Burnett and Kevin Killen.
NME previews Spike and upcoming tour dates.
An quarter-page ad for Spike runs on page 33.
Page 3 clipping.
NME.com
Wikipedia: NME
Flickr: littletriggers
Retrieved from "http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php?title=New_Musical_Express,_February_4,_1989&oldid=17311969"
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D0742/D0743: Pair of Milwaukee Museum School Mallard Decoys
Excellent pair of oversized Wisconsin mallard decoys made by a Lake Michigan charter boat captain named Gordon Caskowski of Milwaukee, circa 1940. Caskowski's decoys were used at Wind Point, Racine, Wisconsin. These folky decoys were the product of the Milwaukee Museum Carvers era and bear a strong resemblance to the birds attributed by the decoy auction houses to Warren Dettman. The two were formerly in the collection of Russ Van Houzen and still retain his collection tags on the bottoms. According to the information on the hen's tag, Van Houzen added them to his collection in 1968. The deep-bodied glass-eyed decoys have 4-piece laminated bodies with carved raised wings and detailed bill carving. The drake's head is turned slightly to the left. Each has been lightly hit by shot, and the hen has had a professional repair to a crack in the neck. There are also small chips missing from both of the hen's wingtips. They remain in bold original paint with only minor wear. The highly detailed feather paint on the hen is especially noteworthy and well executed. Each decoys measure approximately 16” long, 8-1/2” wide and 9-1/2” tall. SOLD
D0738: Doug Jester Black Duck Decoy
Nice fat-bodied black duck by Doug Jester of Chincoteague, Virginia, circa 1925. The decoy is in worn original paint with flaking (this condition is not unusual for Jester's decoys as they were apparently not primed before painting) and wear, particularly to the back and upper left side. The scratch feather paint remains strong on the head and remains visible on portions of the body. There are several age cracks with the largest being on the lower right side. The decoy measures roughly 14 1/2" in length. SOLD
D0734: Trulock & Harris English Wood Pigeon
Excellent English wood pigeon decoy by an unknown carver, sold through the gunsmith firm of Trulock & Harris of Suffolk, UK, circa late 1800s through 1910, and considered to be the premier examples of English wood pigeons. The decoy has a laminated solid-body with glass eyes and it's original molded lead bill. The shoulders are deeply carved as are the raised primaries and the fluted tail. The paint is original but weathered. There was a crack in the tail which has been professionally repaired. Please see Maine Antique Digest, Dec 1988, pp.38-D to 39-D, "From American Ducks To English Pigeons", by Dave Malys. SOLD
M283: Runar Rodell Flushing Mallards Diorama
Diorama of 2 flushing mallards by Runar G. Rodell, Wilmette, Illinois, circa 1930s to 1940s. Rodell, born in Sweden in 1898, moved to the U.S. in his thirties, opening a studio around 1935 in Wilmette before finally settling in Prescott, AZ, around 1950. He died in 1983. His works usually incorporate oil-painted backgrounds and figures (people, animals, birds, buildings, etc.) carved from basswood with plant materials created from bits of natural vegetation in the foreground. Among his collectors were Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan. It is believed that all of his work made in Prescott had a paper studio label on the back, whereas his work from Illinois was simply signed on the back. This piece is in original condition with the roughly 2-1/2" ducks exhibiting intricate individual primary feathers and detailed painted plumage. It is signed "Original by R. G. Rodell, Mallard" on the back. The overall dimensions of the diorama are 12 3/4" x 15" with the glass measuring roughly 7 1/2" x 9 1/2". The oak case is 3 1/2" deep. SOLD
M252: Wilmer Reinbold Flying Miniature Redhead Decoy
Mint flying miniature redhead hen by George Wilmer Reinbold (1885 - 1946), Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, circa 1940. Both the carving and original paint are expertly detailed and beautifully accomplished with the latter exhibiting a mellow patina. The duck has an approximate wingspan of 10", measures 7.25" bill to tail and is signed "Reinbold” on the back of the lower wing. There is a thin wire hanger on the back for mounting the carving on a wall. Wilmer’s work was represented in the most popular and well known outdoor outfitters, wildlife-themed gift shops, and galleries of the day, notably Richard Stockton’s Shop in Bryn Mawr, PA, Caldwell's in Philadelphia, and Crossroads of Sport and Abercrombie & Fitch in New York City. It is highly regarded and much sought after today. Wilmer was the father of noted carver Bill Reinbold of Chestertown, Maryland. SOLD
M255: Wilmer Reinbold Flying Miniature Green-Winged Teal Decoy
Near-mint flying miniature green-winged teal drake by George Wilmer Reinbold (1885 - 1946), Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, circa 1940. Both the carving and original paint are expertly detailed and beautifully accomplished with the latter exhibiting a mellow patina. There are tiny chips missing from two wing tips and a small drying crack under the tail. The duck has an approximate wingspan of 9.5", measures just over 7" bill to tail and is signed "Reinbold” on the back of the lower wing. There is a thin wire hanger on the back for mounting the carving on a wall. Wilmer’s work was represented in the most popular and well known outdoor outfitters, wildlife-themed gift shops, and galleries of the day, notably Richard Stockton’s Shop in Bryn Mawr, PA, Caldwell's in Philadelphia, and Crossroads of Sport and Abercrombie & Fitch in New York City. It is highly regarded and much sought after today. Wilmer was the father of noted carver Bill Reinbold of Chestertown, Maryland. SOLD
M254: Wilmer Reinbold Flying Miniature Bufflehead Decoy
Excellent flying miniature bufflehead drake by George Wilmer Reinbold (1885 - 1946), Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, circa 1940. Both the carving and original paint are expertly detailed and beautifully accomplished with the latter exhibiting a mellow patina. There is a tiny chip to one edge of the bill as well as several tiny chips with touch-up paint to the wing tips . The duck has an approximate wingspan of 8.5", measures 6.5" bill to tail and is marked "Bufflehead" and signed "Geo. W. Reinbold” on the back of the lower wing. There is a thin wire hanger on the back for mounting the carving on a wall. Wilmer’s work was represented in the most popular and well known outdoor outfitters, wildlife-themed gift shops, and galleries of the day, notably Richard Stockton’s Shop in Bryn Mawr, PA, Caldwell's in Philadelphia, and Crossroads of Sport and Abercrombie & Fitch in New York City. It is highly regarded and much sought after today. Wilmer was the father of noted carver Bill Reinbold of Chestertown, Maryland. SOLD
B003, 1929 Limited Edtion Book, The Compleat Walton, Izaak Walton
The Compleat [Complete] Angler and The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert & Sanderson, With Love and Truth & Miscellaneous Writings. Edited By Geoffrey Keynes. Illustrations By Thomas Poulton and Charles Sigrist. Publication Date: 1929. Publisher: The Nonesuch Press, 16 Great James Street, Bloomsbury. Author: Izaak Walton. First edition of Walton's complete writings. Limited to 1600 numbered copies, 1100 copies for the United Kingdom and 500 copies for Random House in the United States (this copy being No. 977). Octavo (8 3/16 x 4 7/8 inches; 208 x 123 mm.). 631 pages. Six engraved portraits (Walton, Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson) by Charles Sigrist, including frontispiece. Ten drawings of fish and a lead weight by Thomas Poulton, printed from line blocks, the fish color stenciled by The Curwen Press. Two seals of Donne redrawn by Poulton and printed in red. Original full natural morocco with front cover decoratively tooled in gilt and spine lettered in gilt in compartments. The leather, particularly on the spine, has darkened somewhat with time and handling, but is otherwise undamaged. Top edge gilt on the rough, others uncut. Marbled endpapers. Housed in the original marbled paper covered slipcase which shows wear on the edges and corners. The Complete Walton, which includes The Compleat Angler, is said to be the third most frequently reprinted book in the English language after the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, "The Compleat Angler" is as much about life as it is about angling. First published in 1653 in thirteen chapters, Walton continued to add to his work through editions in 1655, 1661, 1668, up to his fifth and final edition in 1676 containing twenty-one chapters.
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CES 2020 will allow sex tech on a trial basis
Latest in Business
Alphabet's Wing introduces an air traffic control app for drones
From garage to campus: A look at the digs of tech's Big Five
Jon Turi, @jonturi
04.25.15 in Business
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon: These juggernauts are at the forefront of the tech industry. And with that success comes an ever-expanding workforce, and the need for a place to put them. To keep pace with growth, these companies have been making the requisite real-estate deals in order to build physical spaces to match their forward-thinking business approach. Fortunately, their designs are also more environmentally conscious than ever before. With the eyes of the world upon them, they've taken the well-being of the Earth, as well as their employees, into account, building innovative work spaces in an attempt to harmonize with the world around them. Below, we take a look at some of the steps these giants of industry have made over the years as they've moved from garage operations to vast campuses.
Gallery: A look at the digs of tech's Big Five | 14 Photos
[Image: NBBJ]
In this article: 1 infinite loop, amazon, apple, apple campus 2, architecture, business, facebook, google, hdpostcross, microsoft, mobilepostcross, office design, samsung, tech campus, TL17APLSCE
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Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor — New trailer released (VIDEO)
By Mathew Wace Peck Dec 19, 2013 in Entertainment
With just one week to go before Matt Smith bows out as the Doctor in this year's "Doctor Who" Christmas special, a new trailer has been released by BBC America.
The one-minute trailer for The Time of The Doctor, which is due to have its US premiere on Christmas Day, follows those already released in the UK.
Meanwhile, BBC One has unveiled its Christmas Day programming trailer, which, as well as including Doctor Who, also features clips for its festive installments of Strictly Come Dancing, Call The Midwife, EastEnders, Mrs Brown's Boys and Michael McIntyre's Showtime.
As well as being Smith's last outing as the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor will herald the beginning of the Peter Capaldi era of the show.
The Time of the Doctor will receive its world TV premiere in the UK this Christmas Day (Wednesday, December 25, 2013) on BBC One, at 7.30 p.m. GMT. The special will also be shown on Christmas Day in the US, Canada, Germany and Latin America. Australia and New Zealand will broadcast it on Boxing Day (Thursday, December 26), while other countries/territories to have announced scheduling of the episode so far are Poland (Sunday, 29) and Scandinavia (Sunday, 29).
More about Doctor Who, The Time of the Doctor, Matt smith
Doctor Who The Time of the Doct... Matt smith
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http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/philanthropist-funds-library-of-ancient-indian-texts/article/423644
Philanthropist funds library of ancient Indian texts
Posted Jan 16, 2015 by Sravanth Verma
A new initiative and literary project, helmed by noted Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock and published by Harvard University Press, will make several ancient Indian classics easily and widely available.
Rig Veda manuscript in Sanskrit on paper, India, early 19th century.
The project is a philantropic effort by Rohan Murty, son of Narayan Murthy, founder of Infosys, the Indian IT giant. The series, called the Murty Classical Library of India (MCIL) will publish 48 volumes in the next seven years, and will include classics from 14 Indian languages, including Sanskrit and some almost extinct vernacular forms. Murty released the first set of books on January 15, 2015, in the presence of several high profile guests, including Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen, and former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Mr. Murty initiated the project in 2010, when he was a 26-year-old doctoral student at Harvard, putting up $5.2 million to endow the library. Murty is now a Computing Innovations Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard.
"India has the single most complex and continuous tradition of multi-lingual literature in the world and a lot of it is inaccessible. MCLI will make this literature available in the best possible way for the general reader as well as students and scholars," said Pollock.
The first set of books include such popular classics as the Surdas's poetry and the Therigatha, a text on kundalini yoga. The books have the original script, with English translations on the facing page.
Pollock explains the idea behind the library. "It doesn't as Europe thinks, start with Virgil and end with TS Eliot. There are thousands of Asian texts which show that a classic is that which surprises our sense of being human," said Pollock. Though the most popular ancient texts from India are probably religious classics such as the Upanishads and the Vedas, India has produced several other classics of literature. In fact, Hinduism contains three classes of texts, of which one is itihas, and includes such literary texts as the Mahabharat and Ramayan.
Murty expressed what motivated him to fund the library. He expressed how the general Indian reader was quite unaware of many aspects of ancient India. "What was life like in ancient India? How did people live, die? What was its astronomy, maths, science like? There is so little discussion on any of these in our schools and colleges," he said. "This literature will hopefully offer an exposure."
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By this time their membership numbers had expanded beyond the church’s capacity, and so a competition was held for the design of a new one, with Thomas Lennox Watson beating out John Burnet. A suitable site was found on University Place, opposite the University of Glasgow’s main building which had moved west the decade before. Watson opted for a neoclassical design, favoured by the United Presbyterians, as opposed to other churches who at the time favoured the Gothic Revival style. The end result, completed in 1884, resembles a Greek temple, with a colonnade of Corinthian columns supporting the neoclassic pediment.
While Baird’s original church was demolished in 1909, the current Wellington Church is still very active, including the hidden gem that is the Crypt Café serving tasty lunches all through the working week.
WELLINGTON CHURCH
In the city's West End, on University Avenue, opposite the University of Glasgow's main building
The Wellington United Presbyterian Church congregation gained its name from their original church that was located on Wellington Street in the city centre. That church, completed in 1827 and designed by John Baird, served the congregation for fifty years.
the UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW
ETON TERRACE KELVINGROVE PARK back to RELIGIOUS
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First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati
About First Unitarian Church
History of First Church
Mission, Vision, and Objectives
Covenant of Right Relations
What Does Church Membership Mean
Upcoming Sunday Worship Topics
What is Unitarian Universalism
What is a Typical Service Like
Map, Directions, Facility Details
Life Rituals
Huumanists
Extended Ministry
Get to Know the Staff
Giving to First Church
Rev. Connie Simon, Minister
O n a sunny spring Sunday, all church members present, casting secret ballots, unanimously selected Rev. Connie to become their next settled minister. She is the first woman of color to be called to the position in First Church’s 188-year history. Rev. Connie’s journey to First Church began in the rural southeastern Pennsylvania community of Oxford. She is the youngest of four children. Rev. Connie gets her love of music from her mother who served as music director and organist of their Presbyterian church. A precocious student, she graduated from high school at 16, initially entering college as a music major. Soon, however, the lure of the television media age motivated her to earn a degree in telecommunications from Indiana University with her sights set on running the CBS network. When “they wouldn’t have me,” she accepted a full academic scholarship to Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. Rev. Connie’s diverse career history includes experience as tax counsel for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, working at the corporate level in the telecommunications industry, a position in banking, owning a small business, and time in non-profit organizations. She loves tennis, dogs, crafting and genealogy. She says her most important role is that of sister, cousin, friend and “Aunt Connie.”Rev. Connie received her Master of Divinity from Unitarian Universalist (UU) seminary Meadville Lombard Theological School on May 20, 2018 – nine years after she entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Philadelphia looking for a meditation session and finding a denomination. Rev. Connie enters her ministry at First Church at a time when the UU denomination is facing its own issues with inclusivity in leadership, seeking the path needed to embrace true multicultural diversity. She believes it’s a pivotal moment in UU history, and she’s glad she will be in Cincinnati as it occurs. You may contact Rev. Connie at 513.281.1564, ext. 1, or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. She is in the office on Tues., Wed., and Thurs. Please call for an appointment.
Meredith Plummer, Director of Family Programming
Meredith is a second-generation Unitarian Universalist. Throughout her childhood she attended Heritage Universalist Unitarian Church in Anderson Township. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Miami University in December, 2008, with a B.S. in education. Meredith came to First Unitarian Church in 2009 with 8 years' experience working with children and youth, and 2 years in management. She has two disabled daughters and currently serves on the Board of EqUUal Access, an independent UU organization committed to the full engagement of people with disabilities in our congregations and beyond. Meredith believes parents are their children's primary religious educators, and she is passionate about partnering with parents to raise the next generation of Unitarian Universalist change-makers.
Contact Meredith via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 513.281.1564, ext 3.
Jera Cox, Music Director
Jera grew up in Bryan, Ohio and became a church keyboardist at the age of 13. After moving to Cincinnati to attend CCM, Jera worked with many community theater groups as music director. She became keyboardist and music director at Hartzell United Methodist Church. After marriage, raising children, and divorce, Jera completed her B.A. degree in music from Xavier University. She recently earned a master's degree in secondary education while completing requirements for teaching certification in Music K-12. She is the band director at Reading Community Schools and has 11 violin and piano students. Jera came to First Unitarian Church in November, 2010 as keyboardist, and became Music Director in 2011.
Contact Jera via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 513.281.1564, ext 4.
Carrie Spiess, Operations Manager
Carrie earned a bachelors degree in psychology from Northern Kentucky University, graduating with distinction and as a member of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. Carrie worked as a retail manager and human resources manager prior to staying home to raise children. She has been very involved in her community including as a past board member for the Clermont Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Miami Township Soccer Club, NAMI Wellness Walk Coordinator, Miami Township Soccer Club Assistant Tournament Director and Team Administrator.
Contact Carrie via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 513.281.1564, ext 2.
Susan West, Office Administrator
Susan's background of service and ministry to others has prepared her well for her position at First Church. Susan earned her Masters of Divinity at the Iliff School of Theology and started her career as a United Methodist minister. She also has worked as a child and family counselor, a Family Services clinician and even as a law clerk. Perhaps most directly applicable to the work she will do at First Church are her more than six years of experience as an administrative assistant and business office coordinator. On a personal note, Susan grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky. She has lived in Cincinnati since 2004 and is married to Bob Trombley.
Contact Susan via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 513.281.1564, ext 0.
Join us for our next Sunday service:
Sunday, July 21, 2019 ~ 10 a.m.
Beginning Where We Are
Sky Stewart
Order of Service (Updated Friday)
Upcoming Service Descriptions
In case of inclement weather, please visit Channel 9 WCPO: http://www.wcpo.com/closings.
Our 7 UU Principles:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
© First Unitarian Church
of Cincinnati
536 Linton Street
Sunday, 10:00 a.m.
Monday through Friday:
9:00 - 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 - 3:00 p.m.
(Closed 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.)
HOME | ABOUT | VISITORS | PROGRAMS | STAFF | GIVING | EVENTS
© 2019 First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati. All Rights Reserved.
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Brian Rast Wins 2016 WSOP $50,000 Poker Players Championship
7th July 2016 // News, Poker Tournaments
The poker world was anticipating the possibility of history being made at the 2016 World Series of Poker $50,000 Poker Players Championship (PPC) yesterday as the prestigious tournament’s final table began, but as happens frequently in poker, history took a detour. It is not that something historically noteworthy didn’t happen, it is just that what actually happened was not what everybody had in mind. We have Brian Rast to thank for that, as he won the PPC for the second time, cashing in for $1,296,097.
Let’s elaborate. Here is what the final table chip counts looked like going into Wednesday’s final table:
1. Justin Bonomo – 7,750,000
2. Michael Mizrachi – 5,535,000
3. Eric Wasserson – 3,800,040
4. Brian Rast – 3,185,000
5. Lamar Wilkinson – 2,045,000
6. Ray Dehkharghani – 395,000
While Brian Rast is a tremendous poker player and Justin Bonomo was the chip leader, most of the attention was likely on Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi. In the ten years this tournament had been in existence prior to 2016, Mizrachi had won it twice, the only person to have done so. It is extremely impressive to win any major poker tournament more than once, especially when it has only been held ten times, but there was a realistic possibility that Mizrachi could win it a third time. That not only would have been unprecedented (obviously), but really an achievement that few would have seriously considered possible just a few years ago.
Instead, though, it was Rast who came out on top. So, instead of Mizrachi making history with his third PPC win, it was Rast who made history by tying Mizrachi’s mark with his second PPC win. Oh, did we fail to mention that Rast won this tourney in 2011? Because he did.
Brian Rast – 2016 WSOP
Image credit: WSOP.com
This was Rast’s third WSOP bracelet win of his career. He won both of his other bracelets in 2011, winning, as mentioned, the Poker Players Championship, and the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em Event. Rast has had some other huge victories, as well. In 2013, he won the $100,000 High Roller Event at the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic for just over a million dollars. And last year, he won the $25,000 Super High Roller Q1 for half a million and the inaugural Super High Roller Bowl for $7.525 million.
So while Rast had won this event before and has plenty of other wins and final table appearances, he considers this crowning achievement.
“This final table was really tough,” Rast told the WSOP interviewer after the tournament. “I was really low on chips for a lot of it. The heads up match was a really long battle. And, it was definitely satisfying. I would agree it was both my toughest and most satisfying win.”
He wasn’t kidding about being low on chips. If the win wasn’t impressive enough, it was even more so considering the hole from which Rast had to climb just to give himself a chance. Shortly after Rast eliminated Mizrachi to get the final table to three-handed, Bonomo took a chunk of chips from him, leaving Rast with just 1.2 million compared to Bonomo’s 16.7 million. Less than an hour later, Rast had increased his stack by 50 percent to 1.8 million, but Bonomo was up to 18.7 million and Eric Wasserson had 2.25 million. It looked like Bonomo was going to run away with the title.
But Rast is a pro, one of the best in the world, and he kept at it. When he got to heads-up with Bonomo, he was still facing a massive deficit, but least losing 14.235 million to 8.515 million left him just a double-up away from the lead. And while he didn’t double-up, he did quickly take the chip lead, moving close to Bonomo during a Seven Card Stud round and then overtaking him in Omaha Hi-Lo. Bonomo wasn’t shaken, though, and almost as quickly regained the lead, this time extending it beyond what it was to open heads-up.
Rast kept his head above water through a Pot-Limit Omaha and Limit Hold’em round before again taking the chip lead in Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo. From there, the lead tilted back and forth a number of times, just the kind of match we wanted heads-up in such an important tournament.
The tournament finally ended, as one might have guess, on a hand of No-Limit Hold’em. The two chip stacks were close with Rast holding a slight edge going into the final hand. Bonomo raised pre-flop to 400,000 and Rast called, bringing on a flop of A♠-T♦-5♣. Bonomo bet 350,000 and Rast check-called before the dealer put down the A♣ on the turn. Rast again checked, but this time Bonomo came strong, betting 2.2 million chips. According to WSOP.com, Rast thought about his move for about a minute and a half before flat-calling once again. This was shaping up to be a gigantic hand (clearly). Rast continued his pattern when the K♠ showed up on the river, checking to Bonomo, who moved all-in for 7.815 million. Rast knew he had it, making an instant call.
And he was right. That river did in Bonomo, as he revealed Q♣-J♠ for a Broadway straight, but Rast flipped over A♦-T♠, for a turned full house.
While the end was disappointing for Justin Bonomo, he has had a fantastic 2016 WSOP, with four top-three finishes and more than $1.3 million in winnings.
Afterwards, Rast said that he understands that it is easiest for people to judge poker players based on their tournament results, as there are records of that, but he prides himself on being one of the more well-rounded players out there:
For me I play so much poker, I play for really high-stakes all the time. So, I’m not always playing tournaments — I’m mostly a cash game player. But since I play the biggest cash game limits in almost every game, I think that does say something professionally. Tournament results have a lot of luck involved. I was blessed to run really good in events that were so big. There are plenty of other great players who weren’t as fortunate. While I feel I played well, that’s not all of that and I realize it.
He added that he is fully aware that he is carving out a place for himself as potentially one of the all-time greats. He is only 34-years old, so he has a ways to go, but with $17.8 million live tournament winnings already and a reputation as a great high stakes cash game player, Rast looks like he could be in the express lane to legend status.
“I don’t care what other people in the world think. But I care what other poker professionals think,” Rast said. “I take poker seriously and where my legacy is and how my peers think of me is a measure of professional respect. What I was able to do today was really special.”
2016 World Series of Poker $50,000 Poker Players Championship – Final Table Results
1. Brian Rast – $1,296,097
2. Justin Bonomo – $801,048
3. Eric Wasserson – $545,772
4. Michael Mizrachi – $380,942
5. Wil Wilkinson – $272,558
6. Ray Dehkharghani – $200,027
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Q&A with Maureen and Larry Gelo: Nomadic Retirees and Road Trip Professionals
November 18, 2015 by Samantha Adler in travel
Unity, New Hampshire
Florida palm trees, luxurious naps and bingo: these are the things retirement dreams are made of.
But, if you travel up to woodsy New Hampshire and ask Maureen and Larry Gelo they’d beg to differ. A couple of retirement rebels, these two fill their time seeking new adventures on America’s open roads, breaking away from the status quo of retirees.
The two lived, worked and raised their children in Connecticut. He worked as a police officer in a small town on the shore and she worked as a nanny. Larry’s a handyman who can fix all and create any device you’d ever need from scratch. Maureen’s gentle and loving with a dash of cheeky spunk. After retiring at age of 62, they bought a motorhome and set off on a series of spontaneous road trips in North America, driven by curiosity and an unfulfilled wanderlust. It’s been over a decade and they’re still going, insisting there is so much to see in this big, beautiful country of ours.
This pair of serial roadtrippers happen to be my grandparents (+10 cool points for me) and two of the biggest supporters of the road trip. I recently visited them in Unity, New Hampshire, their home base. When they’re not out on the road, Larry does woodwork with materials from the forest behind their house (Check out some of his amazing work), visit friends, hike and enjoy their rugged New England home.
Before settling down over the kitchen table, we went on a short hike in the nearby Quechee Gorge. A few remaining leaves hung off wiry branches, clinging on against the chilly late autumn breeze. We got home, tore off hiking boots and unbundled. After putting a log on the furnace, we gathered around a plate of brownies and they shared their stories, travel advice and all their coveted road trip knowledge in their usual hilarious banter.
First off, why the travel retirement?
L: There’s a lot of places we’ve never been and we’d like to go there.
M: That pretty much says it all. We just wanted to travel and see this beautiful country.
Why roadtripping in particular?
L: Because you can see a lot more. And with a camper you can stop wherever, whenever and for as long as you want.
M: To get off the beaten path and see things. We’ve had so many surprises, especially in these little towns along the way. [There was] one place in Nebraska we ended up. It was the end of the day and we were tired. We just about got into this parking lot, when we saw there was a museum. Well, we ended up staying there for three more days because this museum was blocks long. A man had collected everything from soup to nuts; from cars to buttons. And he had all these buildings with all these wonderful things, like the earliest telephone. We found out that he was the creator of bubble wrap! And he just collected for years and years and years. But like I said when we pulled into this place it looked like nothing, it was just a place we stopped at because it was the end of the day and we were tired. So that’s the wonderful thing about traveling across this country in a vehicle.
Did you travel when you were younger?
M: I think the farthest we ever went was to visit my father’s sister in New York. And that was about three or four times in my childhood. Neither of my parents liked to travel, they were homebodies. So that gave me the wanderlust.
L: When I was single in the service and my teenage years, I used to travel down the East Coast, and that was it. But I did get to go to college in Alaska and loved it. About forty years ago we got the chance to take a cruise up there and loved it. Then we went back and spent eight or ten weeks traveling around in the motorhome.
What was your first road trip?
M: We had a trailer and we went up to Canada, Quebec and Niagara falls, on both sides. There again, we found this wonderful little town that we would have never found if we weren’t riding around.
L: We first started with a truck, we camped in the back of the truck, then we got a little trailer, then we got a little bigger trailer and then we decided [to get the RV] when we got close to retirement.
What was the best trip or route you’ve taken?
L: I think Alaska was probably the greatest. They’ve all been great. One time we went down Route 50 from the East Coast all the way out to California. It was the old 1950/60’s. Most of it’s disappeared by now, but it was kind of nostalgic and off the beaten path. It was stuff we remembered from when we were young.
M: Route 66.
L: Yea, a lot of it was Route 66. Another time we went along the Canadian border all the way west, then down the coast to San Francisco and then back along the southern coast. That was an amazing trip.
What was the craziest thing you saw because you were driving?
L: We’ve seen just about everything. We’ve been in tornados, major thunderstorms, hailstorms, windstorms where we thought the camper was going to flip over. Anything you can think of we’ve been near it, too near it for comfort or right in the middle of it.
Have you made any friends along the way?
L: We’ve met all sorts of people. You never know who you’re going to run into. We stopped in one place in Canada and met people we’ve been in touch with for seven or eight years now.
M: All nice people from all walks of life.
L: Everyplace you stop you should talk to somebody. You’ll talk about where you’ve been and where you’re going and they’ll tell you what you should go and see. And if they’ve been to places you’ve already been, they’ll tell you about places you missed after you thought you’ve seen everything there is to see. We went to Wall Drugs a few times going across country. It’s a big, big drug store and big tourist attraction. And almost across the street, were the Badlands. We drove right by it. The third time we finally figured it out after chatting with people.
What are the best things you’ve picked up along the way?
L: She likes to shop. We had to go all the way to Alaska to go to Walmart.
M: No. My best souvenirs were in Sequoia National Park, we filled our trunk with great big pinecones.
L: Then we found out it was illegal.
M: And then I got a piece of wood from the Petrified Forest. Which was...another illegal thing. Nothing I bought. I have a chunk of rock from the base of Crazy Horse. And that was legal! They said I could take it.
L: Every place we’ve gone to I’ve gotten a walking stick emblem.
I know you’ve had some run-ins with pretty large critters.
L: We saw every animal you could think of in Alaska: mountain lions, moose, bears. I’ve walked up on a moose. Not intentionally. I was walking along the road and right next to me a moose started snorting. I said “oh that’s not a smart idea.” I kept walking and he went back on to minding his own business.
Advice for aspiring roadtrippers?
L: It’s the most exciting way in the world to go. You don’t have to go on an airplane and go through all that crap. Travel as much as you can. You get a whole, totally different outlook on the world. You see it’s more than this little town you live in.
M: Enjoy the ride and the surprises. In Saint Louis we ended up seeing the Clydesdales from the Budweiser commercials at Grant’s Farm. That was a surprise that we came upon. It was in this beautiful nature park that had all types of animals. And it was totally free.
L: Talk to everyone you can talk to.
M: I like stopping at visitors centers because you can get all the information you need. It’s always good to stop there.
L: If you see something interesting you should stop. The most important thing about traveling like this is being able to stop when you see something interesting and if you don’t make your destination, fine.
The one place you must see in the US?
M: Grand Tetons.
L: When we were traveling to a balloon festival in Arizona, we hit every presidential library in the country. That was amazing, I never knew the presidential libraries had so much to offer.
What route do you recommend for someone who wants to road trip for the first time?
L: I think Route 50 was one of the nicest. If you can stay off the main highways, do it. The interstates are beautiful things for when you want to get somewhere fast, but you miss everything.
There’s so much to see. What should someone base their route on when planning?
L: No matter what you’re interested in look for things that are in that area. Like history, if you’re interested in battlefields you could spend months visiting them all in the southeast. Or if you find a writer you’re interested in...anything!
M: Just seeing the country and riding along.
L: We’ve got friends who like to go to zoos. They just travel all around the country going to zoos. It’s whatever you’re interested in.
M: I wanted to go to Savannah because I heard there was a museum here that had Scarlett O’Hara’s dress from Gone with the Wind. I was so excited because that’s one of my favorite movies. I never thought i’d be able to do that. Especially because I never traveled when I was younger, so it’s amazing to be able to hop in the motorhome, drive down and see something as ridiculous as Scarlett O’Hara’s gown.
L: One time we tried to hit as many national forests and parks as we could.
Has anything you’ve seen changed your perspective?
L: It’s changed our outlook on life. Before we started traveling the north east was basically it. Yea, I’d gone down south a few times for the service. But I’ve probably never gone more than 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. And it’s amazing. I thought everyone in the world lived in New York City; that was civilization. Then you find out Chicago is bigger. And the first time we went across country, to see how big this country is, where you’re driving and you can see fifty miles ahead, drive for hours and see nothing else. You can’t wrap your head around that or visualize that from reading a book or watching TV. You can’t appreciate it until you see it. And to see how different people live. It’s changing a bit now. But we’d hit totally different cultures and foods. I do carpenter work and I’ve seen carpenters make the same thing I make but in totally different ways, with different tools and different methods. That’s where you learn things.
So, you guys are the cool nomadic kids in your friend group.
M: Yea.
L: We dare a little more.
M: Some of our friends don’t follow us cause they feel we’re too old. They don’t want to get off the beaten path.
L: We’ll just go and if we stop, we’ll stop. We’re a little more daring, but everyone is different. It’s still nice to get home. Then regroup, reorganize and then take off again.
grandparents, travel, road trip, carpentry, retirement, nomads, New Hampshire, Q&A
Q&A with Dave Imus: Cartographartist, Expert Road Tripper & The Inspiration for the Flyoverlands Logo
November 08, 2015 by Cassia Reynolds in travel
Eugene, OR to Myrtle Beach, SC
Disclaimer: I know cartographartist isn’t a real word. But it should be.
I first discovered the work of Dave Imus, the founder of Imus Geographics and winner of four top national awards for cartography (as well as six other runner up places), while on a mission to find a map to represent the Flyoverlands logo.
Samantha and I had already spent a week searching for the right map to fit our vision. We wanted something detailed, readable, and representative of the actual landscape of the United States. Basically, we wanted the map to demonstrate what we hoped to do with our blog: explore America. We’d both noticed a trend in the maps we’d found so far; they were very colorful and overwhelmed with labels, but not particularly informative of the nature and distinctions in US geography.
The hunt led me to a Slate article about Dave’s most famous map, The Essential Geography of the United States of America, which won the Best of Show award by the Cartography and Geographic Information Society in 2012. From afar, it looked like a simple, 4ft x 3ft rendering of the United States. It was pleasing to the eye, a well-shaded illustration of geographic changes with clear lines marking state borders, rivers, mountains, and other important landmarks. However, the real genius of the map is in the attention to detail; I learned Dave illustrated and labeled his work over the course of two years. He included 1000 iconic American landmarks and did it all without sacrificing topographic detail for political information.
When I reached out to Dave about possibly using his illustration for the Flyoverlands logo, he not only agreed to it, but to an interview as well. And that’s how I got a little one-on-one time with the man who single-handedly beat out big companies like National Geographic and Rand McNally for this prestigious award in mapmaking. And I found out that not only does Dave not have formal training specifically in cartography, but that he really only started Imus Geographics back in 1983 because his lack of experience meant he couldn’t land a job as a cartographer.
Over the course of a half hour, we discussed Dave’s love of road trips, his beef with geography in the American education system, and the DL on what really goes into making one of his mapsterpieces (BAM I’m on a roll today).
Tell me about your work as a cartographer.
I have very little in common with my colleagues across the country. I live in a pretty artistic community, Eugene, Oregon, and I have way more in common with woodworkers and painters and sculptors than I do with mapmakers. I’m an illustrator, an artist. And mapmaking is primarily a technical activity. It’s data manipulation and interpretation and once this data is somehow represented, it’s done. It’s like, “We have the data published!” And [I say], “Oh yay, that’s a good place to start. Now let’s make a beautiful illustration that really says something.”
What goes into making a map? Does it require you to experience the places you’re mapping out?
If I’m mapping a city I’ve never been to, I want to capture the essence of that city. So I read about it and I study large scale maps of it to see which of the principal routes I want to put on my map and what, if any, iconic landmarks are there that sort of identify it as a place. And so I experience the place whether I’ve been there or not. I’ve got to contemplate it and try to make sense out of it so that somebody who’s looking at my map will know the basic geography of the place just like people who live there.
What’s been your most difficult project and your favorite project?
The way that my career path has gone is each project is more difficult and more fun. For many years I have worked with a colleague in Massachusetts. And we were talking about how complicated we make things. And he said, “You know, if it were easy, we wouldn’t be interested!” And I said, “You know, I think you’re right.” But the US map took everything I knew about map making and geography to do it.
What do you want people to know about your award winning map, The Essential Geography of the United States of America?
The big thing really about that map is that it’s made with an entirely different standard of artistry than American cartographers embrace. I control every detail of the map so it’s all my interpretation of how best to communicate the geography of one area. I’m not letting algorithms do a dang thing. I use a computer but I use it as a drafting tool. So the map has far greater clarity. It’s just easier on the eye and more acceptable to the mind. And the other thing is that it’s the only map of basic geography. It shows where the country is forested and where it’s not. It has the principle populated places so people know what the important locations of an area are. And it’s got stuff like “the Bluegrass Country of Kentucky” on it. Because we care about these places but we don’t know exactly where they are.
Do you see your work as an education tool for others?
In primary and secondary education, geography bores even me. It’s treated like some sort of abstraction. Look up a map by Rand McNally or National Geographic or United States Maps and they treat the world like it’s some sort of abstraction that doesn’t even really exist. [Their maps] might look like a moonscape. They’re just a whole bunch of bright colors but they’re not illustrations of the land. A good map is an illustration of the land first and it’s only a map because you put type tables on it. If you’re not illustrating the land with the artistic attention of a botanical illustrator or a medical illustrator, then you’re not illustrating the land in a way where people can actually make sense out of it. You don’t actually have to see a wild iris because people draw beautiful pictures of them. Nobody draws beautiful pictures of basic geography and puts these labels on them so we know what we’re looking at.
As someone that’s spent so much time going over America’s geography, what are three pieces of advice you have for the American road tripper?
I’m an expert road tripper by the way - I’m exploring all the time. This traveling partner [and I] go on trips for a couple thousand miles and we don’t drive an inch on the freeway. You see so much more of America that way. I mean this is planet earth we’re talking about here! Which as far as we know is the most exotic planet in the universe. So you know whether you’re out in the middle of Kansas or you’re in the canyon lands of southern Utah, it’s beautiful and interesting.
Growing up I made friends with places. I’d see a mountain range and I’d want to know about that. I’d look at a little town and want to know what makes this different. All these questions make life so much more interesting and people who are geographically unaware, to whom the world is just a series of interchangeable sceneries, that’s really boring! Enrich your life by noticing the world: the climate, the vegetation, the culture, everything that’s going on. And the world becomes a much more beautiful and interesting place. You can’t hardly get bored out on the road if you’re interested in what you’re looking at.
Stay the Hell out of Denny’s and places like that! Find local restaurants and stuff that are some individual’s expression of what a restaurant ought to be. Now that’s a whole lot more interesting and varied than some corporate idea of what a restaurant ought to be. Every Denny’s across this country looks identical. So find local stuff! Check out local culture! It’s everywhere.
Pick a US highway and just follow it. See where it goes, the in-and-outs. It might take you from the Texas hill country up through the sand hills of Nebraska and on up to the Turtle Mountains and you would have seen everything in between, you would have seen this cross section of America and would have a way better understanding of that part of the country.
Tell me something you love about the USA.
We have so much to learn from each other. I think that some time in the future, and I hope it’s not too long, people will come from all over the world to visit our Native American reservations. They don’t have them anywhere else. You can still go to the Hopi reservation and, man, people are living there the way they’ve been living for 2000 years basically. They’re still doing the same ceremonies and stuff and it’s really cool.
Dave has now begun a quest to break down the boundaries further between cartography and fine art, transforming his geographic illustrations into high-quality canvas prints that highlight the beauty and intricacy of landscapes. His individual pieces focus on regions like the Great Lakes, or single states, like Iowa and Alaska. They expose the details of the cities, roads, forests, and mountains of these areas in a totally new light.
Or, as Dave put it, “Every state looks cool. Iowa looks cool!”
His current show, “ReEnvisioning Maps: The Cartographic Art of Dave Imus,” in the gallery space of InEugene Real Estate in Eugene, Oregon, began on November 6 and runs through December 2015. Check out the press release for more information, visit Dave’s website, and/or Like Dave's Facebook page, The Essential Geography of the United States of America.
November 08, 2015 /Cassia Reynolds
Q&A, eugene, maps, cartography, usamap, Dave Imus, mapmaking, geography, road trip, landscapes
Gas Station Gourmet: Cajun Style Hot Boiled Peanuts
October 05, 2015 by Cassia Reynolds in food
Somewhere in Wisconsin
You’ve spent the last eight hours locked in a car. Everything has begun to bleed together into that endless interstate continuum. When the fuel indicator flashes an insistent red, a wave of relief passes through you. You pull under the neon awning of the next gas station and as you open the car door, you flop out onto the cement.
Your body is heavy with that special lazy kind of soreness. Your mind is completely fizzled, half-stoned with that long distance driving daze. And as you fuel up, a tender pinging flutters through your stomach, soft but tugging. Feed me, it whines.
When you enter the gas station you’re assaulted by an artillery of smells: preservatives, grease, freeze-dried eggs, and tile cleaner. But in your weakened state you can’t tell if your nose is tingling because it’s warning you of possible poison or if it’s lusting for the source of those sterile-but-greasy fumes.
Are you hallucinating or do those grayish sausages on that open grill smell really good?
And suddenly you’re standing in front of that bacteria-infested grill, a set of plastic tongs in one hand and a paper sausage holder in another. Your mind snaps awake and you drop the tongs, stepping back in horror.
The sausages taunt you, bulbous and speckled unnatural colors. Several are oozing a pus-like yellow liquid onto the grill. Fuck no. Then you take in another deep whiff of hot, meaty goodness. Your stomach is growling. But the fear is too much. Your mind is lost, your decision is unmade, and you leave with just a packet of chips in hand, your true hunger unquenched.
If this sounds familiar, don’t be ashamed; we’ve all had our moment in the gas station, weighing the pros and cons of a questionable food product. And it’s time for someone to take a stand against the uncertainty!
This food pioneer has embarked on a noble quest for the betterment of mankind: to venture into the unknown hazards and test the smelliest, the most mysterious, and the least appealing of all the pre-packaged and quasi-edible. Just for you. And for science, of course.
Cajun Style Hot Boiled Peanuts
At first glance, the mini-cauldron filled with steaming peanut soup confused me. I’m Southern and I’ve eaten boiled peanuts plenty, but they’ve never been soaked in some strange, glowing orange broth. Seriously, this stuff radiated the kind of alluring glow that gold coins did in that old cartoon, Ducktales.
As if to counter the inedible-like ambiance, it also emitted a pleasant, spicy-salty scent that reminded me of gumbo. I attributed it to the cajun seasoning.
I picked out the smallest foam cup and dipped the soup ladle deep into the pot, stirring up the layers of orange-speckled, peanut lumps. Before I dumped a spoonful into my cup, I drained a bit of the hot liquid out. That just seemed damned unsafe for a car snack; I envisioned burnt thighs, stained seats, and a forever lingering smell of cajun seasoning.
Back in my car, I placed the cup in the drink holder beside me. I knew I couldn’t eat this snack and drive; it was way too messy. The first peanut I picked out of the bunch burned hot between my fingertips and I had to drop it and wait a moment before digging in. When I did, I wasn’t sure how to eat these things; I know you don’t normally consume the shell of a boiled peanut, but this one was particularly soft. I decided against it, peeling it open. I dug one meaty half out of a shell and popped it in my mouth.
It was hot, with a smooth, thick texture just a degree away from mushy. It fell apart without resistance between my teeth. As it did, the juices burst across my tongue. The flavor was intense and on the saltier side, but held heavy overtones of pepper and creamy nuttiness that came in waves as I chewed and swallowed. This was no snack to take lightly; it had an explosive, fiery zest.
I only made it through a few peanuts before I had to stop and take a break, fearing a sodium-overdose. The aftertaste held strong and didn’t fade until several sips of coffee later.
The peanuts came with a major downside: every bite meant wiping my fingers on napkins. I couldn’t possibly drive and eat these things at the same time. The smell also lingered forever, even after I closed the lid on the cup and wrapped it up in a trash bag.
Fast Forward Two Hours Later. My stomach is feeling fine, no problematic after effects, except for a slight salty taste in my mouth.
Cost: (for a small) $2.86
Weirdness (Sights, Smells, & Texture): ***
Car-Safety: *
Digestion: *****
Value: **
Conclusion: This is an offensive, awesome visual and olfactory experience. It’s also quite tasty, with a distinct cajun spiciness. However, if you’re the one in the driver seat, it’s just not a viable snack. You will get cajun peanut drip all over you and it will smell up the whole car. It’s also not very filling for the price.
October 05, 2015 /Cassia Reynolds
boiledpeanuts, cajun, gasstation, gasstationfood, road trip, roadtripsnacks, gasstationgourmet, food
Samantha's Definitive America
August 24, 2015 by Samantha Adler in travel
BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY, TENNESSEE
The rolling forests of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are entirely engulfing. With their blue and green hues, dewy crisp breath, lush foliage, and temperamental, seasonal mood swings.
A seemingly odd find in the heart of the American wilderness was a parking lot. An empty, expansive lot, dropped atop a mountain.
That asphalt slab was strangely patriotic. Even amidst the defining, impressive backcountry, I felt a surprising fondness towards the lot. It was a familiar and comfortable sanctuary after five hours of driving through, up, and over many mountains.
The US has always been a wild country of explorers and adventurers. Now, we’re leading modern expeditions in Jeeps and Priuses.
Repetitive lines on blacktop mark a place to rest, park your gas-powered stead, and admire the complexity of this huge country. Whether you’re cutting through the suburban jungle, city bustle, towering forests, or flat, flat desert.
Parking lots are the watering holes of America, a microcosm of its diversity, its good and its bad. To dogs waiting patiently with tongues wagging, notes of kindness left stuck on windshield wipers, helping hands carrying heavy loads for those in need, laughter from impromptu cookouts on pick-up beds. To unwanted stalkers, boisterous and vile exchanges, newly discovered dents and paint chips, and hidden dangers in the absence of street lamps.
These parking lots are definitively American to me. They’re relics of a country of explorers behind the wheel.
August 24, 2015 /Samantha Adler
Blue Ridge Parkway, road trip, Tennessee
Cassia's Definitive America
August 20, 2015 by Cassia Reynolds in travel
I have a special place in my heart for the highways of the American Midwest, yellow dotted lines on straight, wide strips of black speckled asphalt. It’s a timeless love for the scenery: a big, empty sky over endless, flat, green farmscapes. Maybe aesthetically I’m a minimalist; there’s just something mesmerizingly simple about all that open space. I can stare out the window for hours, getting thrills from the sparse huddles of cylindrical granaries that rise above the cornfields or the single hilltop adorned with a quaint, red-painted barn, breaking up the monotony.
And maybe that’s it; the terrain is so boring that I begin to appreciate the beauty of the small things that I see.
Whatever it is, I’m drawn to the quiet charm of this place. To the trees: pines, oaks, firs, spruces, and maples. To the neighborhoods with brick houses and freshly-cut front lawns and barefoot kids running through the grass. To the busy parking lots of the shopping malls with their perfect, infinite rows of soccer mom minivans and SUVs and shiny paint jobs that glint under the sun. To the temperate climate, with its four distinct seasons that perfectly balance a brutally cold winter with a swampy-hot summer. To the parks and lakes and fields and green, green, green everywhere and everything.
It’s what I imagine as definitively American in a land that’s so large and compartmentalized and spread out that it feels like five countries in one sometimes.
It’s a quiet, flat place, with not a lot happening.
August 20, 2015 /Cassia Reynolds
indiana, road trip, indianapolis, midwest, americanmidwest
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Round-Up: May 19, 2015
by Jarrah Hodge | May 19, 2015
filed under Round-Ups
Women, Action & The Media (WAM!) has released a new report with recommendations on how to tackle abuse and harassment on Twitter.
Katherine Swampy, an Aboriginal woman, says she was truly shocked by the racism she received as a candidate in the recent Alberta election (CBC).
BuzzFeed explains Toronto Police’s racist “carding” program, which is similar to the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” policy.
Sara Stewart at Women in Hollywood encapsulates the reasons you need to see Mad Max: Fury Road.
A new anthropological study indicates that gender equality was actually the norm for most of humans’ evolutionary history, until hunter-gatherer societies were supplanted (The Guardian).
Here’s what you shouldn’t say to someone who shares that they have endometriosis, according to Lily Kendall at The F Word.
Poor women are the ones who suffer most as the result of restrictive abortion policies, writes Linda Goler Blount, President and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative (RH Reality Check).
A Change.org petition is calling on Toronto’s transit system to remove ads for anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centres” from transit properties.
A group of women in the States are campaigning to have Harriet Tubman replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. But as Feminista Jones writes, and Jay Smooth says in his new video (below), such a change would still be problematic.
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Paul Amadeus becomes a broadcasting sensation despite his disability
From been told that he had just 72 hours to live to have to spend over 25 years as a fulfilled disabled broadcaster, Paul Amadeus surprises the world to become a broadcasting sensation that is heard on dozens of California stations. He is now an Accessibility Consultant, TV & Radio Personality, Brand Ambassador, Keynote Speaker and MC creating the company “Paul Amadeus Lane Media.”
As someone that wasn’t discouraged and inspired to live his dreams after being involved in a multi-car collision and surviving it, Paul Amadeus attended Academy of Radio and Television Broadcasting in 2006 where he graduated with honors. In 2007, he received his first paid job at CBS Radio KFWB-AM as a news production assistant. While at CBS, he got an additional position, where Paul received the title of Bureau Chief for NBC News Radio, KCAA 1050-AM, in the Inland Empire of Southern California.
Paul has long been a nerdy and a techie. When the month of January 2016 kicked in, he decided to use his love for anything nerdy in his new TECH Zone show. In the TECH show, he discussed technology and its changes in everyday life, games, entertainment, sports, health, and education. This opportunity arose after he had served as a judge for a consumer electronics show. For seven years, Paul broadcast live programs focused on technology and its benefits with respect to the community of people with physical disabilities and their families.
Paul has granted hundreds of celebrity interviews that include some of the most influential people on earth like Gavin Newsom, Chubby Checker, Hill Harper, George Duke, Megan McCain, Tommy Davidson, and many more. Paul Amadeus has a favorite quote which is “Never allow fear of the unknown to prevent you from achieving great things”. Paul Amadeus takes a moment to reflect on his success in the past decade and advice people to stay positive despite the challenges they face.
About Paul Amadeus
Paul Amadeus Lane was involved in a multi-car collision that put him in the hospital for eight months. He went from being told he had 72 hours to live to over 25 years later living a happy, thriving life as a Quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair. Undeterred by his disability, He has moved ahead to become an Accessibility Consultant, TV & Radio Personality, Brand Ambassador, Keynote Speaker, and MC.
To know more about his services, please go to https://www.paulamadeuslane.com/
Contact Person: Paul Amadeus Lane
Website: paulamadeuslane.com
CategoriesBusiness, Marketing & Sales, Media & Communications, News & Current Affairs, Website & Blog
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Home Analysis Kuwait’s Political Adolescence: The Controversies of Constitutional Reform
Kuwait’s Political Adolescence: The Controversies of Constitutional Reform
—Dr. Fatima AlMatar, Kuwait University, Department of Public Law
The political situation of Kuwait today resembles 17th century Britain, where the Amir[1] still has the power to dissolve parliament whenever he pleases so long as he provides a reason for doing so, and so long as the parliament is not dissolved again on the same grounds (article 107).
At first glance Kuwait seems a unique case in the sense that it is the only country in the GCC where a form of a democracy is practiced via a written constitution and an elected parliament. A closer look reveals an ostensible democracy. Coined by Lewin and Lippitt in 1938, the term describes a model of leadership where a thin layer of democracy is implemented to mask coercion under the guise of participatory group processes.
Kuwait’s current constitution, written in 1962, is not the country’s first attempt at democracy.
In 1938 a short lived constitution existed. Prior to oil, the Amir depended on taxes levied from the leading merchants to cover modest public spending. In return, the merchants were included in political decision making. When an oil concession was signed and royalties were paid directly from the British company to the Amir, the position of the merchants shifted, no longer the Amir’s main source to funds they lost political privileges. The Amir could now spend from oil revenues and provide public sector jobs for the population once dependent on the merchants for livelihood.
In addition to political power the merchants aspired to a share from oil revenues, allying themselves with a dissident fraction of Alsabah family, compelling the Amir to accept a national assembly and a constitution, they claimed the British Agent is intervening in all Kuwait’s domestic matters and as the people they demanded their say.
The 1938 constitution designated the nation as the source of authority represented by the assembly, banned treaties or concessions which did not obtain assembly’s consent, and appointed the assembly’s president as the executive authority in the country. Fourteen members were elected and a member of the ruling family Abdullah Alsabah presided the assembly, an elitist affair where only leading merchants and dissident members of Alsabah were included.
When the assembly attempted to assert control over oil revenues and its ambitions grew uncomfortable for the British Agent[2], the Amir dissolved it and abandoned the constitution all together after five months of its formation going back to the old authoritarian rule.
In 1950 Abdullah Alsabah brought radical reform to Kuwait, starting by ending the British protectorate treaty in 1961 an agreement in force since 1899 to protect Kuwait from the Ottoman Empire, approved the 1962 constitution which provides “Kuwait’s system of government is democratic; sovereignty is vested in the nation as the source of all authority; and the exercise of that sovereignty shall be as set out in this constitution” (article 6), and an elected parliament came into power in 1963.
Although the first election in Kuwait was described as free, the government interfered in later elections ensuring more docile MPs. Each time MPs became too vocal for the Amir, parliament was dissolved; dissolved eight times since its inception; 1976, 1986, 1989, 1999, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012.
The 1962 constitution was considered an upgrade from the historical authoritarian rule, civil rights and freedoms became constitutionally protected. “Personal Liberty is guaranteed” in article 30; “freedom of belief is unrestricted” in article 35; “Freedom of opinion is guaranteed” in article 36; “Freedom of the press and the publication is guaranteed” in article 37.
Another perspective suggests the constitution merely safeguards the sovereignty of Alsabah. “Kuwait is a hereditary Emirate held in succession in the descendants Mubarak Alsabah”, according to article 4; “The Amir is the Head of State, his person is safeguarded and inviolable” under article 54. The latter article in particular authorized many arrests in recent years of anyone who criticizes the ruler or government, alleges or seeks to prove the corruption of officials or objects to the extreme deterioration of public services and standards of living.
In 2011, in the heat of the Tunisian, Libyan and Egyptian uprisings, Kuwait also went through a political upheaval, a scandal involving the Prime Minister’s abuse of public funds had spread and people took their anger to the streets protesting and demanding his resignation. Calls for an elected PM (not a member of Alsabah) began to rise. The constitution gives the Amir the power to appoint the PM (article 56). The appointing of ministers belongs to the PM, and both are answerable to the Amir in all policies of the country (article 58). This system of power-sharing among those already in power leads to durable ruling coalitions.
The people’s frustration deepened when the Amir dissolved a popular parliament with a majority of opposition MPs in 2012, and in the absence of parliament issued a decree–another superpower granted to him by article 71–to reform the electoral law unilaterally.
The electoral law divides the country into five districts; ten candidates were elected in each district and gave each voter four votes, reformed to only one vote for each voter. When the Amir’s actions were challenged before the constitutional court arguing that the new voting system would consistently produce pro-government legislatures. The court ruled both actions constitutionally sound. The following election (2013) attracted less than 30% of the people (the lowest in the history of Kuwait).
Constitutions have a life span. The alleged liberties and freedoms the constitution has brought may have been sufficient in the past, however, globalization, social networking, education, awareness, social change and the fact that 70% of the Kuwaiti population is under the age of 29 indicate that reform is inevitable. If change is not initiated by government, peaceful demonstration will continue to push toward rationalizing the political process and amending the 52 year old constitution.
Suggested Citation: Fatima AlMatar, Kuwait’s Political Adolescence: The Controversies of Constitutional Reform, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Apr. 3, 2015, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/2015/03/kuwaits-political-adolescence-the-controversies-of-constitutional-reform
[1] Kuwait is a monarchy, ruled by Alsabah family, the Prince ruling the state is known in Arabic as Amir or Shaikh, the Amir is nominated by a family council headed by the most senior and prominent members of the Alsabah, the leadership is not strictly hereditary although some Amirs have succeeded their fathers’.
[2] The British agent had supported the idea of the assembly until it grew too vocal.
Author: Richard Albert Filed under: Analysis, New Voices
Tags: Abdullah Alsabah, Amir, Arab Spring, ostensible democracy
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Revolution: a Source of Insecurity and a Thing of the Past?
Source: ISN
What is revolution? Is it merely unwanted disorder or a meaning-providing push to be seen and heard by the dispossessed? And most importantly, are the revolutions we’re seeing today different from those of the past? To Eric Selbin, revisiting these questions is unavoidable if we are to understand this enduring phenomenon.
By Eric Selbin for ISN
It’s safe to say that revolutions have always been sources, simple or otherwise, of insecurity and disorder in the short run. Indeed, elites and their minions invoke “revolution” to signify the disruption and chaos (with a soupçon of dread) that people’s efforts to fundamentally change aspects of the material and ideological conditions of their daily lives will bring. Yet for millions there is an almost romantic aspect, evoking not the convulsion attending any social change but boundless possibilities; herein lies the power of revolutions. So the question is really one of “insecurity and disorder” for whom? Insecure lies the heads of those who benefit from the status quo and their concern about disorder grows when revolution is in the air. Meanwhile, those who suffer from the conditions extant, their daily lives marked by the insecurity and disorder associated with globalization might reasonably think a bit more insecurity and disorder in pursuit of improving their lot may not seem like such a bad deal.
A few caveats are in order. Perhaps more than ever before, we recognize that past, present, and future co-exist in complicated ways. As per the novelist William Faulkner, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” There is also “simply” nothing “simple” about revolution, insecurity, or disorder, a dynamic hinted at below. Finally, the underlying terms, security and order, strike me as illusory at best, since any person or society can be only one incident away from “insecurity and disorder,” which in any case might be in the eye of the beholder.
So what, exactly, is a ‘revolution’?
Defining revolution may seem a fool’s errand, but it is not unimportant. If Duc de la Rochefoucauld’s pithy parsing for King Louis XVI that the fall of the Bastille was no mere “révolte” but “une revolution” reminds us that we know it when we see it, today’s dominant formulation hews closely to Theda Skocpol’s, where state power is sought in pursuit of fast, fundamental transformations of state and class structures to alter societal systems in a contemporaneous and mutually reinforcing fashion. Jack Goldstone marries her structuralist approach to the efforts of John Foran and others of us to bring in subjective facets such as culture and ideology. If in some cases power may be captured non-violently (Tunisia) and/or electorally (Latin America’s Pink Tide), his conception of revolution as the forcible seizure of state power through mass mobilization in the name of social justice and seeking to transform or create new institutions and structures seems well suited to the moment.
Revolutions are, as a rule, rare and momentous processes. People have been and are hungry, poor and watched their children suffer and die in many places at many times and not often risen up. Land, goods, and services have been and are unfairly distributed to the wealthy and powerful without prompting radical struggles. Thus, revolutionary imaginations and sentiments abound at any time, revolutionary situations less commonly, and actual revolutions rarely. And yet the people’s notion of revolution as rapid, dramatic social upheaval meant to produce striking, broad, and meaningful change persists. Regardless of what governments, media, or academics say, this notion of revolution in the streets or squares or on social media and in the ‘twitterverse’ is driven by the dynamic of hope and reflects the desire of many people in many places at many times to enable and more importantly ennoble their struggle(s) by setting them in a revolutionary tradition. We should be wary of denying people’s lived experiences and their sense(s) of meaning with which they imbue their lives, their actions, their world(s).
Some of us argue that there have occasionally been global waves of revolution, as in 1848 and 1968 (and perhaps 1917-18), and it is too soon to tell whether today’s are another. But resistance, rebellion, and revolution seem to be in the air, a perception heightened by social media. A few years ago politicians, pundits, and academics of various perspectives assured us that the “age of revolution” (1789-1989), was over. A time, place and space had passed, none too soon and not to be missed. Reports quickly proved exaggerated, as Eastern Europe’s “refolutions,” the “Pink Tide” in Latin America, and persistent revolutionary struggles elsewhere made clear. And at least since 2009 in Iran (but also in Georgia, Guinea, Iceland, Moldova, and elsewhere), there has been a steady rise across the globe of people pressing for social and political and economic change, seeking control over the material and ideological conditions of their everyday lives.
The uprisings in the Arab world, various indignant movements throughout Europe, Chile, and Mexico, the North American Occupy movement, Brazil, Gezi Park in Turkey, Ukraine, and India’s Naxalites all remind us that radical socio-political movements for greater participation and social equality persist. Whatever their demands—or no demands—such collective behavior represents a call to be seen and heard, reflecting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “fierce urgency of now” and the compelling question posed by Mexico’s Zapatistas: “is this the democracy you wanted?” More and more people are stepping out of their homes to claim their private hopes and dreams in public fora. If this is not revolution in the grand scale we conventionally associate with the term, is it revolutionary nonetheless? Who among us is prepared to tell people their struggles for justice and dignity are “simply” “disorder”?
Conditions for revolution
As people move from revolutionary imaginations to share their revolutionary sentiments and seek to create revolutionary situations, they rely on stories to do so. Messy, open-ended, and complicated, these stories tell us much about who and what we were, are, where we want to go and who we want to be. Such stories shift and change in ways that are hard to predict and harder still to pin down, versions and variations often transient and effervescent. This no doubt contributes to a vague sense of unease, and concerns about insecurity and disorder. Yet it is in insecurity and disorder that hopes, dreams, desires, and, hence, possibilities exist.
Walter Benjamin, writing at an ominous juncture in the late 1930s, argued that the “state of emergency” in which they were living was the rule, not the exception, and that people needed to create their own states of emergency to bring about change. While most of us do not live in states constricted and constrained by explicit “states of emergency,” such threats are never far away. Indeed, most of us find ourselves in a time and in places of essentially permanent “states of emergency,” one event or threat, real or perceived, away. Thus are forms of security and order imposed on us, often used by those who seek to maintain their power at the expense of the disenfranchised to proscribe and stifle people’s efforts to bring about meaningful change in their state or society. Revolutions are rare both because states are strong and those who benefit defend the social order. But when states are weak and elites withdraw and groups begin to challenge, mobilization can occur and states—and others—will respond. How this process unfolds in any given time or place and whether it succeeds fundamentally depends on the myriad particulars at play in each country.
Neither gone nor forgotten
And so to the crux of the question. Once upon a time, revolutions were inscribed as rare and momentous occasions, designating great and grand efforts to fundamentally transform humanity with an eye to the worth and dignity of every human being. Today’s movements, in contrast, seem to many as little more than rock throwing or a groupuscule able to muster a protest. Even when they are larger, such movements often seem focused on specific grievances with essentially reformist demands - hardly reminiscent of the sweeping, world-altering dimensions of revolutions past, nostalgically remembered as seeking to change a given society as a mere way station on the way to changing the entire world.
Yet what could be more meaningful than changing the small worlds that are our everyday worlds and hence matter most for most of us most of the time? If insecurity and disorder are attendant to such efforts, it is because for those engaged in such struggles the material and ideological conditions of their everyday lives evince neither security nor order or do so at the expense of their dreams and desires. In which case, the question shifts from what constitutes order and whose security is at risk to whether in disorder there may be great opportunity for reimagining, reworking, and reshaping one’s life. Revolutions are fundamentally struggles to rectify injustice; as long as unjust social orders exist, revolutions will be a recurrent aspect of politics and society, regardless of the banner people choose to fight under.
Eric Selbin is Professor of Political Science and University Scholar. His research interests are in the areas of resistance, rebellion, and revolution, theories of revolution, and socio-political change.
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Home Cover Story News Lead News Swamy’s Dark Herald
Lead News
Swamy’s Dark Herald
NEW DELHI, JUNE 9 (UNI):-Congress President Sonia Gandhi in convesration with Vice President Rahul Gandhi at a meeting of Chief Ministers of Congress ruled states in New Delhi on Tuesday. UNI PHOTO-48U
The Delhi High Court ruling in the Herald case will make political parties accountable for fund spending. All eyes will be on December 19 when the accused will appear before the trial court.
By Venkatasubramanian
The Delhi High Court’s verdict in Rahul Gandhi vs Dr Subramanian Swamy, deli-vered by Justice Sunil Ga-ur, on December 7, set off a huge political storm both inside and outside Parlia-ment. The ruling dismissed the challenges to the issue of summons by a lower court to Congress officials in connection with a complaint of misappropriation of party funds. The judgment provoked the Congress to alle-ge that NDA was encouraging proxy litigation to harass political rivals.
In his judgment, Justice Gaur began by saying that the probity of a legendary national political party was under the scanner in these petitions, which had challenged the issue of summons by a lower court to Cong-ress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, party officials Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes and Sam Pitroda, journalist, Suman Dubey and the company, Young Indian Private Company (YI), floated by the party.
Naming Names: (L-R) Oscar Fernandes, Motilal Vora, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda.
In this case, which has its origins in the trial court, the maverick BJP leader Swamy sought to expose cheating, fraud, criminal misappropriation, etc., by office bearers of the Congress, who also happen to be directors and shareholders of YI and Associated Journals Private Limited (AJL). AJL was engaged in publishing National Herald, which had a historical association with the Congress during the freedom struggle and even after Independence.
On June 26, 2014, the trial court, after recording the evidence of Swamy; a chartered accountant, MR Venka-tesh; an official from the Registrar of Com-panies, Gulab Chand; and journalist J Gopi-krishnan summoned the seven accused for offences under Sections 403, 406 and 420 read with Section 120-B of the IPC. Section 403 deals with dishonest misappropriation of property, Section 406 with punishment for criminal breach of trust and Section 420 with cheating and dishonesty inducing delivery of property. Section 120-B deals with punishment for criminal conspiracy.
When AJL had closed the printing and publication of National Herald in 2008, it owed a huge debt of `90 crore to the Congress. Although this debt had accumulated over a period of time, this was the outcome of interest-free loans extended by the Congress to AJL from time to time.
AJL was a public limited company with immovable assets of crores of rupees. The Congress had assigned the debt of `90 crore to YI on receiving a paltry amount of `50 lakh only.
Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi owned 38 percent each of shares of YI. The debt which AJL owed to the Congress then stood transferred to YI, which was formed in November 2010.
In December 2010, AJL increased its share equity by allotting large chunk of its shares to YI in lieu of the debt owed to the Congress which now stood assigned to YI. Thus, AJL became a wholly-owned company of YI by merely paying `50 lakh and thus, YI acquired complete control of AJL which had real estate assets of at least `2,000 crore, that too in prime areas of New Delhi, Luck-now, Bhopal, Mumbai, Indore, Patna, Pan-chkula and other places. According to Swa-my, the conservative real estate worth of AJL is `5,000 crore.
Illegal move? The current owner of the National Herald House, has rented out the property to MNCs and to the Ministry of External Affairs for its Passport Seva Kendra.
Swamy alleged that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had hatched a criminal conspiracy with the other accused to defraud the Congress and AJL by dubiously forming YI to misappropriate the huge assets of AJL. They thus committed a criminal breach of trust reposed in the Congress and the AJL and its shareholders. He alleged that the rights of shareholders of AJL and its properties had been dishonestly misappropriated by the accused by conversion of a loan of `90 crore into equity shares in favor of YI.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on arrival to appear before the Gauhati High Court in connection with a case of delivering an inflammatory speech at Kaziranga University, in Guwahati.
Curiously, while the Memorandum of Association of the AJL bars the company from entering into any transaction which is not for furthering its objective to publish newspapers, YI declared, after having possession of the vast real estate of AJL, that it would not engage in publishing a newspaper as it was against the declared objective submitted for obtaining registration under Section 25 of the Companies Act.
The National Herald House is a prime property on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi and was given by the government for the purpose of publishing a newspaper at concessional rates. Yet, YI, the current owner of National Herald House, has rented out this property to MNCs and to the Ministry of External Affairs for its Passport Seva Kendra. Such commercial use of property is considered illegal.
Justice Sunil Gaur, Delhi High Court.
“It is a matter of serious concern as allegations of fraud, etc are leveled against the Congress Party, who has ruled the nation for many decades” — Justice Sunil Gaur, Delhi High Court
In August 2014, the trial court prima facie concluded that YI was created as a sham or a cloak to convert public money to personal use or as a “special purpose vehicle” for acquiring control over `2,000 crore worth of assets of AJL. As all the accused had allegedly acted in consortium with each other to achieve the nefarious purpose or design, there were sufficient grounds for proceedings against all of them, it said.
It was asserted by the accused before the High Court that due to historical and emotive relations, money was advanced by the Congress to AJL from time to time and the party’s objective was to uphold the legacy and tradition of secularism and non-alignment.
The accused also strongly argued that there was no legal bar on disbursement of money to a newspaper, which was closely linked to the Congress.
They cited Section 13A of the Income Tax Act which contemplates “income from other sources” in respect of political parties, which are run on donations and contended that other political parties have also invested money in mutual funds. They made a pointed reference to the BJP investing in Canstar Fund.
The Past Unraveled: A chronology of what transpired after National Herald was launched in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru.
The accused told the High Court that the constitution of the Congress permits formation of a trust to hold imm-ovable properties belonging to the party, and that there is no allegation that the accused were the trustees of the funds of the Congress. Secondly, it was argued that there was no entrustment of any money to the Congress. Therefore, there is no question of any misappropriation or breach of trust as the donations received by the Congress could be dealt with in the manner it liked.
Thirdly, it was suggested that AJL had no net worth and was unable to repay the debt to the Congress. Fourth, the accused pointed out that neither the Representation of the Peoples Act nor the Income Tax Act or any other Act prohibits giving of loans by a political party. Reliance was placed upon a decision of the Income Tax Tribunal in the Bharatiya Janata Party vs Deputy Commi-ssioner of Income Tax [CIT (2003) 258 ITR 1] to maintain that a political party could invest in commercial ventures.
The accused also refuted allegations that writing off the loans by the Congress was an illegal act or that there was breach of trust qua the shareholders of AJL. They relied on a Supreme Court decision in the Bacha F. Guzdar, Bombay vs Commissioner of Income Tax, Bombay (1955) 1 SCR 876 to assert that a shareholder is not the owner of the assets belonging to the company.
The High Court, having heard both Swamy and the counsel representing the accused, concluded that in a democratic set up, how a political party of national stature acts is everybody’s concern. “Rather, it is a matter of serious concern as allegations of fraud, etc. are leveled against the Congress Party, who has ruled the nation for many decades,” the High Court held.
The Delhi High Court repelled the challenge that Swamy lacked the locus to make the complaint, as he himself was not a victim of alleged breach of trust. It held that the right of a private citizen to proceed against the corrupt could not be restricted.
Therefore, the Court repelled the challenge that Swamy lacked the locus to make the complaint against alleged breach of trust, as he himself was not a victim of such alleged breach of trust, by holding that the right of a private citizen to proceed against the corrupt could not be restricted.
The High Court also noted with concern the impropriety of extending interest-free loans to a separate legal entity, namely, AJL, by the Congress, particularly when the source of the party’s funds is largely from donations given by the public. “Any citizen can legitimately question the siphoning of funds by a political party,” the High Court held, making it legally possible for any future challenge to misappropriation of funds by any political party. In sum, the High Court found sufficient grounds for summoning the accused by the trial court.
With fresh summons being issued by the trial court to the accused to appear before it on December 19, the likely twists and turns in this case would be of interest to everyone.
Unheralded Crisis
Parliament has been plunged into paralysis over the National Herald case with the Congress projecting it as a BJP conspiracy.
By Ajith Pillai
IT is a truism that when parliament’s functioning is derailed, it is democracy itself that suffers. In the last dec-ade or so we have repeatedly been witness to hostilities in the Lok Sa-bha and the Rajya Sabha stalling proceedings and causing needless adjournments. More recently, an aggressive opposition first en-sured that the monsoon session was a washout. It persisted with its non-cooperation in the winter session resulting in precious time—that should ideally have been de-voted to discussing issues of national importance and passage of key bills—being wasted.
Who is responsible for this impasse? It is easy to blame either the opposition or the ruling dispensation. The truth lies somewhere in between. It cannot be denied that the primary task of ensuring the smooth functioning of parliament is the responsibility of the treasury benches. However, the opposition too owes it to people to ensure that the democratic process proceeds without too many hindrances.
Ironically, there was a glimmer of hope that the sabre-rattling would be within permissible limits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi and the placatory noises he made seeking the support of the opposition were seen as positive signals.
But these efforts were drowned out in the flood of controversies that followed. Conten-tious issues like intolerance towards minorities and those who propagated views seen as anti-government and anti-Sangh Parivar remained unresolved.
On the contrary, the fires continued to be stoked at regular intervals by the right-wing fringe and BJP leaders who projected the entire intolerance issue as politically orchestrated by anti-national intellectuals.
Indeed, what we have been seeing in parliament is a reflection of the larger ideological war raging outside. It is a battle between those who believe in the Nehruvian ideal of a secular state and those who repose faith in the principles of a strident Hindu rashtra. It is this widening fissure between them that frequently raises its ugly head and has contributed to several controversies.
It also found reflection in the National Herald misappropriation case. Congress leaders are now projecting it as a BJP conspiracy not only against the Nehru-Gandhi family but also as an attempt to “eliminate” the Congress. This charge may be far-fetched. But it would best be left for the courts to decide whether the Gandhis are guilty or innocent. This, incidentally, is the official stance of the BJP. But its leaders have all too often not suppressed their glee at the Gandhis courting trouble.
Very clearly, much more needs to be done before the forthcoming budget session vis-a-vis conflict management. Perhaps, the ruling dispensation and the opposition should initiate a dialogue while parliament is in recess instead of holding last-minute talks before the house reconvenes.
As for the Congress, it must learn to live with the fact that Sonia and Rahul have a long legal battle ahead. But that should not come in the way of it functioning as a responsible opposition.
High Court News India
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ALTERNATIVE CAREER OPTIONS FOR LAWYERS: Beyond the Courts
SLAPP Attack!
Water crisis in Marathwada: Chronicle of a Drought Foretold
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(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)
'Or, more precisely, let the citizens of Caricom know that they do not subscribe to such a judicial position as surfaced in Haiti which makes a mockery of institutionalised commitment to observance of international conventions governing crimes against humanity.'
-- Columnist Rickey Singh, in a Jamaica Observer op-ed criticizing a Haitian's judge's January 30 decision to dismiss as beyond a national statute of limitations claims against former ruler Jean Claude Duvalier -- as IntLawGrrls have posted here, here, here, and here, a ruler known as "Baby Doc" since he's the son of Haiti's prior dictator. Singh's op-ed draws a line between that decision and statements in which the current President of Haiti (flag above left) expressed a desire to "'think about the future'" rather than the past. As Singh notes, citing this Los Angeles Times editorial, the dismissal of claims conflicts with international abolition of limitations periods for cri mes against humanity, contained in treaties to which Haiti and other member states of CARICOM (flag at right), the Caribbean Community and Common Market, belong. It's to be noted that not all such treaties can be at play: doesn't appear from this ratifications list that Haiti, let alone other Caribbean states, can be counted as members of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. And Haiti's not a member of the International Criminal Court. The obligation's not explicit in a treaty to which Haiti is a state party, the American Convention on Human Rights, either. Rather, Human Rights Watch has derived the obligation from "decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, by whose judgments Haiti is legally bound."
Labels: CARICOM, crimes against humanity, DMA, Haiti, Human Rights Watch, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, Jamaica, statute of limitation
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Joshua Blevins Peck
Voices [In the Cityplex] + Romance & Hexagons / Telegrafs
Voices [In the Cityplex] was recorded at Zone 41 in Los Angeles, California and Reservoir in Seattle, Washington in 2016. Darby McDaniel provided the backing vocals. The video was shot in Paris, France and edited in Los Angeles by JBP in 2017.
Romance & Hexagons was recorded at Zone 41 in Los Angeles, California. The video was shot in Seattle, Washington by Darby McDaniel and edited in Los Angeles by JBP in 2017.
Voyeurs / Telegrafs
Voyeurs was recorded at Zone 41 in Los Angeles, California and Reservoir in Seattle, Washington in 2015/2016. Darby McDaniel provided the backing vocals.
Voyeurs was shot and edited in Los Angeles, California in 2016.
Voyeurs / Telegrafs / 2016
Sorcerer / Monument
Sorcerer was recorded at Zone 41 in Los Angeles, California in 2014.
Sorcerer was shot by various people in 2014-2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Pryor Creek, Oklahoma. It was edited in Los Angeles in 2015.
Sorcerer / Monument / 2015
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FLOOR DEBATE BEGINS ON THE FIRST STEP ACT
Leader McConnell Follows Through on Commitment to Bring Historic Measure to a Vote
SENATORS OF BOTH PARTIES EXPECTED TO ADD THEIR VOICES; SUPPORT EXPECTED TO EXCEED 70 VOTES
(Washington, D.C.) Today, the Senate made history as Leader McConnell filed for cloture on the FIRST STEP Act, the most significant federal criminal justice reform legislation in a generation. The prison and sentencing reforms in the bill have overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle, and polling shows the majority of voters in the country approve of the bill, including over 80% of Republicans. The legislation is expected to receive support from at least 70 Senators, and a majority in both parties. President Trump endorsed the legislation, urging Leader McConnell to vote the bill, tweeting encouragement that went viral: “Go for it, Mitch!”
The bipartisan legislation is spearheaded by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), an unlikely partnership that held firm for the sentencing reforms in the measure. Both leaders were adamant that the bill had to be bipartisan, and refused any changes on which there was not agreement.
“This an historic moment, and we cannot let it pass us by,” said Holly Harris, Executive Director of Justice Action Network and a Kentucky-based conservative strategist. “This bill will set the country on a path to safer communities, stronger families, and second chances for those who seek to turn their lives around. We credit Senators Durbin and Grassley for reaching across the aisle and working together on this measure—without their steadfast commitment to bipartisan cooperation, the legislation would never have made it to a vote. I also credit Leader McConnell, my home-state senior Senator, for working closely with the President, putting Kentucky voices first, and ultimately stepping in and saving legislation that addresses the civil rights issue of our time. The debate on First Step will not be easy, but nothing worth it ever is, and the Leader will be on the right side of history when the bill makes it to the President’s desk.”
As the country’s largest bipartisan advocacy organization, Justice Action Network serves as a national hub for bipartisan cooperation in the criminal justice reform space. Working through dozens of funded partners on the right and the left, JAN has assisted in the passage of dozens of significant reform bills from Ohio to Minnesota, Oklahoma to Kentucky. JAN credits groups including FreedomWorks, #Cut50, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Conservative Union, the Brennan Center for Justice, Prison Fellowship, Right on Crime, the Center for American Progress, the Fraternal Order of Police, the U.S. Chamber, and so many more for linking arms and moving forward in lockstep to advance federal reforms, which will better prioritize public safety, improve and expand rehabilitative opportunities for incarcerated people, and begin the process of reducing unduly harsh mandatory minimum sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.
Today’s motion puts in motion a cloture vote on Monday and final vote shortly thereafter, and the House of Representatives is expected to pass the bill immediately after a successful Senate vote.
First Step Act
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[Herald Review] Avengers assemble for the glorious ‘Endgame’
My only real regret about “Avengers: Endgame” is that I watched it in a country where it is considered rude to burst into applause during a screening: There were several moments in this damn-near perfect film that deserved a standing ovation.
The last installment in the “Infinity” saga -- the first 22 films about the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- was the sort of culmination that the final film in any series should be. It had the catharsis and the wistful and loving farewell of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” the sense of closure of “The Dark Knight Rises” and the drama of “Return of the Jedi” -- although that last film was only OK.
Like most MCU films, it packed incredible action, visual effects and drama -- but most importantly, it provided perfect closure for those who have followed the franchise since Tony Stark uttered the words “I am Iron Man” and have been waiting for Captain America to shout “Avengers! Assemble!”
“Avengers: Endgame” (Walt Disney Company Korea)
The film by Anthony and Joe Russo kicks off by looking at the world after Thanos has eliminated half of all life in the universe, with a horrid depiction of what happened to “Hawkeye” Clint Barton’s family. Meanwhile, drifting in space, Stark and Nebula are picked up -- literally -- by “Captain Marvel” Carol Danvers and head back to Earth to face their failures.
The remaining Avengers set out to kill Thanos, and soon find themselves on an unclear path.
Just as “Avengers: Infinity War” did, this film feels a lot like a gift to loyal Marvel fans. The directors seem to understand exactly what the fans of the franchise expect and have been awaiting with anticipation.
Throughout the film, they pay homage to past MCU works, even their own. The path the movie takes enables the audience to glance back at the past while looking ahead to the future at the same time.
“Endgame” is simultaneously adventure, superhero flick and drama. As an adventure film, it understands the excitement and uncertain nature of setting out on an unknown path and takes the audience along for the ride.
As a superhero flick, what more can I say? What haven’t the directors of some of MCU’s finest action flicks proven so far? Most of the action that made their past works so amazing is back, and then some.
As for the climactic battle, there are just no words for it -- one, because I’m not allowed to blurt out spoilers, and two, because it is beyond anything I’ve come to expect even in a Marvel film. It is, simply, epic.
Lastly, the drama. Marvel Studios could not have picked better directors to wrap up the saga that was 22 films and 11 years in the making. The audience follows the heroes we have loved and rooted for as they venture on -- not only on to the task at hand, but on their own inner journeys.
I loved how this film mirrored moments from the earlier films, but was not content with feeding fans’ nostalgia. Each of these moments built on the narrative, and despite the flick being three hours long, there were no wasted scenes. The movie really took me back, and pushed me forward.
While the characters were generally covered well, there was one glaring problem with “a certain character.” Having a hero who has fallen from grace and needs to face inner demons is one thing, and building a story arc based on a hero’s failure is another.
But there is a fine line between depicting a fallen hero and making that person an absolute joke, and this film has done the latter. While I understand that the Russo brothers were trying to add depth to the character’s story arc -- and there is a strong, emotional moment that resulted from that attempt -- I’m afraid they may have gone one step too far.
As a result, that character’s narrative, which the films had built up over the years, just went backward.
This is just a minor drawback, really. A far greater issue was with Captain Marvel.
I am starting to worry that being strong and unrelenting may be her only outstanding character traits, which could make her a poisoned apple for the franchise in the next phase of the MCU. The Russos actually did a good job handling this Mary Sue of a character in this picture, but it could potentially be a serious issue in other MCU films to come.
Sure, a deus ex machina may work for a minor character like Vision, but Captain Marvel is supposed to be a major player in the MCU. When a character like Scarlet Witch, with no standalone movie, is more relatable, you have a problem. MCU needs to build up Danvers’ character, and fast.
But these are all the complaints I have in an otherwise perfect ending to a perfect story. I love how the Russo brothers toyed with the viewers’ emotions by sucking them in, shaking them up, and then soothing them once they are crumpled up, overcome with feelings.
The final 10 minutes or so are an absolute gem because this segment has so much heart -- and it’s even more touching because the audience has been watching these characters for 11 years. As I said, perfect closure.
The movie will have you in tears, or out of your seats cheering, as you enjoy the height of possibly the grandest film franchise of this generation.
What can I say but “Thanks Marvel”, and “Excelsior!”
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MALAYSIA:::No proper regulations to protect domestic workers, says MTUC
The Malaysian government needs to come up with laws and regulations to protect the basic rights of domestic workers, says Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC).
Its former vice-president, Mohd Jafar Abdul Majid, told The Rakyat Post that the lack of such laws was the reason many of them had been subjected to different forms of abuse in the course of their occupation.
“We have been fighting for these workers’ rights for a while now and yet nothing has been done.
“The authorities need to realise that the lack of protection and regulations protecting the domestic workers working in the country can lead to unfair treatment that can jeopardise the country’s image.”
He said that recent reported cases of domestic workers being abused proved that it was high time the government took the matter seriously and came up with a solution immediately.
“The public and authorities need to realise that these domestic workers are human, just like us.
“They have similar needs as employees in other sectors and, therefore, should be given equal rights.
“Unfortunately, the reality now is that they are constantly forced to work long hours, have no off days and yet are not paid more for the extra work they have to do.
“MTUC’s hands are tied. If these workers work under one employee or organisation, it will be easier for us to fight for them.
“But each of them is employed by a different employer, which would make it difficult for us to track and knock on each door to force them to listen to us.”
Mohd Jafar said the government was the only entity capable of ensuring a better life for the workers as they could provide better education to the public on the need to respect these individuals as they would anyone else.
“Proper guidelines, rules and regulations imposed on the employers would also work.
“The government can make it compulsory for them to register their domestic helpers and threaten to fine or penalise any employers who take away the workers’ basic employment rights.”
Sisters in Islam (SIS) yesterday highlighted the issue by tweeting that domestic workers were not even considered as legitimate employees, leaving them unprotected under the labour laws and denied basic financial rights, such as the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF).
source:::http://www.therakyatpost.com
The MTUC says domestic workers are constantly forced to work long hours, have no off days and yet are not paid more for the extra work they have to do.
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Home » Timelines by Topic » Regions » Middle East » Iraq » Torture of US Captives
Torture, Rendition, and other Abuses against Captives in US Custody
Project: Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere
Open-Content project managed by Derek, KJF, mtuck
February 6, 2003: Detainee Moazzam Begg Is Transferred from Afghanistan to Guantanamo
After a year of detention at Bagram, which appears to be unusually long, Moazzam Begg is transferred to Guantanamo. [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ; BBC, 10/1/2004]
Entity Tags: Moazzam Begg
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Bagram (Afghanistan), Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Moazzam Begg
February 6, 2003: JAG Officer Protests Justice Department Approval of Torture
Major Jack Rives, a top Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer in the US Air Force, writes a memo challenging the legal opinion issued by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo justifying “harsh interrogation methods” (see January 9, 2002). Rives is representative of a large number of JAG officers who have sent fiercely worded memos calling torture and “harsh interrogation methods” illegal, regardless of what Yoo may have written. Rives writes, “[S]everal of the exceptional techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law,” and notes that US interrogators who use such techniques risk prosecution. And, telling soldiers it is permissable to brutalize prisoners could lead to a general breakdown in discipline and morale, Rives adds, “We need to consider the overall impact of approving extreme interrogation techniques as giving official approval and legal sanctions to the application of interrogation techniques that US forces have consistently trained [as being] unlawful.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 180]
Entity Tags: Jack Rives, John C. Yoo, US Department of the Air Force, Judge Advocate General Corps
Category Tags: Criticisms of US, Legal Proceedings
February 6, 2003: Former CIA Official Claims Guantanamo Prisoner Was Sent to Egypt and Tortured
Newsday reports that Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, told reporters, “Better intelligence has come from a senior al-Qaeda detainee who had been held in the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba, and was ‘rendered’ to Egypt after refusing to cooperate. ‘They promptly tore his fingernails out and he started to tell things.’” [Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004]
Entity Tags: Vincent Cannistraro
Category Tags: Rendition after 9/11, Other Detainees
February 6, 2003: Navy, Justice Lawyers Spar over Presidential Authority to Order Torture
Alberto Mora, the Navy’s general counsel, invites Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to his office to discuss Yoo’s recent memo defending the legality of extreme interrogation techniques used against terror suspects (see January 9, 2002). Mora has been working to put an end to such tactics at the Pentagon, but was horrified when his supervisor, Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, outflanked him with the Yoo memo (see January 23-Late January, 2003). Mora wants to know if Yoo believes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment can be allowed at Guantanamo, and if that the president’s authority to order torture is virtually unlimited. During the meeting with Yoo, Mora asks him, “Are you saying the President has the authority to order torture?” Yoo replies, “Yes.” “I don’t think so,” Mora retorts. “I’m not talking policy,” Yoo replies, “I’m just talking about the law.” Mora responds, “Well, where are we going to have the policy discussion, then?” Yoo has no idea. Perhaps it will take place within the Pentagon, where the defense-policy experts are. Mora knows that no such discussion will ever take place; the Bush administration will use Yoo’s memo to justify its support of torture. [New Yorker, 2/27/2006; Washington Post, 4/2/2008]
Entity Tags: William J. Haynes, John C. Yoo, Alberto Mora, Bush administration (43)
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba)
Between February 10, 2003 and February 16, 2003: CIA Director Briefs National Security Adviser about Italian Rendition
CIA Director George Tenet briefs National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on the forthcoming rendition of al-Qaeda figure Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from Italy to Egypt (see Noon February 17, 2003). According to a senior CIA officer who GQ magazine will say is “directly involved,” Rice approves the mission, but worries how she will tell President Bush. [GQ, 3/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
February 11, 2003: Rumsfeld Dodges Question about Limits on US Power
In Munich, in reference to the imminent war on Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is asked whether the US is bound by any international system, legal framework, or code of conduct. Avoiding a direct answer, Rumsfeld replies: “I honestly believe that every country ought to do what it wants to do… It either is proud of itself afterwards, or it is less proud of itself.” [Guardian, 2/11/2004]
Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld
Category Tags: Public Statements
February 13, 2003: Detainee Moazzam Begg Confesses Al-Qaeda Membership after 600 Days of Solitary and Numerous Threats
Moazzam Begg is put in solitary confinement at Guantanamo and remains there until at least September 2004, which is a period of almost 600 days. [Guardian, 10/1/2004] The same day, he signs a statement stating that he is a member of al-Qaeda, which he later claims he made “under threats of long term imprisonment, summary trials, and execution.” [BBC, 10/1/2004; Independent, 1/30/2005] His confession is made to the same US interrogators who questioned him at the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. “They reiterated the previous threats,” Begg alleges, “of summary trials, life imprisonment and execution.” [Independent, 1/30/2005]
Category Tags: Forced Confessions, Isolation, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Moazzam Begg
Before February 17, 2003: CIA Officers Argue over Rendition of Italy-Based Imam
A dispute breaks out at the CIA after a proposal is made to render an Islamist extremist named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from Italy to Egypt. Nasr had previously informed for the CIA (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After), but had been close to a senior al-Qaeda figure (see Summer 2000). Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA’s senior official in Milan, disagrees with the plan. The CIA and local Italian authorities are co-operating on surveillance of Nasr, and in a few months Lady thinks they will have enough evidence to arrest and convict him. In addition, kidnapping a man in Italy could endanger US-Italian relations. However, the rendition is supported by Jeff Castelli, the chief of the CIA station in Rome. [GQ, 3/2007 ] Reporter Jeff Stein will even say that the rendition is Castelli’s “brainchild.” [Congressional Quarterly, 4/19/2008] Opinion appears to be divided at CIA headquarters. According to one account, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center is against the idea, but the plan is ultimately approved by unspecified CIA managers. [GQ, 3/2007 ] According to another account, it is the Counterterrorist Center that approves the rendition. [Congressional Quarterly, 4/19/2008] One of the CIA officials involved in the rendition is Stephen Kappes, assistant director of the Directorate of Operations. However, details of his opinions on it are unknown. [New York Times, 11/4/2009] CIA Director George Tenet also agrees to the rendition. [GQ, 3/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Robert Seldon Lady, Stephen Kappes, Counterterrorist Center, Jeff Castelli, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Before February 17, 2003: Italian Military Intelligence Approves Kidnap of Milan Imam
The Italian military intelligence agency SISMI is briefed by the CIA on a plan to kidnap radical imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar) in Milan (see Noon February 17, 2003). SISMI agrees to the plan, but it appears other Italian agencies are not informed of it. The CIA will later claim the plan is even approved by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, although documentation to support this will not be produced. When Italian anti-terrorist authorities, who are monitoring Nasr and planning to arrest him, find he has been kidnapped, they will charge several CIA officers with breaking Italian law (see June 23, 2005 and After). [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, SISMI, Central Intelligence Agency, Silvio Berlusconi
Noon February 17, 2003: CIA Kidnaps Own Informer in Broad Daylight in Italy, Damaging Italian Al-Qaeda Investigation
A surveillance photograph of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. [Source: Central Intelligence Agency]The CIA kidnaps an Islamic extremist who previously informed for it in Milan, Italy. The man, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar), who was a member of the Egyptian terror group Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and was close to al-Qaeda, provided information to the CIA in Albania (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After) and operated in Italy (see Summer 2000). [Chicago Tribune, 7/2/2005] While the kidnap is happening, one of the CIA officers involved in the operation, Robert Seldon Lady, is having a meeting on the other side of Milan with Bruno Megale, head of Milan’s antiterrorism police service, DIGOS. The meeting’s purpose is to allow Lady to keep an eye on Megale in case something goes wrong. [GQ, 3/2007 ] The US will say that Nasr is a dangerous terrorist and that he once plotted to assassinate the Egyptian foreign minister. However, Italian officials, who were monitoring him, will deny this and say his abduction damages an intelligence operation against al-Qaeda. A senior prosecutor will say, “When Nasr disappeared in February [2003], our investigation came to a standstill.” Italian authorities are mystified by the kidnap, as they are sharing the results of their surveillance with the CIA. Nor can they understand why Egypt wants Nasr back. When Nasr reaches Cairo, he is taken to the Egyptian interior minister and told that if he agrees to inform again, he will be set free. However, he refuses and spends most of the next 14 months in prison, facing “terrible tortures.” The Chicago Tribune will ask, “Why would the US government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA’s most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?” One possible answer is that he is kidnapped in an attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was. The kidnapping generates a substantial amount of publicity, leading to an investigation of the CIA’s practice of extraordinary rendition, and an Italian official will comment, “Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping.” [Chicago Tribune, 7/2/2005] Arrest warrants will later be issued for some US intelligence officers involved in the kidnapping (see June 23, 2005 and After).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Seldon Lady, Bruno Megale, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Category Tags: Extraordinary Rendition, Rendition after 9/11, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
5:00 p.m. February 17, 2003: Kidnapped Imam Arrives at US Air Base in Italy
A group of CIA officers arrives at Aviano Air Force Base, north of Venice, Italy, with Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar), an Islamist extremist they kidnapped in Milan five hours previously (see Noon February 17, 2003). Some English-speaking interrogators strip Omar’s clothes, putting him in blue overalls, and photograph him. They ask him some questions about his connections to al-Qaeda, his sending of recruits to fight in Iraq, and his relationship with Islamist radicals in Albania (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After). However, Nasr says nothing. The interrogators punch him in the stomach and slap him across the face. Then they wrap his head in a sticky bandage, cut some breathing holes into it, and put him on a plane that arrives in Cairo seven hours later. [GQ, 3/2007 ] Twenty-six US officials will later be charged in Italy with the kidnap. One of them is Joseph Romano, a US Air Force officer whose role is to help the kidnappers at the air base in Aviano. [Congressional Quarterly, 9/23/2009]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph L. Romano III, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Category Tags: Extraordinary Rendition, Rendition after 9/11, Physical Assault, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
After February 17, 2003: Main Supporter of CIA’s ‘Italian Job’ Rendition Promoted Twice
Jeff Castelli, the CIA station chief whose idea it was to render Islamist extremist Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from Italy to Egypt (see Before February 17, 2003 and Noon February 17, 2003), is promoted twice following the operation. According to journalist Matthew Cole, this places Castelli “deep in senior management” at the agency. [GQ, 3/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Jeff Castelli
February 22-March 15, 2003: CIA Milan Chief Flies to Cairo, Following Abducted Imam Who Is Allegedly Tortured
Robert Seldon Lady, chief of the CIA’s substation in Milan, Italy, travels to Egypt for three weeks. A radical imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar) was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan five days before and taken to Egypt, and Lady will later be accused of being a party to the abduction (see Noon February 17, 2003 and June 23, 2005 and After). According to the Washington Post, “many counterterrorism analysts take [Lady’s trip to Egypt] to mean he took part in the initial interrogation.” A search of Lady’s villa will later turn up computer disks showing a flight reservation from Zurich to Cairo and cell phone records will show that a phone associated with Lady was used to place calls from Cairo during the period Lady is thought to be there. Nasr will later say he is tortured when in Egypt (see April-May 2004). [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Seldon Lady, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
(Late February 2003): CIA Aids Questioning of Recently Rendered Extremist in Egypt
The CIA assists with the interrogation in Egypt of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Islamist extremist the agency recently rendered from Italy (see Noon February 17, 2003). Nasr is questioned at a Cairo prison by three agents of the Egyptian Mukhabarat, who repeatedly ask him about his recruiting network and which members of the Islamist organization Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya are working with him. Several CIA officers, presumably including Robert Seldon Lady (see February 22-March 15, 2003), watch Nasr stonewall the questions on a video monitor in a nearby room. The officers, who know intimate family details about Nasr’s life due to a bug in his house, give the Egyptians a fabricated message that Nasr is to be told is from his son. Upon hearing the message, Nasr breaks down and cries. He then tells his interrogators everything he knows, including who is involved in his recruiting efforts in Milan and which Egyptians have helped hide his money transfers. Having gotten the information they wanted, the CIA agents leave and the Egyptians begin torturing Nasr (see Late February 2003 or Shortly After). [GQ, 3/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Late February 2003 or Shortly After: Recently Rendered Egyptian Tortured by Local Authorities
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Islamist extremist recently rendered from Italy to Egypt by the CIA (see Noon February 17, 2003), is tortured there. Nasr was interrogated for information by the local authorities with the agency’s help shortly after his arrival in Egypt and gave up what information he had (see (Late February 2003)). The torture techniques include:
Beating;
Being hung upside down;
Exposure to extreme heat and cold;
Sleep deprivation;
Extremely loud music played for hours;
Denial of bathing; and
A device called the mattress, where the victim is tied to a wet mattress, his shoulders are pinned to it by one of the torturers, and electricity is fired through the mattress coils.
A former CIA official will comment on the rationale behind the Egyptians torturing someone who has already provided information: “They’re a good intel service. They use sedatives and psychological manipulation to get someone to talk. If they’re mad or you’re of no use—that’s when they get mean.” [GQ, 3/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
February 28, 2003: CIA Refuses to Say Whether Bush Has Approved Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
CIA general counsel Scott Muller writes to Jane Harman (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, but fails to respond fully to questions about the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques. [Central Intelligence Agency, 2/28/2003 ] Following a briefing earlier in the month about the legality of the techniques (see February 2003), Harman had written to Muller and CIA Director George Tenet asking whether using the techniques was good policy for the US: “I would like to know whether the most senior levels of the White House have determined that these practices are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have the enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?” She also urges the CIA not to destroy videotapes of detainee interrogations because they are “the best proof that the written record is accurate,” and their destruction “would reflect badly on the Agency.” [US Congress, 2/10/2003 ] In his reply, Muller completely fails to mention the tapes or say whether Bush has been consulted. He also says it would be inappropriate for him to comment on policy issues, merely that “it would be fair to assume that policy as well as legal matters have been addressed within the Executive Branch.” [Central Intelligence Agency, 2/28/2003 ]
Entity Tags: House Intelligence Committee, Central Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush, Scott Muller, Jane Harman, George J. Tenet
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes
Spring 2003: Informant Posing as Prisoner Allegedly Is Mistreated by US Guards at Bagram and Guantanamo
Abdurahman Khadr. [Source: Cageprisoners]Prisoner Abdurahman Khadr says he is forced at a US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, to lie on a cold concrete block for two days in the spring of 2003. He also experiences US soldiers stepping on his shackles, which cut through his skin “to the bone.” A female guard drags him up a flight of stairs, he recalls, after smiling at her. He is then flown to the US prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. He says the flight was a “whole torture on its own,” because, “There were people screaming around me and there was people begging for water and nobody was getting anything.” At Guantanamo, he is placed in an isolation block for 30 days, in a dark cell with just a hole for food. He is only allowed out for 15 minutes every three days. He claims, “They use this room to torture us.… They put the heat up or they put it too low so we are freezing or we are suffering because there is no air. They put the music on so you can’t sleep. They throw rocks at the block so you can’t sleep.” Ironically, Khadr is serving as a CIA informant at the time (see November 10, 2001-Early 2003). When he asks his CIA handlers why he has to suffer so much, he is told it is to make the prisoners think he is one of them. [Toronto Star, 8/19/2004] He complains and in the early summer of 2003 he is transferred to better quarters and secretly allowed better treatment. Sometimes he is even allowed to secretly leave the prison. In September 2003, he will leave Guantanamo as the CIA gives him another assignment (see September-November 2003). [PBS Frontline, 4/22/2004]
Entity Tags: Abdurahman Khadr, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Extreme Temperatures, Isolation, Physical Assault, Poor Conditions, Sleep Deprivation, Bagram (Afghanistan), Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Other Detainees
March 2003: CIA Falsely Claims Kidnapped Imam Is in Bosnia
The CIA tells anti-terrorist authorities in Italy that it has reliable information that Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar), a radical Islamist cleric who was under joint Italian-CIA surveillance in Milan until recently, is in Bosnia. This is a deliberate lie; the CIA knows Nasr is in Egypt, as it recently kidnapped him and took him there, handing him over to Egyptian authorities (see Noon February 17, 2003). According to the Washington Post, the purpose of the lie is “to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric….” The Italians believe the CIA’s story for more than a year, but subsequently discover the CIA was involved in his kidnapping. [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, Impunity
March 2003: Iraq Prisoner Shot to Death in US Custody
Iraqi prisoner Hemdan El Gashame is shot to death in US custody while being held in Nasiriyah. Gashame’s death will be investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS—see May 14, 2008). [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/14/2008]
Entity Tags: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Hemdan El Gashame
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Other US Bases and Centers
March 2003: Bagram Commander Denies Detainees are Chained to Ceilings
Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill, US troop commander in Afghanistan, tells the New York Times that prisoners are forced to stand for long periods at the US prison in Bagram, but denies that they have been chained to the ceilings. “Our interrogation techniques are adapted,” he says. “They are in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques, and if incidental to the due course of this investigation [of Dilawar’s death (see December 10, 2002)], we find things that need to be changed, we will certainly change them.” [New York Times, 3/4/2003]
Entity Tags: Dilawar, Daniel K. McNeill
Category Tags: Public Statements, Stress Positions, Bagram (Afghanistan), Other Detainees
March 1, 2003: Afghani Detainee Allegedly Murdered by US Special Forces
Jan Mohammed re-enacts the alleged murder of his brother, Wakil. [Source: Crimes of War Project]Wakil Mohammed, an unarmed peasant, is shot to death by a US Special Forces soldier while being questioned about his possible role in a firefight. He was protesting that he and his brother—an eyewitness to the shooting—were merely returning home from afternoon prayers and had nothing to do with the fighting. (His brother will later tell the reporters that he and several others were detained and tortured, including having their heads held underwater in a form of waterboarding, and having their toenails torn out.) Mohammed’s death is not reported at all in the initial reports of the firefight. The death is later listed by the Army as a murder, but no charges have ever been filed in relation to the shooting. The team’s battalion commander will later claim that Mohammed’s death was never reported to him. One member of the Special Forces team involved in the murder will tell the Los Angeles Times that his unit held a meeting after the teen’s death in order to coordinate their stories should an investigation arise. “Everybody on the team had knowledge of it,” says the soldier. “You just don’t talk about that stuff in the Special Forces community. What happens downrange stays downrange… Nobody wants to get anybody in trouble. Just sit back, and hope it will go away.” The Times learns that the Special Forces unit in Gardez already is under heavy scrutiny by superior officers. One officer reported that the Gardez unit was “the most troubled” field team among nearly a dozen in Afghanistan. Another senior officer wrote that the team was gaining a reputation as “a rogue unit,” and a battalion commander characterizes the unit’s performance as “a Guard unit operating unprofessionally in a combat zone.” The Times will later report, “What distinguishes these two fatalities from scores of other questionable deaths in US custody (referring to the murder of both Mohammed and another detainee, Jamal Naseer—see March 16, 2003) is that they were successfully concealed—not just from the American public but from the military’s chain of command and legal authorities.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006]
Entity Tags: US Special Forces, US Department of the Army, Wakil Mohammed
Category Tags: Coverup, Prisoner Deaths, Waterboarding, Gardez (Afghanistan)
February 29 or March 1, 2003: KSM Reportedly Arrested in Pakistan, but Doubts on Circumstances Persist
A photo taken during KSM’s alleged arrest in Pakistan. [Source: Associated Press]Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is reportedly arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003] Officials claim that he is arrested in a late-night joint Pakistani and FBI raid, in which they also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the purported main financer of the 9/11 attacks. [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] An insider informant allegedly tips off authorities to KSM’s location, and is given the $25 million reward money for his capture (see Shortly Before February 29 or March 1, 2003). However, some journalists immediately cast serious doubts about this arrest. For instance, MSNBC reports, “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan.” [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] There are numerous problems surrounding the US-alleged arrest of KSM:
Witnesses say KSM is not present when the raid occurs. [Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003; Guardian, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003]
There are differing accounts about which house he is arrested in. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/3/2003]
There are differing accounts about where he was before the arrest and how authorities found him. [Time, 3/1/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 3/4/2003]
Some accounts have him sleeping when the arrest occurs and some don’t. [Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Reuters, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003]
Accounts differ on who arrests him—Pakistanis, Americans, or both. [CNN, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/3/2003; London Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/3/2003]
There are previously published accounts that KSM may have been killed in September 2002 (see September 11, 2002).
There are accounts that he was captured in June 2002 (see June 16, 2002).
These are just some of the difficulties with the arrest story. There are so many problems with it that one Guardian reporter says, “The story appears to be almost entirely fictional.” [Guardian, 3/6/2003]
Account by 9/11 Commissioners Conflicts - In addition, 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton will write in a 2006 book that the arrest is made in an apartment in Karachi and carried out by a joint CIA, FBI, and Pakistani team (see Early 2003).
Account by Musharraf Also Conflicts - Also in 2006, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will publish a memoir in which he claims that KSM was arrested on February 29, 2003 (instead of the widely cited March 1, 2003), and held by Pakistani forces for three days, “during which time we interrogated him fully. Once we were done with him and had all the information we wanted, we handed him over to the United States government.” [Musharraf, 2006, pp. 193]
Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Lee Hamilton, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Pervez Musharraf
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind KSM Tortured in Secret CIA Prison
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed shortly after arrest. (Note: this picture is from a video presentation on prisoners the Pakistani government gave to BBC filmmakers. It has been adjusted to remove some blue tinge.) [Source: BBC's "The New Al-Qaeda."]Following his arrest in Pakistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) finds himself in CIA custody. After two days of detention in Pakistan, where, he will allege, he is punched and stomped upon by a CIA agent, he is sent to Afghanistan. After being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006, he will discuss his experiences and treatment with officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC—see October 6 - December 14, 2006). Mohammed will say of his transfer: “My eyes were covered with a cloth tied around my head and with a cloth bag pulled over it. A suppository was inserted into my rectum. I was not told what the suppository was for.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]
Naked - He is reportedly placed in a cell naked for several days and repeatedly questioned by females as a humiliation. He is attached to a dog leash and repeatedly yanked into the walls of his cell. He is suspended from the ceiling, chained naked in a painful crouch for long periods, doused with cold water, and kept in suffocating heat. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; MSNBC, 9/13/2007] On arriving in Afghanistan, he is put in a small cell, where, he will recall, he is “kept in a standing position with my hands cuffed and chained to a bar above my head.” After about an hour, “I was taken to another room where I was made to stand on tiptoes for about two hours during questioning.”
Interrogators - He will add: “Approximately 13 persons were in the room. These included the head interrogator (a man) and two female interrogators, plus about 10 muscle guys wearing masks. I think they were all Americans. From time to time one of the muscle guys would punch me in the chest and stomach.” This is the usual interrogation session that Mohammed will experience over the next few weeks.
Cold Water - They are interrupted periodically by his removal to a separate room. There, he will recall, he is doused with “cold water from buckets… for about 40 minutes. Not constantly as it took time to refill the buckets. After which I would be taken back to the interrogation room.”
No Toilet Access - During one interrogation, “I was offered water to drink; when I refused I was again taken to another room where I was made to lie [on] the floor with three persons holding me down. A tube was inserted into my anus and water poured inside. Afterwards I wanted to go to the toilet as I had a feeling as if I had diarrhea. No toilet access was provided until four hours later when I was given a bucket to use.” When he is returned to his cell, as he will recall, “I was always kept in the standing position with my hands cuffed and chained to a bar above my head.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] However, he is resistant to these methods, so it is decided he will be transferred to a secret CIA prison in Poland (see March 7 - Mid-April, 2003), where he will be extensively waterboarded and tortured in other ways.
Entity Tags: International Committee of the Red Cross, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Extreme Temperatures, Forced Confessions, Sexual Humiliation, Stress Positions, Waterboarding, Destruction of CIA Tapes, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
After March 1, 2003: CIA Detainee Reportedly Provides Agency with First Intelligence about Al-Qaeda Operative Involved in 9/11 Plot
Al-Qaeda operative Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, under interrogation by the CIA following his capture (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), reportedly gives the agency the first information it has received about another al-Qaeda operative who was involved in the 9/11 plot. That operative’s name will be redacted in a later report by the CIA’s inspector general. Alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will later provide additional information about that person. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 86 ]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi
Category Tags: Other High Ranking Detainees
After February 29 or March 1, 2003: Interrogators Threaten to Kill KSM’s Children
At some point after alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is captured (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), interrogators threaten to kill his children if he does not co-operate with them. An “experienced agency interrogator” will tell the CIA inspector general that “interrogators said to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that if anything else happens in the United States, ‘We’re going to kill your children.’” [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 43 ] Two of his children are alleged to have been captured in late 2002 (see After September 11, 2002). According to author Ron Suskind, this is after CIA headquarters authorizes the interrogators to “do whatever’s necessary” to get information. However, according to a CIA manager with knowledge of the incident, “He [KSM] basically said, so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 230]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Category Tags: Intimidation/Threats, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
March 3, 2003: Official Says International Convention Against Torture Meaningless
An unnamed US law enforcement official tells the Wall Street Journal, “[B]ecause the [Convention Against Torture—see October 21, 1994] has no enforcement mechanism, as a practical matter, ‘you’re only limited by your imagination.’” A detainee “isn’t going to be near a place where he has Miranda rights or the equivalent of them,” the official says. “God only knows what they’re going to do to him. You go to some other country that’ll let us pistol whip this guy.” [Wall Street Journal, 3/4/2003; Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004]
Entity Tags: Convention Against Torture
Category Tags: Statements/Writings about Torture, Rendition after 9/11
March 6, 2003: Defense Department Group Produces Report Justifying Torture
A working group appointed by the Defense Department’s general counsel, William J. Haynes, completes a 100-page-plus classified report justifying the use of torture on national security grounds. The group—headed by Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker and including top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch—consulted representatives of the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies in drafting the report. It was prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and was meant to respond to complaints from commanders working at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba who claimed that conventional interrogation tactics were inadequate. The conclusions in the report are similar to those of an August 1, 2002 memo (see August 1, 2002) drafted by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The OLC is said to have also contributed to this report. [US Department of Defense, 3/6/2003; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/2004; Los Angeles Times, 6/10/2004] The report notes that both Congress and the Justice Department will have difficulty enforcing the law if US military personnel could be shown to be acting as a result of presidential orders. [Washington Post, 6/8/2004]
President's Authority During War Gives Power to Order Torture, Supersede Law - One of the main conclusions of the report is that the president’s authority as commander-in-chief permits him during times of war to approve almost any physical or psychological interrogation method—including torture—irrespective of any domestic or international law. The report finds, “[I]n order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign… [the 1994 law banning torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.” The draft report clearly states that neither Congress, the courts, nor international law has jurisdiction over the president’s actions when the country is waging war. The report asserts that “without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president’s ultimate authority” to wage war. Furthermore, “any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the commander-in-chief authority in the president.” According to the document, the federal Torture Statute simply does not apply. “In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign… (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority,” the report states (The parenthetical comment is in the original document). A career military lawyer will later tell the Wall Street Journal that many lawyers disagreed with these conclusions, but that their concerns were overridden by the political appointees heading the drafting of the report. The lawyer explains that instead, military lawyers focused their efforts on limiting the report’s list of acceptable interrogation methods. [Wall Street Journal, 6/7/2004; Washington Post, 6/8/2004]
Guantanamo Bay Not Covered under Torture Restrictions - The report also finds that the 1994 law barring torture “does not apply to the conduct of US personnel” at Guantanamo Bay, nor does it apply to US military interrogations that occurred outside US “maritime and territorial jurisdiction,” such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. [Washington Post, 6/8/2004]
Legal Arguments to Defend against Torture Charges Conflict with International Statutes - The draft report lists several possible arguments that US civilian or military personnel might use to defend themselves against charges of torture or other war crimes. According to the administration’s lawyers, one argument would be that such actions were “necessary” in order to prevent an attack. However, this rationale seems to ignore very clear statements in the Convention Against Torture (see October 21, 1994) which states that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” Another line of defense, the report says, would be to claim that the accused had been acting under “superior orders” and that therefore no “moral choice was in fact possible.” Likewise, the report cites a Justice Department opinion, which the draft report says “concluded that it could not bring a criminal prosecution against a defendant who had acted pursuant to an exercise of the president’s constitutional power.” This also contradicts the Convention against Torture, which states that orders from superiors “may not be invoked as a justification of torture.” The authors of the report also suggest in the draft report that accused officials could argue that they had “mistakenly relied in good faith on the advice of lawyers or experts,” adding, “Good faith may be a complete defense.” The memo also argues that the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (ICCPR), to which the US is a party, “does not apply outside the United States or its special maritime and territorial jurisdiction (SMTJ), and that it does not apply to operations of the military during an international armed conflict,” as the US “has maintained consistently.” Since the “Guantanamo Bay Naval Station (GTMO) is included within the definition of the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” the ICCPR does not apply to Guantanamo Bay. The authors are also convinced that officials would not be prosecutable under US law, concluding that “constitutional principles” precluded the possibility that officials could be punished “for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities” and neither Congress nor the courts had the authority to “require or implement the prosecution of such an individual.” [Wall Street Journal, 6/7/2004]
Defining Parameters of Interrogation Methods - The document attempts to define the parameters of lawful interrogation methods in terms of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation they cause. The report states that the infliction of physical or mental suffering does not constitute torture. To violate Section 2340 A of the US Code, prohibiting physical torture, suffering must be “severe,” the lawyers advise, noting that according to a dictionary definition, this would mean that the pain “must be of such a high level of intensity that… [it] is difficult for the subject to endure.” It must also be “inflicted with specific intent,” they say, meaning that the perpetrator expressly intends to cause severe pain and suffering. But if the defendant simply used pain and suffering as a means to an end, such specific intent would not exist. Under certain circumstances, the lawyers explain, the US would be justified in resorting to illegal measures like torture or homicide. They argue that such measures should be considered “self-defense” in cases where officials “honestly believe” that such actions would prevent an imminent attack against the US. “Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law,” the draft document asserts. “In sum,” the panel determines, “the defense of superior orders will generally be available for US Armed Forces personnel engaged in exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.” Civil law suits, the panel notes, by a foreign victim of torture will not apply to the US government. [US Department of Defense, 3/6/2003; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/2004]
Report May Not Define Practices, Pentagon Implies - A Pentagon spokesman later says the memo represents “a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law,” and notes: “What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2004]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, US Department of Defense, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Convention Against Torture, Defense Intelligence Agency, Donald Rumsfeld, Mary L. Walker, William J. Haynes
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Internal Memos/Reports, Key Events
March 7 - Mid-April, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Tortured in Poland
Communications antenna at Stare Kiejkuty, the Polish “black site” where Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was held for a time after his capture. [Source: CBC]9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, after being detained and abused for three days in US custody in Afghanistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003 and Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003), is transferred to another CIA-run facility in Poland. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] The facility is later identified as Stare Kiejkuty, a secret prison near the Szymany military airbase. Mohammed is flown in on a Gulfstream N379P jet known to prison officials as “the torture taxi.” The plane is probably piloted by “Jerry M,” a 56-year-old pilot for Aero Contractors, a company that transfers prisoners around the world for US intelligence agencies. [Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 4/27/2009] He is dressed in a tracksuit, blindfolded, hooded, has sound-blocking headphones placed over his ears, and is flown “sitting, leaning back, with my hands and ankles shackled in a high chair,” as he will later tell officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC—see October 6 - December 14, 2006). He later says he manages to sleep a few hours, for the first time in days. Upon arrival, Mohammed is stripped naked and placed in a small cell “with cameras where I was later informed by an interrogator that I was monitored 24 hours a day by a doctor, psychologist, and interrogator.” The walls are wooden and the cell measures some 10 by 13 feet. [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 4/27/2009]
'I Would Be Brought to the Verge of Death and Back Again' - As he will later recall, it was in this detention camp that “the most intense interrogation occurred, led by three experienced CIA interrogators, all over 65 years old and all strong and well trained.” The interrogators tell him that they have received the “green light from Washington” to give him “a hard time” (see Late September 2001 and September 25, 2002). As he will later recall: “They never used the word ‘torture’ and never referred to ‘physical pressure,’ only to ‘a hard time.’ I was never threatened with death, in fact I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the ‘verge of death and back again.‘… I was kept for one month in the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled above my head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the floor.” When he falls asleep, “all my weight [is] applied to the handcuffs around my wrist resulting in open and bleeding wounds.” The ICRC will later confirm that Mohammed bears scars consistent with his allegations on both wrists and both ankles. “Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”
Interrogations - He is interrogated in a different room, in sessions lasting anywhere from four to eight hours, and with a wide variety of participants. Sometimes women take part in the interrogations. A doctor is usually present. “If I was perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a wall and punched and slapped in the body, head, and face. A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall. The beatings were combined with the use of cold water, which was poured over me using a hose-pipe. The beatings and use of cold water occurred on a daily basis during the first month.”
'Alternative Procedures' - The CIA interrogators use what they will later call “alternative procedures” on Mohammed, including waterboarding (see After March 7, 2003) and other techniques. He is sprayed with cold water from a hose-pipe in his cell and the “worst day” is when he is beaten for about half an hour by one of the interrogators. “My head was banged against the wall so hard that it started to bleed. Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated with other interrogators.” He is then waterboarded until a doctor intervenes. He gets an hours’s sleep and is then “put back in my cell standing with my hands shackled above my head.” He sleeps for a “few minutes” on the floor of cell after the torture sessions, but does not sleep well, “due to shackles on my ankles and wrists.” The toilet consists of a bucket in the cell, which he can use on request, but “I was not allowed to clean myself after toilet during the first month.” In the first month he is only fed on two occasions, “as a reward for perceived cooperation.” He gets Ensure [a liquid nutritional supplement] to drink every four hours. If he refuses it, “then my mouth was forced open by the guard and it was poured down my throat by force.” He loses 18 kg in the first month, after which he gets some clothes. In addition, “Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw sunlight.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]
Deliberately False Information - As he will later tell ICRC officials, he often lies to his interrogators: “During the harshest period of my interrogation, I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.… I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent… wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the US.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] It will later be reported that up to 90 percent of Mohammed’s confessions may be unreliable. Furthermore, he will recant many of his statements (see August 6, 2007).
Entity Tags: Jack Goldsmith, “Jerry M”, Aero Contractors, International Committee of the Red Cross, David S. Addington, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Stare Kiejkuty
Category Tags: Coverup, Human Rights Groups, Statements/Writings about Torture, Rendition after 9/11, Extreme Temperatures, Insufficient Food, Isolation, Physical Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Stress Positions, Waterboarding, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Stare Kiejkuty (Poland)
March 7, 2003-May 18, 2007: Al-Qaeda Financier Tied to Pearl’s Death Disappears for Four Years, Then Dies
An ill Saud Memon shortly before his death. [Source: Daily Times]Saud Memon, a Pakistani businessman who owns the land where Wall Street Journal report Daniel Pearl is killed in late January 2002 (see January 31, 2002), apparently flees Pakistan for fear of being arrested for Pearl’s death. According to later newspaper accounts in Pakistan and India, Memon is arrested by the FBI in South Africa on March 7, 2003. He is kept at Guantanamo prison for more than two years and then handed over to Pakistani authorities. On April 28, 2007, some unknown men drop Memon in front of his house in Pakistan. He is deathly ill and unable to speak or recognize people. He dies less than one month later on May 18, 2007. Memon has been the top name on the list of Pakistan’s most wanted. In addition to having a suspected role in Pearl’s death, he helped fund the Al Rashid Trust, which has been banned for being an al-Qaeda front. While some suspect a US and/or Pakistan government role in Memon’s disappearance, it is not known for sure what happened to him for those four years. [Associated Press, 5/18/2007; Daily Times (Lahore), 5/19/2007; Indo-Asian News Service, 5/19/2007]
Entity Tags: Al Rashid Trust, Saud Memon
Category Tags: Detainments, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba)
After March 7, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind KSM Repeatedly Waterboarded in Poland
After being transferred from Afghanistan to Poland (see March 7 - Mid-April, 2003), alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is repeatedly waterboarded by the CIA, a technique simulating drowning that international law classifies as torture. He is only one of about four high-ranking detainees waterboarded, according to media reports (see May 2002-2003). [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; MSNBC, 9/13/2007; New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] He will recall: “I would be strapped to a special bed, which could be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe.… The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the waterboarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe. Female interrogators were also present… and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] Accounts about the use of waterboarding on KSM differ. He says he is waterboarded five times. [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] However, contradictory reports will later appear:
NBC News will claim that, according to multiple unnamed officials, KSM underwent at least two sessions of waterboarding and other extreme measures before talking. One former senior intelligence official will say, “KSM required, shall we say, re-dipping.” [MSNBC, 9/13/2007]
In 2005, former and current intelligence officers and supervisors will tell ABC News that KSM “won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.” [ABC News, 11/18/2005] In 2007, a former CIA official familiar with KSM’s case will tell ABC News a sligntly different version of events: “KSM lasted the longest under waterboarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again.” A senior CIA official will claim that KSM later admitted he only confessed because of the waterboarding. [ABC News, 9/14/2007] In November 2005, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch will say of waterboarding, “The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law.” [ABC News, 11/18/2005]
The New York Times will claim that “KSM was subjected to intense and repeated torture techniques that, at the time, were specifically designated as illegal under US law.” Some claim that KSM gives useful information. “However, many of the officials interviewed say KSM provided a raft of false and exaggerated statements that did not bear close scrutiny—the usual result, experts say, of torture.” CIA officials stopped the “extreme interrogation” sessions after about two weeks, worrying that they might have exceeded their legal bounds. Apparently pressure to stop comes from Jack Goldsmith, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who is troubled about updates from KSM’s interrogations and raises legal questions. He is angrily opposed by the White House, particularly David Addington, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]
The New Yorker will report that officials who have seen a classified Red Cross report say that KSM claims he was waterboarded five times. Further, he says he was waterboarded even after he started cooperating. But two former CIA officers will insist that he was waterboarded only once. One of them says that KSM “didn’t resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick. A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable. KSM was just a little doughboy.” [New Yorker, 8/6/2007]
A different ABC News account will claim that KSM was al-Qaeda’s toughest prisoner. CIA officers who subject themselves to waterboarding last only about 14 seconds, but KSM was able to last over two minutes. [ABC News, 11/18/2005]
In 2009, evidence will surface that indicates KSM was waterboarded up to 183 times (see April 16, 2009 and April 18, 2009).
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency, John Sifton
Category Tags: Detainments, Waterboarding, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Stare Kiejkuty (Poland)
Category Tags: Waterboarding, Stare Kiejkuty (Poland), Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
March 9, 2003: New York Times Claims US Is Rendering Suspects to Other Countries, Using ‘Stress and Duress’ Techniques
A New York Times article reports that the US government is rendering suspects abroad (see 1993) and that “stress and duress” techniques are being used at the secret CIA interrogation center located in a hangar at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (see October 2001). “Intelligence officials… acknowledged that some suspects had been turned over to security services in countries known to employ torture. There have been isolated, if persistent, reports of beatings in some American-operated centers,” the article claims. [New York Times, 3/9/2003; Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004]
Category Tags: Indications of Abuse, Media, Rendition after 9/11, Bagram (Afghanistan)
March 11, 2003: Judge Reaffirms Padilla Has Right to See Lawyer
Wanted poster for John Doe #2, left, and Jose Padilla, right. [Source: Public domain, via Village Voice]A judge reaffirms the right of Jose Padilla, a US citizen being held as an “enemy combatant,” to meet with a lawyer (see June 10, 2002; December 4, 2002). The same judge ruled that he could meet with a lawyer in December 2002, but the government continues to challenge the ruling and continues to block his access to a lawyer. [Associated Press, 3/11/2003] Later in the month, the government tells the judge it is planning to ignore his order and will appeal the case. [Associated Press, 3/26/2003] While it may be completely coincidental, the Village Voice has noticed that Padilla is a “dead ringer” for the never found “John Doe #2” of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and other evidence could tie him to it. [Village Voice, 3/27/2002; Village Voice, 6/13/2002]
Entity Tags: Jose Padilla
Category Tags: Jose Padilla
March 11, 2003: Appeal Court Says US Courts Have No Jurisdiction over Guantanamo
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirms the government’s position that the jurisdiction of federal courts does not extend to Guantanamo Bay, and thus, that the Guantanamo detainees have no legal redress in federal courts. Guantanamo is in sovereign Cuban territory, the court argues, and therefore the 1950 Eisentrager case applies, according to which US courts have no jurisdiction to issue writs of habeas corpus for aliens held by the US military outside US sovereign territory. [Khaled A. F. Al Odah, et al. v. United States of America, et al., 3/11/2003 ]
Category Tags: Legal Proceedings, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Key Events
March 14, 2003: Justice Department Claims Military Can Ignore Laws against Torture, Assault, Maiming, and Drugging Detainees
The Justice Department sends a legal memorandum to the Pentagon that claims federal laws prohibiting torture, assault, maiming, and other crimes do not apply to military interrogators questioning al-Qaeda captives because the president’s authority as commander in chief overrides the law. The 81-page memo, written by the Office of Legal Counsel’s John Yoo, is not publicly revealed for over five years (see April 1, 2008).
President Can Order Maiming, Disfigurement of Prisoners - Yoo writes that infractions such as slapping, shoving, and poking detainees do not warrant criminal liability. Yoo goes even farther, saying that the use of mind-altering drugs can be used on detainees as long as they do not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” [John C. Yoo, 3/14/2003 ; Washington Post, 4/2/2008] Yoo asks if the president can order a prisoner’s eyes poked out, or if the president could order “scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance” thrown on a prisoner. Can the president have a prisoner disfigured by slitting an ear or nose? Can the president order a prisoner’s tongue torn out or a limb permanently disabled? All of these assaults are noted in a US law prohibiting maiming. Yoo decides that no such restrictions exist for the president in a time of war; that law does not apply if the president deems it inapplicable. The memo contains numerous other discussions of various harsh and tortuous techniques, all parsed in dry legal terms. Those tactics are all permissible, Yoo writes, unless they result in “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions.” Some of the techniques are proscribed by the Geneva Conventions, but Yoo writes that Geneva does not apply to detainees captured and accused of terrorism. [Washington Post, 4/6/2008]
'National Self-Defense' - Yoo asserts that the president’s powers as commander in chief supersede almost all other laws, even Constitutional provisions. “If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo writes. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.… Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context.” Interrogators who harmed a prisoner are protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense.” He notes that for conduct during interrogations to be illegal, that conduct must “shock the conscience,” an ill-defined rationale that will be used by Bush officials for years to justify the use of waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods. Yoo writes, “Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” explaining that that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.
Memo Buttresses Administration's Justifications of Torture - The Justice Department will tell the Defense Department not to use the memo nine months later (see December 2003-June 2004), but Yoo’s reasoning will be used to provide a legal foundation for the Defense Department’s use of aggressive and potentially illegal interrogation tactics. The Yoo memo is a follow-up and expansion to a similar, though more narrow, August 2002 memo also written by Yoo (see August 1, 2002). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will suspend a list of aggressive interrogation techniques he had approved, in part because of Yoo’s memo, after an internal revolt by Justice Department and military lawyers (see February 6, 2003, Late 2003-2005 and December 2003-June 2004). However, in April 2003, a Pentagon working group will use Yoo’s memo to endorse the continued use of extreme tactics. [John C. Yoo, 3/14/2003 ; Washington Post, 4/2/2008; New York Times, 4/2/2008]
Justice Department Claims Attorney General Knows Nothing of Memo - Yoo sends the memo to the Pentagon without the knowledge of Attorney General John Ashcroft or Ashcroft’s deputy, Larry Thompson, senior department officials will say in 2008. [Washington Post, 4/4/2008]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, John C. Yoo, Larry D. Thompson, Al-Qaeda, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Geneva Conventions, US Department of Defense
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Civil Liberties
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Legal Proceedings, Internal Memos/Reports, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq), Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba)
March 14, 2003: Military Spokesman Denies Detainees’ Accounts of Treatment
When an Associated Press reporter asks the US military to comment on the accounts of two former Afghan detainees (see December 10, 2002) (see November 30-December 3, 2002), spokesman Roger King claims their accounts are mostly untrue. “Some of the stuff they are saying sounds like partial truths, some of it’s completely bogus,” he says. “They were stripped naked probably to prevent them from sneaking weapons into the facility. That’s why someone may be stripped…. We do force people to stand for an extended period of time…. Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning….They are not allowed to speak to one another. If they do, they can plan together or rely on the comfort of one another. If they’re caught speaking out of turn, they can be forced to do things—like stand for a period of time—as payment for speaking out.” [Associated Press, 3/14/2003; Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]
Entity Tags: Roger King
Category Tags: Coverup, Public Statements
Mid-March 2003: Interrogators Dispatched to Iraq
The platoon of 15 interrogators led by Capt. Carolyn A. Wood is sent to Iraq together with another 15 fellow soldiers from Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004] Wood had been involved in detainee abuses in Afghanistan (see November 30-December 3, 2002) and will be involved in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal in Iraq (see (Early August 2003)).
Entity Tags: Carolyn A. Wood
Category Tags: Other Events
March 16, 2003: Afghan Teenager Dies in US Custody, Allegedly from Torture
Jamal Naseer, an 18-year old newly recruited Afghan soldier, dies in US custody, apparently as a result of beating and torture. Naseer dies after several days in detention at a US Special Forces “firebase,” a small, outlying military base set up to support advancing troops, at Gardez, Afghanistan. [CBS News, 9/21/2004] Naseer and seven other detainees were taken into custody about a week before by Special Forces troops attempting to secure the area from the depredations of a local warlord, Pacha (or Bacha) Khan. Naseer’s brother Ahmad insists that he, his brother, and the other detainees are allies of the Americans, and never participated in Taliban- or al-Qaeda-led attacks against American forces. [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006] It is unclear why the men were detained in the first place, but Los Angeles Times reporters Craig Pyes and Mark Mazzetti report that according to an Afghan intelligence report. “the action was requested by a provincial governor feuding with local military commanders.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2004] Naseer’s death will be officially recorded as resulting from “natural causes,” but fellow detainees will say that Naseer’s death was caused by abuse suffered at the hands of US Army Special Forces soldiers near Gardez. Ahmad Naseer will later describe how he and his brother were beaten and abused while in custody, subjected to electric shocks, immersed in cold water, forced to assume stress positions, thrashed with cables, suffered the forcible tearing off of their toenails, and made to lie for hours in the snow. The last time he spoke with his brother, he says Jamal was “moaning about the pain in his kidneys and back” from being repeatedly beaten. [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006] Jamal died shortly thereafter while being helped outside to relieve himself by two Afghan kitchen workers. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2004] After Naseer’s death, the unit holds a meeting to discuss the incident. The team is told that Naseer died of a sex-related infection that shut down his kidneys. According to one soldier in the meeting, the point of discussion is “to make sure everybody’s on the same sheet of paper—this is what happened to the man”—in case there’s ever an investigation. Captain Craig Mallak, medical examiner for the US armed forces, says that Naseer’s death is never reported to his office (any death of a detainee is required to be reported unless the detainee is determined to have died of natural causes). Naseer’s body is transferred to a civilian hospital where no autopsy is performed. One hospital worker who prepares the body for burial will later tell the Times that Naseer’s body was “completely black” from bruising and injuries, and was “completely swollen, as were his palms, and the soles of his feet were swollen double in size.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006] Asked about such injuries, Dr. Michael Baden, a prominent forensic pathologist who works for the New York State Police, says the descriptions are inconsistent with death by organ failure. “You can’t confuse those. It sounds very much like blunt trauma.” A local physician who examined the survivors later confirmed that all of the men were suffering from similar trauma, with extensive bruising and seeping, and unbandaged wounds. [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006] Eventually, Ahmad Naseer and his comrades are secretly transferred to a civilian prison in Kabul, still without any formal charges. Afghan military prosecutors immediately launch an investigation into their unexplained detention. That inquiry eventually produces a 117-page report asserting that the detainees had been tortured and that there is a “strong probability” that one of the men had been “murdered.” The report speculates that the prolonged imprisonment was intended to give the detainees’ wounds time to heal. Fifty-eight days later, all of the prisoners are released; no charges are ever filed. [Los Angeles Times, 9/25/2006]
Entity Tags: Taliban, US Special Forces, Michael Baden, Pacha Khan, Al-Qaeda, Jamal Naseer, Ahmad Naseer, Craig Mallak
Category Tags: Coverup, Prisoner Deaths, Physical Assault, Stress Positions, Electrodes, Sleep Deprivation, Extreme Temperatures, Gardez (Afghanistan)
March 2003-November 18, 2007: Two British Detainees Held at Guantanamo; Again Pressured to Work as Informants
Bisher al-Rawi. [Source: Craig Hibbert]In February 2003, British residents Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna are transferred from Bagram in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo prison. They spend their first month in isolation. Al-Rawi’s head and beard are shaved off as has allegedly already happened to al-Banna during his detention at Bagram. Al-Banna is put in a cell next to detainee Asif Iqbal. “[S]oon after,” Iqbal will later recall, al-Banna “began to deteriorate.” At Guantanamo, according to Iqbal, “al-Banna was in constant pain from his joints because he suffered from rheumatism and he was diabetic.” [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ] Al-Rawi and al-Banna had served as informants for the British intelligence agency MI5, helping MI5 communicate with radical imam Abu Qatada, who also was an MI5 informant (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Summer-Early November 2002). First in Gambia and then in Bagram, they were pressured to resume being informants, but they refused (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002 and December 8, 2002-March 2003). After about six months in Guantanamo, an MI5 officer visits al-Rawi and again asks him if he wants to resume being an informer. Later, one of his previous MI5 handlers comes to visit him. He will recall: “I suppose he was nice enough. He asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a book on base jumping. He never came back, and I never got the book.” Eventually, two other previous handlers visit him and try to recruit him yet again. “They said, “You know, Bisher, if you agree to work for us when you get back to Britain, we’ll get you out.” They promised to return, but never did.” When al-Rawi faces a tribunal in September 2004 to determine if his detention is justified, he asks for his previous MI5 handlers to corroborate that he had been an informant. The British government refuses to help in any way, and the tribunal decides that he should continue to be imprisoned. The two of them grow increasingly bored and depressed, and face harsh conditions. For instance, after three detainees commit suicide in June 2006, the jailers retaliate by keeping the air conditioning turned to maximum for months. “We were freezing the whole time. Other times they made it scorching hot,” al-Rawi says. Al-Banna is not even allowed to phone his sick mother just before she dies. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] Al-Rawi will finally be freed and flown back to Britain on April 3, 2007. Al-Banna will be freed and returned to Britain on November 18, 2007.
Entity Tags: Bisher al-Rawi, Asif Iqbal, Jamil al-Banna, UK Security Service (MI5)
Category Tags: Extreme Temperatures, Intimidation/Threats, Isolation, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna
(March 23, 2003): Saudi Detainee Transferred to Guantanamo
Saudi detainee Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi is transferred from Bagram, Afghanistan (see August 2002), to Guantanamo. According to a statement he will later make (see July 1, 2009), he is abused at Guantanamo. The abuse includes:
Solitary confinement;
Loud music;
Cold temperatures;
Bright lights;
US personnel disrespecting the Koran by throwing it to the ground; and
Not being allowed to go to the bathroom during interrogations.
Al-Darbi is mostly questioned by the FBI, including an agent he knows as “Tom” and who questioned him at Bagram. Tom allegedly tells al-Darbi that “if I did not stick with my Bagram confessions, I would not ‘escape Bagram.’” If he does not cooperate he is allegedly to be sentenced to death and executed, or tortured, raped, and sexually abused at Guantanamo, or sent back to Bagram or to other countries. Al-Darbi will later claim, “The interrogators at Bagram and Guantanamo fed me particular details in my statements and forced me to identify individuals based on photographs or to ascribe to those individuals certain conduct.” However, he apparently never signs a written statement and will say that he makes “numerous false statements” under questioning. [al-Darbi, 7/1/2009]
Entity Tags: Ahmed Muhammad al-Darbi
Category Tags: Extreme Temperatures, Forced Confessions, Intimidation/Threats, Isolation, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Other Detainees
March 24, 2003: Guantanamo Detainee Says He Has Been Threatened with Physical Violence and Sexual Assault
Briton Martin Mubanga, a Guantanamo detainee since April 20, 2002 (see Spring 2002), writes coded letters from his cell to his relatives. He says US guards at the base have threatened him with sexual assault and physical violence. He also reports that US soldiers attempt to “shame” Muslim prisoners by offering them prostitutes. [Independent, 8/8/2004]
Entity Tags: Martin Mubanga
Category Tags: Intimidation/Threats, Sexual Temptation, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Other Detainees
(late March 2003): Rumsfeld’s Assistant Takes Control of US Military’s Secret Programs
Stephen Cambone, the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, acquires control of all of the Pentagon’s special access programs (SAPs) related to the war on terrorism. SAPs, also known as “black” programs, are so secret that “some special access programs are never fully briefed to Congress.” SAPs were previously monitored by Kenneth deGraffenreid, who unlike Cambone (see February 4, 2003), had experience in counter-intelligence programs. DeGraffenreid quits a short time later. Cambone is considered very close to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [New Yorker, 5/24/2004]
Entity Tags: US Congress, Kenneth deGraffenreid, Stephen A. Cambone
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Operation Copper Green
April 2003: Iraqi Detainee Dies Following Beating by Navy Team
An Iraqi prisoner of war is beaten while being interrogated by members of the Naval Special Warfare Team at the LSA Diamondback facility in Mosul, Iraq. He is later found dead in his sleep. The death report will conclude that the man died from “blunt-force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia.” [Denver Post, 5/18/2004]
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Physical Assault, Other US Bases and Centers
(April 2003): Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and CIA Director Tenet Reportedly Fighting over Intelligence Programs
An unnamed intelligence source tells reporter Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, Defense Secretary Donald “Rumsfeld is in a death fight with [CIA Director George Tenet] to get control” of intelligence programs. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone has reportedly created a single office overseeing the organization, planning, and execution of military intelligence missions. Cambone also oversees assets, including one program called “Gray Fox.” This is said to be a secret intelligence organization that specializes in large-scale “deep penetration” missions overseas. It is said to specialize in tapping communications and laying the groundwork for overt military operations. The Post reports that Rumsfeld appears to be winning the turf battle. [Washington Post, 4/20/2003, pp. A01]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Central Intelligence Agency, Stephen A. Cambone, George J. Tenet
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions
(April 2003): Justice Department Memos Say US Officials Not Responsible for Abuse If Detainees in Another Country’s Custody
The Justice Department advises in a set of legal memorandums that if “government officials… are contemplating procedures that may put them in violation of American statutes that prohibit torture, degrading treatment or the Geneva Conventions, they will not be responsible if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country.” That is because, according to one official, “It would be the responsibility of the other country.” The memos seem to suggest that top government officials may be concerned that they are in violation of international laws. One administration figure involved in discussions about the memos tells the New York Times in May 2004: “The criminal statutes only apply to American officials. The question is how involved are the American officials.” [New York Times, 5/13/2004]
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Rendition after 9/11, Internal Memos/Reports
April 2003-2004: Suspected Iraqi Insurgents Interrogated at Delta Force Facility with Poor Reputation
Captured suspected “insurgents” and other militants are brought to the ultra-secret Battlefield Interrogation Facilities (BIF) in Baghdad run by Delta Force. NBC will report that “it is the scene of the most egregious violations of the Geneva Conventions in all of Iraq’s prisons.” BIF is described as a “place where the normal rules of interrogation don’t apply.” Prisoners “are kept in tiny dark cells. And in the BIF’s six interrogation rooms, Delta Force soldiers routinely drug prisoners, hold a prisoner under water until he thinks he’s drowning, or smother them almost to suffocation.” Pentagon officials will deny that prisoners held at the facility are subjected to illegal interrogation tactics. [MSNBC, 5/20/2004; CNN, 5/21/2004 Sources: Two unnamed top US government sources]
Category Tags: Detainments, Impunity, Involuntary Drugs, Waterboarding, Key Events, Other US Bases and Centers
April-June 2003: US Soldier Witnesses Other Soldiers Abuse Iraqi Detainees
Greg Ford. [Source: Salon]At an Iraqi police station in Samarra, a town north of Baghdad, Sgt. Greg Ford witnesses soldiers repeatedly abuse detainees during interrogations. Ford, a soldier from the California National Guard, is part of a four-member team of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion. He sees his three fellow team members threaten prisoners with guns, stick lit cigarettes in their ears, and strangle them until they collapse. At one point he witnesses his team leader point a pistol at a detainee’s head. On another occasion, he sees one of the soldiers stand on the back of the neck of a handcuffed detainee and pull his arms until they pop out of their sockets. Sgt. Ford later recalls trying to prevent the abuse. “I had to intervene because they couldn’t keep their hands off of them. You weren’t supposed to stand on their neck or put lit cigarettes in their ears. Twice I had to pull burning cigarettes out of detainees’ ears.” In June, according to Ford, he reports the incidents to his commanding officers, but they dismiss his complaints. “Immediately, within the same conversation, the command said, ‘Nope, you’re delusional, you’re crazy, it never happened.’ They gave me 30 seconds to withdraw my request for an investigation.” But, he adds, “I stood my ground.” He is then ordered to see combat stress counselors, who send him out of Iraq. The Commander of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, Lt. Col. Drew Ryan, later says, “All the allegations were found to be untrue, totally unfounded and in a number of cases completely fabricated.” [Associated Press, 6/9/2004] However, a report obtained by the New York Times details allegations of prisoner abuse in Samarra in the spring of 2003 that resemble the account by Sgt. Ford. The report says military personnel “forced into asphyxiations numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information” over a period of 10 weeks. It concerned an official US army overview of the deaths and alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Guardian, 5/26/2004]
Entity Tags: Greg Ford, Drew Ryan
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Internal Memos/Reports, Key Events, Other Detainees
April 2003-2004: US Begins Establishing Prisons and Detention Centees in Iraq
The US establishes a loose network of prisons and detention centers in Iraq where Iraqi prisoners of war are held and interrogated. Iraqis detained by Coalition Forces are usually first brought to facilities at US military compounds where they are subjected to initial and secondary interrogations, ranging from a period of one week for initial interrogations up to one month for secondary interrogations. During this period, the detainees are not permitted to contact relatives or seek legal counsel. The prisoners are then sent to one of ten major Coalition prison facilities, at which point their names and information are supposed to be entered into the Coalition’s central database. The major facilities include:
Abu Ghraib Prison (Baghdad Central Correctional Facility or BCCF), the largest.
Camp Bucca, in Umm Qasr.
Talil Air force Base (Whitford Camp), located south of Baghdad.
Al-Rusafa (formerly the Deportations’ Prison or Tasfirat), in Baghdad.
Al-Kadhimiyya, in Baghdad, for women only.
Al-Karkh, in Baghdad, for juveniles only.
Al-Diwaniyya Security Detainee Holding Area.
the Tikrit detention facility.
the Mosul detention facility.
and MEK (Ashraf Camp), near al-Ramadi. [Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004]
Entity Tags: US Military
Category Tags: Detainments, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq), Camp Bucca (Iraq)
Early April 2003: Saudi Arabian Arrested Entering Iraq, Abused Using Various Techniques
Abdallah Khudhran al-Shamran, a Saudi Arabian national, is arrested and detained with six others of different nationalities in al-Rutba by US and allied Iraqi forces as he is traveling from Syria to Baghdad. The captives are relieved of their possessions and blindfolded. Their hands are bound behind their backs and they are forced to walk for three hours to an unknown location. Shamran is accused of being a terrorist and subjected to various means of torture, including beatings, electric shocks, “being suspended from his legs and having his penis tied,” and “sleep deprivation through constant loud music.” Four days after arriving at this site, he is again blindfolded and then moved to a camp hospital in Um Qasr for three days, where he is treated, interrogated, and released. But without his passport and money, he is forced to sleep on the streets until he finally decides to seek help from a British soldier eight days later. He is then detained a second time, taken to a military field hospital with two other detainees, and again interrogated and tortured. He later explains to two Amnesty International investigators: “He stuck the pen he was holding into my right shoulder. The scar is still fresh and visible…. They tied my hands behind my back and put me exposed in the sun from noon to early evening. Then they transferred me to a container and locked me in. The next morning they put me in the sun until about 10 a.m.” He is subsequently sent to a hospital where he receives treatment and is finally permitted to speak with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to help him recover his passport. He is then interrogated by a British officer who accuses him of being a member of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen and threatens to execute him. [BBC, 3/16/2003; Associated Press, 3/16/2003; Observer, 3/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 5/16/2003; Amnesty International, 7/23/2003] This incident is described in a memorandum to the Coalition Provisional Authority on July 23 (see July 23, 2003).
Entity Tags: Abdallah Khudhran al-Shamran
Category Tags: Electrodes, Physical Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Other Detainees
April 2, 2003: Pentagon’s Legal Counsel Assures Human Rights Group that Renditioned Suspects Are Not Being Tortured
In a letter to Human Rights Watch, Pentagon legal counsel William J. Haynes writes that “if the war on terrorists of global reach requires transfers of detained enemy combatants to other countries for continued detention on our behalf, US government instructions are to seek and obtain appropriate assurances that such enemy combatants are not tortured.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003] However, in December 2002, referring to objections raised about the use of unlawful interrogation methods by Egypt, one Bush government official was quoted in the Washington Post saying, “You can be sure that we are not spending a lot of time on that now.” [Washington Post, 12/26/2002]
Entity Tags: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Human Rights Groups
April 2, 2003: Cooperative Prisoners Moved to More Relaxed Section of Guantanamo Prison
The most cooperative detainees at Guantanamo are moved to Camp 4, a “medium-security” facility, where they are allowed to wear white uniforms, instead of the standard prison orange and enjoy more benefits. Cells in Camp 4 contain 10 prisoners each and the total camp has a capacity of about 160. [New York Times, 6/21/2004] Up to nine hours a day, according to military officials, detainees can spend outside their cells, playing soccer and watching “family oriented” films in their own language. In mid-June, according to these officers, half a dozen Camp 4 detainees are allowed to go to the beach. “Camp 4 is the place they aspire to get to,” Col. Nelson J. Cannon says. [Neil A. Lewis, 11/30/2004]
Entity Tags: Nelson J. Cannon
Category Tags: Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba)
April 4, 2003: Pentagon Report Recommends 35 Interrogation Techniques, Nine Reserved for Suspects with Critical Intelligence
In a report, the Pentagon working group (see January 15, 2003) recommends the adoption of 35 interrogation techniques. Twenty-six of them are recommended for use in interrogations of all unlawful combatants held outside the US. The remaining nine are considered “exceptional” and recommended for use only on unlawful combatants suspected of holding “critical intelligence.” The advice is clearly not for the public eye. “Should information regarding the use of more aggressive interrogation techniques than have been used traditionally by US forces become public,” the panel warns in its report, “it is likely to be exaggerated or distorted in the US and international media accounts, and may produce an adverse effect on support for the war on terrorism.” [MSNBC, 6/23/2004]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Key Events
April 16, 2003: Rumsfeld Approves New ‘Harsh’ Interrogation Methods
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signs a memo on interrogation methods approving 24 of the 35 techniques recommended by the Pentagon working group (see April 4, 2003) earlier in the month. The new set of guidelines, to be applied to prisoners at Guantanamo and Afghanistan, is a somewhat softer version of the initial interrogation policy that Rumsfeld approved in December 2002 (see December 2, 2002). [Roth and Malinowski, 5/3/2004; Washington Post, 5/11/2004; Age (Melbourne), 5/13/2004; Washington Post, 5/13/2004; Los Angeles Times, 5/22/2004; Newsweek, 5/24/2004; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/2004; MSNBC, 6/23/2004; Truthout (.org), 6/28/2004] Several of the techniques listed are ones that the US military trains Special Forces to prepare for in the event that they are captured by enemy forces (see December 2001 and July 2002). [New York Times, 5/13/2004]
Two Classes of Methods - The list is divided into two classes: tactics that are authorized for use on all prisoners and special “enhanced measures” that require the approval of Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. The latter category of methods includes tactics that “could cause temporary physical or mental pain,” like “sensory deprivation,” “stress positions,” “dietary manipulation,” forced changes in sleep patterns, and isolated confinement. [Washington Post, 5/11/2004; Washington Post, 5/13/2004] Other techniques include “change of scenery down,” “dietary manipulation,” “environmental manipulation,” and “false flag.” The first 18 tactics listed all appear in the 1992 US Army Field Manual (FM) 34-52, with the exception of the so-called “Mutt-and-Jeff” approach, which is taken from an obsolete 1987 military field manual (1987 FM 34-52). [USA Today, 6/22/2004] The approved tactics can be used in conjunction with one another, essentially allowing interrogators to “pile on” one harsh technique after another. Categories such as “Fear Up Harsh” and “Pride and Ego Down” remain undefined, allowing interrogators to interpret them as they see fit. And Rumsfeld writes that any other tactic not already approved can be used if he gives permission. Author and reporter Charlie Savage will later write, “In other words, there were no binding laws and treaties anymore—the only limit was the judgment and goodwill of executive branch officials. ” [Savage, 2007, pp. 181] The use of forced nudity as a tactic is not included in the list. The working group rejected it because its members felt it might be considered inhumane treatment under international law. [Associated Press, 6/23/2004]
Result of Discussions among Pentagon Officials - The memo, marked for declassification in 2013 [Truthout (.org), 6/28/2004] , is the outcome, according to Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dell’Orto, of discussions between Rumsfeld, William J. Haynes, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and General Richard Myers. [Washington File, 6/23/2004] One US official explains: “There are very specific guidelines that are thoroughly vetted. Everyone is on board. It’s legal.” However in May 2004, it will be learned that there was in fact opposition to the new guidelines. Pentagon lawyers from the Army Judge Advocate General’s office had objected (see May 2003 and October 2003) and many officials quietly expressed concerns that they might have to answer for the policy at a later date (see (April 2003)). [Washington Post, 5/11/2004; Washington Post, 5/13/2004]
Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard B. Myers, William J. Haynes, Ricardo S. Sanchez, Daniel J. Dell’Orto, Charlie Savage
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Key Events
April 16-22, 2003: Red Cross Sees Prisoner Shot Dead in Iraq
At Camp Bucca, a large detention camp at Umm Qasr near the Kuwaiti border (officially called the Bucca Theater Internment Facility), representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) witness a shooting incident resulting in the death of one prisoner and the wounding of another. [International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/2004]
Entity Tags: International Committee of the Red Cross
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Physical Assault, Camp Bucca (Iraq), Other Detainees
April 18, 2003: Pentagon Refuses to Allow Amnesty International into Bagram
The Pentagon rejects Amnesty International’s request to visit the US military base at Bagram, Afghanistan. The Defense Department declares that “access to detainees is provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on a case-by-case basis to selected government officials.” In a letter, Marshall Billingslea, principal deputy to the assistant secretary of defense, writes that “in this war, as in every war, captured enemy combatants have no right to counsel or access to courts for the purpose of challenging their detention.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]
Entity Tags: Amnesty International
Category Tags: Coverup, Human Rights Groups, Bagram (Afghanistan)
April 22, 2003: US Army Seizes Abu Ghraib Prison
An overhead view of Abu Ghraib prison. [Source: Google Earth]The US Army seizes the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, which is notorious for having been the scene of torture under Saddam Hussein. BBC reporter Martin Asser describes the event: “It had been only lightly looted, vandalism mainly, and the MPs—reservists led by a colonel from Florida—were there to secure the location ‘as a possible center for operations’.” [BBC, 8/4/2004]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Saddam Hussein
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation
Category Tags: Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq)
April 29, 2003: Guantanamo Detainee in ‘Vegetative State’ after Attempted Suicide
A medical report by US doctors at Guantanamo Bay details an attempt by a detainee to commit suicide. The detainee, who cannot be identified from publicly released records, attempted to hang himself with a towel. He fell into what doctors call a “vegetative state” due to brain injuries suffered during the hanging. Guantanamo doctors “most strongly advocate” for the detainee’s “earliest return to his home country,” noting that the detainee has a “history of depression” and “his rehabilitation will be long.” Available records will not show whether Guantanamo officials follow the recommendations of the medical staff. [American Civil Liberties Union, 6/19/2006]
Category Tags: Internal Memos/Reports, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Other Detainees
April 29 - Mid-May, 2003: Al-Qaeda Suspect Tortured in US Custody
One of a group of 25 al-Qaeda members captured in Pakistan, Tawfiq bin Attash (see April 29, 2003), is taken into US custody and sent to a CIA-run detention facility in Afghanistan. Years later, after being transferred to Guantanamo, he will discuss his experiences and treatment with officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC—see October 6 - December 14, 2006), who will identify him as “Walid bin Attash” in their documents.
'Forced Standing' - Bin Attash will recall his introduction to detention in Afghanistan as follows: “On arrival at the place of detention in Afghanistan I was stripped naked. I remained naked for the next two weeks. I was put in a cell measuring approximately [3 1/2 by 6 1/2 feet]. I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light, artificial or natural. During the first two weeks I did not receive any food. I was only given Ensure [a liquid nutritional supplement] and water to drink. A guard would come and hold the bottle for me while I drank.… The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell.… I was not allowed to clean myself after using the bucket. Loud music was playing 24 hours each day throughout the three weeks I was there.” Author Mark Danner, writing of the ICRC report in 2009 (see March 15, 2009), will note that the “forced standing” technique. with arms shackled above the head, was a favorite technique of the Soviets, who called it “stoika.” Bin Attash, who had lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan, found the technique particularly painful: “After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain. Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists. I shouted for help but at first nobody came. Finally, after about one hour a guard came and my artificial leg was given back to me and I was again placed in the standing position with my hands above my head. After that the interrogators sometimes deliberately removed my artificial leg in order to add extra stress to the position.” He is checked periodically by a doctor. The doctor does not object to the ‘forced standing,’ even though the treatment causes intense pain in bin Attash’s leg; neither does the doctor object to the suspension from shackles, even though the shackles cut and abrade his wrists.
Cold Water, Physical Beatings - Bin Attash will tell ICRC officials that he is “washed down with cold water every day.” Every day he is also subjected to beatings: “Every day for the first two weeks I was subjected to slaps to my face and punches to my body during interrogation. This was done by one interrogator wearing gloves.… Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements. Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets.… I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation.”
Moved to Second Facility - It remains unclear where bin Attash is moved to after his initial detention in Afghanistan, but he will tell ICRC officials that his captors there—also Americans—“were rather more sophisticated than in Afghanistan because they had a hose-pipe with which to pour the water over me.” Danner will later note that the methods used to interrogate and torture bin Attash are somewhat more refined than those used on an experimental basis with another al-Qaeda suspect, Abu Zubaida (see April - June 2002). For example, a towel was wrapped around Zubaida’s neck and used to slam him into walls, while bin Attash was given a plastic collar. [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]
Entity Tags: International Committee of the Red Cross, Khallad bin Attash, Al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaida, Mark Danner, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Coverup, Criticisms of US, Independent Investigations, Extreme Temperatures, Insufficient Food, Isolation, Physical Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Stress Positions, Waterboarding, Other High Ranking Detainees
April 30, 2003: US Official Says Attacks Prevented Because Many Terrorists in Prison
The one-time CIA Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Cofer Black, says that “a large number of terrorist suspects were not able to launch an attack last year because they are in prison.” He claims that “more than 3,000” detainees in US custody are al-Qaeda terrorists who were arrested in over 100 countries. [First, 6/2004 ]
Entity Tags: Cofer Black
April 30, 2003-May 9, 2003: Iraqi Detainee Abused Using Various Techniques
Khreisan Khalis Aballey, a 39-year-old Iraqi man, is arrested at his home with his 80-year-old father by US soldiers who are looking for ‘Izzat al-Duri, a senior member of the Ba’ath Party. His brother is shot during the operation and never seen again. On July 23 (see July 23, 2003), Amnesty International will include an account of his detention in a memo to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which reads: “During his interrogation, he was made to stand or kneel facing a wall for seven-and-a-half days, hooded, and handcuffed tightly with plastic strips. At the same time a bright light was placed next to his hood and distorted music was playing the whole time. During all this period he was deprived of sleep (though he may have been unconscious for some periods). He reported that at one time a US soldier stamped on his foot and as a result one of his toenails was torn off. The prolonged kneeling made his knees bloody, so he mostly stood; when, after seven-and-a-half days he was told he was to be released and told he could sit, he said that his leg was the size of a football. He continued to be held for two more days, apparently to allow his health to improve, and was released on 9 May. His father, who was released at the same time, was held in the cell beside his son, where he could hear his son’s voice and his screams.” [Amnesty International, 7/23/2003]
Entity Tags: Khreisan Khalis Aballey
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Stress Positions, Other Detainees
May 2003: Military Lawyers Ask Bar Association Committee Chairman to Help Get Interrogation Rules Changed
Eight high-ranking military lawyers from the Army Judge Advocate General’s office—which historically has ensured that interrogators do not violate prisoners’ rights—visit Scott Horton, head of the New York State Bar Association’s committee on international law, and ask him to persuade the Pentagon to reverse its policy on using “stress and duress” interrogation techniques (see Late 2002-April 2003) (see April 16, 2003). “They were quite blunt,” Horton will recall. “They were extremely concerned about how the political appointees were dealing with interrogation issues. They said this was a disaster waiting to happen and that they felt shut out” from the rules-drafting process. [Washington Post, 5/13/2004; Newsday, 5/15/2004; New Yorker, 5/24/2004] The lawyers describe the new interrogation rules as “frightening,” with the potential to “reverse 50 years of a proud tradition of compliance with the Geneva Conventions.” [USA Today, 5/13/2004] The military lawyers will make another visit to Horton’s office in October (see May 2003).
Entity Tags: Scott Horton
Category Tags: Criticisms of US, High-level Decisions and Actions, Key Events
May 2003: CIA Inspector General Reviews Videotapes of Abu Zubaida’s Interrogations; Several Blank, Waterboarding Sessions Missing
The CIA’s Office of the Inspector General reviews videotapes of the interrogation and custody of militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida. The tapes, made in 2002 (see Spring-Late 2002), show 83 applications of the waterboarding technique, most of which last for less than 10 seconds. However, 11 of the interrogation videos turn out to be blank, two others are blank except for one or two minutes, and two more are broken and cannot be reviewed. The Inspector General then compares the tapes to logs and cables about the interrogations and identifies a 21-hour period, including two waterboarding sessions, that is not captured on the tapes. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 36-37 ]
Entity Tags: Abu Zubaida, Office of the Inspector General (CIA), Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Waterboarding, Destruction of CIA Tapes, Abu Zubaida
May 2003: Red Cross Sends Coalition Forces Memo on Alleged Prisoner Mistreatment
The International Committee of the Red Cross sends a memorandum to Coalition Forces reporting that it has recorded roughly 200 allegations of mistreatment and abuse from prisoners of war being held at various detention facilities in Iraq. The report notes that the allegations are supported by medical examinations of the prisoners. [Amnesty International, 7/23/2003; New York Times, 5/13/2004]
Category Tags: Human Rights Groups, Indications of Abuse
May 2003: National Guard Uses Sleep Deprivation, Mock Execution Techniques on Prisoners at Base Near Baghdad
Infantry units from the Florida National Guard arrive at the Assad airbase located northwest of Baghdad. They are assigned the task of overseeing a detention center that has been set up in an aircraft hangar. The cells of this makeshift prison are separated with concertina wire. The US soldiers are “instructed to use sleep deprivation on prisoners, and taught to perform mock executions.” The interrogators are “not in regular army uniform, and the soldiers never [learn] their real names.” Camilo Mejia, a member of the Florida National Guard, will later tell The Guardian: “We had a sledgehammer that we would bang against the wall, and that would create an echo that sounds like an explosion that scared the hell out of them. If that didn’t work we would load a 9mm pistol, and pretend to be charging it near their head, and make them think we were going to shoot them. Once you did that, they did whatever you wanted them to do basically.” Mejia, the son of a famous Nicaraguan political songwriter and folksinger and who later applies for status as a conscientious objector, will say that many soldiers were uncomfortable with these tactics. “The way we treated these men was hard even for the soldiers, especially after realizing that many of these ‘combatants’ were no more than shepherds.” Mejia will also say that when his platoon leader objected to using these techniques, he was told that his refusal to do so could end his military career. [Mail & Guardian, 5/14/2004]
Category Tags: Intimidation/Threats, Sleep Deprivation, Other Detainees
May 2003: CIA Informs Italian Military Intelligence Kidnapped Cleric Being Interrogated in Cairo
The CIA notifies the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI that Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Islamist radical the agencies kidnapped from Milan in February (see Noon February 17, 2003), is being interrogated in Cairo, Egypt. After Italian prosecutors begin investigating the kidnap, they will raid a SISMI safehouse in Rome, finding a document that confirms the notification. [Reuters, 11/4/2009] Nasr is actually tortured in Egypt (see Late February 2003 or Shortly After).
Entity Tags: SISMI, Central Intelligence Agency
(May 2003): Solider Says US Troops Have Killed Iraqi Prisoners in Video Diary
In a homemade video journal, an unidentified female US soldier at Camp Bucca prison in Iraq candidly speaks of how she and her colleagues have shot and killed prisoners. “If we shoot any more of the Iraqis, or attack any of them, they’re gonna supposedly come in and attack the camp…. But we’ll believe that when it actually happens, because we’ve already killed another Iraqi just last night when I was working. So I don’t know what’s going on…” She does not describe under what circumstances the shootings had taken place. In another part of the video she admits to antagonizing the captives. “I actually got in trouble the other day because I was throwing rocks at them.” [CBS News, 3/12/2004]
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Camp Bucca (Iraq), Other Detainees
(May 2003): Military Police Company Arrives in Iraq
Soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company arrive in Iraq and are assigned to routine traffic and police duties. [New Yorker, 5/10/2004]
(May 2003-May 2004): President Bush Informed of Red Cross Concerns over Prisoner Treatment
According to a unnamed aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, at “various times throughout this period,” Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld relay the Red Cross’ concerns about the Coalition’s treatment of prisoners directly to President Bush. [Baltimore Sun, 5/12/2004]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Indications of Abuse
(May 2003-July 2003): Detainee Allegedly Suffers Haematoma and Broken Rib Due to Abuse in Iraq
An unnamed Iraqi is taken into custody by Coalition Forces and then subjected to severe abuse in the military intelligence section of Camp Cropper. The International Committee of the Red Cross will later interview the person and report the prisoner’s allegations to Coalition Forces once in early July and then again in February 2004 (see February 24, 2004). The latter report will explain: “In one illustrative case, a person deprived of his liberty arrested at home by the CF [Coalition Forces] on suspicion of involvement in an attack against the CF, was allegedly beaten during interrogation in a location in the vicinity of Camp Cropper. He alleged that he had been hooded and cuffed with flexi-cuffs, threatened to be tortured and killed, urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, force-fed a baseball which was tied into the mouth using a scarf, and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days. Interrogators would allegedly take turns ill-treating him. When he said he would complain to the IRC he was allegedly beaten more. An ICRC medical examination revealed haematoma in the lower back, blood in the urine, sensory loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with flexi-cuffs, and a broken rib.” [International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ; New York Times, 5/11/2004]
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Camp Cropper (Iraq), Other Detainees
May 7-9, 2003: CIA Wrongly Informs Court about Detainee Recordings in Moussaoui Case
On May 7, 2003, Leonie Brinkema, the judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, asks the CIA if it has recordings of interrogations of detainees related to Moussaoui’s case. Two days later, the CIA replies that it does not, although it is actually in possession of some recordings. In 2002, the CIA secretly videotaped interrogations of high-ranking detainees Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (see Spring-Late 2002) but it does not reveal this to anyone involved in the Moussaoui trial. In 2005, some of these videotapes will be destroyed (see November 2005), around the time the Brinkema makes a repeat request for the tapes (see November 3-14, 2005). However, other recordings—two videotapes and one audio tape—will survive and will finally be viewed by Moussaoui’s prosecutors in 2007, long after Moussaoui has been convicted (see September 19 and October 18, 2007). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 10/25/2007 ; Reuters, 11/13/2007] Although the identity of the detainees in the recordings requested is not known, one of the prosecutors will later say, “Obviously the important witnesses included [Abu] Zubaidah, [Ramzi] bin al-Shibh, and KSM [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed]… those are the guys at the head of the witness list.” However, he will not specifically recall which tapes are requested. [Associated Press, 12/7/2007]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Leonie Brinkema, Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Coverup, Destruction of CIA Tapes
May 12, 2003: Four US Soldiers Beat Severely Prisoners at Camp Bucca
Four soldiers from the 320th Military Police Battalion severely beat prisoners after transporting them to Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. Soldiers spread the legs of some prisoners while others kick them in the groin. One prisoner allegedly has “his face smashed in.” The incident is reported by the MPs of another unit. After the soldiers are charged, one of the soldiers being investigated writes to his relatives to explain the charges: “A few of my MPs were assaulted by the enemy prisoners, and we had to use force to regain control, all justifiable.” [Associated Press, 7/27/2003; Washington Post, 5/9/2004] The four MPs of Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum’s 320th Military Police Battalion will be given less than honorable discharges, but not prosecuted. [US News and World Report, 7/9/2004]
Entity Tags: Jerry L. Phillabaum
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Camp Bucca (Iraq), Other Detainees
May 14, 2003: One Guantanamo Detainee Released and Four Others Repatriated to Saudi Arabia
One Guantanamo detainee is released and four Saudi detainees are transferred “for continued detention by the government of Saudi Arabia.” The Defense Department releases no further details. [US Department of Defense, 5/16/2003]
Category Tags: Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Other Detainees
May 19, 2003: Theatened with ‘Enemy Combatant’ Status, ‘Lackawanna Six’ Strike Plea Bargain with US Government
Charged with supporting al-Qaeda in September 2002, all of the “Lackawanna Six” originally pled not guilty (see September 13, 2002). But by May 19, 2003, all of them change their minds and plead guilty. They accept prison terms of 6 and a half to 9 years. The Washington Post reports that the fear of being declared “enemy combatants” led “the Lackawanna Six” to engage in plea bargain talks. The six men all plead guilty of providing support to a terrorist organization and received prison sentences of six-and-a-half to nine years. “We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us,” says Patrick J. Brown, attorney for one of the six. “So we just ran up the white flag and folded.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] “Basically, what was related to us,” says James Harrington, attorney for another, “was that if the case was not resolved by a plea, the government was going to consider any options that it had. They didn’t say they were going to do it [declare them ‘enemy combatants’], they just were going to consider it.” [Guardian, 12/3/2003] This is corroborated by the US federal attorney responsible for the prosecution of the six, Michael Battle. He says his office never explicitly threatened invoking the enemy combatant status, because he did not have to. Everybody knew this threat was in the air. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier,” he says, “but the war on terror has tilted the whole [legal] landscape. We are trying to use the full arsenal of our powers. I’m not saying the ends justify the means,” he adds. “But you have to remember that we’re protecting the rights of those who are being targeted by terror as well as the rights of the accused.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] Neal R. Sonnett, speaking as the chairman of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, says: “The defendants believed that if they didn’t plead guilty, they’d end up in a black hole forever. There’s little difference between beating someone over the head and making a threat like that.” [Washington Post, 7/29/2003] “Nothing illustrates the US government’s new power over suspects… better than the case of the Lackawanna Six,” Guardian journalist James Meek observes. [Guardian, 12/3/2003]
Entity Tags: Yaseinn Taher, Yahya Goba, Faysal Galab, Sahim Alwan, Neal R. Sonnett, Shafel Mosed, Michael A. Battle, Mukhtar al-Bakri, Patrick J. Brown
Category Tags: Other Detainees
May 24, 2003: Detainee at Camp Cropper Shot
In relation to a hunger strike, there is unrest at Camp Cropper. One prisoner suffers a gunshot wound. [International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ]
Category Tags: Physical Assault, Camp Cropper (Iraq), Other Detainees
May 25, 2003: Guantanamo Camp Commander Allegedly Thinking about Building Execution Chamber
The Mail on Sunday reports that according to Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the US is considering plans to build an execution chamber at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay where suspected terrorists, convicted by a secret military tribunal for capital crimes, would be put to death. “Prisoners would be tried, convicted, and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury, and without right of appeal.” [Courier Mail, 5/26/2003] Britain says that it is unaware of the US plans. [Courier Mail, 5/26/2003]
Entity Tags: Geoffrey D. Miller
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Prisoner Deaths
May 29, 2003: Al-Marri Pleads Innocent to Credit Card Charges
Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a Qatari citizen and former US college student charged with bank fraud and alleged to be an al-Qaeda sleeper agent (see December 12, 2001), pleads innocent in an Illinois federal court. His court date is set for July 21, but before that can happen, President Bush will designate al-Marri an “enemy combatant” and send him into military custody, where he will be denied access to the US court system (see June 23, 2003). Al-Marri has been in detention in New York City while federal investigators probe his alleged connections to 9/11 hijackers. Al-Marri is charged with credit card fraud (see February 8, 2002) based on his alleged possession of at least 15 unauthorized and counterfeit credit cards; he is alleged to have been part of the al-Qaeda finance network. He is also charged with lying to FBI agents over alleged overseas phone calls to a number associated with an al-Qaeda figure in the United Arab Emirates, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a known al-Qaeda facilitator linked to the 9/11 attacks (see Early-Late June, 2001). Al-Marri is not charged with being personally linked to the attacks. US Attorney Jan Paul Miller says al-Marri has not been charged with a terrorist crime. [Associated Press, 5/29/2003]
Entity Tags: Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, Al-Qaeda, Jan Paul Miller, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, George W. Bush, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: Detainments, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri
May 30, 2003: Military Interrogators Encouraged to Use Harsh Interrogation Tactics FBI Personnel Consider Questionable, Possibly Illegal
An FBI memo released to the American Civil Liberties Union in 2006 (ACLU—see February 23, 2006) documents escalating tensions between FBI and Defense Department personnel stationed at Guantanamo. According to the memo, beginning in late 2002, Defense Department interrogators received encouragement from their superiors to “use aggressive interrogation tactics” that FBI agents believed were “of questionable effectiveness and subject to uncertain interpretation based on law and regulation.” The memo names Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, as supporting interrogation methods FBI agents believe “could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information.” FBI personnel took their concerns to senior Pentagon officials, but were ignored. [American Civil Liberties Union, 2/23/2006]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Geoffrey D. Miller
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Internal Memos/Reports, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba)
Summer 2003: Wolfowitz Visits Abu Ghraib Prison
Top: Wolfowitz (center). Karpinski stands to the left side. Bottom: Wolfowitz is partly behind Lane McCotter, who has a camera around his neck. Karpinski is behind them both. [Source: Associated Press (top) and Utah Sheriff (bottom)]Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz visits the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The exact time of the visit is unknown, but Wolfowitz is pictured with Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski who begins working at Abu Ghraib in June 2003, and prison administrator Lane McCotter, who stops working at Abu Ghraib in early October. Other details of his visit there are unknown. [Tom Paine (.com), 5/27/2004]
Entity Tags: Janis L. Karpinski, Lane McCotter, Paul Wolfowitz
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq)
Summer 2003: CIA Officials Obtain Permission from Rice to Use Harsh Interrogation Tactics on New Detainee
CIA officials ask for reauthorization of the controversial harsh interrogation methods (see April 2002 and After and August 1, 2002) that had been withdrawn (see December 2003-June 2004) after the revelation of abuse and torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison (see November 5, 2003). The CIA has captured a new al-Qaeda suspect in Asia, and top agency officials ask the National Security Council Principals Committee—Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft—for permission to use extreme methods of interrogation against the new detainee. Rice, who chairs the Principals Committee, says: “This is your baby. Go do it.” [ABC News, 4/9/2008] The name of the new suspect captured in Asia is not mentioned, but Hambali is captured in Thailand in August 2003 (see August 12, 2003), and he is the only prominent al-Qaeda figure arrested that summer. He is considered one of al-Qaeda’s most important leaders. There are some reports that he is one of only about four prisoners directly waterboarded by the US (see Shortly After August 12, 2003).
Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George J. Tenet, John Ashcroft, Hambali, National Security Council, Donald Rumsfeld
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Impunity, Indications of Abuse, Statements/Writings about Torture, Sleep Deprivation, Stress Positions, Waterboarding, Internal Memos/Reports, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Hambali
Summer 2003-January 2004: 9/11 Commission Does Not Receive Videotapes of Detainee Interrogations
Kean (left) and Hamilton (right) of the 9/11 Commission. [Source: Doug Mills / New York Times]The 9/11 Commission does not receive video or audio recordings of interrogations of detainees thought to know something about the 9/11 plot (see Spring-Late 2002), even though it is unhappy with the amount and quality of information it is getting from detainees (see Summer 2003) and has a series of meetings with CIA officials to improve access (see November 5, 2003-January 2004). The CIA will indicate that the Commission never asks for the tapes, saying it “went to great lengths to meet the requests of the 9/11 Commission,” and that one of the reasons that the tapes are not destroyed until after the Commission releases its final report in 2004 is so that it could have the tapes, if it so desires. [New York Times, 12/8/2007] However, when the tapes’ destruction is revealed in late 2007 (see November 2005 and December 6, 2007), former 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton will dispute this, saying that in hours of negotiations and discussions with the CIA and written requests they make it clear they want all material connected to the interrogations of the relevant detainees. [International Herald Tribune, 12/8/2007] Kean will say, “They knew what they had and they didn’t give it to us.” [ABC News, 12/7/2007] Hamilton will say, “The CIA certainly knew of our interest in getting all the information we could on the detainees, and they never indicated to us there were any videotapes… Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge.” [International Herald Tribune, 12/8/2007]
Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Central Intelligence Agency, Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Commission
Summer-Late 2003: Covert Interrogation Programs in Iraqi Prisons Lead to Abuse, Causing CIA to Pull Out of Programs
According to journalist Seymour Hersh, by the summer of 2003, US-led forces have conquered Iraq but it becomes increasingly obvious that there is a growing insurgency movement. However, the US knows very little about the insurgency. A secret military report from the time states, “Human intelligence is poor or lacking… due to the dearth of competence and expertise.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his close assistant Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone try to solve this problem by authorizing increasingly aggressive interrogation of detainees in Iraq prisons. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Guantanamo (or “Gitmo”) prison in Cuba, comes to Iraq with a plan to “Gitmoize” the prisons in Iraq to make them more geared towards interrogation (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). A former intelligence official will later tell Hersh, “They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq. No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot.” The program mentioned is Operation Copper Green, which allows secret task forces to capture and interrogate wanted figures with very little oversight, and which is expanded to Iraq around this time. This official continues, “And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets” - meaning Iraqi detainees -“than people who can handle them.” As a result, Cambone decides to include some of the military intelligence officers working in the Iraqi prisons in the special access programs that are a part of Operation Copper Green. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply. And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and its’ to be kept within Defense Department channels.” As a result, more and more people, including the MPs (military police) pictured in the later Abu Ghraib abuse photographs, get involved in these covert programs that have almost no accountability and the stage is set for abuses to occur. The official says, “as soon as you enlarge the secret program beyond the oversight capability of experienced people, you lose control.” By the end of 2003, this official claims that senior CIA officials were complaining. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets.’” The CIA supposedly ends its involvement with the covert programs in Iraqi prisons, although exactly when this happens is not clear. [New Yorker, 5/24/2004]
Entity Tags: Geoffrey D. Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Seymour Hersh, Operation Copper Green, Stephen A. Cambone
Category Tags: Impunity, High-level Decisions and Actions, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq), Operation Copper Green
June 2003: Military Interrogators are Allegedly Impersonating FBI Agents
FBI officials report that a member of the military personnel has impersonated an FBI agent. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1/20/2004 ] One FBI supervising special agent writes, “There were… accusations made by different investigators that military interrogators would present themselves as FBI agents to detainees and harass them… .” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/13/2004 ] A similar claim will be made by Rhuhel Ahmed. At one time, Ahmed complains to an FBI investigator that one of his female colleagues kept him in Camp Delta’s interrogation room for 18 hours. The investigator tells Ahmed he knows the woman, but that she is not from the FBI but from military intelligence. [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ]
Entity Tags: Rhuhel Ahmed
Category Tags: Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Rhuhel Ahmed
June 2003: Iraqi Prisoner Dies from ‘Hard, Fast Blow’ to the Head
An Iraqi prisoner is bound to a chair and interrogated by soldiers at a “classified interrogation facility” in Baghdad. He later dies. The autopsy will report that the man was “subjected to both physical and psychological stress” and died from a “hard, fast blow” to the head. [Denver Post, 5/18/2004]
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Physical Assault, Other Detainees
June 2003 or July 2003: British Detainees at Guantanamo Forced to Make False Confessions
A female senior official from Washington comes to Guantanamo to interrogate British national Shafiq Rasul and shows him a videotape recording of a meeting in January 2000 in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks. The video allegedly also shows Rasul being present. Rasul recalls saying: “Are you blind? That doesn’t look anything like me.” His questioners are adamant. “[L]oads of people had told them that this guy in a beard standing behind bin Laden was me. I told them that in 2000 I didn’t leave the country, that I was working at the Wednesbury branch of Currys, who would have my employment records. They told me I could have falsified those records—that I could have had someone working with me at Currys who could have altered the data the company held, and traveled on a false passport.” Then Rasul decides to confess. “I’d got to the point where I just couldn’t take any more. ‘Do what you have to do,’ I told them.” He recalls: “My heart is beating, beating, I’m saying it’s not me, it’s not me, but I’m thinking ‘I’m going to be screwed. I’m on an island in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing I can do.’” [Guardian, 10/3/2004] His two friends, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, are also forced to make confessions. But the British intelligence service MI5, later demonstrates that the Tipton Three were all in Britain at that time, [Observer, 3/14/2004] and Rasul was indeed working in a Currys store in the West Midlands at the time of the alleged meeting attended by bin Laden and Mohamed Atta. [Guardian, 8/4/2004]
Entity Tags: Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, Mohamed Atta, Shafiq Rasul, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Forced Confessions, Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba), Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul
June 2003 or July 2003: Iraqi National Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul Captured by Kurds and Handed Over to US
Iraqi national Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, later to be nicknamed “Triple-X,” is captured by Kurdish soldiers on suspicion that he is a member of Al-Ansar al-Islam, a militant group operating in northern Iraq. [Washington Post, 10/24/2004] He is then handed over to the CIA, which takes him outside of Iraq to a secret facility in Afghanistan. [New York Times, 9/10/2004]
Entity Tags: Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul
Category Tags: Detainments, Other Detainees
June 2003: Democratic Senator Asks White House, CIA, and Pentagon about Detainee Abuse
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, sends letters to the White House, the CIA, and the Pentagon with complaints about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan and “other locations outside the United States.” He writes that according to unnamed officials, the prisoners are being subjected to beatings, lengthy sleep- and food-deprivation, and other “stress and duress” techniques (see April 16, 2003). He asks if these techniques are indeed being employed and urges the administration to issue a clear statement that cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees will not be tolerated. The Pentagon and CIA respond with denials that the United States is torturing its prisoners. [Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004; USA Today, 5/13/2004]
Entity Tags: Patrick J. Leahy
Category Tags: Coverup, Indications of Abuse
June 2003: CIA Begins Course for Training ‘Debriefers’
The CIA starts a course for officers it calls “debriefers,” who are to participate in detainee interrogations. (In the CIA’s terminology of this time, an “interrogator” is someone who applies the agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” whereas a debriefer does not apply the techniques, but merely asks a detainee questions after an interrogator has designated a detainee as “compliant.”) The purpose of the course is to train the debriefers to collect actionable intelligence from high-value detainees in CIA custody. It is intended to familiarize them with key aspects of the CIA’s interrogation program, including its goals and legal authorities, the interrogation guidelines, and the roles and responsibilities of all who interact with high value detainees. [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 38 ] The agency began a course for interrogators the previous year (see November 2002).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency
June 2003: Iraqi Prisoner Strangled to Death in US Custody
A 53-year-old Iraqi man, Naem Sadoon Hatab, is strangled to death while in US custody at the Whitehorse detainment camp in Nasiriyah. Hatab’s death will be investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS—see May 14, 2008). [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/14/2008]
Entity Tags: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Naem Sadoon Hatab
June 2003-August 2003: Minor Iraqi Agricultural Ministry Official Badly Treated in Detention for Three Months
Abd al-Rahman, a minor official at the agriculture ministry in Baghdad, is taken into custody by Coalition Forces and held for three months during which time he is “beaten frequently, given shocks with an electric cattle-prod, and [has] one of his toenails prised off.” Rations are often laced with pork, which is forbidden to Muslims, and the area around his tent is infested with scorpions. [Sunday Times (London), 1/18/2004; Human Rights Watch, 5/7/2004]
Entity Tags: Abd al-Rahman
Category Tags: Dangerous Conditions, Electrodes, Physical Assault, Suppression of Religious Expression, Other Detainees
Summer 2003: 9/11 Commission Unhappy with Information Coming from Detainees
The 9/11 Commission becomes unhappy with the quality of information being provided by the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon about detainees in US custody who are being interrogated, because “the government’s investigators [are] not asking the detainees the kinds of questions [it wants] answered” - they are asking about future threats rather than the history of the 9/11 plot. The Commission is receiving detainee evidence “third-hand - passed from the detainee, to the interrogator, to the person who writes up the interrogation report, and finally to [its] staff in the form of reports, not even transcripts.” It can take up to six weeks for a report on an interrogation to be produced. Due to the absence of any interaction between Commission staff and detainees, they also have “no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information.” [Kean and Hamilton, 2006, pp. 119-123] In at least one case, it seem possible that the 9/11 Commission was not given all the information from CIA interrogations that it needed. Counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna will later independently view some interrogation transcripts, and from them he will claim that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) confessed to attending a pivotal al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia where the 9/11 plot was discussed (see January 5-8, 2000). The CIA was in charge of monitoring this meeting, so their failure to notice the presence of KSM, a photographed and well-known terrorist mastermind with a $2 million bounty on his head at the time, would have been nearly inexplicable (see July 9, 2003). The Commission subsequently requests direct access to the detainees, but this request is not granted (see November 5, 2003-January 2004).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Rohan Gunaratna, US Department of Defense, 9/11 Commission
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, Coverup
June 2, 2003: CIA Is Concerned about Interrogation Techniques US Military Is Using on High-Ranking Detainees
Michael DeLong. [Source: PBS]In a secret memo, Gen. George Casey, Jr., director of the US military’s Joint Staff, warns Gen. Michael DeLong at Central Command (Centcom) that the “CIA has advised that the techniques the military forces are using to interrogate high value detainees (HVDs)… are more aggressive than the techniques used by CIA who is [sic] interviewing the same HVDs.” DeLong replies to Casey that the techniques being used are “doctrinally appropriate techniques” in line with Army regulations and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s direction. [New Yorker, 6/17/2007] It will later come out that the CIA was using techniques on these detainees widely considered to be torture, such as waterboarding. But little is known about military treatment of these detainees or the techniques they used.
Entity Tags: George Casey, Michael DeLong, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Reports/Investigations, Waterboarding
June 5, 2003: US Marines Choke and Kill Iraqi Prisoner
At the Camp Whitehorse detention center near Nassiriya, Iraq, US marines beat and choke Najem Sa’doun Hattab, a former Ba’ath Party official, and then drag him by the neck to his cell. Hattab dies from his injuries. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/3/2004; Amnesty International, 3/18/2004] His autopsy reveals bone and rib fractures, and multiple bruises over his body. [American Civil Liberties Union, 10/24/2005]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Marines, Najem Sa’doun Hattab
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Physical Assault, Other Detainees, Other US Bases and Centers
(June 8, 2003): US Guards at Camp Cropper Shoot and Injure Five or Six Detainees
Detainees at Camp Cropper in southern Iraq riot after one of the prisoners hits an MP. When things calm down, a US soldier removes his shirt and flexes his muscles in front of the prisoners, provoking another riot. After a soldier is struck in the head by a rock and another is hit by a tent pole, the MPs open fire, wounding five or six prisoners. The incident is later investigated by US authorities who conclude that the soldiers’ actions were justified. [International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ; Washington Post, 5/9/2004]
June 12, 2003: Guards at Abu Ghraib Shoot Prisoners; One Dies
Prisoners being held at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq hold demonstrations protesting their living conditions. In response to the protests, prison authorities promise to inform each of the prisoners about the status and expected length of their detention the following day. [Amnesty International, 6/30/2003; International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ] Additionally, two people attempting to escape the facility are shot. One dies of his wounds after being taken to a hospital. [International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ]
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq)
June 13, 2003: Guards Shoot Abu Ghraib Detainees Holding Demonstration
Many detainees in Abu Ghraib are being held in poorly guarded and provisioned tents during this time. [Source: HBO]Detainees being held at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq hold another demonstration after prison authorities fail to follow through on a promise (see June 12, 2003) to provide the detainees with information about their status. Some of the demonstrators throw bricks and poles at the soldiers, but remain within the razor wire fence surrounding the tents and are not a threat to the soldiers. In response, the prison guards fire from three watchtowers into the detention area, killing 22-year-old Ala’ Jassem Sa’ad, who is in one of the tents. Seven others who are sharing the tent are injured. According to the prison authorities, the “shooting [is] justified as the three tower [guards] determined that the lives of the interior guards were threatened.” [Amnesty International, 6/30/2003; International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/24/2004 ]
Entity Tags: Ala’ Jassem Sa’ad
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq), Other Detainees
June 17, 2003: Al-Qaeda Suspect Arrested in Pakistan, Disappears into US Custody
On June 17, 2003, al-Qaeda suspect Adil Al-Jazeeri is arrested at a public swimming pool in Peshawar, Pakistan. He is not on any wanted list, and there is very little public information known about him, but intelligence sources call im a long-time aide to bin Laden and someone involved in training for al-Qaeda. On July 14, 2003, CBS News reports that he has been transferred over to US authorities after being subjected to “tough questioning” by Pakistani agents. US forces has then flown him “blindfolded and bound to an unknown location for interrogation in US custody.” Most likely, he is taken to the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. [Associated Press, 6/19/2003; CBS News, 7/14/2003; Amnesty International, 8/19/2003] In late 2005, Human Rights Watch will list his as a likely “ghost prisoner” probably being held by the CIA. [Human Rights Watch, 11/30/2005]
Entity Tags: Adil Al-Jazeeri
June 17-18, 2003: CIA, RAND, Psychological Association Explore Use of Drugs on Interrogation Subjects
The CIA, the RAND Corporation, and the American Psychological Association host a two-day workshop entitled, “Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory.” One session, “Law Enforcement Interrogation and Debriefing,” explores the question, “What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?” [American Psychological Association, 6/18/2003; Congressional Quarterly, 4/4/2008] This question becomes more relevant in light of evidence that mind-altering drugs may be used by US interrogators against terror suspects (see April 4, 2008).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, RAND Corporation, American Psychological Association
Category Tags: Independent Investigations, Statements/Writings about Torture
June 18-21, 2003: Detainee Killed while in Custody at Base in Afghanistan
Abdul Wali turns himself in to a US base in Asadabad, Afghanistan [CBS News, 6/18/2004] at the request of the Afghan governor of Kunar province. Wali allegedly participated in rocket attacks against the base, which is located in northeast Afghanistan close to the border with Pakistan. During the next two days, according to an indictment, he is “brutally assault[ed]” by David A. Passaro, a private contractor, employed by the CIA, [Guardian, 6/23/2004] who uses “his hands and feet and a large flashlight.” On June 21, Wali dies in detention. The CIA refers the case to the Justice Department in November 2003. Passaro will be indicted with charges of assault in June 2004. [CBS News, 6/18/2004]
Entity Tags: David A. Passaro, Abdul Wali
Category Tags: Prisoner Deaths, Private Contractors, Other Detainees, Other US Bases and Centers
June 22, 2003: Malawi Authorities Arrest Five Suspects with CIA Help
In the city of Blantyre in Malawi, the local National Intelligence Bureau, together with US officials who are reportedly CIA agents, move to arrest five foreigners on suspicion of belonging to al-Qaeda. They are Ibrahim Habaci and Arif Ulusam, both Turkish; Saudi citizen Faha al Bahli; Mahmud Sardar Issa from Sudan; and Kenyan national Khalifa Abdi. They are held incommunicado in an undisclosed location somewhere in Malawi, and defense attorneys take immediate action on their behalf. That evening, the High Court of Blantyre orders that the detainees be brought before it within 48 hours. [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]
Entity Tags: Faha al Bahli, Arif Ulusam, Ibrahim Habaci, Khalifa Abdi, Mahmud Sardar Issa
June 23, 2003: US Drops Criminal Charges Against Al-Marri, Designates Him ‘Enemy Combatant’
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. [Source: Slate]A month before he is slated to go on trial for bank and credit card fraud charges (see February 8, 2002), the federal government drops all criminal charges against Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been held without legal representation, and in solitary confinement, since 2001 (see December 12, 2001). [CBS News, 6/23/2003; CBS News, 6/23/2003; CNN, 12/13/2005; Progressive, 3/2007]
'Grave Danger' - President Bush says al-Marri “represents a continuing, present, and grave danger” to the country, and the government designates al-Marri as an “enemy combatant,” alleging that he helped al-Qaeda operatives settle in the US. “Mr. Al-Marri possesses intelligence, including intelligence about personnel and activities of al-Qaeda,” Bush continues, and adds that gaining access to it “would aid US efforts to prevent attacks by al-Qaeda.” [Knight Ridder, 6/24/2003; Progressive, 3/2007] The presidential order says he “engaged in conduct that constituted hostile and war-like acts, including conduct in preparation for acts of international terrorism.” His detention is necessary, the order claims, to prevent him from participating in terrorist activities against the US. The order in effect precludes a pretrial hearing scheduled for July 2 and the start of a formal trial on July 22. [CNN, 6/24/2003]
Alleged Sleeper Agent - The government declaration for al-Marri says he worked as an “al-Qaeda sleeper agent” who was planning to “hack into the computer systems of US banks,” and possibly facilitate a follow up to the 9/11 attacks. For its part, the Defense Department says al-Marri trained at a terror camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, personally met Osama bin Laden, and volunteered for an unspecified “martyr mission.” [CNN, 12/13/2005] Attorney General John Ashcroft will later claim that al-Marri refused repeated offers to cooperate with the FBI; “consequently,” Ashcroft will write, Bush declares him an enemy combatant. Ashcroft will claim that under the laws of war, an enemy combatant can be killed out of hand. Instead, the government will hold al-Marri “without charge or trial until the end of the war.” [Slate, 11/30/2006]
Transferred to Navy Brig - Instead, the “enemy combatant” designation takes al-Marri, a Qatari citizen and legal US resident, out of the civilian criminal justice system and places him under the control of the Defense Department, which immediately transfers him into detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina. He could face a military tribunal or remain in detention indefinitely, without trial. He is only the third person to be publicly named as an enemy combatant, along with US citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
Fingered by KSM - According to a Justice Department official, al-Marri was “positively identified” as being part of a planned second wave of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks by an “al-Qaeda detainee in a position to know.” Justice officials imply that the detainee to finger al-Marri is senior 9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. [CBS News, 6/23/2003] Another suspected al-Qaeda operative, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi (see Early-Late June, 2001), is also said to have mentioned him. [CNN, 12/13/2005] Alice Fisher, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division, says the department did not drop the criminal charges against al-Marri because the case was weak: “We are confident we would have prevailed on the criminal charges. However, setting the criminal charges aside is in the best interests of our national security.” The criminal charges—lying to banks, lying to the FBI, and credit card fraud—could have given al-Marri up to 60 years in prison and $1.75 million in fines. [CBS News, 6/23/2003]
Pleaded Not Guilty - Al-Marri’s lawyer Mark Berman says that his client pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges (see May 29, 2003), and the case was proceeding to trial. “I definitely got the sense they were reluctant to try the case in court,” Berman says. “They’d rather be in a forum where defendants aren’t represented by counsel.” Al-Marri’s wife and five children have left the US. The Saudi Arabian government granted the family passports in February, in spite of a State Department request not to issue the passports, as department officials wanted al-Marri’s wife, who is Saudi, to be available to the FBI for questioning. [Knight Ridder, 6/23/2003] Al-Marri’s lawyers say they are preparing a legal challenge to Bush’s decision. [Knight Ridder, 6/24/2003]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, US Department of State, Osama bin Laden, US Department of Justice, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, John Ashcroft, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al-Qaeda, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, Mark Berman, Alice Fisher, George W. Bush, Jose Padilla, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Yaser Esam Hamdi
Category Tags: High-level Decisions and Actions, Indefinite Detention, Legal Proceedings, Military Commissions / Tribunals, Abrogation of Rights, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri
Key Events (98)
General Topic Areas
Abu Ghraib Scandal Aftermath (28)Coverup (144)Criticisms of US (171)Detainee Treatment Act (15)Detainments (121)Disciplinary Actions (17)High-level Decisions and Actions (450)Human Rights Groups (81)Impunity (49)Indefinite Detention (41)Independent Investigations (27)Indications of Abuse (61)Legal Proceedings (217)Media (77)Military Commissions / Tribunals (66)Other Events (20)Prisoner Deaths (48)Private Contractors (8)Public Statements (84)Reports/Investigations (144)Statements/Writings about Torture (129)Supreme Court Decisions (5)
Extraordinary Rendition (24)Rendition after 9/11 (75)Rendition before 9/11 (34)
Types of Abuses Performed by US
Abrogation of Rights (37)Dangerous Conditions (18)Deception (5)Electrodes (9)Exposure to Insects (4)Extreme Temperatures (48)Forced Confessions (37)Ghost Detainees (28)Insufficient Food (25)Intimidation/Threats (44)Involuntary Drugs (14)Isolation (33)Medical Services Denied (14)Mental Abuse (21)Physical Assault (140)Poor Conditions (30)SERE Techniques (30)Sexual Humiliation (57)Sexual Temptation (3)Sleep Deprivation (74)Stress Positions (65)Suppression of Religious Expression (18)Use of Dogs (20)Waterboarding (92)
Internal Memos/Reports (95)Presidential Directives (8)
Specific Events or Operations
Destruction of CIA Tapes (94)Operation Copper Green (9)Qala-i-Janghi Massacre (17)
US Bases and Interrogation Centers
Abu Ghraib Prison (Iraq) (187)Al Jafr Prison (Jordan) (8)Al Qaim (Iraq) (6)Bagram (Afghanistan) (60)Camp Bucca (Iraq) (13)Camp Cropper (Iraq) (13)Diego Garcia (8)Gardez (Afghanistan) (7)Guantanamo (US Base in Cuba) (293)Kandahar (Afghanistan) (19)Salt Pit (Afghanistan) (34)Stare Kiejkuty (Poland) (21)US Base (Thailand) (15)USS Peleliu (7)Other US Bases and Centers (40)
High Ranking Detainees
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (32)Abu Zubaida (52)Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (6)Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (26)Hambali (9)Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (10)Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (34)Majid Khan (7)Ramzi bin al-Shibh (13)Other High Ranking Detainees (14)
Other Detainees
Abed Hamed Mowhoush (8)Asif Iqbal (20)Binyam Mohamed (14)Bisher al-Rawi (11)Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (37)Huda al-Azzawi (10)Jamal Udeen (10)Jamil al-Banna (9)John Walker Lindh (29)Jose Padilla (31)Khalid el-Masri (17)Maher Arar (14)Moazzam Begg (8)Mohamed al-Khatani (13)Mohammed Jawad (14)Rhuhel Ahmed (22)Saddam Salah al-Rawi (8)Salim Ahmed Hamdan (12)Shafiq Rasul (20)Tarek Dergoul (11)Yaser Esam Hamdi (22)Other Detainees (167)
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Vanessa Hudgens joins judging panel of So You Think You Can Dance
Vanessa Hudgens has graduated to a prime spot on TV show So You Think You Can Dance.
The High School Musical actress will join judges Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy on the panel for the upcoming 14th season of the show and make her debut at the Los Angeles auditions round, which will air from 12 June (17).
“I am so excited for Vanessa to join Mary and me on the judging panel for the 14th season of So You Think You Can Dance,” co-creator Nigel said in a statement. “There was instant chemistry in the audition rounds, and I know the SYTYCD fans will love her as much as we do. Vanessa is an accomplished artist and brings her own brand of enthusiasm and energy to our panel.”
Vanessa, who previously showed off her dancing skills as Rizzo in Grease: Live last year, retweeted news articles about her new role and tweeted: “So excited!!!”
This will be the 28-year-old’s first permanent judging role following her guest appearance in a 2016 episode of fashion reality show Project Runway.
Season 14, which will be hosted by longtime presenter Cat Deeley, marks a return to the old format, where dancers are aged 18 to 30, and the return of Mary, who left after season 11, before the two seasons focussed on Next Generation dancers aged between eight and 13. Those seasons were judged by Nigel, Paula Abdul, Jason Derulo, and Sia’s regular collaborator Maddie Ziegler.
Vanessa’s casting news comes shortly after her new TV series Powerless, in which she had the lead role, was cancelled before its first season had finished, with the final three episodes never making it to air. She also co-hosted the Billboard Music Awards with Ludacris earlier this month (May17).
Vanessa Hudgens: 'Catwoman role would be dream come true'
Vanessa Hudgens had rude airport encounter with fan's parent
Vanessa Hudgens convinced she can read Jennifer Lopez's mind
#SoYouThinkYouCanDance
#VanessaHudgens
by WENN
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You are at:Home»News»Electronic money: Commission asks Court of Justice to fine Belgium for not implementing EU rules
Electronic money: Commission asks Court of Justice to fine Belgium for not implementing EU rules
The European Commission has decided to refer Belgium to the Court of Justice of the EU for failing to implement the Directive on the taking up, pursuit and prudential supervision of the business of electronic money institutions. The Commission has also decided to ask the Court to impose daily penalty payments on Belgium until it fully implements the Directive.
Directive 2009/110/EC was adopted in September 2009 and had to be implemented in all EU Member States by 30 April 2011. Most Member States have adopted implementing legislation. However, Belgium has not yet notified to the Commission any national implementing measures. The Commission sent a reasoned opinion to Belgium in April.
If the Directive is not fully implemented in all Member States, companies cannot reap the benefits of a clear legal framework designed to strengthen the internal market while ensuring an adequate level of prudential supervision.
The Commission proposes a daily fine of € 59 212.80 which would be paid as from the date of the Court’s ruling until Belgium notified the Commission that it had fully implemented the rules into national law.
These financial penalties are proposed by the Commission under the Lisbon Treaty and take into account the duration and the gravity of the infringement and the size of the Member State. The final decision on the penalties rests with the Court. Here to read more.
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Flights to Spain 'prove popular'
Almost one million passengers passed through Alicante Airport during the month of September, official figures have revealed.
According to airport operator Aena, Alicante is now Spain's fifth-busiest airport, jumping ahead of the likes of Tenerife and Las Palmas in Gran Canaria.
Over the last nine months the airport has handled in excess of 7.6 million passengers, indicating that the demand for holidays in Spain is as high as ever.
The influx of holidaymakers looks set to continue throughout the winter months, with many carriers having increased the number of flights they operate to the popular airport, Costa Blanca News reports.
In related news, flight search engine Skyscanner last week announced that Alicante is the most searched for half-term flight destination.
Skyscanner co-founder Barry Smith claimed that holidays in Spain have always been popular.
"Despite heavy competition from other Mediterranean countries, it seems it's still the favourite, with Brits keen to take advantage of the country's warm weather, relatively low prices and close proximity to the UK for their half term holidays," he commented.
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Zejtun Corinthians president steps down
Zejtun Corinthians president John Bugeja and seven other committee members resigned from their posts.
In a statement, Bugeja said that after just one year during which he felt really proud of being part of the Zejtun community, it was of great disappointment for him that this experience had come to an end. He said that the present circumstances led him and seven other committee members to quit over lack of trust shown by some members of the committee.
John Bugeja said that all this happened after that he was personally invited to form part of a private company which will be running the Juventus Soccer School. He felt that as Zejtun Corinthians president, he could offer his support as the club would benefit from this project. However this decision was misinterpreted by some members of the committee. Bugeja said he feels hurt and after analysing the situation, he decided to step down from the post of president.
John Bugeja believes that the only loser in this issue will be the club as Zejtun had nothing to lose and everything to gain from the project through the youngsters forming part of the club’s nursery, publicity for the club and also the financial aspect as the club had its representative in the company running the school.
The former Zejtun president concludes the statement by thanking the Zejtun community for how they welcomed him, respected him and loved him and said that he will continue to remember this experience with the club and for this reason, he will not exclude offering his services to the club in future.
07/11/2010 Antoine Busuttil News Comments off
← Julian Vella joins Tarxien Rainbows
Applications for coaches to join Sirens Youth Nursery →
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An Interview with Mitch Mayne: Gay, Mormon, & Recently Called
by Scott Heffernan (bio)
Over the last several years, Mitch Mayne has been anxiously engaged in a good cause. He has been helping to build bridges between the LGBTQ community and the LDS church. Visit his very cool blog and website to learn more. Recently Mitch made headlines over his announcement of a new calling he received in San Francisco's Bay Ward. He was called to be the Bishop's Executive Secretary, a highly visible leadership position within the LDS church. Mitch's placement into this role is remarkable because he is "openly and unapologetically" gay. It has been absolutely fascinating to follow the unfolding events. Read the story as covered by Joanna Brooks, Peggy Fletcher Stack, the San Francisco Examiner, and even Robert Kirby. Mitch was nice enough to grant us an interview as well.
Image via Mitch Mayne.
Scott Heffernan: Hi Mitch. I just want to say thanks for being willing to interview with me. From what I understand you have been inundated by the press trying to speak to you. It's an honor to have you here on Modern Mormon Men. Welcome! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Mitch Mayne: Thank you, Scott. It’s my pleasure—I think it’s pretty apparent that this is a topic about which I am deeply passionate, and have been for some time.
First, I wish to mention a couple of points. I am not a spokesperson for the Mormon church—I speak for me, and as such can share my perspectives, my experience, and my hope. Second, I don’t set doctrine—fortunately, that mantle of responsibility does not fall to me. I do believe our faith is led by kind, inspired men who seek to do the right thing, and that gives me great hope.
As for me personally, I believe every single one of us is equal in the eyes of our Savior, regardless of orientation, ethnicity, gender–or any other marker we use as humans to define differences between ourselves and others. As such, I don't believe it is ever my job to condemn, criticize, or mock another. My job, as my Father’s son, is to walk beside you as you learn the lessons life is intended to teach you; to celebrate your joys with you, and to lend a hand when you stumble. The true spirit of love we have for one another is kind, patient, and doesn’t demand it’s own way. It doesn’t scold, condemn, or criticize. I am most certainly an imperfect human–but this is the spirit I think our Savior wants us to strive to achieve throughout the human family, and it is the spirit that I endeavor to bring to my entire life–and most certainly my faith.
And, it is the spirit I bring to this interview with you today.
Scott: Good to state all that right up front. Let me start by asking why your calling is such a big deal? Why do you think this is getting the attention that it is?
Mitch: I think what’s generating the enthusiasm and attention is the direction we’re taking here in San Francisco, and the opportunity that represents to begin to create more peaceful hearts when it comes to the topic of gays and lesbians within the church.
There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of LGBTQ people and those who care about them in the membership of the church. In 2010, there were over 14 million people across the globe on the church membership records. Based on an extremely conservative estimate of just 1%, that would mean that there are over 140,000 gay and lesbian individuals within the church. Add to that their families—and that number quickly grows to at least 500,000. Then, add to that their friends, their neighbors, and their priesthood and relief society leaders, those who care about them—that number quickly grows to over a million.
Now, let’s factor in those who have left the church over this issue, and those within the LGBTQ and straight communities alike who listen to what our faith has to say on this matter, and we can extrapolate that there are probably tens of millions of people in the world to whom this is an important topic—tens of millions of people who are troubled, pained, and long for some kind of reconciliation on the question of how gays and lesbians fit within our faith.
Currently, at the local level in San Francisco, we have an opportunity to help begin to build the reconciliation that I believe so many seek. My local leadership is comprised of kind, inspired men who recognize how painful this topic has been in our community, and want to help reach out to those whose souls are hurting. They’ve called me to help, and I’m blessed to be able to play a small role in bringing that to fruition in the San Francisco area. But, I think you can see that this is a topic that dwells in the hearts of many people across the globe—and I think they’re watching with great anticipation, and welcome our efforts. The place of our gay and lesbian brothers and sister isn’t something that just affects those in San Francisco—its impact is felt in every corner of the world.
Scott: One important point of interest is that you self-identify as a “gay Mormon” as opposed to one who “suffers from same sex attraction.” Can you clarify that distinction?
Mitch: I understand my sexual orientation to be a core component of my spiritual identity—not something that has been placed upon me as a burden, test of my faith, or cross I must bear. Orientation encompasses much more than simple attraction; I think to reduce it to that one aspect dismisses how deeply this is embedded in my spiritual DNA.
I am a gay man, just as my Father made me. I am not someone who suffers from same sex attraction. I think the words from one of my first essays on being a gay Mormon called, You know who I am, fit quite well here:
I don’t want to be labeled as “afflicted” or “suffering” or “struggling.” I do not have an illness that requires my soul be mended. I want to be recognized, like you, as a whole person, just as my Heavenly Father made me. I have suffered no affliction by His hand; I have, however, suffered affliction at the hands of others, including my brothers and sisters in the gospel.
Scott: Your story has been met with some skepticism—on both sides of the spectrum. I kept an eye on some of the reactions to the news of your calling and they were interesting, to say the least. I can imagine that you are receiving some criticism as well. Care to share any stories? Would you say the overall feedback you are getting is more negative or more positive?
Mitch: Positive, hands down. The outpouring of support has been humbling, to say the least. Not a day goes by now that I don’t get a couple hundred emails from people around the world expressing how happy they are to see this happening. For example, I got a note from a straight, married Mormon man who told me that he and his wife had been praying for years now for some kind of movement toward reconciliation on the topic of gays and lesbians and the church—that they had experienced much spiritual discord over the topic. The news of my calling—and the direction I’m following from my Bishop and Stake President to outreach to the gay community—strengthened their testimonies of both the church and our Savior. The volume of email and messages are astounding—it tells me people genuinely want heartfelt reconciliation on this challenge. Our faith community is not only ready for this, they’re desirous of it.
I am seeing it locally as well. My first Sunday in the Bay Ward, where I’m serving my new calling, I was approached after speaking in Sacrament Meeting by several straight members with similar stories. And, I was approached by at least three gay men—some of them new to the ward—who are also happy to see movement in this direction. In the Oakland stake, an investigator heard me speak about this work and called the Bishop and said he was ready to move forward into full fellowship—that the gay and lesbian issue had been a sticking point with him.
It’s been overwhelming, but in a very good way.
Scott: People are having very public conversations speculating about the details of your private life. That has to be fun. Some of the flak you have been given is because you haven’t committed to a life of celibacy, which some people interpret as you "planning to sin" and are therefore unrepentant and unworthy. Could you explain this?
Mitch: There’s been a lot of attention on what my romantic future may or may not hold, and I understand that.
First, my commitment is to uphold the identical standards we ask of any single male in a priesthood leadership role while I have this calling; that is fair, and I do so with full purpose of heart. I was interviewed, deemed worthy, and sustained in the identical fashion as any other single male would have been. That is also fair.
Beyond that, I simply don’t know. I don’t have any increased psychic abilities as a result of taking this position. I don’t get to know what life will bring me—romantically, professionally, or otherwise. I am a gay man, and gay men are emotionally and intimately attracted to other men. That hasn’t changed. And, I have always strived to live my life in accordance with what I understand my Savior’s will for me to be. That hasn’t changed, either. Both of these qualities are part and parcel of my DNA as a gay Mormon.
I think we, as humans, tend to get ourselves in trouble when we use the terms “always” and “never.” As far as I know, there has been only one unchangeable, perfect human who always made the right choices. The rest of us aren’t perfect, and life comes to us in ways we often don’t expect. I think the best any of us can do is hold good intentions, stay close to our Savior, and do our level best. And if I haven’t misread my scriptures entirely, I think that’s all He asks us to do.
Scott: I understand you were called because you are gay, not in spite of it. Is that accurate? What unique qualities do you plan to bring to your calling as a gay Mormon? What do you view as the mission of your calling?
Mitch: My mission in my calling is to follow the orders of my Stake Presidency and my Bishop, Don Fletcher. Within the ward boundaries of the San Francisco Bay Ward alone, we have 2500 members; only 500 members actively attend. Many of those who are inactive are single men and women—some of whom have served missions, and honorably so. Their families are still members. And many of these are our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, who feel like they have no place among our flanks. I’ve been asked to help build a bridge between these two communities, and it is my pleasure to do so.
My Bishop’s direction is this: The doors of the church in San Francisco are open to any and all, regardless of where people are in their lives; partnered, single, monogamous, dating, celibate—there’s room for everyone in our congregation. Bishop Fletcher said the other day that he wants our biggest problem to be lack of seating in the chapel on Sunday, and a challenge in keeping people from talking to one another during Sacrament Meeting because they are so darned glad to see one another. What a great goal! How could I not want to be part of a team like that?
Yes, I was called in part because I am gay. I have a foot in both worlds, Scott. I’m a gay Mormon, and one who is comfortable living with what so many see as two irreconcilable perspectives. And that gives me the unique ability to help my leadership understand what we go through as gay Mormons, and also speak to the gay community about our faith. That’s a great thing, and a pretty impressive blessing I’ve been given. I’m grateful for it.
My mission is simple: Follow the guidance set forth by my leadership. They’re the coaches. They write the plays. They direct the game. I’m just the quarterback who executes.
Scott: Wow. Your leaders sound amazing.
You've been fairly public about announcing your calling. Even before your calling you have been a very vocal gay Mormon. How does that play into your goals for this calling?
Mitch: One of my goals has always been to help people understand that it’s our similarities that bind us—not our differences that separate us. We’re all children of our Father. He loves us for exactly where we are, and exactly who we are.
Yes, I have been very public about being a gay Mormon for a long time—talking about not only the struggles we face, but also the joy we get from the gospel. That won’t change with this new calling. But the great thing now, is I get to be able to be part of a team of kind, compassionate and inspired men who want to do the right thing. And I get to leverage my history as a gay Mormon to do it—to hopefully create a better future for all of us.
But this really isn’t about me—it’s about the opportunity for all of us within our faith to come a little bit closer to demonstrating the kind of unconditional love our Savior has asked us to emulate. True, I am more open than many others feel comfortable being. In the end, we all need to stop declaring our individual identities over the pulpit and just focus on being disciples to our Savior. But until the invisible among us are recognized and respected, I think it’s incumbent upon me to do a little more identity sharing.
Scott: What is a straight ally? Why should we be one? And what should we do? Can one be a straight ally and still sustain the leaders of the church?
Mitch:This is a great set of questions—so many people have asked me what it is and how they can become one. I think in most ways they already are by virtue of simply asking the question, quite frankly. A straight ally is someone who recognizes exactly what we’re trying to accomplish here in San Francisco: that we’re all children of our Father, and there’s room for every one of us at His table. And someone whose actions and words speak that vision of equality among our brothers and sisters. The great news is so many people are asking the question—and how amazing that is!
I’m teaming up with Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project in the next few weeks to begin to put together a package for those who are interested in learning more. It will cover things like how parents can talk to LGBTQ children, how Bishops and leaders in the church can support LGBTQ folks, and what the role of the congregation is—all in ways that are in keeping with the guidance our faith provides. So stay tuned, there is much more to come on this topic as well.
And can you be an ally and still sustain the leaders of the church? Absolutely! Our faith is built on the gospel of our Savior, and one of the cornerstones of His gospel is the commandment to love one another. I think this direction goes hand in hand with His mandate to us.
Scott: Homosexuality is a very controversial/sensitive subject within the LDS church. Being gay, has it been difficult to maintain activity in and a testimony of the church?
Mitch: I think one of the best things that’s happened since this announcement is the volume of people who’ve begun to ask questions like this: How does it work for you? Is it challenging? How can you be both gay AND Mormon? Maybe, for the first time, people are beginning to understand what it is like to hold two seemingly irreconcilable perspectives in their heads and hearts. To them I say, “Welcome to a small glimpse of what it’s like to be a gay Mormon—we have to grapple with this every day.”
It’s not an easy task, being a gay Mormon. And, I don't think it's supposed to be easy...our Savior sent us here to grapple with difficult choices, seemingly competing perspectives, and challenging situations. That's part of the plan. But He also blessed us with the spirit, the ability to communicate with Him (and Him with us), and critical thinking skills. I think we offend Him when we don't bring those gifts to bear on every matter, not just the rough ones. That's also part of the plan—and what a great one it is!
I’ve been blessed with a unique faith community here in the bay area. I could live a quiet, healthy, happy life as a member of my church here—fully accepted for exactly who I am. But, I think my Savior had a different plan in store. He blessed me with some marginal communication skills (which He augments every time I speak or write!), and gave me a pathway to share what I have—by helping create it in other wards. True, I could have declined and probably had a much more peaceful life than I’ll have now, but to decline it would be toss back into my Savior’s face all the blessings and opportunities He has given me. And given how much I owe Him, I can’t possibly refuse.
Scott: Earlier you mentioned that in your area, "the doors of the church are open." What exactly does this mean? What is different in your ward and stake?
Mitch: “The doors are open.” This is a quote from my leadership. It means that everyone—independent of where they are in their lives—is welcome in the Bay Ward. There is no authorization interview to sit in our chapel on Sunday. There is no test to take to qualify for our love, support, and kindness.
True, doctrine as we understand it today has not changed; but no one will ask you to give up your partner or change your life to attend. Is it a doctrinal change? No. Is it a great and wonderful softening of the perception of all of our Savior’s children as our brothers and sisters? Will it help mend families? Will it help people who want the feeling of being part of a community of faith? Absolutely!
Scott: What an inspiring message you bring with you today, Mitch—a message I think we can all benefit from. I hope we can all grow in unconditional love and empathy for our fellow brothers and sisters. I’m excited to see such a big step in this direction, and I know a lot of my fellow Mormons feel the same way. Thanks so much for stopping by!
One last question: The goatee—did you have to shave or did they let you keep it?
Mitch: Hahaha! I love this question! No, no one has asked me to shave it. In fact, in one of my lighter moments a few months back I put up a before/after photo of me with and without the goatee on Facebook, and opened it up to a poll to help determine whether or not I should keep it. I think there was only one vote to shave it off. I suspect it hides some of my face, so I can understand the requests, and shall follow suit. I am, after all, here to serve my fellows—facial hair and all.
Labels: interview, MMM, religion, Scott Heffernan, sexuality
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Home > Canada > Employment and HR
Canada: Independent Contractors And Their Rights Upon Termination
Last Updated: May 30 2013
Article by A. Irvin Schein
Minden Gross LLP
Originally published at www.irvinschein.com.
The recent Superior Court decision of McCready v. De Dwa Dehs Nyes provides interesting observations about the rights of independent contractors upon termination.
In this case, the Plaintiff was a social worker with years of experience working with aboriginal communities.
The Defendant was a non-profit organization providing health care and related services to aboriginal people.
In 2009, the Defendant obtained funding for a six-month research project to collect information relating to aboriginal health care issues. The Defendant was referred to the Plaintiff in September, 2009 as a person who might be able to supervise the project. In one single phone call, the Plaintiff and a representative of the Defendant discussed the project and the Defendant hired the Plaintiff as an independent consultant for the six month timeframe in which the project was to be completed. A total fee for the Plaintiff's work was also agreed on.
Both parties agreed that the consulting contract would ultimately be put into writing. In the telephone call, however, they agreed that the Plaintiff would start work with a training session at the Defendant's premises on October 1st and that the written contract would follow at a later date.
A key fact to note was that the consulting contract was non-exclusive. In other words, the Plaintiff was free to take on other consulting work during the six months that the project was anticipated to last.
The Plaintiff started his training on October 1st as planned. By the end of the week, on October 8th the Defendant had made the decision that the position actually required a full-time research co-ordinator, and the Plaintiff was fired.
The Plaintiff then sued for the entire amount that would have been payable to him for the six months' worth of work. The Defendant responded by insisting that no firm contract had been entered into since whatever had been discussed on the telephone was never reduced to writing and signed.
The Court had little difficulty dispensing with the Defendant's argument, and found that a binding agreement for a non-exclusive consulting arrangement had been made on the telephone and was enforceable.
However, in response to the Plaintiff's argument that given that there was a contract for a fixed term with a fixed price, and that in the absence of any termination provision, he was entitled to have the contract price paid in full, the judge responded by analogizing the situation to that of a lawyer.
Where a lawyer is retained, even if it is for a specific task or term, no one would expect the lawyer to get paid for work expected to be done but not yet reached if the lawyer's retainer is terminated before the task has been completed. As far as the Court was concerned, this is a function of the fact that typically, lawyers are engaged by clients on the basis that they are at liberty to work for other clients at the same time, i.e., on a non-exclusive basis.
In this case, the Court concluded that as the Plaintiff had been hired on a non-exclusive basis only, he was not entitled to the full contract price. He was entitled only to the value of the time he actually spent on the project prior to termination.
As a result, the Plaintiff's damages were fairly limited.
However, and as an aside, the Court did wish to express its disapproval for what it considered to be the disrespectful way in which the Plaintiff was treated. Accordingly, punitive damages in the amount of $15,000 were awarded. This may not seem like a significant amount but the fact is that punitive damages are only rarely awarded in breach of contract cases.
The Plaintiff was also awarded a substantial amount for costs. In fact, the costs award was roughly eight times the amount of the damages awarded. Presumably, this was also a reflection of the judge's distaste for the Defendant's conduct.
The important point to be taken in this case, of course, has to do with the nature of the consulting agreement. The fact that a consulting agreement is non-exclusive in nature will have a very dramatic effect on the damages that might be claimed by a consultant in the event of early termination.
A. Irvin Schein
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Norwich Launch of Music & Literature No. 6
The U.K. Launch of Music & Literature no. 6: the Forum / 21 November 2015
George Szirtes speaks to the audience
On 21 November, the Forum in Norwich hosted the launch of Music & Literature no. 6, featuring the work of Alejandra Pizarnik, Victoria Polevà, and Dubravka Ugrešić. Both the venue and the location befitted the occasion: Norwich is now a UNESCO City of Literature and the Forum is both a hub for cultural events and a home for the excellent Millennium Library. We descended from the atrium into a snug underground room where Daniel Medin, co-editor of Music & Literature, welcomed us to the event and introduced the evening’s presenters: Megan Bradbury, Cecilia Rossi, George Szirtes, Joanna Walsh, and Roman Yusipey.
Szirtes, a poet and translator from Hungarian, praised the depth and breadth of material—essays, interviews, letters and diaries—that Music & Literature provides for its readers. The journal is unique, he noted, in publishing such a range of material on both the lives and the works of each artist it features. Szirtes also spoke about his experience of translating Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who was featured in M&L No. 2 and subsequently won the Man Booker International Prize in 2015.
Cecilia Rossi answers questions about the poet Alejandra Pizarnik
Norwich-based author Megan Bradbury then gave a beautiful reading from an essay about Alejandra Pizarnik, “An Overdose of Seconal,” written by Enrique Vila-Matas and translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey. We gained a moving insight into the oeuvre of “this solitary, desolate lady of poetry,” described by her compatriot Luis Chitarroni as “an extreme lyric and a tragedy.”
We also heard a sample of Pizarnik’s poetry—poem 21 from El árbol de Diana / Diana's Tree and “Works and Nights,” the title poem from Los trabajos y las noches—read by Cecilia Rossi, who lectures at the University of East Anglia and has written extensively on Pizarnik. Rossi has won a number of awards for her versions of Pizarnik’s poetry, and translated excerpts from Pizarnik’s Diaries for the issue. Following a question-and-answer session about her experience of bringing Pizarnik into English, Rossi read out an extract from the Diaries. It was a bittersweet reflection on a day of “empty happiness” spent quietly reading poetry; Pizarnik notes that she experiences her “greatest happiness or well-being” on days like this, when she is left alone to read and write, but muses a sentence later that “it’s not possible for a human being to be happy if turned into a machine for making and reading poems.” A poignant portrait emerged of a tortured woman who, despite her great talent for literature, felt that she had “little talent for life.”
Roman Yusipey (L) with his accordion as George Szirtes (R) reads "Three Improvisations on Music"
The next section of the event focused on the work of Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevà. After a poem in praise of accordions written expressly for this evening and read by George Szirtes, we were treated to a compelling interpretation of Polevà’s Null by Ukrainian accordionist Roman Yusipey. The stark power of the music was heightened by the intensity of Yusipey’s performance: the intimate venue meant we could see every expression on the accordionist’s face, every pressure of his fingers on the buttons of the instrument. The experience of listening to Null is described by Polevà herself in a conversation with Anna Lunina, translated for the issue by Rachel Caplan and read to us by Bradbury and Medin: “In Null you must come to this void state: it is a very resonant state, it resounds, it is an echoing desert. As if there was nothing at all, and yet the void rings with sound.”
Yusipey then read from the same interview in Russian, to give the audience a feel for the sound of the original language, before playing again—this time a haunting piece called De Profundis by Russian composer Sofia Gubadulina. There was one unforgettable moment when the accordion stopped playing notes and started breathing, slowly, in and out: it sounded uncannily like a human being.
The third section of the event featured work by and about Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić. First, Medin read a portion of “Home Away from Home,” Damion Searls’ entertaining account of spending time with Ugrešić in Amsterdam. Although “emotionally supercharged with the trauma of exile,” writes Searls, Ugrešić’s apartment was also “filled with beautiful things, European culture, home cooking, and the warmth she spread around her.”
Joanna Walsh reads from "Writing in a State of National Emergency"
Joanna Walsh, an author and critic, then read a piece of her own writing entitled “Writing in a State of National Emergency: On Dubravka Ugrešić.” Walsh reflected on how Ugrešić has continued to carry a state of national emergency around with her whilst living in exile in Amsterdam, and on the need for writers to keep writing in times of crisis. She also read from Ugrešić’s account of a year she spent studying in Moscow in “A Story about How Stories Come to be Written,” translated from the Croatian by David Williams.
The evening was rounded off by an apt piece of music: a tribute by a Ukrainian musician (Vladimir Zubitsky) to an Argentine one (Astor Piazzolla), again performed with spirit and flair by Yusipey. It was the perfect end to a fascinating evening of music and literature—and to cap it all, as we stepped outside, we saw that it had started to snow.
—Romy Fursland
This event was made possible thanks to the generous support of the UEA Alumni Annual Fund and the British Centre for Literary Translation
L to R: Roman Yusipey, Cecilia Rossi, Daniel Medin, Joanna Walsh, George Szirtes, & Megan Bradbury
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Goan youngsters Alston De Sousa and Diksha Singh have followed their passion and are part of star studded Bollywood. While Alston is studying in a film school in Mumbai, Disksha is in her final year at MES College. De Sousa has to his credit his film ‘The Date’ which he co-directed, wrote the script of and also played the lead role. Diksha on the other hand is the writer for the Bollywood film ‘Ishq Tera’. NT KURIOCITY brings to its readers the experiences, aspirations and challenges faced by duo
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A Mapusa lad and alumnus of St Xavier’s College, Alston has always been fascinated by films. His love for films, he says, began with a small handycam that his dad presented him right after his standard 11 exams. “The timing was perfect and with my handycam with me, I would go around filming everything that caught my attention. As I looked through my camera everything had a different dimension and colour; even the simplest of things became fascinating. Also at that time the song Bhaag D K Bose from the film Delhi Belly was very popular and I decided to do a remake of it with a few friends. We got together and I decided the concept, chalked out a plan of action and got it done without any prior knowledge of filmmaking. It was such an unforgettable experience putting together our thoughts and making something from our imagination come alive on screen in addition to playing a character in it, it can only be described as surreal,” he says. After his experience behind as well as in front of the camera and the overwhelming response and appreciation to the remake, he decided to make film-making his career.
Bollywood and Mumbai, he knew, was where he needed to be and after completing his course at St Xavier’s in Mass Communication and Videography, that is where he moved to. “Being used to the calm and peaceful pace of Goa, it wasn’t easy adjusting to the city that never sleeps. Initially when I shifted I had to get used to many things like living alone, the fast pace, the noise, the people, everything but I knew exactly what I wanted to do, so these small challenges didn’t deter me at all. I also had to find the right college, talk and connect with the right agencies, people, etc. But yes once I got the rhythm of the way things work and adjusted to it, it was amazing. Mumbai is definitely a vibrant and happening city,” he says.
Asked to share his experience learning filmmaking, he says: “The entire process of learning the art and craft of making movies was a joyous experience. My teachers in college to the experts in film school have all taught me in-depth, nuances and practicalities of every stage of making a movie. However there is nothing to beat practical knowledge. If I have been able to reach this far, I attribute it to the practical knowledge I gained through my various experiences in Mumbai.” Short films, teasers and music videos are just a few of the assignments besides assisting as a writer and director, which Alston has undertaken. He believes one has to experience it all to learn and grow.
In the pursuit of learning and growth he has also done various courses and one such course he mentions is the intensive acting workshop with casting director Mukesh Chhabra. “It was one of the best experiences I’ve had in the city of dreams. Mukesh Chhabra is a master at what he does and the workshop helped bring out the best in me as an actor. We were taught how to let go of everything and give uninhibited performances. I learnt a great deal from the workshop.”
Soon after Alston applied for the Bolti Khidkiyaan short film competition; an initiative to give young filmmakers a chance to get their first break in Bollywood. “Participants were required to write a 10 to 15-minute script and submit it before the deadline. I definitely wanted my script to be chosen but knowing there were 12000 entries I wasn’t very hopeful. Hence when I came to know my script was chosen, I was on cloud 9,” he says excitedly. The chosen scripts were then made into films which were funded by the producers. Siddiqui and Chabbra fine-tuned the end product.
In the making of the film, Alston used only newcomers even though he had the freedom to do otherwise. He says: “I knew how important and challenging it is to get a first break and I knew there were many like me from film school who were waiting for this kind of opportunity. They were as hungry as I was to do something big. So I put together a team of people who were fresh out of college or had just done a little work in the industry and we kick started the entire process with the help of the Bolti Khidkiyaan team. Most of the core team members were Goans.”
The film, ‘The Date’, revolves around a couple on a date who are enjoying each other’s company and are completely immersed in each other. But as the story proceeds the couple face some important issues about their respective personal lives and the decisions they have to take to make it through together. “My motivation to write this story was that I wanted to portray a story that deals with basic human emotions and the problems that relationships go through. A story that is real in every sense and also has a suspense element to it.”
On March 7 the five films were screened along with another two special screenings of films made by Tahira Kashyap called ‘Toffee’ and Shamas Siddiqui called ‘Miyaan Kal Aana’. “There were many VIPs and professionals from the film industry who were also present at the event. Towards the end we were given an opportunity to speak about our respective films, journeys and experiences through the entire process. It was an honour to be among the film fraternity and feel a part of the magical world of cinema,” he adds.
Writer, director or actor, which is the most challenging?
“All three have their own challenges. Writing however requires you to be at your composed best and in a quiet and inspiring environment. However, sometimes even amidst all the chaos a story can pop up. When directing you are the captain of the ship, a director needs to look into all the departments and work very closely with the actors to bring out the best in every scene. Acting for me is completely believing and being the character you are playing. It involves living the part, being the character I’m playing and actually emoting to every scene,” he answers.
Work, he says is his inspiration and looks forward to working with big banners and production houses in Bollywood as a lead actor in mainstream commercial cinema.
“I’m looking to do good work which is challenging and has quality to it. Something that can bring out the different shades in me and which will test my skills.”
To Goan youngsters who want to follow the same career, he says: “Filmmaking and acting require passion, endless hours of work, creativity and everything that you’ve got. So go for it only if you believe you’re ready for that commitment. If you believe in your dreams no matter how big they are, go forth with the right mindset, put in the effort and the rest will just follow. The sky is the limit.”
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The Foundation Center powers social mission with NetSuite cloud
Nonprofit Leverages NetSuite to Achieve a 360-Degree Constituent View and Improve Overall Business Efficiency
Leading Source of Philanthropy Information Benefits Through NetSuite.org Corporate Citizenship Program
NETSUITE SUITEWORLD 2014, SAN JOSE, Calif.—May 15, 2014—NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel software suites, today announced that the Foundation Center, a New York City-based nonprofit that is the leading source of information about philanthropy worldwide, has deployed NetSuite to transform its social mission effectiveness. The Foundation Center replaced a myriad of systems and processes with NetSuite. The Foundation Center is relying on NetSuite for CRM, donor management, ecommerce, order processing, financials, budgeting and forecasting—all within one unified platform and without a huge IT infrastructure and staff. This modernization effort has helped the Foundation Center get rid of antiquated, disparate software systems that were affecting the organization's operational efficiency. NetSuite has streamlined and transformed the Foundation Center's mission-critical business processes, resulting in operational efficiency, a real-time 360-degree constituent view and a single source of information.
The Foundation Center, which offers a large array of resources to enhance the impact of philanthropy and aid nonprofits and individuals seeking philanthropic grants, received an initial software grant from the NetSuite.org corporate citizenship program, which offers free and discounted subscriptions to qualified nonprofits and social enterprises.
"We have made huge strides by implementing NetSuite to replace our many legacy systems," said Crystal Mandler, Director of Business Systems at the Foundation Center. "With NetSuite, we now have a single coordinated effort across the organization and strive to make the most of every interaction with our donors and customers with a 360-degree view."
The initiative got under way in 2010, when the Foundation Center began looking for an ecommerce solution to replace an outdated on-premise ATG Dynamo system. Exploring the NetSuite SuiteCommerce platform, the Foundation Center realized that NetSuite's comprehensive cloud solution could also address challenges the organization faced in donor and customer management, order processing and financials. The Foundation Center had struggled with disparate information silos that limited its ability to strengthen relationships with its two constituencies—customers who access and/or purchase a variety of educational, training and research resources, as well as large donor organizations such as the Gates Foundation and Ford Foundation that help to fund the organization and its research. With multiple applications in use, management lacked a single, reliable data source and faced challenges in making informed decisions.
"It was very challenging for management to have different sets of numbers from different departments that were inconsistent," said Robert Yaeger, Vice President for Finance and Administration. "It's hard to make strategic decisions on the future when you don't have consistent information about what happened in the past."
In a multi-phase implementation, the Foundation Center has replaced ATG Dynamo with NetSuite SuiteCommerce for its ecommerce site, followed by the elimination of several Microsoft Access databases for CRM, a mainframe system for order processing and a Macola financials application. With the legacy modernization project about 75 percent complete, the Foundation Center is set to bring the Foundation Directory Online, its largest revenue-generating product, into NetSuite and plans to implement NetSuite for donor management. The NetSuite Financial Planning module has been implemented for budgeting and planning, replacing Excel-based processes and the Foundation Center hopes to integrate NetSuite with a Tableau visual business intelligence solution for enhanced dashboard-based tracking and decision-making. The NetSuite solution is delivering dramatically greater efficiency, visibility and control for the Foundation Center, which operates regional centers in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and works with over 480 Funding Information Network partners in public libraries and other physical locations in 18 countries.
The Foundation Center credits the NetSuite.org program for its role in supporting the legacy modernization effort. "NetSuite.org has been a huge value for us," Mandler said. "The discount has really made it possible for us to eliminate all those legacy applications." The benefits achieved by the Foundation Center include:
Cost savings. The Foundation Center is currently forecasting net savings of $500,000 to $1 million over five years in reduced IT infrastructure and personnel expenses and software licensing, and through the elimination of redundant manual work required within its fragmented IT environment.
Improved customer management. With NetSuite CRM, the Foundation Center is capturing all constituent interactions through all touchpoints, including ecommerce, call center, events and its 480 Funding Information Network partners. With the 360-degree view, the Foundation Center is able to drive better customer engagement and adoption of its products.
Improved donor management. NetSuite's single unified record enables the Foundation Center to better manage and cultivate important relationships with large philanthropic foundation donors, giving personnel across department a real-time view of status and history with these critical constituents.
Better tactical and strategic decision-making. With consistent, real-time information available on demand, Foundation Center managers are able to make informed, data-driven decisions that enable the organization to better fulfill its mission and heighten the social impact that philanthropy has across the world.
Reduced reliance on IT and super-users. NetSuite's ease of use broadens access to critical data across the organization, eliminating the need for staff to engage with IT or super-users experienced with the intricacies of a legacy system, and improving productivity and accuracy across the board.
About the Foundation Center
Established in 1956, the Foundation Center is the leading source of information about philanthropy worldwide. Through data, analysis, and training, it connects people who want to change the world to the resources they need to succeed. The Center maintains the most comprehensive database on U.S. and, increasingly, global grantmakers and their grants—a robust, accessible knowledge bank for the sector. It also operates research, education, and training programs designed to advance knowledge of philanthropy at every level. Thousands of people visit the Center's web site each day and are served in its five regional library/learning centers and at more than 470 Funding Information Network locations nationwide and around the world. For more information, please visit foundationcenter.org or call (212) 620-4230.
About SuiteCommerce
NetSuite SuiteCommerce enables B2C and B2B merchants, manufacturers and distributors to seamlessly connect every step of a multi-channel, multi-location business—from ecommerce, POS and order management to merchandising, marketing, inventory, financials and customer support. Featuring an advanced web store that allows the creation of uniquely branded and personalized shopping experiences optimized for multiple devices, SuiteCommerce empowers businesses to run across multiple touchpoints—web, brick-and-mortar stores, social, mobile—all from a single, unified cloud-based commerce system that provides unprecedented visibility into your business and customers. Please visit www.suitecommerce.com for more information.
Today, more than 20,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud financials/ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing financial management software vendor on a global basis. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financials suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud is accelerating.
NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are registered service marks of NetSuite Inc. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
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C. Lloyd Morgan
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Lloyd Morgan's Canon is both the most quoted and the most misrepresented statement in the history of comparative psychology
C. Lloyd Morgan (Conwy Lloyd Morgan) (February 6, 1852 - March 6, 1936) was a British psychologist. His experimental approach to animal psychology which helped establish psychology as an experimental science. Morgan is best remembered for his statement that became known as "Morgan's canon," which states that higher psychological processes should not be used to explain behavior that can be explained by processes lower on the evolutionary scale, without independent evidence of the use of such higher processes on other occasions. However, his Canon has often been misrepresented as a principle of parsimony like Ockham's razor, namely that the simplest process should always be invoked as the explanation for behavior, a version that was used by Behaviorists in the early part of the twentieth century to support their approach.
2.1 Trial and Error Learning
2.2 Morgan's Canon
2.3 Emergent Evolution
4 Major Works
In more recent times, Morgan's work has been seen less as absolutely anti-anthropomorphic and anti-anecdotal and rather as promoting the use of accurate observation and recording of behavior to accompany the use of controlled experiments. At the same time, with the rise of animal cognition as an area of interest, the interpretation of his Canon has returned closer to Morgan's original intention. His ideas on "emergent evolution," initially rejected by many due to his appeal to a supplemental activity (generally interpreted as God) to natural processes of evolution, may also find their place in contemporary thought.
Conwy Lloyd Morgan was born on February 6, 1852 in London. During his childhood years he became interested in philosophy as a result of conversations with the local rector who encouraged him to read the works of Bishop George Berkeley.[1] He attended a local grammar school and then decided to attend the Royal School of Mines in London with the idea of becoming an mining engineer, at the suggestion of his father who was a lawyer with interests in several mining companies.
A chance meeting with Thomas Huxley led to an invitation to study biology with him for a year, which Morgan did after several months of travel abroad. This encouraged him to pursue an academic career and his first position was as a lecturer in Physical Science, English Literature, and Constitutional History at the Diocesan College at Rondebosch near Cape Town, South Africa.
In 1884 he joined the staff of the then University College, Bristol as Professor of Geology and Zoology, and carried out some research of local interest in those fields. However, he soon became interested in the field he called "mental evolution," the borderland between intelligence and instinct. In 1899, he became the first Fellow of the Royal Society in the field of psychology, and in 1901 became the college's first Professor of Psychology and Ethics.[2]
As well as his scientific work, Lloyd Morgan was active in academic administration. He became Principal of the University College, Bristol, in 1891 and consequently played a central role in the campaign to secure it full university status. In 1909, when, with the award of a Royal Charter, the college became the University of Bristol, he was appointed as its first Vice-Chancellor, an office he held for a year.[3]
In 1911, Morgan returned to his teaching position, which he held until his retirement in 1919 when he was made Emeritus Professor of Psychology. Following retirement, Morgan delivered a series of Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews. It was in these lectures that he developed the concept of emergent evolution, laying the foundation for his publications Emergent Evolution in 1923 and Life, Mind and Spirit in 1926.
Morgan served as president of the Aristotelian Society from 1926 to 1927. He died in Hastings on March 6, 1936 at the age of 84.
Morgan had become interested in philosophy at a young age and trained in the sciences, with a strong emphasis on biological sciences and Darwinism, in his early years. His life's work reveals both these influences, which he applied to the field that captured his interest—the growth of intelligence in the evolutionary scale. His emphasis on precise observation and experiments on animals established comparative psychology within the field of experimental psychology.
Yet his work was not typical of experimental psychologists. His interest lay in understanding the evolution of mind, and he argued that introspection is a necessary method for this pursuit. He recognized the difficulties inherent in the use of introspection, calling it "hazardous," but believed that it was possible to interpret animal behavior by reflecting on the processes of one's own mind. Morgan stated that this can be done, "or, if it cannot be done, we can learn nothing of mental development in the individual or of mental evolution in animals or in men."[1]
Trial and Error Learning
Morgan rejected excessively anthropomorphic interpretation of animal behavior, specifically the anecdotal approach of George Romanes. He was an astute observer, watching and recording the behavior of his own cats and dogs, as well as experimenting on newly hatched chicks and ducklings. He provided convincing examples of cases where behavior that apparently involved higher mental processes could in fact be explained by simple trial and error learning (a term made famous by the American psychologist Edward L. Thorndike whose proposed law of effect regarded learning as the strengthening of associations between a stimulus and an action that produced satisfying consequences). A famous example is the skillful way in which his dog opened the garden gate, easily taken by someone seeing the final behavior as an insightful act. Lloyd Morgan, however, had carefully watched and recorded the series of approximations by which the dog had gradually learned the response, and could demonstrate that no insight was required to explain it.
Morgan's Canon
Morgan is most well known for Morgan's Canon which became the mantra of psychologists, particularly the Behaviorists, in the early twentieth century. His original formulation is as follows:
In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one that stands lower in the psychological scale.[4]
In other words, we should only consider behavior as, for example, rational, purposive or affectionate if there is no other explanation in terms of the behaviors of more primitive life-forms to which we do not attribute those faculties.
Morgan did not, however, mean that higher order mental processes could not exist in animals. His view was more complex than merely a statement that parsimony was always the criterion by which to judge an explanation. In the 1903 revised edition of his text, in describing his canon he not only changed the term "higher psychical faculty" to "higher psychological processes" for clarification, he also added a caveat about its application:
In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes, if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development. To this, however, it should be added, lest the range of the principle be misunderstood, that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular activity in terms of the higher processes if we already have independent evidence of the occurrences of these higher processes in the animal under observation. [5]
Emergent Evolution
The term "emergent evolution" was coined by C. Lloyd Morgan in his Gifford lectures of 1921–1922 at the University of St Andrews, published in 1923 as Emergent Evolution and later elaborated in The Emergence of Novelty in 1933. The idea had also been developed by his contemporary, the philosopher Samuel Alexander, in his Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow during 1916–1918 and published as Space, Time, and Deity,[6] both of them having based their theory in part on Henri Bergson's work published in Creative Evolution.[7]
Emergent evolution is the hypothesis that the course of evolution is not uniform and continuous, as Charles Darwin's work suggested. Rather, some entirely new properties, such as life and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities. The term "emergent" was first used in this context by English philosopher George Henry Lewes, who wrote: "The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference."[8] This concept is more easily understood as similar to "chemical emergence: the various observable properties of water cannot be predicted from the observable properties of hydrogen and oxygen."[9]
Morgan's earlier work had already laid the foundation for this theory:
Those evolutionists who accept this [continuity] assumption as value are logically bound to believe either (1) that all forms of animal life from the amoeba upwards have all the faculties of man, only reduced in degree and range ... or (2) that in the higher forms of life the introduction of the higher faculties has been effected by some means other than that of natural evolution.[10]
His developed version of the theory, however, was not well received due to his insistence on the need for a supplemental activity to the natural processes, namely a deity which he described as "an immanent Activity, the ultimate Source of those phenomena which are interpreted under evolutionary naturalism."[11] For psychologists who had been struggling to have their discipline accepted as a science, both in the UK and America, any form of theism was unacceptable.
The significance of Morgan's work has been eclipsed by the attention paid to Morgan's Canon, called "perhaps, the most quoted statement in the history of comparative psychology"[12] a sentiment echoed and expanded by Franz de Waal in The Ape and the Sushi Master as: "perhaps the most quoted statement in all of psychology."[13] It played a critical role in the growth of the prestige of Behaviorism in twentieth century academic psychology. Morgan's Canon has often been regarded as a specialized form of Occam's razor by virtue of its apparent presupposition of simplicity that lower level interpretations are more parsimonious than higher level ones. Thus, the canon appeared to support the view that an entity should be considered conscious only if there is no other explanation for its behavior.
However, this understanding is perhaps "the most misrepresented statement in the history of comparative psychology."[14] Morgan's argument was that one should attribute a lower process to account for a particular behavior unless there was separate evidence suggesting that the animal was capable of using a higher process and that this higher process better explained the behavior under observation. Thus, in fact, Morgan's Canon does not support Behaviorism in an absolute sense. Neither is it absolutely anti-anthropomorphic and anti-anecdotal, as many have claimed it to be. Rather, Morgan cautioned against the assumption that complex psychological processes are necessarily the explanation for all behavior; on many occasions simpler processes may suffice, while higher level processes may provide a more accurate explanation for other behaviors. Such an approach allows for complex processes in animal cognition while at the same time demanding rigorous proof of their existence.
When Behaviorism was gaining popularity as the way to establish psychology as an experimental science, the view of Morgan's Canon as anti-anthropomorphic and promoting parsimony provided support for this approach and thus persisted. In the latter part of the twentieth century, cognitive psychology became dominant and animal cognition was a topic of interest. This different "spirit of the times" no longer resonated with the misrepresentation of Morgan's Canon, and now "Morgan’s original intentions regarding the canon fit very well with the contemporary Zeitgeist."[15]
Morgan, C. Lloyd. An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. Adamant Media Corporation, 2000 (original 1894). ISBN 978-1421227757
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Animal Behaviour. BiblioLife, 2009 (original 1900). ISBN 978-1117406879
Morgan, C. Lloyd. The Interpretation Of Nature. Nabu Press, 2010 (original 1906). ISBN 978-1172140787
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Eugenics and Environment. University of Michigan Library, 1919.
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Emergent Evolution. Chandra Chakravarti Press, 2008 (original 1923). ISBN 1443720674 online version Retrieved March 8, 2011.
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Life, Mind and Spirit. Williams & Norgate, 1926. ASIN B000O1FUVO
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Mind at the Crossways. Maclachan Bell Press, 2007 (original 1929). ISBN 978-1406737578
Morgan, C. Lloyd. The Animal Mind. Edward Arnold, 1930.
Morgan, C. Lloyd. Autobiography of Lloyd Morgan Retrieved March 8, 2011. First published in History of Psychology in Autobiography, Volume II edited by Carl Murchison, 237-264. Clark University Press, 1932.
Morgan, C. Lloyd. The Emergence of Novelty. Henry Holt and Company, 1933.
↑ 1.0 1.1 C. Lloyd Morgan, "Autobiography of C. Lloyd Morgan" in History of Psychology in Autobiography Volume II ed. Carl Murchison, 237-264 (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1932).
↑ University of Bristol History of Experimental Psychology. Retrieved April 14, 2011.
↑ University of Bristol, First Vice-Chancellor appointed Timeline. Retrieved April 14, 2011.
↑ C. Lloyd Morgan, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1894), 53.
↑ Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity: The Gifford lectures at Glasgow, 1916-1918 (1920, Nabu Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1177005388).
↑ Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907, CreateSpace, 2011, ISBN 978-1460970478).
↑ George Henry Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind: First Series, Vol. 2 (1875, Scholarly Publishing Office, 2005, ISBN 978-1425555788), 412.
↑ Edwin G. Boring, "Morgan, Conwy Lloyd" International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968, Thomson Gale, 2008) Retrieved May 30, 2011.
↑ C. Lloyd Morgan, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (Adamant Media Corporation, 1894).
↑ C. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution (1923, Chandra Chakravarti Press, 2008).
↑ Donald A. Dewsbury, Comparative Psychology in the Twentieth Century (Stroudsburg, PA: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984), 187.
↑ Franz de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master (Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 978-0465041763).
↑ Roger K. Thomas, "Lloyd Morgan’s Canon" in Comparative Psychology: A Handbook edited by Gary Greenberg and Maury M. Haraway (Routledge, 1998, ISBN 978-0815312819), 156.
↑ Roger K. Thomas, "Lloyd Morgan’s Canon: A History of Misrepresentation." History & Theory of Psychology Eprint Archive (2001). Retrieved April 25, 2011.
Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time, and Deity: The Gifford lectures at Glasgow, 1916-1918. Nabu Press, 2010 (original (1920). ISBN 978-1177005388
Ballantyne, Paul F. "Marginalization of Morgan's Canon and Emergent Evolution (1894-1951)" History and Theory of Psychology: An early 21st century student's perspective (December, 2003). Retrieved April 25, 2011.
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. CreateSpace, 2011 (original 1907). ISBN 978-1460970478
Boring, Edwin G. "Morgan, Conwy Lloyd" International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Thomson Gale, 2008 (original 1968). Retrieved May 30, 2011.
Boring, Edwin G. History of Experimental Psychology. New York, NY: Appleton Century Crofts, 1970. ISBN 978-0390109880
Davis, Derek Russell. "Conwy Lloyd Morgan." In Oxford Companion to the Mind edited by Richard L. Gregory, 614.. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0198662242
De Waal, Franz. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. Basic Books, 2001. ISBN 978-0465041763
Dewsbury, Donald A. Comparative Psychology in the Twentieth Century. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984. ISBN 978-0879331085
Dewsbury, Donald A. "On Misrepresenting Lloyd Morgan's Canon: Comment on Thomas." History & Theory of Psychology Eprint Archive (2002). Retrieved April 25, 2011.
Epstein, R. "The principle of parsimony and some applications in psychology." Journal of Mind and Behavior 5(1984): 119-130.
Greenberg, Gary, and Maury M. Haraway (eds.). Comparative Psychology: A Handbook. Routledge, 1998. ISBN 978-0815312819
Goudge, T. Morgan, C. Lloyd (1852-1936). Retrieved May 4, 2011. In Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Donald M. Borchert. Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. ISBN 978-0028657905
Lewes, George Henry. Problems of Life and Mind: First Series, Vol. 2. Scholarly Publishing Office, 2005 (original 1875). ISBN 978-1425555788
Murchison, Carl (ed.). A History of Psychology in Autobiography, Volume II. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1932.
Thomas, Roger K. "Lloyd Morgan’s Canon: A History of Misrepresentation." History & Theory of Psychology Eprint Archive (2001). Retrieved April 25, 2011.
Wozniak, Robert H. "Conwy Lloyd Morgan, mental Evolution, and the Introduction to comparative psychology: An introduction." Introduction to re-publication of Introduction to Comparative Psychology by C, Lloyd Morgan. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993 (Original work published 1894). Retrieved April 25, 2011.
Gifford Lectures
Conwy Lloyd Morgan Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
Conwy Lloyd Morgan Biography Encyclopedia of World Biography
C._Lloyd_Morgan history
Morgan's_Canon history
History of "C. Lloyd Morgan"
Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=C._Lloyd_Morgan&oldid=1002089
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Jun 27 AN EPIPHANY OF FACES THE WORK OF LEILA ALAOUI
Art, Culture, Photography, Travel, People
Leila Alaoui (1982–2016) was a Franco-Moroccan photographer and video artist. She worked as a commercial photographer for magazines and NGOs and in 2015, she completed a photographic assignment “Everyday Heroes of Syria”, in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, focusing on Syrians living in refugee settlements. The project was completed for the Danish Refugee Council, the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office and ActionAid. The photographer tragically died aged 33 of a heart attack after being shot in terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso while on assignment. She was in Ouagadougou to work on a photography project for a women’s rights campaign called My Body My Rights for Amnesty International.
Her work appeared in publications including the New York Times and Vogue, and her photographs have been widely exhibited. She was probably best known for a series of portraits of Moroccan people, “Moroccans have the most complicated relationship to photography among Arabs because they are very apprehensive due to superstition. They are also tired of tourism, so there is a sort of rejection of the camera. My hope was to show traditional Moroccans without the folklore’, revealing the intrinsic beauty of the ‘Moroccan universe’ liberated from socio-historic conditioning.
Alaoui believed that photography could be used for social activism, and should be used for “reflecting and questioning society”. As a result, she chose to focus her work on social and national realities of cultural identity, migration and displacement. For her series, exhibited currently at Casa Arabe in Madrid, “ The Moroccans” , she travelled the country with her mobile photo studio to capture the cultural diversity of Morocco avoiding to produce “ picturesque” postcard images. The result, beautiful portraits that strongly express her fierce independence.
culture, Art, photography, Arab Photography
Jun 30 PEEPSHOW
Jun 25 DAILY ART ADVISORY HIGHLIGHTS ART BASEL 2019
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North by Northwestern
Author Dr. Eve L. Ewing provides wisdom on leadership and racial inequality
Maya Mojica, Reporter
Although author, activist, professor and artist Dr. Eve L. Ewing told Northwestern students and faculty on Tuesday evening that she was sick, she was, in her own words, “weak in body but strong in mind.” In the talk, she discussed her perspective on topics such as leadership, creativity and racial injustice in education — and also about the time she thought it was rude to enter her class at the University of Chicago while eating a churro without having any to offer them, resulting in a grand purchase of 25 churros.
Dr. Eve Ewing / Photo courtesy of Nolis Anderson
The conversation, which was hosted by the SESP Leadership and Programming Board, was moderated by SESP Dean David Figlio, who asked questions about topics proposed by SESP students prior to the event. Ewing spoke as a part of the Nancy and Ray Loeschner Leadership series at Ryan Auditorium, where members of the audience were asked to move forward to make the talk more intimate and close-knit. Even with this request, when Ewing began speaking, the auditorium was full enough that the laughter resulting from Ewing’s witty comments rang throughout the room. Although Ewing said she would not describe herself as a leader, she offered students advice on how more effective leadership can bring about change.
“I believe in collected or distributed leadership,” Ewing said. “I think that if the world is going to change, we all have a role to play and strengths that we bring to the table to make that happen. All of us still have moments when we’re not so strong, and we need people to help us.”
Ewing focused this discussion of leadership in terms of racial injustice in education, though her advice on leadership extended far beyond this. Specifically, Ewing spoke about what contributes to these problems and how a solution will require more work than simply identifying disadvantages.
“The idea is that if you just show people how messed up we are, somebody is going to come help us,” Ewing said. “But the reality is no one is coming.”
Ewing, who grew up attending Chicago Public Schools, received an undergraduate degree with honors in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and completed her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Since then, Ewing, as a sociologist of education, writer, poet and activist has become known for an extremely wide variety of different accomplishments, from having work published in The New York Times to writing the Ironheart series for Marvel Comics to co-authoring the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.
“I see myself in a Black intellectual tradition that has always been that multidisciplinary and polymath thinking,” Ewing said.
In addition to these achievements, Ewing is also extremely well known for her Twitter account, which has over 180,000 followers and sees tens of millions of views each month. Micki Burton, the Program Assistant for Global Health Studies at Northwestern, attributed part of her excitement at hearing Ewing speak to her Twitter account, which Ewing often uses to discuss social issues.
Dr. Eve Ewing's Twitter
“I just want to be inspired, and I think that I will be, because I’m inspired reading her Twitter,” Burton said. “I feel like I’m going to walk out of here thinking, ‘I know what I need to be doing now.’”
Throughout the course of her talk, Ewing offered plenty of inspiration for those in the audience. To students who feel as though they face injustice in the education system, Ewing offered three points of advice: the feelings they are having are real and valid, they deserve sufficient mental health care and should have better access to the history surrounding these issues.
“There may be instances when the university or institutions are acting in my favor because their interests converge with mine for that moment,” Ewing said. “But that’s not the same as loving me, or putting my well-being first or caring about me as a human. It’s my job to look out for myself and surround myself with people who do love me and see me as a human person.”
Ewing’s words attracted many different students from the university. Weinberg junior Amos Pomp, for example, said that he was drawn to Ewing’s talk because it gave him the opportunity to speak about subjects that might otherwise be considered uncomfortable.
“As a cis white man, I just find it very important at a predominantly white institution to seek out voices that will provide me with any knowledge that I don’t have already,” Pomp said. “Coming to hear Eve is especially important because she brings up a lot of topics that people aren’t always talking about.”
One of the main points that Ewing stressed in her talk was that positive change for minorities in education is dependent upon improvement in what actions are being taken and also in the way that marginalized groups are being talked about.
“Just in the same way that we don’t look in the mirror and see ourselves as the greatest trauma that ever happened upon us, we can’t look at our communities that way,” Ewing said. “It’s dehumanizing.”
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Fremont, Ohio
Revision as of 16:06, 29 August 2013 by SPosmontier (Talk | contribs)
Fremont is the county seat of Sandusky County, Ohio. It was originally known as Lower Sandusky. Lower Sandusky had its beginnings as a village of the Wyandot natives. During the 1750s, the French constructed a trading post to participate in the fur trade with the Wyandots. During the late 1700s and the early 1800s, other colonial settlers moved into the area. Elizabeth Foulks and James Whittaker were some of the first white people to live in Lower Sandusky. They were captives of the Wyandots and fell in love. They married in Lower Sandusky in 1785. Like the residents of Upper Sandusky, the white people who settled here were in direct violation of the Treaty of Greeneville. During the War of 1812, the United States Army considered removing these people from the land by force. The soldiers did not carry out the threat. Fort Stephenson, an important American military post, was also built here during the war. Although the Wyandots still called Lower Sandusky home, by the 1830s, the community had a sizable white and African American population. Many of the African Americans were runaways and sought safety by living together. Throughout the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, slave hunters passed through the area looking for runaways.
Lower Sandusky became the Sandusky County seat in 1821. The town grew slowly. In 1835, Cyrus Bradley traveled through Lower Sandusky. He described it as a swampy place and a breeding ground for flies. Despite this, Lower Sandusky emerged as an important economic center. Located on the Sandusky River, the community became active in the shipbuilding industry. Fishing also helped support early residents. Most early manufacturing establishments were connected to agriculture. They included several saw and flour mills, as well as the first sugar mill in Ohio. The village might have grown even more quickly if canals had connected it with other communities. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Lower Sandusky did gain access to the rest of the state through railroads, and the town continued to grow. In 1849, Lower Sandusky residents changed the village's name to Fremont, in honor of John C. Fremont, who had just acquired California for the United States.
Among Fremont's most prominent residents was Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio governor as well as the nineteenth President of the United States. Hayes moved to his home, Spiegel Grove, in 1873, just three years before the American voters elected him President. Sardis Birchard, Hayes's uncle, originally built the house from 1859 to 1863. Hayes remodeled it on several different occasions, primarily to accommodate his numerous guests. Today, Spiegel Grove is part of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. Founded in 1916, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center was the first presidential library in the United States.
Today, Fremont remains the county seat of Sandusky County. Many of the city's businesses are agricultural. Other businesses include cutlery, battery, rubber, electric switch, and sugar manufacturers, as well as pork processors. Many Fremont residents commute to Toledo, thirty miles away. Sandusky County also has several important manufacturing establishments, including Whirlpool Corporation, Heinz USA, and Lear. Fremont had 17,135 residents in 2000. The population of Sandusky County was 61,792.
Wyandot Indians
Fort Stephenson
Lower Sandusky
Upper Sandusky, Ohio
Greenville, Ohio
Sandusky River
[Hayes Presidential Center]
[City of Fremont Website]
Fremont Industrial Development Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of Sandusky County. Facts About Fremont: Community Information Prepared by the Fremont Industrial Development Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of Sandusky County. N.p.: n.p., 1965.
Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes. Vol. II. Cincinnati, OH: C.J. Krehbiel & Co., Printers and Binders, 1902.
Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Vogel, John J. Indians of Ohio and Wyandot County. New York, NY: Vantage Press, 1975.
Retrieved from "http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/index.php?title=Fremont,_Ohio&oldid=33448"
History Places
Exploration To Statehood
Communities and Counties
Frontier Ohio
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Dr. Jonathan Petrus Sandberg Knisely, MD
作者：奥沃医学 3年前
首页 / 作品 / Dr. Jonathan Petrus Sandberg Knisely, MD
Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Radiation Oncology, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and specializing in the treatment of brain and spinal tumors with image guided radiotherapy (IGRT), intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), Dr. Knisely is the Chief of the Division of Radiosurgery and Stereotactic Program in the Radiation Medicine Department and is Co-Director for Radiosurgery and Stereotactic Radiation Therapy in the Health System, where he leads the Gamma Knife program. He has published numerous influential journal articles and book chapters. He is focused on building the Stereotactic Body Radiaton Therapy (SBRT) and SRS programs in the Health System and on clinical research in the Department of Radiation Medicine.
Dr. Knisely came to NSLIJ from the Yale Cancer Center where he was an Associate Professor and served as the Director of the Stereotactic Radiosurgery Program, Co-Director of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Gamma Knife Center, and Principal Investigator for the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group at Yale.
Dr. Knisely holds professional memberships in several medical societies including the International Stereotactic Radiosurgery Society, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, the Society for Neuro-Oncology, the Leksell Gamma Knife Society, and the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group.
Hobbies include beekeeping and gardening.
Credentials:
Board certifications:
Internal Medicine – American Board of Internal Medicine
Radiation Oncology – American Board of Radiology/Radiation Oncology
Academic titles
Associate Professor, Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Michael Reese Hospital & Medical Center
Princess Margaret Hospital
Long Island Jewish Medical Center
Long Island Jewish Valley Stream
Southside Hospital
Syosset Hospital
Northwell Health Physician Partners
Northwell Health Cancer Institute
Northwell Health Neuroscience Institute
Reference Link: https://www.northwell.edu/find-care/find-a-doctor/radiation-medicine/dr-jonathan-petrus-sandberg-knisely-md-11354978
李金升 博士 （奥沃研发总监）
胡逸民 教授
分享本作品
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Home / This Week / Cover Stories / CPEC’s growth, crops revival bring tractor industry delight
CPEC’s growth, crops revival bring tractor industry delight
Mohammed Arifeen March 5, 2018 Cover Stories, Economy, Transportation 280 Views
In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, tractor sales rose 45 percent year-on-year to 38,173 units, according to data of the Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (PAMA). The lion’s share went to two main sellers, namely Massey Ferguson and Fiat, which sold 23,263 and 14,776 tractors, respectively.
The reasons behind rising sales are the revival of the crop sector in the last three years, and the massive road infrastructure development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The rise infrastructure development contributed 70 percent to the revival in sales. Rice and sugar cane have particularly helped the tractor industry. The rice crop recovered as a result, with its production rising from 3.39 million tonnes to 3.5 million tonnes in Punjab. Also the price increased dramatically. This extra money is now being used for farm mechanization. For sugar cane, yields have also risen from 550 maunds per acre to 635 maunds. This helped the use of tractors substantially.
Farmers suffered levels of price crash; the last two years have relatively been financially best for farmers. Farmers usually buy tractors whenever they can as they are the only means of transporting cane to mills during the four-month crushing season.
The federal and provincial policies helped the tractor industry. In 2016, tractor industry’s sales and production fell 80 percent; the federal government slashed general sales tax by 5 percent. The industry now expects production to cross 50,000 units this year and attain the pre-recession level of 60,000 to 70,000 units next year if the agriculture sector does not relapse into a crisis.
CPEC’s impact on the tractor industry, that 1,800-kilometre-long network of new major highways and expansion of old ones have helped the industry like never before. The agriculture sector did not have this kind of money or activity that could help push tractor sales up a part of it must have come from other sectors. It has frankly opened a new path for tractor owners, especially those falling on and around the roads being constructed. The tractor industry is striving for revival from the adverse impact of taxation.
The industry stakeholders say that the imposition of tax has not only reversed the impetus but also the growth, already achieved, was also lost. Sindh Government, in the past, has been under harder criticism for introducing Tractor Schemes that lacked transparency. It was only after an outcry from farmers and also complaint by PAMA on the irregularities in Sindh Tractor Scheme then, Sindh Government allocated only 6200 units to be divided equally amongst all local manufactures only to silence the protesting companies.
The best option is that government should let this be the choice of the customers i.e. farmers, to choose freely from amongst the available local brands and the Sindh Government should not interfere with the market mechanism in this regard. Farmers are well aware with the standing of one brand against the other in terms of their general performance, credibility on quality, and value for their money.
The role of the local tractor industry needs to be reviewed by all stakeholders, particularly the government, further boost its effectiveness. So far, the industry’s performance has been quite satisfactory. This self-reliance in production of indigenously built tractors has been achieved.
The industry holds a unique position in the automobile sector as it has played a major role in the transfer of technology and transformation of the fledging local light engineering sector. A local content of more than 90 percent has been attained in tractors. This is the highest in the automobile sector of Pakistan.
The industry and associated vendors are also supporting the national economy by paying taxes and duties up to the tune of Rs 4.5 billion. It has exported tractors, implements and spares of $100 million and creating job opportunities for 500,000 families. The industry has increased its production capacity by over 70,000 units per annum. It is offering a wide range of models from 50hp to 85hp to cover the entire spectrum of local customers as per their needs and affordability.
Cheapest brands in the world
Tractors produced in Pakistan are cheapest in world. The current price of competitive tractor models of Pakistan is $130/hp, against Indian’s $200/hp, China’s 150/hp and Japan’s $900/hp. On the basis of its strengths, the industry has also diversified its business for other products such as Prime Movers, Diesel Generating Sets, Forklift Trucks and Agri-Imlpements.
New projects are also under way to address the emerging needs like Combine Harvesters, Fodder Harvesters, Balers for bio-mass handling, Green engines for international markets and future conformity to local emission standards compliance, development of new tractor models in 100 hp and above ranges, etc. There are some new business avenues in agriculture sector, which have tremendous economic potential and can be grasped with the help of mechanization. The local tractor industry has the technical and financial muscles for R & D in these areas to offer economical solutions and equipment.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has given a tremendous boost to the depressed tractor industry in Pakistan. Farm tractor sales have spiked up to 38,620 in the first nine months of the current financial year as against 22,169 units during the same period of the previous year. A large number of farm tractors are being used in the under construction CPEC which is a collection of infrastructure projects throughout Pakistan.
The sources said that Millat Tractor Ltd sold 24,590 Massey Ferguson tractors against last years’ sale of 13,524 pieces from July to March. The sales of Fiat tractor manufactured by Al-Ghazi Tractor Ltd increased from 7,947 to 13,926 pieces in the first nine month of the current financial year.
Reduction of GST from 16 percent to 5 percent also greatly helped the tractor industry to stand on its feet. The mark up on the agriculture loans was very high which must be reduced so that more farmers could buy the locally manufactured high quality tractors.
Tags CPEC Crop Industry tractor
Previous Auto and Allied chaos taking toll in Balochistan
Next Future vision of Pakistan’s automotive industry
The Government of Pakistan (GoP) has launched ‘Prime Minister’s Kamyab Jawan SME Lending Program’ aimed …
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Wed Jul 17, 2019 07:10:42
President upon arrival in Tehran at Mehrabad Airport:
Trump’s baseless accusations to Iran not suitable for UN/JCPOA not negotiable/We will be decisive about JCPOA/If there’s no JCPOA, we will continue economic progress
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran returned to Tehran on Thursday evening to mark the end of a working trip and delivering a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
news id: 100859 -
Thu 21 - September 2017 - 17:22
Dr Hassan Rouhani was welcomed at Mehrabad Airport by the First Vice-president and Advisor to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in International Affairs.
In a brief interview with reporters, the president described the 72nd UN General Assembly different from the previous ones and said: “The summit is an opportunity to deliver the voice of the people of Iran to the world”.
Dr Rouhani said: “The difference of this year's summit with the previous ones was that there were only two people from more than 190 countries participating in the General Assembly whose words were against the rest of the members”.
“This is a less common issue in the history of the United States and the United Nations in which the President of the United States takes stances on a number of important issues and after that, the Prime Minister of the Zionist Regime repeats the same words, but no one endorses that statement,” the President added.
Dr Rouhani said: “Officials from other countries, and even heads of European countries, as well as the media and journalists, stated explicitly that they disagree with this statement and do not accept it”.
The president went on to say: “Trump made great mistakes and very groundless accusations that were neither appropriate to be said at the UN, nor suitable for a person who is the president of a country”.
Dr Rouhani further noted: “During the visit, the OIC Contact Group on Myanmar was held, which was a great summit. Meetings and talks were also held with senior US’ mass media directors, political officials, Muslim leaders from the United States, Iranians residing in US, and senior officials from different countries”.
“In all of these meetings and interviews, the stances of the Iranian nation were explained and described,” said Rouhani.
"On the other hand, there are some words coming from some people that the JCPOA is not a bad deal, but it should not be left in this way, and we have to negotiate so that it can become better, but in this case we explicitly told them that the deal was not negotiable," he said.
Dr Rouhani added: “In meetings with heads of European countries such as France, Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Austria and Bulgaria, they all emphasised its implementation and ruled out any return, negotiation and reform to it. In general, it can be said that JCPOA is an agreement that is approved and everybody should try to implement it”.
Stating that the Americans were seeking to induce that Iran seems to have fulfilled its commitments in the JCPOA, but it has problems with the spirit, Dr Rouhani said: “No one believed in this and everyone considered the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the criterion, and the Agency has repeatedly stated several times that Iran has fully complied with its obligations”.
“Another thing that they were trying to do was to portray the role of Iran in the region as having negative impacts and suggest that Iran has exported terrorism. These are hideous, baseless words usually coming from those who don’t have information and knowledge in this regard,” continued the President.
Rouhani also said: “It is totally clear and natural that a person who does not know what the JCPOA is and is not familiar with legal matters, will make such errors”.
Referring to the words of Tramp as similar to old Israeli claims, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran went on to say: “The situation in the region is quite clear. Which important country in the region and the world does not believe Iran has an important role in the region”.
The president said: “Without Iran's support in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, today's achievements would not have been achieved, and this was something that, the leaders of all countries emphasised Iran's positive attitude and explicitly asked us what the solution to problems was”.
“Today no one tells Iran “why are you violating the laws and not complying with international regulations”, but asking what should be done on regional and international issues; and how we should push the United States to remain committed to international regulations”.
The president stated: "We will be decisive about the JCPOA, and if anyone wants to violates it, we will have all the options ahead and we will have no choice but to choose these options."
Stating that even if the JCPOA is not there, Iran will continue to develop economic progress, he said: “Because today we are in a new situation and various agreements with the countries around the world confirm this".
news id: 100859
- Foreign Trips
Arrival in Tehran
Employment still main issue; unemployment rate down 10.8%/ Talks of gov’t inefficiency in serving people unjust/ Those in White House claiming they can ruin Iran’s economy will fail
Iran kept diplomacy door fully open/ Tehran wants JCPOA parties to fully comply with commitments
UK seizing Iranian tanker on behalf of B-Team very cheap, wrong move/ UK initiator of insecurity in seas, to understand consequences/ World shipping lines must be fully secure
US economic pressures against Iranian nation act of terrorism, fully-fledged economic war/ Iran’s recent actions fully under JCPOA terms/ EU should fulfil its duty under int’l treaties
Iran’s reducing commitments to save JCPOA/ If US afraid of fire, it mustn’t start it/ Shooting down Iranian airliner proved committing crime easy for Americans/ On July 7, our enrichment level to be based on our needs/ Iran advises US, Europe to return to table/ An empty INSTEX not useful; they must buy oil, transfer money with it
If JCPOA was fully implemented by other parties, we would see good regional developments/ US gov’t key factor for regional tensions/ Iran always committed to regional security, stability
Many issues in today’s world result of US gov’t unilateralism, violation of int’l regulations/ US’ military presence root cause of regional issues/ Int’l institutions should respond properly to recent US intrusion into Iran’s airspace
Talks with Japanese PM fruitful, valuable/ US actions against Iranian nation not sanction, but crime against humanity, economic terrorism/ Suspending some commitments under JCPOA’s 26, 36 paragraphs/ JCPOA’s spirit economic, trade ties
Tehran determined to deepen close ties with Paris/ Europe’s time for compensation limited; JCPOA’s collapse not beneficial for Iran, France, region, world
Ⓒ2018 Official website of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Address: Pasteur St., Pasteur Sq., Tehran
Phone number: +98(21)64451 //
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Forensic Finance, Benford's Way
Misnamed and Mad
One of the more curious statistical anomalies of the universe has turned out to have a range of practical applications in the world of finance. It also turns out to be one of the stranger laws underpinning the stockmarket, although figuring out why is a painful process.
Above all, Benford’s Law can be used to spot financial fraudsters because of a psychological quirk that means we humans are dead useless at pretending to be random. All of this comes from a law that was discovered by one man, explained by another and named after a third. Now that’s random.
Naturally Bizarre
Take any naturally occurring set of numbers and keep a count of the first digit in the number. A newspaper is an ideal test bed. Most people reckon that each number from 1 to 9 will occur with equal frequency: after all, why would they not? Yet they don’t: the number 1 appears almost a third of the time and each subsequent number reduces in frequency. And this, frankly, is bizarre at first flush.
This odd feature of the world was first noted by the polymath Simon Newcomb back in the nineteenth century. ‘Polymath’, of course, is an old-fashioned way of saying ‘smart ass’. Anyway, Newcomb noticed that books of logarithm tables were more worn at the front – where the numbers started with a 1 – than at the back. For those youngsters at the back there, log tables were what we used before someone invented the calculator, devised by John Napier back in the fourteenth century as the bane of schoolchildren for four centuries.
Newcomb figured out the curious nature of Benford’s Law, published his observations and then was promptly forgotten about. Frank Benford independently discovered the law in the 1930’s and compiled copious examples to make his point. His original data table shows that this distribution of leading integers applies for a vast range of different quantities.
Benford Stockmarkets
In fact it turns out that daily stockmarket returns follow Benford’s Law. When Eduardo Ley investigated this in On the Peculiar Distribution of the U.S. Stock Indeces’ Digits he observed that:
“The analysis presented here suggests that small changes are more likely than big ones; at the same time, the closer the daily changes are (in absolute value) to 0.1%, the more probable they are too”.
Which accords with commonsense: daily movements in stockmarkets are more likely to be small than large. This is characteristic of situations where Benford’s Law works – the numbers need to describe the sizes of similar phenomena and need to be ranged across different magnitudes. So human height doesn’t follow the law. They also can’t be assigned, like social security numbers. However, where the numbers cover several orders of magnitude, like peoples’ income, then it’s likely to hold.
A familiar example would be the growth of stock market capitalisation. If a company has a market cap of $100 million and is growing at 10% per year it’ll take it about 8 years to grow to $200 million, a further 4 to get to $300 million, 3 to get to $400 million and so on. A first digit of 1 naturally occurs more often in such situations.
Tricky Math
Although it’s not too difficult to see why this peculiar distribution occurs it turns out to be exceptionally difficult to unpick the mathematics. In fact mathematicians are still arguing about it, even though Ted Hill came up with an explanation over a decade ago that suggests, more or less, that it’s what you get if you sample naturally occurring distributions randomly. Hill explains this in this Scientific American article:
“Suppose you are collecting data from a newspaper, and the first article concerns lottery numbers (which are generally uniformly distributed), the second article concerns a particular population with a standard bell-curve distribution and the third is an update of the latest calculations of atomic weights. None of these distributions has significant-digit frequencies close to Benford’s Law, but their average does, and sampling randomly from all three will yield digital frequencies close to Benford’s Law”.
Although that’s a darned peculiar newspaper.
Psychology's Not Random
Now Benford’s Law isn’t something you’d actually expect to find so if you’re not aware of it and you want to fake some numbers for a naturally occurring distribution you’d probably come up with a random distribution. Of course, if you’re looking at a distribution that naturally follows Benford’s Law you’d end up producing something completely wrong. Human psychology being what it is we are very, very bad at pretending to be random anyway. Ted Hill, again, explains this in The Difficulty of Faking Data where he gets his students to:
“Flip a coin 200 times and record the results, or merely pretend to flip a coin and fake the results. The next day I analyse them by glancing at each student’s list and correctly separating nearly all the true from the faked data. The fact in this case is that in a truly random sequence of 200 tosses it is extremely likely that a run of six heads or six tails will occur … but the average person trying to fake such a sequence will rarely include runs of that length”.
This idea lends itself to analysis of financial figures and has been used to, amongst other things, uncover suspected fraud in an Iranian election, show that Bill Clinton rounded up the numbers in his tax return but didn’t falsify them and suggest that Enron started fiddling its numbers in 2002. The main proponent of this approach, especially as applied to financial analysis, has been Mark Nigrini, as described in I’ve Got Your Number.
Shady Corporations
When Saville applied this approach to the Johannesburg Stockmarket he found that the practice met the theory: applying Benford’s Law to the income statements of various companies, including many known to have produced fraudulent numbers he showed that:
“The test of Benford’s Law correctly identified 88.20% of the cases (30 out of 34 companies), and correctly identified 100% of ‘errant’ cases. The reason for this appears to be elegantly simple: like supernovae, fraudulent companies give themselves away by shining more brightly than their peers as they zealously thrash away in their final moments”.
Basically when people start fabricating numbers they simply can’t help but make them up to fit their expectations. This was never more true than with the entrepreneurial yet mathematically illiterate Kevin Lawrence who, as reported by Leonard Mlodinow in his superbly enlightening The Drunkard’s Walk, having raised $91 million to set up a chain of health clubs proceeded to buy:
“Several homes, twenty personal watercraft, forty-seven cars (including five Hummers, four Ferraris, three Dodge Vipers, two DeTomaso Panteras, and a Lamborghini Diablo), two Rolex watches, a twenty-one carat diamond bracelet, a $200,000 samurai sword, and a commercial candy machine”.
He was caught by a determined accountant applying Benford’s Law to his company’s financial dealings. As in so many cases of fraud you end up wondering how exactly he thought he was going to get away with it. Still it’s encouraging to think that a relatively simple analysis of company income statements can reveal recidivist corporations. However, we need to remember that Benford’s Law is by no means perfect. It will throw up false positives, and even Dilbert knows that.
Related articles: Recency: Hot Hands and the Gambler's Fallacy, Physics Risk Isn't Market Uncertainty, In Markets Bad Stuff Happens - Frequently
Labels: benford's law, fraud
Interesting post, thanks.
Typo?:
"randomly sample naturally occurring distributions randomly"
Now that’s random.
timarr 19 January 2011 at 11:39
Yep, too many "randomly"s: some kind of post-moderist joke - i.e. not funny.
Fixed, thanks.
Jonathan Smith 22 January 2011 at 22:04
We see it when we believe it. Great post.
Patrick 23 January 2011 at 16:15
Were you inspired by IOT http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x9xjb or is that a random coincidence?
Salis Grano 23 January 2011 at 16:44
A fascinating phenomenon, thanks. On a simpler level, just asking people to produce random two digit numbers often makes them reluctant to choose repeated digits like 11, 22 etc.
Hi Patrick
Interesting program. But no, I wrote this about 3 months ago as a follow up to Cardano's Gambit. If you're interested in this stuff Mlowdinow's book is excellent: I found that because I was looking for an example of fraud on a corporate scale for the post: serendipity is everywhere, if you look hard enough :)
Random House published a very good book with random numbers in the fifties. As was pointed out by several of the reviewers, the only problem was that it lacked an index or other tool to help if you wanted to locate your favorite random number.
http://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/product-reviews/0833030477
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We Do Not Kill Children
The Tenth Province of Jaryar
15th February 2019 In Christianity By Penelope Wallace
The established church, north and south of the border (1)
Before I start, in case anyone didn’t read Malachi’s comment last week, inspired equally by modern politics and by our church’s sermon series on Daniel, here it is:
“If you want a challenge you could perhaps try interpreting the dreams of Nebuchadnezzer’s political descendants. I believe the EU leaders had a dream of Europa with all her 28 or more children playing happily and harmoniously around the cornucopia at her feet. By contrast some British leaders had a dream of a newly invigorated Brittania, refreshed after a long slumber, with a brightly burnished shield and sharpened trident standing at the side of a moat and stabbing at a crowd of frogs, toads, snakes and other slippery serpents who were trying to invade her green and prosperous land. Which, if either, of the dreams was inspired by God and what happens next in the two dreams?”
Ahem. Between the years of 1978 and 1997 (discounting time away at university) I was a member of the Church of Scotland, sometimes called the Kirk. From 1997 on, as a result of the move from Aberdeen to Nottingham, I have been a member of the Church of England. I thought it would be interesting to compare the two.
Both the C of E and the C of S are established churches, with status. The Queen is the Head (under Jesus) of the C of E, but when she’s in Scotland she’s a member of the Kirk. Both therefore have traditionally had a large nominal membership, a parish system, and a great variety of churchmanship, eg more or less evangelical or liberal, liturgical or relaxed; although there is no Scottish equivalent of Anglo-Catholicism.
Both have less than totally edifying histories. Most British people know roughly how the C of E was set up – to enable Henry VIII to ignore the Pope on the issue of divorce, wasn’t it? The Kirk had numerous splits over the issue of patronage (who appoints the minister?) in the 18th century, giving rise to several very similar denominations, called things like the Wee Frees (Free Presbyterian), mostly in the west.
Both are experiencing trauma through the issue of same-sex marriage and clergy.
(Several Church of Scotland congregations have effectively and dramatically split over this issue, or indeed defected from the church almost en masse. I note with sorrow that one of these is Gilcomston South in Aberdeen. I never attended this church, although large numbers of students did. It was famous for the long-serving then minister’s line-by-line Bible-expository sermons, which regularly lasted two hours, and which were packed out.)
The Church of England is the mother of the Anglican Communion, basically because it is England’s unique Tudor response to the Reformation, and all other Anglican/Episcopalian churches grew from it via Empire and mission societies. Anglicanism has a prayer book and bishops, and in practice can be almost like Roman Catholicism… but usually is not.
The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian. At this point I stopped to look up “presbyter”, and Wikipedia let me down. Each church has a Kirk Session, composed of the minister (= vicar) and elders; each town has a presbytery, composed of representatives from the churches, and the whole church is governed by the General Assembly. This meets annually and is headed by a Moderator, appointed for one year only. Elders are regarded as ordained (in theory for life), and they have a sacramental and pastoral role, as well as sharing leadership. When a church needs a new minister, its congregation elects a Vacancy Committee, which basically advertises and interviews, and presents a desired candidate to a) the church and b) the local presbytery for approval.
We were astonished, when we came south, to discover that vicars are appointed by outsiders, albeit with consultation, and sometimes even by a “patron”.
Church governance is one of the main differences, then; although of course a Kirk Session meeting and a PCC one have a lot in common; as does the new-fangled concept of General Synod with the older General Assembly in Edinburgh. Other major differences surround communion and leadership.
A Church of England church in theory celebrates Holy Communion weekly, with a choice of eight specific Eucharistic prayers and responses. The elements of bread and wine are distributed by the vicar or other ordained person, with assistants, individually to communicants who come forward in turn and kneel. I assume this is fairly familiar also to those of a Roman Catholic background.
Warning: some of what follows may now be out of date. Traditionally, in the Church of Scotland, communion is celebrated three or four times a year. Each “member” of the Church is supposed to be visited by “their” elder beforehand to deliver a card authorising/inviting them to receive communion. This may have been part of a system of church discipline in the past; now of course the visit is for pastoral care. It doesn’t of course mean that visitors are turned away from the service (nor that you’re turned away if you forget your card.) The bread and wine are blessed and taken by elders to each row of the congregation, who then pass the elements to each other, to enact being members of the same body. The wine, always non-alcoholic, is usually in tiny cups, and many pews are designed with holes to put the cups in after drinking. I assume this is fairly familiar also to those of other Reformed denominations.
Without going into the more complicated theological elements of the Eucharist, it is obvious that these two methods of sharing the body and blood demonstrate very different approaches. I admire both, and have developed a great love for the Anglican communion liturgy. But the emphasis is different.
One of these differences reflects the role of the ordained person in charge. Although traditionally someone greatly respected, the minister of the Kirk is not considered to be set apart as completely as an Anglican priest, nor does he/she represent Christ in the same way that “high” Anglicans regard as proper. This is doubtless a major reason why there were women in the ordained ministry so much earlier in Scotland (1969, as opposed to 1994. Women are of course also elders.)
The relative infrequency of communion in Scotland is meant to emphasise its solemnity. It also means that Presbyterians have to do other things in their services, and this has traditionally meant a very great emphasis on the Bible and on preaching. This is seen architecturally – most Anglican churches that I have seen look towards the high table or altar, on which the bread and wine are placed. The pulpit is to the side. Churches of Scotland churches have the pulpit in the middle, and in my home church in St Andrews, there was a substantial spiral staircase leading to it. The minister would have been standing at least eight feet above floor level. The communion table was central, but on the floor. Frequently the Bible is carried in formally at the start of the service, and all rise.
That’s enough for today. I expect to revert to the topic, to discuss some of the less weighty differences, for example in music.
Love from the PPI Blogger
C of EChurch of ScotlandcommunionKirk
Judith Leader
16th February 2019 at 5:21 pm Reply
I think I am right in saying that Henry VIII wanted a male heir and that is why he fell out with the Pope (would you like not to have the choice but belong to Rome).
I find your problem one that affects people who go to the established Church, whereas it isn’t a problem for me as by choice I am a nonconformist and am not that bothered about church politics as long as it doesn’t lead to something against my conscience. I still worry about what our Vicar said about homosexuals, but that can happen in any church as prejudice is something that is active in all churches, sadly. When our vicar decided either unilaterally or in consultation to have communion every Sunday at 09.00 I was sad as I didn’t mind going to the odd service, but it meant I just stuck to the later service.
These things don’t really bother me, perhaps that is more an indictment on me, or perhaps I have seen too much. Oh I do get the connection between Brexit and said Henry and the Pope or at least I think I do.
© Copyright Penelope Wallace
Thanks to Studio Renton for website creation, Ian Storer for artwork and Stephen Hall for this map.
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It's About Damn Time...
I'm sure you've already seen pictures of these kicks coming out next Spring. But, here's something interesting to think about... Why the hell did it take this long for a Black/Red Air Jordan II to release?
Every single Game Shoe had an originally-released Black colorway... All of them except the Air Jordan II. Back in '86-'87, there were only four variations that released: two highs and two lows. Surprisingly, all four of them were dominantly Whitet. If we talk about Retro releases, yes, there were the Black/Chrome II's in 2004 and the Black/White II's in 2010. These shown here just blow the others out of the water in my opinion.
The original Air Jordan II shape has never been properly replicated. Can you imagine if these were an original release?
#TakeFlight
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Historic Issues →
1994 APOLOGY SILVER DALA
Two US Presidents addressing the same event - the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii:
"... By an act of war... the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown. A substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair."
Message to Congress from President Grover Cleveland - December 18, 1893
"The Congress... apologizes to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii... with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.
Joint resolution of Congress, signed by President Bill Clinton - November 23, 1993
Two Presidents... 100 years apart announced the same conclusion. The participation by agents of the United States government, including the U.S. Navy and Marine military units in the overthrow of the lawful government of Hawaii was not only blatantly wrong, but also injurious to the reputation and prestige of the American people and their government. It has taken 100 years, but the time has come to right this grievous wrong.
To mark this historic event, Royal Hawaiian Mint created the Apology Dala. The obverse features the profile of President Bill Clinton. The reverse carries the inscription, "MIHI" (Apology). Resolved by Congress and signed by President Clinton, Senate joint Resolution 19 acknowledges and apologizes for the participation in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. The inscription is emblazoned over a map of the Hawaiian Island. OIP of the one ounce .999 fine silver Apology Dala was $39.00.
RE: MINTLINE OCTOBER 1994
Obverse: Portrait, UNITED STATES APOLOGY TO HAWAII, STEP TO SOVEREIGNTY, CLINTON, 1994 with protrait of President Clinton. Reverse: MINI (APOLOGY) PROCLAIMED BY CONGRESS…NOVEMBER 23, 1923, with weight and fineness. RHM Packaged in a tamper proof capsule, a gift box with Royal Hawaiian Silver printed outer box and a Certificate of Authenticity. Limited Edition. Mintage:1615 including sets
Portrait, UNITED STATES APOLOGY TO HAWAII, STEP TO SOVEREIGNTY, CLINTON, 1994 with protrait of President Clinton. Packaged in a tamper proof capsule, a gift box with Royal Hawaiian Silver printed outer box and a Certificate of Authenticity that certifies the dala is minted in Proof condition, measures 39mm in diameter, weighs one ounce of .999 Silver and is a Limited Edition.
MINI (APOLOGY) PROCLAIMED BY CONGRESS…NOVEMBER 23, 1923, with weight and fineness. RHM
Packaged in a tamper proof capsule, a gift box with Royal Hawaiian Silver printed outer box and a Certificate of Authenticity.
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Domestic Bumblebees, The
Break Up Bop
Submitted by kitti (20 July 2008)
The Domestic Bumblebees... It was only some months ago that I first heard this name - interesting, unusual, easy to remember, impossible to forget... finally it has nothing to do with cats, rockers, hot rods, rockin', boppin' and different kind of billies. Well, as soon as I saw they must play in De Kroeg...
Drugstore Cowboys
Crash & Burn
Submitted by rockabilly_girl (01 February 2007)
Power-rockabilly from a superb british band who draw influences from Rev Horton Heat, The Cramps, The Paladins & the Stray Cats. They blend it together, add a heavy dose of their own style and originality, and the result is a totally explosive rock 'n' roll assault....
Havin’ A Ball
Submitted by kitti (03 October 2009)
Second DVD of the biggest true rockabilly festival in Europe - Rockabilly Rave is out! And it has all chances to become the most popular rock’n’roll documentaries (or maybe already did) among others. I am not exaggerating! Not only me, who had that positive opinion about it; everyone who saw it would agree with me. ...
Eddie Clendening
Is... Knockin'at Your Heart
Submitted by kitti (13 April 2011)
Eddie Clendening - the name you've probably already heard here and there. And certainly if you have seen him live, you would not forget it. The fresh talented guy from New York creates atmosphere of 1950's just right in front of you. His look, his voice and energy makes your heart beat faster, so probably you...
Finn & The Sharks
Shark Therapy
Submitted by hankabilly (13 July 2009)
In the late seventies and early eighties, an energetic neo-trend grew up alongside and within the Punk and so-called New Wave Rock ‘n’ Roll scene. It was a revival called Rockabilly and right in the heart of it all was Finn & The Sharks from Nyack NY. They recorded a four song EP entitled "Innercity Rockabilly"...
Breakfast Special
This New York band merges punk, with a Teddy Boy, rockabilly sound. Breakfast Special, released in 2008, contains 18 original recordings from the beginning of the eighties, a more recent version of Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog and a bonus track. The opener Rockabilly Bop is just that: a rockabilly bop song, including background vocals. The second...
Submitted by hankabilly (20 May 2016)
his New York band merges country, roots Americana, taking in Rockabilly and more. Packed with well crafted original songs, played with precision, and led by a good strong vocal. The guitar playing is a delight, and the upright bass and drums solid. The songwriting is top-notch, mixing moody ballads if you like Chris Isaak...
Finn And The Sharks
Here I have got a cd from year 2007 by a fine band from New York, Finn and the Sharks. Playing together more than 30 years, the band have formed their own sound, which unites all American roots music. With this cd you’ll get coctail of blues, rock’n’roll and country… sometimes with some heavy, rock sparkle....
Fireball Steven
The Many Sides Of
Submitted by kitti (27 March 2010)
The series of the Rhythm Bomb Records, called “The Many Sides Of”, is a collection of the best songs of (mostly) modern artists, which were recorded during some period of time. Fireball Steven (Nic Steven Nilsson in normal life) is one those who was lucky enough to be part of that project. First six songs...
Flaming Combo
Big Black Rocket
Flaming Combo 120 miles west to Paris France, influenced by the original legends of the 50's as well as by the present time. The opening cover track Gunning For The Dogs say everything what you can expect from this album, teddy boy, rockabilly, Bo Diddley beat, gretch-guitar, double bass etc. The sound is really good they...
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Matthew Schuler
About Matthew
Matthew is a visionary technology entrepreneur and Co-Founder and Chairman at Sol Inc. He is working to advance the world by building virtual tools that drive human development.
At age 18 Matthew launched his first startup, Roshambo Global, with EPA Communications Producer Mark Hanson to provide information support for the United States National Guard overseas and domestically. He returned to academia in 2006 to study under legendary Digital Ethnography professor Dr. Mike Wesch, then founded Snowtone Limited to provide social revenue integration assistance for international agencies. Matthew then expanded to Cape Town, South Africa where he deployed experimental business models and constructed two intercultural training facilities located in the poorest townships of the region. He also served as a consultant to the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa on decriminalization reform and anti-human trafficking legislation, and as an advisor for the Traffick Proof coalition and Media Village in Muizenberg.
In 2017 Matthew co-founded Sol Inc. and currently serves as Chairman. The goal of the Sol™ platform is to catalyze the evolution of planet Earth through reimagined human learning.
Matthew lives in Silver Lake, California with his wife Irene Cho.
“H ere’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Stay in the loop as we release modules and content for you to test drive.
Learn About Updates
© 2019 Matt Schuler. All rights reserved.
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Video Adds Dimension to the Pew Study on Restrictions on Religion
12. Mai 2018 •et; Religious Freedom
Although presented in 2013, the TEDx talk by Brian J. Grim, founder and president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, adds dimension to the numbers in the most recent Pew Study on Restrictions on Religion.
Brian J. Grim's TEDx talk on the Pew Study on Restrictions on Religion
The talk, delivered at the Vatican, reviewed the deteriorating global situation of religious freedom. Grim speaks on the difference between government and social restrictions on religious freedom and how social restrictions tend to mirror, follow the trend, and be reinforced by government restrictions. He also presents insight into the effects on this right of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and an analysis of religious freedom issues in the Middle East and North Africa in the aftermath of Arab Spring.
The numbers in the most recent study show the worsening trend visible in 2013 has only intensified in the years since this talk.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”
The booklet What is Religious Freedom? published on this website shows that the struggle for religious freedom has gone on for thousands of years, and the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was the first time legal international human rights obligations were defined and agreed upon.
Article 18 of the UDHR states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”
The Universal Declaration was created in response to the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II. Prior to the Holocaust, many argued that human rights were a domestic concern, to be supervised and enforced by the government within each country. This view evolved as the world learned of the scope of the atrocities, leading to a movement for internationally protected human rights that were universal and inalienable.
The importance of religious freedom as a core human right was embraced by the global community in the Universal Declaration. In the first sentence of its preamble, the Universal Declaration states that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” It is this recognition of the inherent dignity of humanity that has become the driving force for the protection and promotion of religious freedom and all human rights.
What is Religious Freedom? is available in 17 languages and can be read on this website or downloaded as a pdf.
From its beginnings, the Church of Scientology has recognized that freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. In a world where conflicts are often traceable to intolerance of others’ religious beliefs and practices, the Church has, for more than 50 years, made the preservation of religious liberty an overriding concern.
The Church publishes this blog to help create a better understanding of the freedom of religion and belief and provide news on religious freedom and issues affecting this freedom around the world.
religious freedom TEDx Pew Research Center
Weitere Nachrichten zu diesem Thema
Pew Research study finds escalating global restriction on religion
Candidates Urged to Support Religious Freedom and Inclusion
Pew Study: Black Millennials Are the Most Religious
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Chinese Comics App Raises $177 Million in Investment
Latest round of financing for Kuaikan Manhua shows the immense growth of China’s animation, comics, and games sector.
Yin Yijun
One of China’s most popular mobile apps for reading comics, Kuaikan Manhua, announced Friday that it had completed a Series D financing round totaling $177 million — the largest investment to date for the country’s booming comics industry.
The financing round was led by international capital fund Coatue Management. Other participants included China Media Capital, the Chinese mainland’s most prolific media industry investor founded by Li Ruigang, who has been compared to Rupert Murdoch.
“China’s animation and comics market has huge potential compared to developed countries,” Coatue’s China director, Jiang Kai, told media outlets including Sixth Tone’s sister publication, The Paper. “The younger generation’s needs are far from being satisfied.” According to data consultancy Big Data Research, China’s animation, comics, and games market is expected to be valued at 150 billion yuan ($22 billion) by the end of the year.
Kuaikan Manhua was established in 2014 by 22-year-old Chen Anni, who rose to fame while still in college for her autobiographical comic published on microblogging platform Weibo. The Kuaikan Manhua mobile app now has 130 million registered users, including nearly 10 million daily active users. According to a report published by tech data service provider QuestMobile in December 2016, Kuaikan Manhua ranked No. 60 in a list of the 100 most popular apps among millennial users in China.
Yet the company has had a rough road to success. In December 2014, when Chen lamented in a post promoting the app that she was only living “1 percent of life,” some commenters criticized her for trying to “emotionally blackmail” people into supporting her dream. In the same month, Kuaikan Manhua publicly apologized for republishing two much-loved comic artists’ works without their consent. Keen-eyed readers were quick to point out that the app had also reproduced several comics by foreign artists without authorization.
But in the last couple of years, Kuaikan Manhua has improved its copyright compliance record and shrugged off its past negative publicity. In September, its original content won two awards at the China Animation & Comic Competition, a major event backed by the country’s official media regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. The company has also introduced original Chinese comics to foreign markets: For example, Japanese platform Comico imported three comic series after they found fame on Kuaikan Manhua.
Kuaikan Manhua has announced that the latest investment will be used to serve and support comic artists on its platform, scout out rising talent, and hold competitions to celebrate the sector’s development.
(Header image: A woman accesses the Kuaikan Manhua app on her smartphone, Shanghai, Dec. 4, 2017. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone)
Chinese Disney Fans Decry Black ‘Little Mermaid’ Casting
Chinese TV Show Swapped Toon for Quake-Japing Celeb, Viewers Say
New Sci-Fi Series Has Fans Asking, Can ‘Three-Body’ Be Filmed?
With ‘Endgame,’ Chinese Superfans Renew a Love Affair With Marvel
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TINA KONEC AIR 2019
NINA ČELHAR AIR 2018
MINA FINA AIR 2017
SKALINADA HOUSE
Beyond the wonders of the physical space, the stone staircase, or Skalinada, is a portal that cuts across time and space linking diverse paths, stories and spaces travelled. A portal of inspiration that stands on a solid rock upon the silent sea – where imagination can access new heights and discover new depths. This piece of land is special, reflecting the classic simplicity of the seaside town, while adding to it a contemporary vibe which promises to stir the creative spirit.
A classical Mediterranean and minimalist space, designed to embrace established visual artists, far and near, to practice art – without distraction from the roving world. We hope to provide the artist a period of rest, recreation and reflection – inspired by varied aspects of life – from the waves to the stone, from past to present. Mostly, we are looking ahead with our combined paths. The vision for this new artistic initiative is simple – to nurture individual creativity and infuse it with our collective artistic production, with the gusto to explore and express. To give back to the quiet seaside community of Omišalj so it thrives on the ebb and flow of our shared lives.
SKALINADA, founded in july 2017, is an artist-in-residence programme that offers a free space to the artist, to live and work. In a sweet exchange for their stay, we request for the artists to leave behind a trace of their time at the house. Typically this may come in the form of a site-specific piece that will find a permanent home inside the house. The future for Skalinada – to house a unique art collection that reflects the various artists-in-residence who have spent time with us, a house curated with contemporary visual art illustrating potent minds, embalmed with the glitter of imagination. After an artist completes the residency programme, we will open the house as an gallery so the artist can exhibit and share his or her works for that specified period of time.
Highly regarded for her active contribution to the local contemporary and urban arts scene for the past 15 years, Piera has collaborated with many artists and collectives working in the area of visual arts and culture. Piera is proud to be part of Kino Siska’s pioneer team, and has worked at the Centre for urban culture as an Artistic Programme Manager for almost 10 years. With the support of a dynamic team at Kino Siska, Piera revitalised the local arts through exciting projects and ideas. She also initiated many new concepts – like DobraVaga Gallery, which quickly became one of Ljubljana’s most esteemed spaces for local art and conversation. She is now working for her own private initiative RAVNIKAR GALLERY SPACE, and is also active with projects such as MENT Ljubljana, limited edit111ons and independent platform new york city. Piera holds an MA in Modern History from the University of London and EU diploma in Cultural Management Marcel Hicter, Brussels.
Tina Konec (1992) graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, under Professor Zmago Lenárdič, where she is currently finishing her postgraduate studies under the mentorship of Tugo Šušnik. She actively exhibits at home and abroad. She has held independent exhibitions at Kvartirna hiša (2018) in Celje, the City Gallery Fonticus (2018) in Croatia, the Layer House (2017) in Kranj, as well as at the Bežigrad Gallery 1 (2017), the DobraVaga Gallery (2017) and the Ravnikar Gallery Space (2018, 2019). In 2018, she received the highest possible prize – the Grand Prix of the 53rd International Painting Ex-tempore in Piran for her work Crystallisation in the ink wash technique on paper.
Helena Tahir (1992) works in painting, drawing, photography and graphic art. For the latter, she received this year’s May Saloon award for the best young graphic artist. She is a postgraduate student in the painting programme at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana, where in 2015 she also graduated with distinction in painting and graphic arts. In recent years she was an exchange student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Porto, Portugal, and at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, Germany. She has participated in several solo and group exhibitions at home and in international cultural environments, such as the Transformation of Image in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, SlovenIndia in the National Modern Art Gallery, New Delhi, India, Zum Zoom Zoum in the GapGap Gallery, Leipzig, Papirologija in the Equrna Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia, VI Biennial of Slovenian Independent Illustration in Kino Siska, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and also her solo exhibition In the Whirl in the Božidar Jakac Gallery, Kostanjevica na Krki, Slovenia, and the first group exhibition Something Ending, Something Beginning in Ravnikar Gallery Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Skalinada house was designed by architects Aleš Žnidaršič and Katja Žlajpah from the Multiplan Studio based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. While performing the architectural fulfillment of an empty space they always take into consideration the values of the past, homage to environment as well as modern architectural views. Clear idea, simple and comprehensible forms, indubitable structures are their leading principles. The focus of their practice is to work interdisciplinary involving different profiles of collaborators, trying to stay in constant relation between present reality and its local identity. The bureau’s work is present in their homeland Slovenia as well as abroad. They draw attention especially through many national and international prizes they have achieved with their projects answering to different calls of tenders.
Skalinada house is based in Omišalj, one of the oldest living towns in the Croatian island of Krk. The town itself is built on a cliff about 80 metres above the sea beholding glorious vistas over Kvarner bay. The old city centre has a rich cultural heritage with monuments and architecture that speak of a medieval past. There are no vehicles in the old part which makes it a delight for city-walkers to wander carefree. On the main square, one will find a large parish church of the Assumption with a bell tower, the city’s Lodge and the Chapel of St. Helen. Residential homes, with arched entrances, balconies and external staircases, characteristic of Krk island, lend faithfully to its old-fashioned charm.
The Island of Krk is located in the northern part of Croatia, in the Kvarner Bay. A number of distinct characteristics make this island unique. With its intact relief, it offers a number of possibilities for an active vacation, as well as relaxation next to the crystal clear sea. It has rich Mediterranean vegetation and climate with long and warm summers and mild winters. It is also worth mentioning that the Island of Krk is one of the sunniest parts of Europe, with no less than 2500 sunny hours in the year!
The Island of Krk is a part of the Central Europe, only 20 km removed from Rijeka, a traffic hub with daily train departures towards many European capitals. It is connected with the mainland by the Krk Bridge (Croatian: Krčki most) built in 1980, and an airport located in Omišalj. All things considered, the Island of Krk represents a unique tourist destination, one easily accessible from any direction.
Copyright Skalinada 2017. All Rights Reserved
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News: FRINGE Renewed for Fifth and Final Season
Yesterday, the Internet blew up as multiple sources confirmed that FOX had indeed picked up cult favorite Fringe for a fifth and final season of 13 episodes. While I'm happy for the fans of the show, I have to admit that I had mixed reactions when I read the news.
On one hand, I'm all in favor of these kind of "fringe" shows living on network television. Heck, one of my favorite shows of all-time (Chuck) was a cult classic, so I understand the kind of love and dedication fans of Fringe have for their show, and I'm happy that it gets to live on to keep the TV landscape refreshing and daring.
On the other, television's still a business and keeping a show that's so low-rated on the air seems puzzling to me. Again, I cannot throw stones since Chuck's numbers were also pathetic towards the end of its run, but I also expected it to get cancelled multiple times. Sure, I was happy when NBC kept it going, but even those renewals didn't make sense to me at the time either.
I know that people are going to point out syndication, licensing fees and other factors that allowed FOX to bring back Fringe, so I understand that there's some justification from a business perspective ... for Warner Bros. but not necessarily FOX. While I'm by no means an insider, even I know WB essentially gave Fringe away to pad its episode order so it can put together a sweet package for any channel willing to show reruns, but will anyone be willing to.
The reason why syndication can be a good deal for the studios that produce television shows is because their programs can fill holes on network's schedule, but there's some debate whether a heavily serialized show like Fringe can thrive in syndication. More often than not, the channels that buy syndicated packages will air episodes throughout the week and at odd hours, so if someone tries to watch something like Fringe, Lost or Heroes missing one day out of the week can throw them off. I'm not even saying that most people would watch these shows in that way, but there's a reason why most reruns on off networks tend to be sitcoms and procedurals; you don't need to watch every episode to follow along.
That's my long-winded way of saying that I'm glad Fringe is back, but I still don't know what FOX was thinking. I suppose the real moral of the story is if you have an idea for a television show that's only appealing to a small amount of viewers, then pitch it to Warner Bros. Television because they'll do whatever it takes to keep it going like they did for Fringe and Chuck ... and that network television has entered into a bizarro world where low-rated sci-fi is the new black.
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Karen Hanton, Toptable
Karen Hanton founded restaurant booking site toptable.com in 2005 after selling her first two businesses. Toptable.com is the UK and Europes leading restaurant reservation, review and search site, and has over 30,000 restaurants from 14 different countries recorded on its database. Karen set up with business with the help of Sir Alex Ferguson and Gary Rhodes, now founding shareholders. Karen has won awards including the Financial Times/Moet Hennessy Extraordinary Achievers Award and was named one of the top 100 most influential people in the first decade of the internet in an NOP/e-consultancy poll.
In this video interview Karen explains how she came about the idea for toptable.com and the desire to develop an online community for restaurateurs. She gives expert advice on how to build a website and talks about the life of an entrepreneur. Hanton details the pros and cons of being the first in the market and the importance of adaptability, as well as marketing guidance on engaging customers and website functionality.
The successful female entrepreneur also talks about how to get finance and whether she faced problems with getting celebrity sponsorship, as well as the process of selecting shareholders and equity distribution. This interview is a good source of information whether you are looking for building up customer profiles, developing a web site or financial advice.
Visit toptable.com
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Thailand •
Foreign relations by country •
Politics of Thailand •
Sport in Thailand •
Government of Thailand •
Outline of Thailand
Etymology of Thailand
List of Thailand-related topics
Thai studies
Foreign relations of Thailand
The foreign relations of Thailand are handled by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand.Thailand participates fully in international and regional o...
Foreign relations of Thailand - Wikipedia
2008 Cambodian-Thai stand-off •
Thai Chinese •
People's Republic of China-Thailand relations •
Foreign relations of Indonesia •
Laos-Thailand relations •
Malaysia-Thailand relations •
Australia-Thailand relations •
Foreign relations of Canada •
India-Thailand relations •
Japan-Thailand relations •
Saudi Arabia–Thailand relations •
South Korea - Thailand relations •
Thailand - United States relations •
Ambassadors of Thailand •
Ambassadors to Thailand •
Bilateral relations of Thailand •
Borders of Thailand •
Diplomatic missions in Thailand •
Thai diplomats •
Foreign ministers of Thailand •
Treaties of Thailand •
Wars involving Thailand
Assassinations, Curses, and Stolen Jewels: The 'Blue Diamond Affair' Is Still Darkening Saudi-Thai Relations
Some 25 years ago, a lowly Thai gardener found himself working in a grand palace in Saudi Arabia, half way across the world from his home village. Kriangkrai Techamong mainly tended the lush palace gr...
2008 Cambodian-Thai stand-off
The Cambodian–Thai border dispute began in June 2008 as the latest round of a century-long dispute between Cambodia and Thailand involving the area surrounding the 11th-century Preah Vihear Temple, lo...
2008 Cambodian-Thai stand-off - Wikipedia
Thai Chinese
Thai Chinese are Thai citizens of Chinese, primarily Han Chinese ancestry. Thailand is home to the largest overseas Chinese community in the world with a population of approximately nine million peopl...
Thai Chinese - Wikipedia
People's Republic of China-Thailand relations
China – Thailand relations officially started in November 1975 after years of negotiations.Currently there may be a power struggle between the United States and China due to escalating presence of bot...
Foreign relations of Indonesia
Since independence, Indonesian foreign relations have adhered to a "free and active" foreign policy, seeking to play a role in regional affairs commensurate with its size and location but avoiding inv...
Laos-Thailand relations
Laos–Thailand relations refers to the current and historical relationship between Laos and Thailand. Diplomatic relations were established in 1950. Laos and Thailand share a common border and both sta...
Laos-Thailand relations - Wikipedia
Malaysia-Thailand relations
Malaysia–Thailand relations (Malay Hubungan Malaysia-Thailand; Thai ความสัมพันธ์ประเทศมาเลเซีย-ประเทศไทย; ) refers to bilateral foreign relations between the two countries, Malaysia and the Thailand. ...
Malaysia-Thailand relations - Wikipedia
Australia-Thailand relations
Australia–Thailand relations are foreign relations between Thailand and Australia. Thailand is represented through its embassy in Canberra and a consulate general in Sydney. Australia has an embassy ...
Australia-Thailand relations - Wikipedia
Foreign relations of Canada
The foreign relations of Canada are Canada's relations with other governments and peoples. Canada's most important relationship, being the largest trading relationship in the world, is with the Unite...
India-Thailand relations
Diplomatic relations between India and Thailand were established in 1947, soon after India gained independence. India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand along the Anda...
India-Thailand relations - Wikipedia
Japan-Thailand relations
Japan–Thailand relations refer to bilateral relations between Japan and Thailand. Contacts had an early start with Japanese trade on Red seal ships and the installation of Japanese communities on Siam...
Japan-Thailand relations - Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia–Thailand relations
Saudi Arabia–Thailand relations - Wikipedia
South Korea - Thailand relations
South Korea–Thailand relations are foreign relations between the Thailand and South Korea. Both countries established diplomatic relations on October 1, 1958. The year 2008 is the 50th year of bilate...
Thailand - United States relations
Bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States of America date to 1818. Thailand and the United States have long been close allies and diplomatic partners. According to a 20...
Thailand - United States relations - Wikipedia
Ambassadors of Thailand
Ambassadors to Thailand
Bilateral relations of Thailand
Borders of Thailand
Diplomatic missions in Thailand
Diplomatic missions in Thailand - Wikipedia
Thai diplomats
Foreign ministers of Thailand
Foreign ministers of Thailand - Wikipedia
Treaties of Thailand
Haw wars
The Haw Wars (Thai: สงครามปราบฮ่อ), so called in Thai, were fought against Chinese quasi-military forces invading parts of Tonkin and Siam during the years of 1865 to 1890. Forces invading Lao dom...
Haw wars - Wikipedia
Royal Thai Consulate General, Chennai
The Royal Thai Consulate-General in Chennai is the mission of Thailand in South India representing the interests of the Thai government in the region. The other missions are the Royal Thai Embassy in...
Royal Thai Consulate General, Chennai - Wikipedia
Angola–Thailand relations
Bangladesh–Thailand relations
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Medieval poets •
People of Al-Andalus •
Moorish writers •
Andalusian writers •
Arabic poets by period
Poets of Al-Andalus
Ibn Juzayy
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi (1321 - 1357) (in Arabic, محمد بن محمد بن أحمد بن عبد الله بن يحيى بن يوسف بن عبد الرحمن بن جزي الكلبي الغرناطي) was a scholar, write...
Muhammad bin Hani al Andalusi al Azdi
Muhammad bin Hani al Andalusi al Azdi, born in c. 936, became the chief court poet to the Fatimid Caliph Imam, Al Mu'izz. Most of his collected poems are in praise of the Fatimids against the claims o...
Ibn Ammar
Ibn Ammar (Arabic: ابن عمار;1031–1086) was a Muwallad poet from Silves.Ibn Ammar, descended from a Portuguese Muslim family, became vizier of the taifa of Seville. Though he was poor and un...
Ibn Quzman
Abu Bakr Abd al-Malik ibn Quzman (Arabic: أبو بكر بن قزمان, b. 1078–d. 1160) was the single most famous poet in the history of al-Andalus and he is also considered to be one of its mo...
Ibn al-Khatib
Lisan ad-Din ibn al-Khatib (Born 16 November 1313, Loja– died 1374, Fes, Morocco) (Full name Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Said ibn Ali ibn Ahmad al-Salmani) was an Arab polymath poet, writer, historian...
Ibn al-Khatib - Wikipedia
Ibn Gharsiya
Abu Amir Ahmad Ibn Gharsiya al-Bashqunsi (Arabic: أبو عامر أحمد بن غرسية البشكنسي ) (died 1084), popularly known as Ibn Gharsiya was a Muwallad poet and katib (writer) in the taifa court o...
Ibn al-Zaqqaq
For the Maliki scholar see Ali ibn Qasim al-Zaqqaq.Ali ibn Attiya ibn al-Zaqqaq (علي إبن عطيّة إبن الزقّاق البلنسي) (ca. 1100 Valencia - 1133 or 1134) was one of the great poets of Al-Andalus during t...
Maria Alphaizuli
Maria Alphaizuli or Mariam Bint Abu Ya'Qub was an 8th-century poet from Seville.Living during the time of the Moors, she has been referred to as the Arabian Sappho. During her time, many women of the ...
Wallada bint al-Mustakfi
Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (Arabic: ولادة بنت المستكفي) (born in Cordova in 1001 - died March 26, 1091), was an Andalusian poet.
She was the daughter of Muhammad III of Córdoba, one of th...
Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya
Ḥafṣa bint al-Ḥājj ar-Rakūniyya (born c. 1135, died AH 586/1190×91 CE) was an Granadan aristocrat and one of the most celebrated female poets of medieval Arabic literature.Ḥafṣa's biography was charte...
Ibn Bassam
Ibn Bassam (Ibn Bassam Al-Shantarini) was a poet and historian from al-Andalus. He was born in Santarém (sometimes spelled Shantarin or Xantarin) and died in 1147. Ibn Bassam describes how the incessa...
Ibn Amira
Ibn Amira or Ahmad ibn Abd Allah Ibn Amira (1186 Alzira in the province of Valencia- 1251/1259) was a historian, poet, and scholar of law from al-Andalus during the reign of the Almohad dynasty. Ibn ...
Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya
Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya (eleventh-century) was a Granadan courtesan and poet, noted for her outrageous verse, her learning, and her low-status origins (possibly as a slave). Although lit...
Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya - Wikipedia
Ibn Hamdis
Ibn Hamdis (c. 1056 – c. 1133) was a Sicilian Arab poet.Ibn Ḥamdīs al-ʾAzdī al-Ṣīqillī was born in Syracuse, south eastern Sicily, around 447 AH (1056 AD). Little is known of his youth, which can be r...
Ibn Zamrak
Ibn Zamrak (also Zumruk) or Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b, Yusuf b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Surayhi, (1333-1393) was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still d...
Al-Tutili
Al-A'ma al-Tutili (or Abu l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abd Allah ibn Hurayra al-Absi al-A'ma al-Tutili) (died 1126) was a Muwallad poet born in Tudela in Al-Andalus. Al-A'ma' means 'the blind one' and 'Tutili' m...
Ibn Zaydún
Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi (1003-1071) known as Ibn Zaydún (Arabic full name,أبو الوليد أحمد بن زيدون المخزومي) was a famous Arab poet of Cordoba and Seville. His romantic and literary...
Ibn Baqi
Ibn Baqi or Abu Bakr Yahya Ibn Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Rahman Ibn Baqi (died 1145 or 1150) was an Arab poet from Córdoba or Toledo in al-Andalus. Baqi is one of the best-known strophic poets and song wri...
Ibn Khafaja
'Ibn Khafajah (إبن خفاجة) or Abu Ishaq Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Abu Al-Fath Ibn Khafajah (1058-1138/9) of Alzira was one of the most famous poets of Al-Andalus during the reign of the Almoravids. He was born ...
Yusuf III, Sultan of Granada
Yusuf III (Arabic: يوسف الثالث) (1374–1417) was the thirteenth Nasrid Nasrid ruler of the Moorish Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula from 1408 to 1417. He inherited...
Yusuf III, Sultan of Granada - Wikipedia
Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad
Muhammad ibn Abbad al-Mu'tamid Arabic: المعتمد بن عباد; reigned c. 1069–1091, lived 1040-1095) was the third and last ruler of the taifa of Seville in Al-Andalus. He was a member of the Abb...
Ibn Sahl of Seville
Ibn Sahl (Arabic: أبو إسحاق إبرهيم بن سهل الإسرائيلي الإشبيلي Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn Sahl al-Isra'ili al-Ishbili) of Seville (1212–1251) is considered one of the greatest Moorish poets of Andalusia of...
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SEFS11 Sessions
Mid-SEFS11 excursions
Publish full papers
All excursions are on Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Please take: walking shoes, light jacket, sun protection, repellent and water!
Plitvice Lakes – the oldest national park in Croatia – SOLD OUT!
Departure from The Westin Hotel Zagreb at 6:45 hours
Plitvice lakes are the oldest and the largest among the 8 national parks in Croatia. The Plitvice Lakes are located within the karst region of the Dinarid Mountains. Because of their unique natural characteristics such as tufa deposition and highly diverse habitats, the lakes and surrounding forests were declared a national park in 1949 and an UNESCO World Heritage area in 1979. The lakes form a barrage hydrosystem of 16 consecutive oligotrophic, dimictic lakes in which the water flows from one lake to the other over numerous transverse tufa barriers and associated structures (waterfalls, cascades, channels and fast flowing streams). The 16 lakes are divided into an upper and lower cluster, descending from an altitude of 636 to 503 m a.s.l. over a distance of 8.2 km, and aligned in a south-north direction. Only 2 hours drive from Zagreb you can find yourself in this natural wonder, hiking around the Lower and the Upper Lakes, taking a ride on an electric boat or exploring one of 20 caves in the park. Let us show you why every year more than 1 million travelers decide to visit Plitvice Lakes.
Distance from Zagreb: ca. 130 km (81 mi)
Duration: full day (8-10 hours)
Price per person (based on minimum 40 participants per bus): 420,00 HRK (57 EUR)
The price per person includes: return transfer from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes, a licenced tour guide, National Park entrance fee, lunch without drinks (as the lunch will be organized later in the afternoon, it is suggested that the participants bring their own snack).
Mrežnica rafting/kayak adventure (Lower Mrežnica) – SOLD OUT!
Mrežnica is one of the most beautiful rivers in Croatia, known as a “pearl of natural karst”. Its source is near the town of Slunj, and it flows into the River Korana near Karlovac – the city lying on four rivers (Mrežnica, Kupa, Korana, Dobra). Mrežnica forms numerous waterfalls and underwater travertine barriers, which are a key feature of the Mrežnica River. It is ideal for canoeing, rafting and kayaking. Our rafting adventure starts within the wilder upstream stretches and ends within the calmer downstream reaches of the river. During the ride, you will see amazing scenery and experience the power of rapids and waterfalls.
This trip does not require any previous experience. We use professional SOTAR rafting boats for up to 12 people. An experienced skipper is in charge of training and safety of the crew on each boat. The boats are equipped with a waterproof container for cameras, mobile phones etc. Every participant is given a safety vest and protective clothing for cold or windy weather. If some participants do not feel comfortable with rafting, kayaks can be organized. For kayak trips, we use inflatable Hypalon kayaks. Each group has one or two guides, depending on the size of the group.
Duration: full day (cca. 8 hours)
Price per person (based on minimum 15 and maximum 18 participants): 570,00 HRK (77 EUR)
The price per person includes: return transfer from Zagreb to Mrežnica River, a licenced tour guide, rafting guide, equipment, insurance and lunch without drinks.
Boat trip on river Kupa and Aquatic Freshwater Aquarium
Kupa River sources in the mountainous region of Gorski Kotar, in the area of Risnjak National Park. Because of its diverse flora and fauna, upper stretch of the Kupa River is called the ‘enchanted butterfly valley’. In its lower stretches, Kupa reaches the city of Karlovac – a city famous for its four rivers. In Karlovac, Kupa confluences with other two rivers – Dobra and Korana, which is joined with Mrežnica River. This excursion includes a 90-minute boat cruise, tasting of the homemade liqueurs and homemade traditional cookies. During the sail, our boat host will tell you the story of the boat, the history of the Pokuplje region, the story about the sunken ships, rich biodiversity of the Kupa River, and many other interesting stories. After the trip, we will have a lunch at a local family farm, where you will try local cuisine. After the lunch, we will visit Aquatika – the largest Croatian freshwater aquarium. The aquarium displays the natural richness of Croatian karst rivers – their flora and fauna, geological history, and traditional culture and history of the four rivers of the Karlovac basin.
Distance from Zagreb: ca. 80 km (49 mi)
• Price per person (based on minimum 40 participants per bus): 450,00 HRK (61 EUR)
The price per person includes: return transfer ticket from Zagreb to Kupa River, guide, boat trip, entrance fees to Aquatika and lunch without drinks.
Hike in Nature Park Medvednica (15.5 km/9,6 mi, the total elevation is 800 m/2620 ft.)
Medvednica is located above the city of Zagreb, and its highest peak Sljeme is at 1.033 m a.s.l. Medvednica (literally translated, “bear mountain”) is well known as a place for hiking and other outdoor activities, representing a very rare example of a nature park merging with a capital city. Medvednica was declared a nature park in 1981, but it is an easy and fast getaway from city reachable by public transport. We offer a hike trip to the top of Medvednica – Sljeme. During the hike, you will be able to see Snow Queen Trophy ski-trails and a spectacular view of Zagorje region and Medvedgrad – a medieval castle from the 13th century. During a short visit through the castle ruins, you will be able to hear the story of the legendary Black Queen, see the eternal flames of the Homeland Altar and take beautiful panoramic photographs of Zagreb.
Duration: full day (8,00-17,00h); 6 hours hiking (15-15.5 km/9.3-9.6 mi), public transport (tram and bus)
Price per person (minimum 15 participants): 345 HRK (46 EUR)
The price per person includes: guide, public transport from Zagreb and back, lunch without drinks, entrance fee to the fortress Medvedgrad.
Lonjsko polje – The largest protected wetland area in Croatia
The Lonjsko Polje Nature Park is situated in the alluvial plain of the Sava River, representing a unique landscape of flooded river plain of the Danubian basin. With a total surface of 50 650 ha, the Lonjsko Polje Nature Park is one of the largest wetland area in the entire Danubian basin. The most significant ecological element in the Lonjsko Polje Nature Park is flooding, which appears at any time of the year. Due to its natural values and cultural heritage this area has been protected as a nature park since 1990, and has been included in the List of Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar site) since 1993. Given the abundance of bird species, specific areas of the Park have been protected as special ornithological reserves, while the entire Park has been included in the List of important bird areas in Europe (IBA). The village Čigoč belonging to the area of Lonjsko Polje Nature Park has been proclaimed the European village of storks in 1994, as it has a very large white stork population nests (almost each house has its “own” nest). The characteristics of the cultural landscape and cultural identity of Lonjsko Polje are linked to traditional rural settlements primarily recognized by specific ambiences and traditional wooden architecture – traditional houses built of oak and even standardized by their construction and architectural solutions. During this one-day excursion, you will experience the highlights of the mosaic landscape and traditional life of Lonjsko Polje – the excursion programme includes: visiting Čigoč – the European village of storks; a guided tour through the floodwater retention zone of Lonjsko Polje (Mužilovčica); tasting traditional lunch within the eco-ethno village Strug (“At grandpa Jozeph” Restaurant); visiting Krapje – a Village of the Architectural Heritage; panoramic boat ride on Sava River.
Price per person (based on minimum 40 participants): 380,00 HRK (52 EUR)
The price per person includes: return transfer ticket from Zagreb to Lonjsko Polje, guided programe, entrance fee and guidance through the highlights of the Lonjsko Polje Nature Park, lunch at the restaurant “At grandpa Jozeph” including a welcome drink (‘šljivovica’ – a plum brandy) and a meat or fish main dish with a glass of wine.
Seats are subject to availability and will be booked on a first come first served basis. After receiving your application, tentative confirmation, cancellation policy and payment details will be sent according to the availability. Final confirmation will be sent after receiving your payment.
All cancellations and modifications of reservation must be done in writing to PBZ Card Ltd. travel@pbzcard.hr. Refund according to the cancellation policy will be made after the event. Any bank charge or commission must be covered by the participant.
In the event of any changes to the minimum number of participant in the particular group, VAT (PDV) regime in Croatia or currency rate, new rates will apply.
• 30 days and more before departure – 10% of the total service booked will be charged
• 29-22 days before departure – 25% of the total service booked will be charged
• 14-8 days before departure – 80% of the total service booked will be charged
• 7 days before departure and “no show” – 100% of the total service booked will be charged
© SEFS11 2019
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Tete-a-Tetes, Then and Now
July 23, 2018 Kathleen Smithnosky
When we think of tete-a-tetes, we usually think of Victorian times, but there are many more modern versions as well. Tete-a-tete literally means head to head in French, and it is a two-seat sofa, basically consisting of two chairs joined together. Its primary use was for private conversations as its other names suggest. The tete-a-tete is also known as a courting chair or a gossip couch. It was developed during the early 19th century in France and was popularized during the Victorian era. The Victorian ideals of modesty and controlled courtship are illustrated by the shared armrest which provided a slight barrier between the couple sitting on the sofa!
One of the most famous examples of a tete-a-tete is this one which was made by John Belter, an American cabinetmaker, around 1850-1860. His extravagant use of carved ornamentation is typical of Rococo Revival style. It is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
In many mid-century modern versions of the tete-a-tete, the shared armrest for modesty is gone – in fact this Edward Wormley tete-a-tete from 1950 looks more like modern double chaises we see today. We saw this one for sale on www.decaso.com for $15,000.
We thought this ultra-contemporary tete-a-tete that we saw on Houzz is a very unique and dynamic art piece, but we could not find any information about where it could be purchased.
The rattan Confident armchair from Maison Drucker that we saw in Elle Décor comes in a range of colorful options as a part of its outdoor bistro seating collection. It is priced at $3912.
For some, two heads may be better than one!
In Art, Colors, Fabrics, Furniture, Interior Design, Modern Design, Seating, Vintage Finds Tags John Belter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edward Wormley, Victorian era, Rococo Revival, Houzz, Confident armchair, Maison Drucker
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Festive opening dates at Cosford (12th December 2014)
If you're looking to escape the hustle and bustle this Christmas, why not visit the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford during the festive period? The Museum will be open daily throughout December from 10am apart from Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. FREE admission.
Not only will you be able to reminisce in the Warplanes Hangar where you can view a wide range of historic aircraft including the world's oldest Spitfire, visitors can get up close to a unique collection of experimental jets including the TSR2 and the Bristol 188.
Step in from the cold into the award winning National Cold War Exhibition, where you will find much more than aircraft on display. The exhibition includes a genuine section of the Berlin Wall, audio visual displays telling the story of the Cold War in a fun and innovative way, plus a collection of military tanks and civilian vehicles - all housed under the wings of Britain's three V Bombers; Vulcan, Victor and Valiant and other aircraft suspended in flying attitudes.
The RAF Museum Cosford is also home to a number of smaller unique exhibitions including Lucky Mascots and RAF Boy Entrants. Plus, in Hangar 1 you will find the 1:1 scale Airfix Spitfire model built by TV Presenter James May and the popular 'Pilots of the Caribbean - Volunteers of African Heritage in the RAF' exhibition. Best of all, if your credit cards are maxed out after Christmas, a visit to the Museum won't cost you a penny as admission is FREE!
So if you're looking to entertain the children in the run up to Christmas, or your nearest and dearest in the lull before New Year, the RAF Museum has something to occupy visitors of all ages. The fun filled area of Fun 'n' Flight will keep the youngsters fascinated, packed with hands on excitement; it's the easy way to answer all those questions about how aircraft stay up in the air. Or, if you're in need of a break from all the cooking, why not treat yourself to a warming meal and freshly brewed cup of Coffee in our Refuel Restaurant overlooking the Museum grounds.
The Museum will close again on New Year's Day and will reopen on Friday 2 January 2015 from 10am until 5pm (last admission 4pm). The Museum’s annual closure week for maintenance, training and cleaning will run from 5-9 January 2015. For further information, please call the Royal Air Force Museum on 01902 376200 or visit the Museum website www.rafmuseum.org. The Museum is open daily from 10am and admission is FREE of charge.
Keep up to date with the latest news and event information by following us on:
Facebook – Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
Twitter @RAFMUSEUM
Instagram – rafmuseum
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022 2630 3125valiacollege@gmail.com
ABOUT VALIA COLLEGE OF COMMERCE AND ARTS
In 1961, it was the spirit of idealism that inspired a group of like minded residents of D. N. Nagar, Andheri(W) to establish a quality educational institution. Thus, was the Cosmopolitan Education Society was born. Under its Aegis, the society runs the Valia College of Commerce and Arts which offers various programmes at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
Over the Years Valia College has grown in strength to achieve a distinctive reputation. Our efforts are aimed at providing a holistic development of the student’s personality which necessarily involves going beyond the cirriculum. The power of dreams continues to be the driving force of our institution.
We are aware that our foundation rests on quality and motivation of our teachers and the quality of infrastructure. The academic excellence cannot be achieved unless best of the facilities are provided and we have a team of teachers who are well qualified, well trained, updated with the advancements in knowledge. It has been our policy to lay highest priorities to these as aspects.
Cosmopolitan’s Valia College was started in 1986 and is permanently affiliated to the University of Mumbai .The college with a total strength of more than 2000 students offers the following graduate and undergraduate programs Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com), Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance)B.Com (A & F),Bachelor of Management Studies (B.M.S.)Bachelor of Mass Media (B.M.M) Bachelor of Science(Information Technology) B.Sc.(IT),Master of Commerce M.Com (Accountancy),Master of Science (Information Technology).
The college also has together with facilities for research under three recognized PhD guides in the subjects of Business Policy and Administration and Management Studies. The college also lays emphasis on a holistic learning experience with our students excelling in curricular and extra- curricular activities.
To provide value based quality education and training in an environment conductive to intellectual, social and cultural enrichment so as to mould responsible citizens with a harmonious blend of Indian traditions and modern technology for a better tomorrow.
“The Empires of the future are the Empires of the mind”
At Valia college we know that our responsibility does not confine to the student community alone, we owe a larger responsibility to society.Our efforts are directed towards creating an environment conducive to learning, that fosters the spirit of inquiry.We hope to contribute towards the creation of global citizens who would strive to make a difference for the better.
*Wishing you success in your life *
Dr. Shobha Menon
PRESIDENT - COSMOPOLITAN EDUCATION SOCIETY
The constant endeavour of the Cosmopolitan Education Society has been quality enhancement.
With our sights aimed at the future, acknowledging the fast growing changes in the world of education today, our efforts are directed towards creating an environment in which talent and skill is nurtured and flourishes. this is what we strive for.
Hard work always bears its rewards- it is a matter of pride for us to congratulate our student Miss. Preeti Matharu who attained the coveted 1 rank at the M.com examinations of the University of Mumbai.
The national conference on “Vision India – the road ahead” gave us an opportunity to play host to luminaries from the world of academia and industry.
These are but two instances of recognition. I am confident that in the years ahead our institution will achieve greater fame and glory.
Shri Himat Valia
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Huge new water main to Surrey nears completion
Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun 09.11.2015
Tunnelling work continues below the Fraser River for the new Port Mann water main in Surrey.
NICK PROCAYLO / PNG
The new $240-million Port Mann water tunnel under the Fraser River has cost Andrew Rule a lot of sleep over the past four years.
But as he stepped out of the red “man cage,” lowered 55 metres by crane to the bottom of the southern shaft of the kilometre-long crossing on Thursday, Rule was breathing a little easier.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” said Rule, contract manager for the Metro Vancouver-commissioned project, as he led journalists through the recently finished tunnel that connects Surrey and Coquitlam.
“We’ve been here four years and it’s really a technically challenging job. You never sleep really when you’ve got crews in the ground. It’s very rewarding to me where we are.”
Metro Vancouver heralded the 3.5-metre wide tunnel as a milestone for its Port Mann water project, which is considered one of the region’s largest and most complex jobs.
The tunnel was commissioned by Metro Vancouver to replace the existing water main that connects Surrey and Coquitlam, after it was damaged in 1997 by excessive river scour.
Construction started in 2011. The tunnel, which is now being fitted with steel liner pipes, is expected to be more resilient, as well as seismically safe because it sits 30 metres below the river bottom, with its two shafts anchored into the rock on the Coquitlam side and dense clay soil on the Surrey side. On Thursday, crews had already installed liner pipes about two-thirds of the way through the tunnel and were welding in the next section.
“We’re standing under the river right now, probably the deepest part,” said Murray Gant, Metro’s senior engineer of major projects. “The tunnel needs to be deep in the glacial soils so it is not affected by a large earthquake.”
While many tunnels have been built under water in Europe, they are few and far between in North America, Gant said, and not nearly as deep.
The Canada Line tunnel under False Creek, for instance, is much shallower.
The project is so significant that Tim Langmaid, construction manager for Hatchmott McDonald, emigrated from the U.K. to Canada to work on it.
Under the best-case scenario, Langmaid said, it was estimated it would take three months to build the tunnel. But the variable glacial soils, consisting of silt, sand, till and hard clay, proved challenging, pushing the project to 16 months. Crews also suffered a setback just 200 metres from the end of the crossing when the boring machine, dubbed Squirrel, broke.
Contractors had a choice: to send in professional divers to assess the machine, or bore a hole and fill it with liquid nitrogen to freeze the site so crews could go in. They chose the latter. It took five months before Squirrel was back in action.
“People around the world, in the U.K. in particular, are aware of this job because of the significance of tunnelling this deep under the river,” Langmaid said. “The biggest single challenge excavating both the shafts and the tunnel was the total lack of experience anyone has of the ground.
“Glacial soils are challenging because it means one minute you are dealing with sand or silt and the next moment you run into a boulder the size of a car. There are no predictions of what you are going to encounter.”
The 2.1-metre water main is slated to be finished by the end of next year, at which time it will carry about a billion litres per day from the Coquitlam reservoir to taps mainly south of the Fraser, Gant said. The existing water main will remain open for another four years to ensure the new tunnel is operating properly.
The Coquitlam reservoir is one of three water sources in Metro Vancouver and provides drinking water to the Tri-Cities south of the Fraser, and as far away as Vancouver’s Little Mountain. The Capilano and Seymour reservoirs on the North Shore provide the bulk of drinking water to the rest of the region through three water mains.
Metro Vancouver has just started designing another tunnel, which would run under the Burrard Inlet, to replace the three water mains from the North Shore. That tunnel would likely be the same depth as the Port Mann tunnel, although twice the size in diameter.
ksinoski@vancouversun.com
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Neighbourhood Watch is a community based crime prevention program which aims to reduce preventable crime such as burglary and theft as well as foster closer community ties. Community and Police work closely together on this program.
The Neighbourhood Watch Queensland (NHWQ) State Office is situated at the Crime Prevention Programs Unit (CPPU), Community Contact Command (CCC), Queensland Police Service (QPS).
The CPPU exists to support the QPS objectives to stop crime, make the community safer and build relationships across the community. The CPPU works with other CCC units to ensure effective community engagement and liaison as well as maintaining appropriate links to support services and community policing programs.
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Sermons >
An Examination Of The Book Of Daniel >
Daniel Chapter 4: The Deterioration Of The Ruler!
Kenneth Humphries
A special character attaches to this chapter from the fact that it contains a communication or letter, written by Nebuchadnezzar himself, and addressed to "all people, nations, and languages, that dwells in all the earth." He had been favoured with many signs from God through Daniel's interpretation of his dream in Daniel Ch.2, and in connection with the deliverance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the power of the flames in Daniel Ch.3, and, under the momentary impressions produced, he had confessed Daniel's God to be a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a Revealer of secrets, and that there was no god that could deliver as the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. His heart, however, was unchanged; but in the narrative before us, which again is both historic and prophetic, we are permitted to see the way in which this idolatrous king is brought at last to "praise and extol and honour the King of Heaven" (Daniel Ch.3v37). Read in its conscience and heart to the testimony which reached him through the prophet Daniel, and that he thus became a servant of the "Most High." The proof of this lies in the royal communication to all his subjects. He desires that every person in his dominions should be made acquainted with his "conversion." The address of the letter has already been noticed; and a salutation, (Peace be multiplied unto you) follows this, which in its form is almost apostolic. Compare 1 Peter 1v2. In Daniel Ch.4vv2-3 he concisely states the object he has in addressing his subjects: "I thought it good to show the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me"; and then his heart overflows in admiration as he recalls what God had wrought, exclaiming, "How great are His signs! And how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation." It is a good thing when the soul is constrained to confess what God has wrought by His grace; for, as the apostle teaches, “if the heart believes unto righteousness, it is with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans Ch.10v10). This is truly a proclamation ending in praise and it is due to God that confession should be made, and when made it turns to a testimony for His glory. Following upon this, he gives his own personal circumstances at the time when this new message from God reached him. "I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace" (Daniel Ch.4v4). He had attained the summit of all human ambition. Monarch of all the kingdoms of the earth, his authority undisputed, prosperous in all his undertakings, with nothing to disturb his tranquility, whether as touching his public or his private affairs; he was in peace in his house, and flourishing in his palace. Everything, in a word, went well with this mighty monarch, so that he might have been, if human prosperity could have given it, in the enjoyment of perfect happiness. And he was, it would seem, happy, but without God. It was from this clear sky; with no premonition of coming trouble that God's warnings suddenly came to arouse the king and to fill him with apprehensions. "I saw a dream," he says, "which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me" (Daniel Ch.4v5). I believe we could say this is a dream ending in difficulty. Such is the translation given by some; and this removes perhaps the ambiguity of the words "at rest," as in connection with his dream and visions they might be thought to mean that he was resting in sleep. The dream did not, as on a former occasion, pass away from his mind; nor did he understand what he had seen, although he was troubled, troubled as he felt that it contained something of momentous import for him and for his kingdom. He therefore at once issued a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon, that they might make known to him the interpretation of the dream (Daniel Ch.4v6). Having proved their incompetence in Daniel Ch.2, and having, at the same time, learned that Daniel alone could unravel his mystery, it may seem strange that Daniel was not immediately summoned into the king's presence. There is no affinity between the natural and the spiritual man. Saul was glad to avail himself of David's services both with his harp and with his sword, and yet he hated him. In like manner, Nebuchadnezzar had profited by Daniel's interpretation; God had spoken to Nebuchadnezzar in several ways, first by the dream vision and then by the remarkable appearance of the Son of God in the fiery furnace, but Nebuchadnezzar’s heart was still hard and rebellious. He, at this moment of time is blatantly refusing to submit to the ruler-ship of the Almighty God. He could not love the one who was the representative before him of the God of heaven. If, therefore, he could do without Daniel he would; and consequently he first tried his own wise men. Again their impotence was manifested. The wisdom of man is confined to earth; but Nebuchadnezzar's dream came from heaven. The subject was one outside of all the thoughts of men, even though it related to the earth. To understand God's things a man must be instructed of God; and this, the wise men of Babylon were not. Foiled in his purpose, the king tells us, "At the last Daniel came in before me, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god," etc. (Daniel Ch.4v8). The next verse plainly shows that Nebuchadnezzar had not forgotten Daniel's ability as an expounder of secrets, although he could not have known the source of his inspiration, nor that he was God's vessel of the spirit of prophecy. He only sent for him, therefore, from necessity, inasmuch as in all his dominions there was no other who could interpret his dream.
On this occasion every particular of the dream was fast rooted in the king's memory, and he proceeded to repeat it to Daniel. It falls into three parts; first, its subject matter, the tree (Daniel Ch.4vv10-12) secondly, the judgment upon the tree (Daniel Ch.4vv13-16) and lastly, the object of the judgment executed (Daniel Ch.4v17). As Daniel takes up all these particulars, we may pass to his interpretation, after noticing, first, the effect on Daniel of the king's recital. When Nebuchadnezzar had explained to him what he had seen in the visions of his head in his bed Daniel Ch.4v19, "Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him." The meaning of the dream was unfolded to his soul as he heard it, and as he comprehended its import in its application to the king, filled with amazement, and troubled, he was reluctant, it would appear, to communicate to him the significance of the dream. This was perceived by Nebuchadnezzar, and he said, "Belteshazzar, let not the dream, or the interpretation thereof, trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, my lord, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies" (Daniel Ch.4v19). It may be questioned whether Daniel, in speaking thus, having received from God the interpretation of the dream, maintained the level of his prophetic office as a messenger from God; and it will be observed that in the record of this sentence the name Daniel is dropped. It is for the first and only time Belteshazzar, not Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, but simply Belteshazzar who answered the king. However this may be, Daniel commenced to give to the king the interpretation of his dream: "The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation: it is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth" (Daniel Ch.4vv20-22). The figure of a tree to denote men in their earthly greatness is often used in the prophets. Ezekiel thus says: "Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations," etc. (Ezekiel Ch.31vv3-9). This striking correspondence helps much to understand the zymology of Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, and enables us to perceive how apt an illustration it is of exaltation in the government of the earth, in the far-reaching, wide-spreading, and sheltering protection it affords to all ranks and conditions of men. The beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven are introduced because both alike had been given into his hand (see Daniel Ch.2v38); and hence they, as well as the children of men, are looked upon as subject to, sustained and protected by, his authority. Well therefore might Daniel say to the king, "Thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth" (Daniel Ch.4v22). A difference between the head of gold in Daniel Ch.2 and the tree here in Daniel Ch 4, in their respective applications, is to be remarked.
Both concern Nebuchadnezzar, as plainly said; but the former includes his dynasty, inasmuch as it is not until his dynasty ends that the second of the four prophetic kingdoms appears. The latter is a symbol of Nebuchadnezzar himself, as is seen by the judgment executed; only, it has to be added, that his degradation is in reality, as may be afterwards explained, typical of the character of the Gentile power in government on to its suppression at the appearing of Christ to establish His kingdom. Having given the application of the symbol, Daniel continued his interpretation: "And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him; this is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most High, which is come upon my lord the king: that they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule" (Daniel Ch.4vv23-26).
Nothing could be more precise than this interpretation, and it is given at length that the reader may perceive how exact in every detail was the fulfillment. It could not be otherwise, inasmuch as it was, through Daniel, a divine exposition of Nebuchadnezzar's vision. It may now be understood why Daniel was tempted, as the judgment impending over the king rose up before him, to say, "The dream be to them that hate thee." It was only the courage which the sense of his mission from God imparted that enabled him thus fearlessly to unroll the scroll of the king's future; and it needed courage for the Jewish captive-prophet to stand before the monarch of the world, and to depict such an overwhelming disaster. Daniel himself would appear to have been moved; for he appealed to the king in words of earnest entreaty, "Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility" (Daniel Ch.4v27). Here is a preacher ending with a pleading. Like Paul with Felix, Daniel reasoned with Nebuchadnezzar of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; but we do not read that the king trembled. The message, however, had been delivered and the appeal made; and the momentous interview between the prophet and the monarch was ended.
In the next place the history of the fulfillment of Daniel's interpretation is given. "All this," he says, "came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar" (Daniel Ch.4v28); and then we have the circumstances under which the threatened judgment was executed. Twelve months had passed, and there is no record that the king had even been troubled by the warning he had received. The sky was still clear, with not a cloud on the distant horizon. This might be a matter of unspeakable surprise if we did not remember that the spectacle of sinners unmoved on the eve of eternal woe greets our eyes every day. Death must come, and judgment will follow, and yet men are careless and heedless. So with Nebuchadnezzar; and hence it is that we read, "at the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon" (Daniel Ch.4v29). And what was the subject of his meditations? His own greatness power, and majesty "The king spake, and said, is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (Daniel Ch.4v30). All this was the glorification of himself; the full-blown pride of the human heart, begotten of his exaltation and prosperity, the pride that goeth before destruction. The source of his power had been communicated to him in Daniel Ch.2; but this he had entirely forgotten in attributing all the glory of his kingdom to himself. Surveying the magnificence of his palace and metropolis, with a heart swelling with pride and exultation, he ascribed all to the might of his own power, and declared that it was all for the honour of his own majesty. God was not in all his thoughts, nor even his own false gods; himself — himself as the source of all his glory, and himself as the object of all his works, bound his vision. What an insight into the heart of man! We are allowed to behold the moral condition of this gigantic tree before it is hewn down according to the divine decree. The similarity between this and the parable of the rich man, whose ground brought forth plentifully, will at once be recalled.
As he congratulated himself upon his prosperity, purposed to enlarge his barns, and contemplated years of selfish enjoyment, the judgment went forth, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke Ch.12vv16-20). In like manner, as Nebuchadnezzar vented the pride of his heart in his foolish boasting, even "while the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, The kingdom is departed from thee" (Daniel Ch.4v31); and then the judgment pronounced by Daniel is repeated by the voice, and immediately executed. For "the same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws" (Daniel Ch4vv32-33). Here is serious humiliation ending in salvation. When God speaks, it is done, and what He commands ever stands fast.
It is now necessary to enquire into the meaning of this judgment; and on examination it will be found that it has three-pronged significance personal, moral, and prophetic. First, then, the personal significance has to be considered. This lies in the fact that what was inflicted upon Nebuchadnezzar was a direct judgment from God for his personal pride, for what might be called his self-deification, and we should not be unaware that God still works in such a manner today. The judgment of God has fallen upon our world in recent days even through an eruption of nature, but like Nebuchadnezzar, it would seem to take a long time sinking in and cause us to repent and turn to God from idols. The pride of man is one of the special objects of God's hatred; and because of its expression in an extreme form in the king of Babylon; he fell under God's judicial hand. There are those who endeavour to account for his condition in a natural way by terming it a special form of madness. Even so, the question returns, where did this judgment come from? The Biblical narrative supplies the answer, an answer recorded by the king himself, that it came from the hand of God as a just judgment upon Nebuchadnezzar's overweening pride and vainglory. Threatened a year before it was inflicted, and space thus having been given for repentance, he has the very words of Daniel recalled to his mind by a voice from heaven, at the very moment when the punitive stroke was about to descend. Entrusted with the government of the earth, God held him accountable, and punished him accordingly, and yet in grace, as well as in righteousness, since the object was to teach him "that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (Daniel Ch.4v32). Next comes the moral significance of what befell Nebuchadnezzar, this if possible, was of more importance. He was driven from men, became as a beast of the earth, for he ate grass as oxen, and in his bodily condition was even worse than the beasts of the field. All this is but expressive of his moral state, and of the character of the power he wielded as dissociated from God. Power is reduced to the condition of the beasts that know not God, and are devoid of man's understanding. The only true privilege of man, that which ennobles him, is that he can look up to God and acknowledge Him. Without this he looks downward, he cannot suffice to himself, he is degraded, pride and independence separate man from God; he becomes a beast, devoid of real intelligence. The physical state of this monarch is therefore a moral picture, and one that should often be pondered, inasmuch as it reveals man's condition according to the estimate of God, when he vaunts his own power, seeks his own glory, and asserts his own independence. But it goes further than the king himself; it embraces also the character of his rule, and of his kingdom. If then the first kingdom in man's hand becomes in Daniel 3 idolatrous, in Daniel 4 it becomes bestial, bestial in the sense of being devoid of all intelligence as dissevered from God, and as looking downward, and feeding only upon the motives and objects of earth. For when man in his exaltation shuts out God from his thoughts, he makes himself his centre and object; he is morally no better than a beast. As the Psalmist says, "Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish" (Psalm Ch.49v20). There is lastly the prophetic significance. "Seven times" were to pass over the king in his degradation before he should be restored. It does not say "years," though probably the "times" mean "years” the expression may appear vague to the skeptic but it is generally accepted this is the true meaning, while the term "seven" gives it a very precise meaning; a perfect period, a period comprises the whole duration of the times of the Gentiles. We gather, therefore, that all the four kingdoms, and these, it will be remembered, embrace the whole period of Gentile rule, will have the same moral character before God; that the power exercised in them will be apart from God, and will be wielded for self, for man, and for earthly objects, without regard to God's thoughts, or responsibility to Him from whom the power has been derived. This is a very solemn consideration, and on many accounts, it shows that no improvement in the governments of the earth is to be expected, and therefore that it is worse than useless, to say nothing of inconsistency with his heavenly calling, for the Christian to embark upon the sea of political agitations, in the hope of securing some amelioration in the state of things around. It is not for one moment denied that man's condition in this world may be improved by just and beneficent laws; but the question remains, will any political changes or legislative enactments alter the moral character either of human governments or of their subjects?
Our chapter, with a host of other scriptures, proclaims that the character of the first kingdom will be repeated in its successors; and it will, as we know from the book of Revelation, be seen without any disguise in the final form of the last of the four prophetic kingdoms. If any one should doubt this statement, let him trace the course of human governments from the days of the kingdom of Babylon up to the present time. Let him wade through the histories of conquests, wars, and dynasties, and then let him ask himself if he could name any period when the power of the throne was held from God, and wielded for God. He will undoubtedly discover that some individual monarchs have been pious men; but he will also have to confess that, whatever their piety, they could not change the course or the character of their governments. The powers that be are ordained of God, and therefore the Christian is to render them all due honour and subjection; but this in no wise militates against the fact that Nebuchadnezzar's condition in its moral aspect, as given in our chapter, depicts the character of the kingdoms which fill up the times of the Gentiles.
Having traced the meanings of Nebuchadnezzar's degradation, we may now consider its effect on himself the "seven times" may also refer to this effect. The period was divinely appointed, and, as in corresponding cases in the typical books, had without doubt regard to the change to be wrought in his soul. His degradation, in other words, was to continue for a perfect period, as indicated by the number seven, until the divinely intended work in his soul should be accomplished. Hence he says, "And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?" (Daniel Ch.4vv34-35). The object of God's dealings with him was attained; for the king had now learnt the lesson appointed him, that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will (Daniel Ch.4vv25-32). Let us, however, examine his confession more particularly. In the judgment with which he had been visited he was as a beast of the earth; and, as we have pointed out, the characteristic of a beast is that it looks downward, and does not possess the intelligence of man. It is, therefore, most interesting to notice that the moment Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes to heaven, his understanding returned. So with the prodigal who had wandered into the far country; his "coming to himself" and his turning to his father's house are connected. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and this statement is illustrated in the experience of the king of Babylon. Turning upward to the hand that had smitten him, he began to understand, for he learnt for the first time his accountability to God. And do remark that the first use he makes of his newly-found understanding is to bless the most High, to praise and honour Him as the eternal God, and as the Sovereign Ruler both in heaven and on earth. This is exceedingly beautiful; and is the sure evidence of what we know as a work of grace in the soul. The character under which he blesses God, "the most high," is also significant. This title is first found in connection with Melchizedek, who is termed the priest of the most High God; and who, blessing Abram on his return from the slaughter of the kings, said, "Blessed be Abram of the most High God, possessor of heaven and earth" (Genesis Ch.14vv18-19). This plainly teaches, as also may be gathered from other scriptures, that this is the title which God will assume in the age to come, when He will, in very deed, possess the earth as well as heaven. In addition, therefore, to the significance of the use of the title by Nebuchadnezzar, who owned thereby that God, though He had committed the sovereignty of the earth to him, yet did according to His will on earth as in heaven, there is also a prophetic meaning. We have already called attention to the fact that Nebuchadnezzar's degradation shadowed forth the character of Gentile rule on to the end; and now we learn that it will be through judgment that the nations will be brought to acknowledge God. We thus read in the prophet Zephaniah, "My determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy. For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent" (Zephaniah Ch.3vv8-9). Daniel had told the king that the kingdom should be sure unto him; after that he had learnt that the heavens do rule. This prediction was also verified; for he further adds: "At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me" (Daniel Ch.4v36). God thus fulfilled His own word by the mouth of His servant; not one jot or title was allowed to fall to the ground; and Nebuchadnezzar joyfully confesses and records the divine faithfulness. And it is no small encouragement in the presence of the pride of power everywhere displayed, and amid all the confusions of earth, to see that God is working through all for the accomplishment of His own purposes, and that in the issue all the Gentiles, as well as His ancient people, will be brought into willing subjection to Christ when He establishes His kingdom, and extends His sway throughout the whole earth.
The chapter closes with another note of praise: "Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment: and those that walk in pride He is able to abase" (Daniel Ch.4v37). Truly, here is a life ending in light. Comparing the Nebuchadnezzar who renders this praise to God with the Nebuchadnezzar who said, as he surveyed the magnificence of his city, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?" etc., we can only exclaim with wonder and amazement, "Look what hath God wrought!" He had indeed shown His power to abase the one who was walking in pride; and, more than this, in abasing him He so effectually changed the heart of the monarch that he turned submissively to the hand that had smitten him, and confessed that all God's works are truth, and His ways judgment. He thus justified God, a sure and unmistakable sign of conversion, and as he justified him, his lips were filled with praise and adoration. It is a lovely picture of the ways of God both in judgment and in grace. A word should be added upon the character in which he here confesses God. He now speaks of Him as the King of heaven; and this is also evidence of his having been divinely taught. When Jehovah had His throne in Jerusalem, He was God of the earth as well as of heaven; but when He had abandoned His throne there, and had committed the sovereignty of the world to the Gentile monarch, He would be known as the God of heaven, and it is to Him as such that Daniel bore testimony before the king Daniel Ch.2vv37-44. But while God had now assumed this title, He in no wise surrendered either His claims to the earth, or the present actions of His power in government; for His object in the judicial stroke that fell upon Nebuchadnezzar was, as we have seen, to teach him, "that the most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever He will." Nebuchadnezzar had confessed this truth; but before he concludes the account of God's dealings with himself he proceeds a step further, and owns Him as the King of heaven.It is exceedingly interesting to trace the various stages in Nebuchadnezzar's history, which led up to this conclusion. In Daniel Ch.2 he confessed to Daniel, "Of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret"; in Daniel Ch.3 he decreed that no one, under the extreme penalties of the law, should speak against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, owning that there was no other god that could "deliver after this sort"; and, lastly, in our chapter, Daniel Ch.4 he acknowledges God as the most High, and as the King of heaven. God thus in His mercy subdued the proud heart of this mighty potentate, and humbling him before Him, made him confess His name before all the inhabitants of his vast empire. If a record of judgment, it is yet a story of unbounded grace.
Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favour those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus. A. W. Tozer.
Edythe Draper, Draper's Book of Quotations for the Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992). Entries 4650-4652.
I feel it incumbent upon me to add as a conclusion to chapter four, the life and character of the author of the book we are studying is clearly evidenced in his writings as a man of deep and unshakable faith and fearless courage. Not only does Daniel set before us a life lived for the glory of God regardless of the consequences but he continually charges us by that very life style to stand up, stand up for truth and be a people who desire to be vessels unto honour in the house of our God. It is relatively easy for us in this day and age to want to fit in with our culture and have a belief that if we bring what we believe down to the level of those who are out of Christ without a Saviour then, we will have greater opportunity to speak to them and indeed lead them to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, what Daniel is saying is, faithfulness first and foremost in all things to our great God is the only way to honour His Holy Name.
The Battleground Of Truth
An Examination Of The Book Of Daniel
The book of Daniel is particularly suited to be a battleground between faith and unbelief; it was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “When ye, therefore, shall see ...
Silence: Our Suffering Saviour Is Speaking!
Reading Luke Chapter 23 v 27-28
All too frequently, when silence would have been golden, some have displaced their inward thoughts with words to the deep, deep, outward and inward, lasting hurt of others. Someone says, ah, but ...
PROPHETIC PROFILE
The Intent Of Biblical Prophecy!
When I think of the intent of Biblical Prophecy I think of the little chorus we often sang in our children's meetings so, oh so, very many years ago! Always it would start ...
Use the Following Code on your site to link to us:
<a title="" href="http://www.treasuredtruthtoday.org/main/">http://www.treasuredtruthtoday.org/main/"><img style="" src="http://www.treasuredtruthtoday.org/main/images/banners/ttt-ministries.jpg">/main/images/banners/ttt-ministries.jpg" alt="Treasured Truth Today Ministries with Kenneth Humphries" /></a>
the Shepherd to the Sheep!
Are You Satisfied With Your Share?
Reading Psalm 23v1: Part 1.
The story is told of a farmer who had lived on the same farm all his life. It was a good farm, but with the passing years, the farmer began to tire of it. He longed for a change--for ...
The Marks of a Miracle and Mighty Church! Pt. 1
Every true Church of Jesus Christ is a Miracle Church and should therefore be a Mighty Church! I mean,the Lord Jesus takes sinners who are at a distance from God and turns them into ...
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China Vietnam's largest trade partner in 5M
Illustrative image (Source:favri.org.vn)
Fruit and vegetable exports to China continue to head upwards.
by Minh Tuyet
5M agri exports at $13.7bn
4M fruit & vegetable exports reach $1 billion
Vegetables exports bring in $8.2 million per day
China was Vietnam’s largest trade partner in the first five months of this year, with turnover of $32.76 billion, up 23.6 per cent year-on-year, according to General Department of Vietnam Customs.
It has increased its imports of fruit and vegetables and seafood from Vietnam. As at the end of May, it had imported fruit and vegetables worth $1.06 billion this year, a 51 per cent increase and accounting for 75 per cent of Vietnam’s exported fruit and vegetables.
Export turnover of fruit and vegetables to other markets such as the US, Japan, and South Korea reached $44 million, $43 million, and $40 million, respectively.
China also imported more seafood from Vietnam, worth $338 million and up 38 per cent.
Though Vietnam exports large quantities of fruit and vegetables to China, export value is low because three-quarters is exported via unofficial channels.
Earlier this month, Deputy of Minister Agricultural and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam asked the Plant Protection Department to complete documents requesting China to only allow Vietnamese exports of these goods via official channels.the US, Japan and South Korea with $44 million, $43 million, and $40 million. In a joint statement from Vietnam and China during President Tran Dai Quang’s visit to the northern neighbor, the two countries agreed to accelerate all legal procedures for the export of Vietnamese fruit and vegetables. Once completed, such exports are expected to grow rapidly.
Other Vietnamese exports to China increased rapidly in the first five months. Computers, electronic products and components, and phones and accessories totaled $2.69 billion, an increase of 85.8 per cent, while footwear totaled $418 million, up 29.1 per cent, and machinery and equipment $672 million, up 84.5 per cent.
Total export turnover to China in the first five months was $10.629 billion, a 42 per cent increase year-on-year.
While growth has been strong, Vietnam still records a major trade deficit with China, of $11.5 billion in the first five months.
South Korea and the US were the second and third-largest trading partners in the first five months, with $23.94 billion, a 45.2 per cent increase, and $19.96 billion, up 12.9 per cent up, respectively.
Of its ten largest trading partners, Vietnam only recorded a trade surplus with the US, of $12.07 billion, the EU $10.03 billion, and Japan $152 million.
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Vietnam's government approves Samsung extra pouring
Photo: Archives
The Korean giant remains the country's biggest single foreign investor.
by Duy Anh
Samsung reveals cause of Galaxy Note7 explosions
Samsung Display invests further $3 billion
FDI disbursement up 6.3 per cent y-o-y
JLL: FDI keeps rolling in
The Vietnamese government has agreed to Samsung Display Vietnam’s (SDV) plan to pour an additional $2.5 billion into its AMOLED module plant in the northern province of Bac Ninh.
According to SDV’s plan, the firm will carry out the expansion for five years starting in 2018, bringing the sum to be invested in this project to $6.5 billion and making it the largest project invested in by the South Korean giant. “Government approval will be officially announced soon,” said Minister-Chairman of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung at a press meeting on February 3.
The provincial government earlier asked for government permission to offer tax incentives for the additional investment, which will enable the project to be classified as large-scale project. The plan for expansion is likely to be finalized as soon as the first quarter of 2017, according to local media.
Samsung Display in 2014 set up the factory to assemble AMOLED panels into modules for use by Samsung Electronics' smartphone factories in Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen, which is also in northern Vietnam. The AMOLED panels are transported from its factories in South Korea. The South Korean company has dominated the global supply of smartphone AMOLED panels. In order to maintain the market status and viewing that Apple is very likely to adopt AMOLED panels for the new iPhone to be launched in 2017, Samsung Display plans to expand the factory of AMOLED modules in Vietnam.
Companies setting up plants in Vietnam, such as Samsung Electronics, are transforming the country into a manufacturing hub for electronics goods, including smartphones. From a trade deficit of $3.5 billion in 2015, Vietnam returned with a trade surplus of $2.68 billion in 2016. Wage cost competitiveness is the key reason it’s attracting capital away from countries with worsening demographic transitions in East Asia. Institutional reforms have also contributed to making Vietnam more foreign investor friendly. Revised investment and enterprise laws have cut the time needed to establish a new business. Lower corporate income tax rates and streamlined payments have also helped.
South Korean companies have deployed 592 projects worth a combined $8.6 billion in Bac Ninh, accounting for 65.6 per cent of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) in the province. Samsung has been the largest single foreign investor in Vietnam, with its investments totaling some $15 billion. This is not the first time the Korean giant has asked for incentives for its projects in the country.
The FDI sector continues to lift Vietnam upwards, with it making a contribution of more than 20 per cent to GDP growth since 2010. Last year, disbursed FDI rose by 9 per cent to a record $15.8 billion and committed FDI increased 7.1 per cent, to $24.4 billion. The Foreign Investment Agency at the Ministry of Planning and Investment announced that 2,547 FDI enterprises bought stakes of more than 50 per cent in Vietnamese companies or in conditional investment sectors last year, totaling $3.425 billion.
But while exports rely heavily on specific FDI enterprises, the technology absorption and enhancement of human capital that Vietnam was supposed to acquire from FDI inflows are nowhere to be found. Vietnam’s workforce is largely engaged in the final assembly of products for export, which are primarily low value-added, labor-intensive and use low-level technologies.
The foreign sector plays a crucial role in the Vietnamese economy, but considerable tax incentives granted to overseas investors may lead to distortions of the overall investment climate, the World Bank has said in a report.
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Torbay Liberal Democrats Demanding better for Torquay, Paignton and Brixham.
Your Local Team
Council bows to Libdem pressure and rescinds decision to end funding for HIV support
Posted by Nick Ford | Updated 2017-08-07
Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council have welcomed the decision by the council to rescind its decision to end, on the 30th September the Torbay public health funding of local provision of advocacy, care and support for people who have been diagnosed with HIV and their carers and family members and redirect them to nationally available digital provision and help lines as appropriate.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council, Steve Darling, said : “We are cautiously welcoming this news. We are concerned that it may be a stay of execution for the support to this vulnerable group of people in Torbay. We are shocked that it appears the council failed to do their homework on this and was forced by the Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council to call a halt to these proposals when it became apparent that the decision would be the subject of public scrutiny.”
The Torquay councillor went on to say: “We will continue to be vigilant for any further threats to this service.”
Mayor wants to reduce funding to Investment Committee
Mayor is wrong to limit Investment Committee’s potential say Torbay Libdems.
Torbay’s mayor is once again at loggerheads with his own Conservative colleagues over his plans to put less money into Torbay’s investment committee than what is being asked for.
In July’s council meeting the mayor’s recommendation to approve the Investment Fund Strategy was objected to on the basis that the amount of money within the Investment fund should see a much bigger increase than the additional £50 million set out in the recommendation and that the level of authority delegated to the investment committee should be higher than proposed by the mayor.
Despite the objection, the mayor is expected to stand-by his original recommendation at this Tuesday’s meeting setting him at odds with members of his own party as well as the Liberal Democrats.
Proposed "New Wards" in Torbay give electoral advantage to the Conservatives
Torbay Council have published (Wednesday 19 July) their proposals for new wards in Torbay. Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council have branded Conservative proposals for new wards in Torbay as gerrymandering. While the majority of wards stay the same the most controversial Tory proposals cut the community of Ellacombe in half resulting in an increase in the size of safe conservative seat Wellswood ward from 2 to 3 councillors. This Tory meddling also sees parts of Brixham cast off into the Churston with Galmpton ward.
Liberal Democrat ward councillor for Ellacombe, Cindy Stocks, said: “The Local Government Commission want any new wards to reflect communities. Despite this, the proposal to cut Ellacombe in half flies in the face of the principle. The ward and parish of Ellacombe sit in a natural combe and was originally Ellacombe Farm. The natural ridge of the Warberries copse makes a natural boundary. The community faces the town centre and so it is more logical for any expansion of the ward to include this part of Torquay rather than going over the other side of the hill."
Cllr Steve Darling, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Torbay Council, said: “We have worked with officers and have developed a proposal that more accurately reflects the way that Ellacombe and Torquay town centre interact. This new ward of Ellacombe and Torquay Central exactly hits the target of numbers of electors to councillors that the commission wish to see. It also more closely reflects the topography of Torquay and the way that people live their lives.”
A second amendment to be put by Paignton Liberal Democrat councillors would see the historic high street of Winner Street included in the Clifton with Maidenway ward. Liberal Democrat Paignton ward councillor Ian Doggett said: “Town centres can generate a lot of work for councillors from the traders. We felt that by including Winner Street in the mostly residential Clifton with Maidenway ward we could share the burden."
Contact Cindy Stocks 07787766544
Steve Darling 07736658666
Ian Doggett 07 01803 555025
Libdem councillors demand sight of Planning Services report
The leader of the Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council, Steve Darling, said: “We were promised copies of the action plan to tackle the issues identified in this report weeks ago, but we have not received this information. I also shared my concerns at the last Full Council that this report was being hushed up. I am now demanding that the report is released under the Freedom of Information Act. “
He went on to say: “Planning is a public service and we as Liberal Democrats believe that as the public purse has paid for a review of a service then the public should have sight of the findings.”
New Member of Torbay Council
Despite there having been no local elections in Torbay there will be a new face at this week's Full Council meetings.
A few weeks ago, Coral, Cllr Mandy Darling’s guide dog retired and was rehomed by fellow Liberal Democrat councillor Adrian Sanders. Now, following a period of intensive training, Cllr Darling returns to the Council chamber with a new dog, Pepsi, who was set to attend her first council meeting on Tuesday 9th May.
This is Cllr Mandy Darling’s fourth guide dog. Mandy said: “It is always difficult saying goodbye to a dog who has enabled my independence for many years, but Coral deserves her retirement. Pepsi, a 21 month black Labrador/retriever cross, is a real live-wire and, like Coral, works really well. I am looking forward, with the assistance of Pepsi, to getting out into the streets of the ward I represent, the heart of Torquay.”
Contact Cllr Mandy Darling 07736 6586666
Torbay Council to back formation of Housing company
At the Full Council meeting to be held on the 6th of April, Liberal Democrat councillors on Torbay Council are set to back the next step in the establishment of a housing company in Torbay, The project is mostly driven by the need for the Council to generate income in the light of the savage cuts to all council budgets by the national Conservative government. The company would build its own homes for sale and rent and could intervene in the housing market in Torbay to tackle inequalities.
Torbay Council hopefully to build more afforable housing
Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council have welcomed a decision at last week’s Full Council meeting to take the next step in enabling the local authority to start building houses and flats in the bay for sale and rent. This is possible because the council can borrow the money at historically low rates of interest and use this to help meet housing needs in the bay.
The Liberal Democrat group leader, Steve Darling, said: "This is something we have been campaigning for the council to do for many years. The reason why the council have come round to this idea is to provide an income- generating stream, but if handled correctly this can achieve much much more, such as opportunities for employment and training, as well as opportunities for local businesses. Because we have less than half the national average of units of affordable social housing in Torbay the deficiency has mostly been filled by poor quality private housing. With the council engaging in the rented housing market there is an opportunity to raise standards by it potentially becoming the landlord of choice. "
Planning meetings should be when working people can attend
Torbay Lib Dems call for Planning meetings to take place at time when working people can attend.
Impact of Brexit on Torbay
With a continuing lack of leadership from the national Conservative government, Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council, at the Full Council meeting on 22 September, are set to challenge the Conservative and UKIP-controlled administration to get a grip on the changes that will face Torbay in a world outside the EU. In a motion to Full Council the opposition Liberal Democrats lay out a clear agenda for the council to follow.
Paignton Liberal Democrat councillor Adrian Sanders said: "The public have given the government a clear instruction to negotiate the UK's exit from the EU. While the government cannot prevaricate or hesitate, they must be careful to take into consideration the effects on local areas that have benefited from EU support and the free movement of workers and students.
Torbay's tourism and care industry, NHS services and language schools have all benefited greatly, as have a number of infrastructure projects that might not otherwise have received UK funding alone, from Brixham Fish Quay to the South Devon Highway.
Torbay Council needs to take a lead representing the interests of the businesses and people who could lose out significantly if the government overlooks them in the long and complex process of negotiating the terms of our exit. These terms should be put to the people for approval when completed."
Air show cost
Liberal Democrats on Torbay Council are set to reject a call by the Conservative-controlled council to bankroll the Torbay Air Show following its £250,000 loss this year.
The three year commitment would see the underwriting of the project to the tune of £211,000. The opposition group on Torbay Council are also concerned that there is no contingency plan in case the event is washed out by bad weather.
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Landowners in Summit and Stark Counties Now Facing Lawsuits for NEXUS Pipeline Surveys
As has happened in other counties in Ohio, the company behind the NEXUS pipeline is taking to the courts to get a warrant to conduct surveys on the land of residents who have refused to grant permission. In the Summit County city of Green in particular the opposition to the project has been fierce, with the company feeling the necessity to send security personnel with the surveyors as they carry out their work due to threats that have been received.
A Texas-based pipeline company intends to file lawsuits on Thursday against Summit County residents who have refused to allow the company’s surveyors.
Nexus Gas Transmission LLC notified residents of Green and New Franklin of the impending legal action in notices delivered to their homes on Wednesday.
The company said it intends to seek temporary restraining orders in Summit County Common Pleas Court to allow access to the private property for its surveyors for the proposed Nexus Pipeline that will cross northern Ohio.
The company said that such denials are causing problems in preparing plans for the $2 billion pipeline.
Efforts to contact the company about the number of suits that will be filed were unsuccessful.
Attorney David Mucklow, who lives in Green and has been active against the pipeline, said he intends to file legal papers opposing the company’s request, after the Nexus request is filed.
UPDATE (8/6/15 2:49 P.M.):
The Akron Beacon Journal reports that 91 landowners in Summit County are named in the lawsuit, which was filed today.
Likewise, from the Canton Repository:
NEXUS Gas Transmission has sued several Stark County landowners for permission to survey their property for a proposed natural gas pipeline.
The company says the landowners, who control 11 parcels, have refused to allow surveys.
NEXUS Gas Transmission filed the lawsuit Friday. Stark County Common Pleas Judge Taryn Heath has scheduled a hearing for Aug. 13.
NEXUS says it has the right under Ohio law to survey the properties and is asking the court to give surveyors immediate access. The company has taken similar action against landowners in other counties.
Many of the similar lawsuits filed in the state have resulted in the pipeline company receiving access to the properties in question, although in Medina County a judge ruled in favor of the landowners.
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Biochar producing through rural households in Bangladesh
03rd-Jun-2016
Mohammad Younus Ali, Manikganj :
Bangladesh is the most densely populated mainland country in the World, with over 1,200 people per square kilometre, having a ‘lower middle income’ of 1466 $US/yr per capita gross national product (reported BBS April 2016). The country is under energy stress, and twenty-five million households use biomass fuel for cooking of which 40 per cent is wood, with the remaining 60 per cent being a combination of cow dung and poor quality loose plant residues.
Using dung and rice straw for fuel, rather than leaving them in agricultural fields is a causing decrease in soil organic matter, and lowering crop yields. Climate change will make the situation worse, because a 1-m rise in sea level could reduce the land area by 20 per cent, and extreme weather will bring longer droughts and heavier rains. The problems faced by the people of Bangladesh are immense, and require multiple solutions. CCDB (Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh) has been fostering since 2013 the Bangladesh Biochar Initiative (BBI, www.biochar-bangladesh.org) is advancing a two-pronged program that will help the energy issue with efficient gasifier cook stoves, whilst simultaneously producing biochar/charcoal.
Biochar is defined simply as charcoal that is used for agricultural purposes. It created using a pyrolysis process, heating biomass in a low oxygen environment. Once the pyrolysis reaction has begun, it is self-sustaining, requiring no outside energy input. Once it is produced, biochar is spread on agricultural fields and incorporated into the top layer of soil. Biochar has many agricultural benefits. It increases crop yields, sometimes substantially if the soil is in poor condition. It helps to prevent fertilizer runoff and leeching, allowing the use of less fertilizers and diminishing agricultural pollution to the surrounding environment. And it retains moisture, helping plants through periods of drought more easily. Most importantly, it replenishes exhausted or marginal soils with organic carbon and fosters the growth of soil microbes essential for nutrient absorption, particularly mycorrhizal fungi. This 2,000 year-old practice converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security, and increase soil biodiversity, and discourage deforestation. The process creates a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water. This biochar can be used as for increasing the productivity of agricultural and horticultural soils. The BBI is promoting gasifiers and biochar for households. If the technology is adopted, the outcome will be a reduced use of biomass fuels, lower indoor air pollution, and improve household food security and income.
Biochar technology for Bangladesh
The BBI was founded in 2013 to foster the use of charcoal for enhancing agricultural production. Canadian scientist Prof Dr Julian Winter and CCDB Development Policy Advisor Md Mahbubul Islam invented this low cost TLUD (Top-Lit-Up-Daft) gasifier cookstove, agriculture friendly cookstove Akha recently with locally available material. Biochar (charcoal) can be made in a natural draft, top-lit updraft gasifier (ND·TLUD) cookstove.
This agriculture friendly cook stove Akha mechanism and the basic principle of an ND·TLUD is quite simple. Fuel is loaded into a vertical cylinder that has holes in the bottom to permit the entry of a small amount of air. The fuel is lit at the top, and the fire progresses downward through the fuel bed to the bottom of the cylinder. Because the bottom air supply is limited, there is not enough oxygen to burn the fuel to ash, so as the fire moves downward, it leaves charcoal above the ignition front, and produces a lot of smoke. The smoke is flammable. It rises to the top of the cylinder where it is ignited in a gas burner, and produces most of the heat for cooking. Because the smoke is burned, polluting emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and soot are very low. Once the fire reaches the bottom of the cylinder, it starts to burn the charcoal from the bottom-up. This is not the best way to burn charcoal, because burning charcoal at the bottom of a TLUD is not that efficient for cooking, so it is better to save it for a charcoal-burning stove. Also, charcoal has other uses, such as biochar. Therefore, the charcoal is usually removed from the cylinder, and the fire quenched. The yield of charcoal is around 15 to 25 per cent of ash-free, dry fuel. If cooking is to continue, the stove is reloaded and the cycle repeated. For a cylinder that is 30cm tall, a burning cycle can last from fifteen minutes to more than one hour (depending on the amount of air that enters the bottom of the cylinder and on the bulk density of the fuel).
Biochar technology in community level
Recently (May 3-4, 2016) in Shivalay, Manikganj held an event on biochar technology orientation and demonstration the participants focused on the priority on homesteads rather than on agricultural fields, biochar will have its most immediate and greatest impact. First, there is the simple logistics: making enough biochar for hectares of farm land is an industrial problem, whereas biochar for a garden can be made in a home as a byproduct of cooking. Secondly, fruits and vegetables are crops with the highest economic and nutritional value. Thirdly, homesteads have organic wastes that can be used for soil fertility management. Fourth, wood is an excellent feedstock for cookstove-biochar, and homesteads have the most sustainable and productive forestry in a county where, generally, forest cover is low. Fifth, but not least, applied at the household level, the benefits can be most widely distributed over the population. Distribution of the technology to homesteads is of particular importance for indigenous peoples who are culturally more dependent on their natural surroundings.
Co-inventor of this TLUD gasifier Akha M M Islam said that this kind of cookstove is fuel efficient in cooking and automatically producing Biochar as by product. Biochar is very helpful for soil amendment and increase soil fertility and precious inputs for agriculture sector. This Chula is helping healthy environment in kitchen, make clean cooking helping for women and children health, easy to use through any kind of biomass, less smoke and less expensive. It reduces carbon dioxide during cooking and helping reducing carbon in air (Green House Gas) and mitigating climate change, and it’s by product Biochar is helpful for soil fertility; purify water from salinity and arsenic. This invention has potential and opportunity for micro enterprise development in rural areas and livelihoods for marginalized people in CCDB working areas.
The participants explained during demonstration such as they are astonished at how a ND·TLUD works, impressed by how fast it cooks, and how little fuel it uses compared to traditional chulhas. ND·TLUDs, however, have a distinct advantage over other stoves given that they make charcoal. That could make all the difference for stove adoption. People already know the value of charcoal as fuel, but getting them to use it as biochar will need educational gardens, and peer-to-peer exchanges of experience. It will be necessary to demonstrate the use of biochar in waste management, horticulture, and to show the consequent improvement in crop yields. Even so, the idea of adding charcoal to soil is not entirely foreign, because people already fertilize soil with cookstove ashes.
Biochar and Livlihoods
The long term objective of introducing TLUD/biochar technology is to improve household food security and income, and foster community commerce. The effect on households of the TLUD/biochar cookstove will improve household air quality, and provide charcoal for various uses. In the homestead garden, biochar could be used to increase the efficiency of nutrient cycling through composting systems. Applying biochar- compost to soil will increase crop yields, and some of that effect will be permanent. Charcoal also has commercial value, and can provide a source of household cash to buy other commodities such as food, clothing, medicines, educational materials, and solar collectors. Surplus fruits and vegetables can also provide income. The net effect on the household should be improved health, nutrition, and financial status. The application of modern stove science to develop locally-made ND·TLUD stoves is important for creating jobs, and sustainable household cooking. The stoves are sustainable if they have no, or minimal requirements for imported materials, create no waste, and are designed for renewable fuels. Improving air quality, increasing cooking efficiency, and producing charcoal for use in food production will have profound effects in Bangladesh.
Small is powerful
If one household burning 3kg of wood per day produced 0.6kg of biochar per day, they would have 18kg of biochar per month. For a village of 500 households, that could amount to 108,000 kg biochar per year. Across the landscape, the people of Bangladesh could become the World’s largest per capita sequesters of carbon. This is, as a by-product of cooking without cutting any additional forest. n
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Regional Expertise
Items tagged with: North America
The End of U.S. Leadership on Human Rights?
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Home / concert / il divo / music / news / resorts world genting / tour / Il Divo making “Timeless” stops in Singapore and Malaysia
Il Divo making “Timeless” stops in Singapore and Malaysia
TheHIVE.Asia Sunday, August 19, 2018 concert, il divo, music, news, resorts world genting, tour
Il Divo is set to perform not only in Malaysia, but also Singapore, this October!
The singing group is taking their brand new “Timeless Tour” to both countries in celebration of their 15th Anniversary milestone.
Here are the details for their concert in Malaysia:
Venue: Arena of Stars, Resorts World Genting
Date: 7 October 2018
Time: 8.30pm
Ticket prices for Il Divo “Timeless Tour Live in Genting 2018” are RM846 (VIP), RM646 (PS1), RM446 (PS2), RM286 (PS3) and RM146 (PS4).
However, from 22 to 24 August, a ‘Merdeka Flash Deal’ will see PS1, PS2 and PS3 ticket prices slashed to RM452.20, RM312.20 and RM200.20, respectively.
More details on Il Divo’s concert in Malaysia can be found on Genting's website.
And here are the details for their Singapore concert:
Venue: The Star Theatre at The Star Performing Arts Centre
Tickets for Il DIVO “Timeless Tour Live in Singapore 2018” are priced at SGD278, SGD238, SGD198, SGD168, SGD138 and SGD98 (excluding booking fee), and can now be purchased at all SISTIC counters, via hotline 63485555 and online at www.sistic.com.sg.
VIP Meet and Greet packages are also available from SISTIC.
Don’t miss your chance to catch Il Divo in Singapore once again!
Il Divo is the first Classical Crossover artists to have an album debut at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. Furthermore, they are listed by the Guinness Book of World Records (2006) as the most commercially successful classical crossover group in international music history, having sold an impressive 30 million albums worldwide and collected 160 gold and platinum awards in over 33 countries.
“Love Me Tender”, “What A Wonderful World”, “Smile”, “All Of Me” and a brand new interpretation of Adele’s Hit “Hello” in Spanish (“Hola”) are some of the songs fans can look forward to at Il Divo’s latest tour.
Hương Mai September 30, 2018 at 3:50 PM
I'm full of the joys of spring when see your new posts.They are very useful and interesting. I'm so grateful for all that you've done.
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The Omate TrueSmart is a smartwatch, which has been funded by crowd funding platform Kickstarter. It's one of the first and few smartwatches which doesn't act as a companion-watch to a smartphone only but is instead running a full version of Android 4.2.2 (AOSP) with Omate UI 2.0 on top. Being a mobile phone by itself, it also allows to make calls, as well as it is data enabled. It's powered by a MediaTek dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU at 1.0 MHz and either comes with 512 MB or 1 GB (Extreme Edition) of RAM and 4 GB or 8 GB (Extreme Edition) of flash memory which can be expanded through a microSD memory card. It supports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as singleband UMTS/HSPA+ at either 1900 MHz (US) or 2100 MHz (Europe).
Furthermore, the Omate TrueSmart supports Bluetooth 4.0 as well as WiFi b/g/n at 2.4 GHz. The 1.54" sapphire crystal glass protected TFT IPS multi-touch capacitive touchscreen has a resolution of 240 × 240 pixel 1.54". The 3 megapixel camera, which is located on the right between the two hardware buttons, allows to record 720p videos. Since the TrueSmart is a fully fledged smartphone, it has a audio speaker as well as a microphone.
The Omate TrueSmart measure 45 × 45 × 14 mm and weights, including the SIM card, microSD memory card and 600 mAh Li-Ion battery 108 g.
The TrueSmart is IP67-certified and waterproof and dustproof. The case is steel alloy while the non-removable straps are silicone. The wrist wraps are not replaceable since the 2G/3G as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS antennas are integrated into the straps.
The Omate TrueSmart comes with a charging-cradle, a USB to micro USB cable, a screwdriver and a couple of replacement screws, since the screws which are used for the battery and SIM card cover are really tiny and can therefore be easily lost. To charge the TrueSmart, it has to be placed in the cradle. However, the cradle hides the two side buttons which makes it impossible to turn on the screen.
Omate said that it has shipped all 512 MB RAM TrueSmart to its Kickstarter backers. At the moment, the company is shipping the 1900 MHz Extreme Edition to its US backers while shipping of the 2100 MHz Extreme Editon should start soon as well.
The Kickstarter Editions were available from US$ 179 to US$ 229. While yet not available, the Omate TrueSmart is available for pre-order but costs now between US$ 249 (512 MB RAM / 4 GB flash memory) and US$ 299 (Extreme Edition with 1 GB RAM / 8 GB flash memory).
Cheers ~ Arne
Thanks to Omate for the Review Unit
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Clinton Think Tank Readies for 2016
As Hillary Clinton ponders a 2016 presidential run, a hugely influential Washington think tank in gearing up for battle to promote and defend her.
Here is more from Time:
...Her [Hillary Clinton's] unofficial apparatus already includes...a think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), ready to work up white papers and field-test applause lines.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on CAP being a launch-pad for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on CAP offering access to Clinton for $250,000.
CAP, which may be Clinton's favorite think tank, is also hugely close to President Obama and a variety of powerful Democrats.
CAP was just ranked by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings as the 30th best think tank in the world, and it has climbed the ranks to become the US's 10th best think tank.
Flashback on UPenn think tank rankings: "It will take at least one more decade to refine tools to further measure think tanks."
Wilson Center comments on its wins in the 2014 UPenn think tank rankings.
Craig Zelizer: Key policy institutions and think tanks in peacebuilding and related fields.
WSJ: Think tanks = geeky institutions with opinions.
China Daily: 36 private think tanks founded in China from 2003-2012.
Does Russia fall behind in think tanks? Only four Russian think tanks in top 100 list.
Rep. Allyson Schwartz leaves Third Way.
Cool Map: Number of think tank in the world by region (2012-2013 comparison).
40% of Chinese think tanks have strong backing from government or military.
CPSSA annual conference has talk on student run think tanks.
Think Tanks Advising Obama on SOTU Speech
It's that time of year again for the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address, and as usual, think tanks are providing a variety of talking points for the President.
Here is more from the Washington Post:
Senior administration officials have been meeting with think-tank experts, administration alumni, Democratic strategists and others before the State of the Union — an outreach described by White House officials as more intensive than in the past. “After five years,” said one adviser, “it’s good to get some fresh eyes on the target.”
One of the think tanks that will likely have a large fingerprint on President Obama's talking points: Washington Center for Equitable Growth (WCEG), a new think tank focusing on income inequality that was founded by John Podesta, who was recently named as a top advisor to President Obama.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on WCEG. Politico notes that WCEG is one of the think tanks that has compiled a list of possible unilateral executive actions that President Obama can take to bypass the gridlocked Congress. The new think tank is housed within the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP).
Following is a look at some advice and analysis that think tanks are giving about this year's State of the Union address:
John Hudak of Brookings: Obama should encourage Congressional earmarks.
Amy Liu of Brookings: Don't back down on trade in the SOTU.
Lloyd Green of Brookings: A GOP SOTU would still be off message.
Thomas Mann of Brookings: Why the SOTU matters, even if it doesn't.
Marc Thiessen of American Enterprise Institute (AEI): In his SOTU address, President Obama will try to turn the page on the controversies of 2013 and shift to new topics. Good luck with that.
Heritage Foundation's pre-SOTU Twitter chat.
Amy Payne of the Heritage Foundation: 7 things the President and Congress can do after SOTU.
Matt Lee-Ashley and Jessica Goad of CAP: Why President Obama should discuss conservation for the first time in his SOTU address.
Lawrence Korb of CAP: The state of our union? Dull.
CAP's recommendations for President Obama's energy and environmental to-do list in the SOTU.
Karla Walter and David Madland of CAP: Obama should use the SOTU to hold accountable federal contractors that harm workers and shortchange taxpayers.
CAP: Eight actions young Americans want to hear Obama discuss in his SOTU address.
Josh Bivens of Economic Policy Institute (EPI): What to look for in the SOTU.
A variety of university and think tank scholars are pushing for Obama to address the minimum wage in the SOTU.
Cato Institute is live-blogging the State of the Union speech.
Details Emerge: 1st-Ever Africa Think Tank Summit
Here are more details from The Daily Pennsylvanian:
Penn staff and students are organizing the first-ever think tank summit in Africa.
Penn International Relations’ Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, directed by James McGann, is working with student interns to bring representatives from African think tanks together for the first time. The three-day conference will take place in Pretoria, South Africa between Feb. 3 and Feb. 5.
The African summit is one of several conferences TTCSP is organizing around the world and follows a Middle Eastern and North African summit, which was held in Istanbul in December.
While TTCSP had expected 40 or 50 think tanks to register for the conference, McGann said that currently 71 organizations have decided to attend. He added that this “overwhelming” interest means the summit will almost definitely become a yearly event.
The summit will consist of panel presentations and round-table discussions under the working title “Think Tanks and the Transformation of Africa.” TTCSP’s Global Summit Intern Coordinator Erin McCabe, a graduate student in the School of Social Policy & Practice, said the role of TTCSP at the summit will be that of “a neutral party but also an authoritative voice.”
The organization aims to help unlock the potential in Africa’s diversity by “fortifying the think tanks” so they can have “fertile resources to stay alive and stay active,” she said.
The just-released University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings says that there are 1,123 think tanks in Africa (including the non-African Middle East). The Middle East and North Africa have 16.46% of the world's total think tanks. North America and Europe have nearly 60% of the world's think tanks. With 88 think tanks, South Africa has the largest number of think tanks in Africa.
Demos To Get Woman President
The liberal-leaning think tank Demos announced today that Heather McGhee will take over as the new president starting on March 10, 2014.
She will be replacing current president Miles Rapoport, who is leaving to head the public interest group Common Cause. Rapoport led Demos for 13 years.
Ms. McGhee is currently the Vice President for Policy & Outreach at Demos, which is based in New York.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on women running think tanks. Last year, Foreign Policy noted that 42 of the top 50 think tanks in the US are run by men.
Neera Tanden, who leads one of the top 50 US think tanks (Center for American Progress), congratulated Heather McGhee on Twitter. Said Tanden: "Proud to have another sister run a think tank & especially one so devoted to justice."
A variety of other people praised the announcement, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Jeff Merkley (R-OR), President of Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Lawrence Mishel, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, International President of SEIU Mary Kay Henry, and MSNBC host Chris Hayes.
Demos, founded in 2000, was just ranked by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings as the 53rd best think tank in the US.
Cool Map: Number of Think Tanks in the World
From the University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.
Sen. Schumer Uses CAP to Launch New Plan to "Destroy" the Tea Party
From BusinessInsider:
Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will outline on Thursday a new plan that he says will undermine the conservative wing of the Republican Party by driving a wedge between its wealthy donors and the rank-and-file members of the "Tea Party."
Schumer, one of the Senate Democratic caucus' top political strategists, will discuss the plan in a speech at the left-leaning Center for American Progress on Thursday. He will argue that the Tea Party has a "fundamental flaw," and that Democrats can exploit it, according to a preview of his speech.
Center for American Progress (CAP), which has close ties to the Obama Administration, was ranked as the 30th best think tank in the world by the 2013 University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was ranked as the 11th best think tank in the US. It was also ranked as the 2nd best think tank in the world in terms of best use of the Internet or social media.
China's Think Tanks Lack Quality?
Hot off the press from UPI:
China has the world's second-largest number of think tanks after the United States, but experts question their quality.
A report by the think tank and civil societies program at the University of Pennsylvania said China had 426 think tanks as of August of last year, compared to the United States' 1,828, but only six of the Chinese institutions ranked among the top 100 worldwide. The rankings were determined by the think tanks' academic successes and global influence.
The country's top rated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing got only the 20th rating on the world list, which was topped by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. The top 10 positions were taken by U.S. and European institutions.
This leads us to another question. Are the University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings biased towards the US and Europe? Think Tank Watch is aware of other think tank "rankings" outside of the US, but none are as comprehensive as the one compiled by UPenn.
Sunder Katwala on the role that journalism plays within think tanks.
Heritage Foundation video: Just how much is $1 trillion?
Jill Biden speaks at CAP on Feb. 5 about caregiving beyond parenting (postponed on Jan. 22).
Congressional Moneyball: Brookings uses sports-inspired stats to rank lawmaker effectiveness.
Brookings wins Bunkun Grand Prize for shoddiest educational research for 2013.
Three ways creating a "think tank" will improve your company.
New American Foundation analysis finds NSA surveillance programs had minimal impact in 225 terrorism cases since 9/11.
Will Ken Cuccinelli join a think tank?
Townhall: "Study by Brookings finds Sen. Harry Reid and Democrats responsible for gridlock."
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) speak at Brookings Social Mobility Summit.
Ben Bernanke Headed to Think Tank Land?
Is one of Washington's premier think tanks about to land one of the most powerful people in the world?
Speculation is hot that Ben Bernanke is headed to think tank land once he steps down from the Federal Reserve at the end of this month. More specifically, Brookings could be his think tank of choice.
Here is more from The Wall Street Journal:
The stars could be aligning for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to join the Brookings Institution after his term ends at the end of the month.
Mr. Bernanke was the featured speaker at an event sponsored by Brookings last week, his last public appearance as Fed chairman. His friend and former deputy, Donald Kohn, has been a senior fellow at Brookings since leaving the Fed in 2010. And Brookings has recently established a new center on monetary and fiscal policy, called the Hutchins Center, with $10 million in funding from Glenn Hutchins, a founder of Silver Lake Partners, an investment fund. Mr. Hutchins also is a director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mr. Bernanke plans to write books and give speeches after he leaves the Fed, and has said he plans to remain in Washington.
Brookings, a Washington think tank, has been keen to land Mr. Bernanke and has had talks with him about it, said people familiar with the discussions. If he does plan to make a move there, he likely wouldn’t announce it until after his business at the Fed is finished. The Fed has a policy meeting Jan. 28-29 and his term ends Jan. 31.
But Think Tank Watch is not as sure about Mr. Bernanke going to Brookings as it was about Brookings being the #1 think tank (again, and again, and again) in the just-released University of Pennsylvania 2013 Global Go-To Think Tank Index.
In that report, released today, Brookings was rated as the world's best think tank, the US's top think tank, the top domestic economic policy think tank, the top education policy think tank, the top foreign policy and international affairs think tank, the top international development think tank, the top international economic policy think tank, the top social policy think tank, the best managed think tank, the think tank with the best use of social networks, the think tank with the best external relations/public engagement program, and the think tank with the most significant impact on public policy, to name a few.
Think Tank Watch wrote about Bernanke joining a think tank the spring of last year in this post. Think Tank Watch noted at that time that former Federal Reserve officials are scattered at various think tanks, such as Brookings, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). More recently, as we have noted, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been on a central banker "binge."
Here is more on Ben Bernanke's speech at Brookings Here is more on why Brookings is looking pretty darn good to Ben Bernanke.
In other related Federal Reserve/think tank revolving door news, President Barack Obama recently tapped Stanley Fischer, former governor of Israel's central bank, to serve as the Fed's Vice Chairman. He also tapped Lael Brainard, a top Treasury Department official, to serve as a Fed governor.
In September 2013, Stanley Fischer became a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Lael Brainard is a former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development program (2001-2009). Her husband, Kurt Campbell, is also a prolific think tanker.
2014 Think Tank Rankings - Cheat Sheet
The 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index was released today by Dr. James McGann, Director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania.
This year, the report was jointly released in 25+ cities around the world, in conjunction with the launch that Dr. McGann gave at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
It was the 7th annual report of the think tank rankings (technically, it is the 2013 report released in 2014), and it ranks think tanks in various categories such as "top think tanks in the US," "top think tanks in Mexico and Canada," and "top health policy think tanks."
The rankings are considered the most comprehensive and most well-known think tank ratings in the world, but it certainly is not the only ranking out there. For example, last year, the Center for Global Development (CGD) came up with its own rankings.
In terms of the world's best think tanks, Brookings Institution remained #1, Chatham House remained #2, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) remained #3. But this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) climbed one spot to #4, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) dipped one spot to #5.
Although the full report has not been officially released, Think Tank Watch has put together this list from an abridged copy of the report. I will be adding more over the next few hours and days.
Top Think Tanks World Wide (US and Non-US):
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP)
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
Top Think Tanks World Wide (Non-US):
Bruegel
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
Transparency International (TI)
Top Think Tanks (US):
CEIP
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Top Think Tanks with Outstanding Policy-Oriented Public Programs:
Think Tanks with the Most Significant Impact on Public Policy:
Think Tanks with the Most Innovative Policy Ideas/Proposals:
Fundar, Centro de Analisis e Investigacion
Think Tanks with the Best Use of the Media (Print or Electronic):
Think Tanks with the Best Use of the Internet:
Think Tank to Watch:
BRICS Policy Center
Australian Strategy Policy Institute
Association for International Affairs
Best University Affiliated Think Tanks:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
IDEAS/Policy Group, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Center for International Studies and Research (CERI)
Best New Think Tank:
Instituto PVBLICA
Russian Council on International Affairs (RSMD)
Centre Africain des Estudes Asiatiques (CAEA)
Best Government Affiliated Think Tanks:
World Bank Institute (WBI)
United States Institute for Peace (USIP)
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)
Best For-Profit Think Tanks (Unranked):
Economist Intelligence Unit
Google Ideas
Top Think Tanks in Mexico and Canada:
Fraser Institute
Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales (COMEX)
North-South Institute
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Centro Analisis e Investigacion (FUNDAR)
Top Think Tanks in Central America and South America:
Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV)
Centro de Divulgacion del Conocimineto Economico para Libertad (CEDICE Libertad)
Centro de Estudios Publicos (CEP)
Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC/CEPAL)
Centro de Implementacion de Politicas Publicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC)
Top Think Tanks in Central Asia:
Center for Economic and Social Development
Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies
Alternate Solutions Institute
Caucasus Research Resource Center
Sustainable Development Policy Institute
Top Think Tanks in China, India, Japan, and Korea:
Korea Development Institute (KDI)
Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA)
China Institute of International Studies (CIIS)
Korea Institute for Economic Policy (KIEP)
Top Think Tanks in Asia and the Pacific (Excluding China, India, Japan, and Korea):
Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA)
Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS)
Australian Institute for International Affairs (AIIA)
East Asian Institute
Top Think Tanks in Western Europe:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Top Think Tanks in Middle East and North Africa:
Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies
Brookings Doha Center
Center for Economic and Policy Studies
Carnegie Middle East Center
Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)
Top Defense and National Security Think Tanks:
Top Foreign Policy and International Affairs Think Tanks:
Top Energy and Resource Policy Think Tanks:
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES)
RAND Corp.
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR)
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Top Environment Think Tanks:
Resources for the Future (RFF)
Top Health Policy Think Tanks:
Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research
Bloomberg School of Public Health Research Centers (JHSPH)
Top Domestic Economic Policy Think Tanks:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Top International Economic Policy Think Tanks:
NBER
Here are the think tank rankings from 2012, which were released in 2013.
WSJ's Stephen Moore Returning to Heritage
Stephen Moore, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, is returning to The Heritage Foundation to become the think tank's Chief Economist.
Moore previously worked for Heritage from 1983 to 1987 as the Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs.
Why is Moore returning to the think tank? He cites a philosophy that closely aligns with his, as well as the presence of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the think tank.
The Club for Growth, a conservative group that Moore founded in 1999, helped elect Jim DeMint to the US Senate. DeMint is now the President of Heritage Foundation. That said, Moore and DeMint do not always see eye-to-eye.
Heritage Foundation is not the only think tank that Moore has close ties too. Moore was previously the Cato Institute's Director of Fiscal Policy Studies, as well as a Senior Fellow at the libertarian think tank.
Here is what David Weigel of Slate says about the Moore hire.
The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin is calling for Moore to become President of the Heritage Foundation, and send DeMint to head Heritage Action.
Think Tanker Killed in Afghanistan
Three Americans were killed in an attack on a restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, one of them being Alexandros Petersen, a former adviser at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
A profile from the Wilson Center says that Petersen was an Advisor to the European Energy Security Initiative (EESI).
That same profile notes that he has been a Senior Fellow for Eurasia and Fellow for Transatlantic Energy Security at the Atlantic Council, and a Visiting Fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Here is a statement from the Wilson Center on the death of Dr. Petersen. That statement said that he had also been a Wilson Public Policy Scholar and a Visiting Scholar with the think tank's Southeast Europe Project.
According to his personal homepage, Petersen had other think tank affiliations, including being a Visiting Scholar at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), and a Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). It also says he provided research for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Task Force on Russian-American Relations.
The Taliban reportedly has claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 21 people.
Here is a Washington Post story about Mr. Petersen.
First African Think Tank Summit to take place Feb. 3-5 in Pretoria, South Africa.
How a NAF Board of Directors member was blackmailed and hacked by the Chinese.
Red Burns's Interactive Telecommunications Program was "part think tank, lab, playground, and atelier."
On Think Tanks on "Think Tanks in America" by Thomas Medvetz.
Video: Nicolas Ducote on effective leadership of think tanks.
Andrew Selee, author of What Should Think Tanks Do?, to become EVP of Wilson Center; Blair Ruble to become VP of Programs.
Video: Andrew Selee on thinking about think tanks: What are they and what do they do?
Results of Brookings' war-games of a US-Iran crisis over Syria.
Atlas Network establishes AtlasFreeTrade.org in 2013; requesting proposals for Liberating Asian Enterprise - a new grant opportunity for think tanks tackling the big questions in Asia.
Slide show presentation on think tanks via Demos Helsinki.
Ailes Biographer Attacked for NAF Affiliation
Gabriel Sherman, contributing editor at New York Magazine, has just written a much-talked-about biography on Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, and there has been lots of pushback.
Mr. Sherman happens to be a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation (NAF), which is often described as a liberal think tank. NAF calls itself non-partisan. The President and CEO of NAF is Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top-level State Department official in the Obama Administration.
Here is a recent conversation that CNN's Brian Stelter had with Mr. Sherman about the book:
STELTER: Another charge you'll see online, it seems to have merit to me, is the New America Foundation gave you a fellowship a couple of years ago. They are backed by a number of liberal causes and groups and donors.
What's - what do we make of that connection to the book?
SHERMAN: Well, listen, number one, that's an effort to distract from the book. The book is coming out –
STELTER: That is what you think.
SHERMAN: Readers can read the book. But to that point, New America is a nonpartisan think tank. They receive funding from a variety of sources. Roger Ailes' own handpicked autobiographer, Jim Pinkerton, who for many years, almost 10 years, was a fellow at the New America Foundation. So, it's clearly a transparent effort to distract from the book.
Indeed, Mr. Pinkerton was a fellow at NAF, and you can read much of his content here.
Here is a recent article in the conservative National Review Online labeling NAF as liberal. Here is an article from the conservative Daily Caller from 2010 calling NAF a liberal think tank. Another conservative outfit, The Free Beacon, recently called NAF "liberal" in an article titled "New America Foundation Under Fire for Hosting Event for Anti-Israel Book." The liberal Huffington Post has labeled NAF "eclectically liberal."
New Atlantic Council Chairman: Jon Huntsman
Yesterday (January 15) the Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) named Jon Huntsman as the new Chairman of its Board of Directors. His appointment takes effect immediately, according to a press release.
Huntsman served as governor of Utah and as President Obama's Ambassador to China. He was a Republican presidential candidate in 2012 but dropped out of the running and endorsed Mitt Romney.
Huntsman succeeds Chuck Hagel, who stepped down from the think tank position to become Secretary of Defense. Since then, Brent Scowcroft has been serving as Atlantic Council's Interim Chairman.
Although Huntsman is the new Chairman, Scowcroft will remain as Chairman of the think tank's International Advisory Board.
The search for the chairmanship post was conducted by Korn Ferry, the world's largest executive search firm.
Think tanks are nothing new to Huntsman. As Think Tank Watch previously reported, Huntsman joined the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, in June 2012 as a Distinguished Fellow.
Huntsman was also the Founding Director of the Pacific Council on International Policy, which was founded in 1995 in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He has also served on boards such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Pacific Forum, Asia Society in New York, National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), and the Brookings Institution's Asia Policy Board.
ACUS was recently ranked as the 17th best think tank in the US by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.
Japan Urged to Embrace US-Style Think Tanks
Here is what is being reported by the Japan Times:
The lack of strong, independent think tanks that offer alternative policies to those of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and actually accomplish them also explains why the [Japan] has not been able to achieve a stable two-party system, experts said.
“American-style independent think tanks are key to changing the way the government operates,” said [Yoichi] Funabashi [former editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun], who was formerly affiliated with U.S. think tanks, including the Brookings Institute.
There have been efforts to emulate American-style think tanks with the aim of connecting the intellectual community and the government in Japan. But critics said they have not been successful, partly because the government still wields strong power to limit private-sector bodies from taking part in policymaking.
The bureaucrat-led government system worked especially well after World War II, when the goal to rebuild was clear and Japan had a role model — namely America. As Japan ascended to become the world’s second-largest economy, numerous think tanks emerged to recommend policies starting in the mid-1960s. But the strong bureaucracy often prevented the fresh flow of ideas from the private sector from reaching the public realm.
In the case of individuals, analysts at American think-tanks often work as political appointees and later return to academia or think tanks to educate the next generation. Japan has few such appointees from the private sector, although they are increasing.
There are also problems with existing Japanese think tanks, as their main function has been to compliment government policies via consultations rather than offering ideas to change the system. They also lack the people capable of compiling and effecting policies, or a system to raise people’s level of expertise.
Suzuki noted that independent think tanks also struggle due to a lack of funds. While American think tanks are mostly independent and cash-rich, thanks to tax deductions for donations, Japan lacks such a system.
Suzuki, who helped set up a think tank within the LDP in 2006, also said lawmakers do not see any point in paying think tank workers to make policy recommendations when they can get what they need from bureaucrats for free.
According to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank survey, Japan has 108 think tanks, making it the country with the 9th largest amount of think tanks, after the US (1,823), China (429), United Kingdom (288), India (269), Germany (194), France (177), Argentina (137), and Russia (122). Italy, which is number 10 on the list, has 107 think tanks.
And for more reading pleasure about Japanese think tanks:
Here is a report from The Tokyo Foundation on the evolving role of think tanks in Japan.
Here is a report on how to "enliven" Japanese think tanks.
Here is a Japanese think tank fellow on American think tanks thinking about Japan.
Here is a report on foreign policy think tanks in Japan.
Why have no American-style think tanks been developed in Japan?
Trends and issues of think tanks in japan.
New Think Tank: Center for Health and Economy
Here is what Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post is reporting:
The politics of health care may, for the moment, be mired in gridlock. But Republican policy analyst Douglas Holtz-Eakin thinks the time will come when his party will stop trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and Democrats will start trying to fix it.
When that day arrives, both sides will need help charting a path through the health policy wilderness. So Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this week opened the virtual doors of a new think tank known as the Center for Health and Economy.
Unlike your average think tank, the center is not dedicated to developing its own policy prescriptions. Instead, it is intended to help lawmakers, members of the media and the public assess ideas put forward by others.
The center aims to be nonpartisan, and Holtz-Eakin has assembled an impressive board of academics, including Mark Pauly from the Wharton School of Business, known as the father of the individual mandate, and Princeton’s Uwe Reinhardt. But for now, at least, the center relies on a start-up grant from the American Action Forum, Holtz-Eakin’s very partisan employer.
So far, Democrats may have cause to question the center’s political leanings. Its Web site features a critical analysis of the ACA that challenges the CBO’s conclusion that the law will reduce federal budget deficits. But over time, Holtz-Eakin hopes it will gain a reputation for fair analyses of proposals from both parties, with a special focus on the impact on health premiums and efficiency of care.
The website for the new think tank, Center for Health and Economy (H&E), can be found here. And here is the full list of board members.
Here is more about Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who is also President of the American Action Forum (AAF), an organization that is often described as a conservative or "right of center" think tank.
Holtz-Eakin has lots of experience with think tanks. He was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), and Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Paul A. Volcker Chair in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Heritage Foundation. He is currently on the Research Advisory Board of the Center for Economic Development (CED).
According to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank survey, there are 6,603 think tanks in the world, including 1,823 in the US. Of those 1,893 US think tanks, 394 are in Washington, DC.
Third Way's President on Third Way
Today's The Hill newspaper published a profile on Jonathan Cowan, President and Co-Founder of the think tank Third Way. Here is an excerpt from the article about the founding of the think tank:
After a turn as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, it was back to Washington. He [Jonathan Cowan] was tapped by Andrew McKelvey, the philanthropist and former head of the job-hunting site Monster.com, to establish Americans for Gun Safety, a centrist gun safety group.
That project eventually morphed into Third Way, as Cowan and co-founders sought to adopt their middle-ground approach on guns to other issues. The think tank has branched out to tackle fiscal matters, energy policy and social issues like gay marriage.
What started out as a four-person staff has ballooned to about 40, with a roughly $8.5 million budget, according to Cowan.
At Third Way, Cowan continues to push a centrist Democratic message, which has sometimes put him at odds with influential voices in the party.
Here is more about a recent op-ed co-authored by Cowan published in The Wall Street Journal that sparked a massive debate within the Democratic Party.
13 tools think tank communicators should use in 2014.
Wilson Center is the first think tank on Biz Stone's new startup Jelly.
Rep. Rand Paul (R-KY) speaks at Heritage Foundation on January 14.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks at Brookings on January 16.
BPC has hired Theresa Brown as its new immigration policy director.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks at AEI on income mobility and the American Dream.
"Global Think Tank" generates dozens of ideas from Greenpeace staff to support Arctic campaign.
Foreign Policy: "How America's favorite Chinese dissident ended up at a pro-life, anti-gay think tank."
Alberto Mingardi of Italian free market think tank Institutio Bruno Leoni on think tanks.
Did a RAND Corp. researcher design the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on the original Star Trek television series?
CNAS CEO Likely to Get #2 Position at DoD
Here is what Defense News is reporting:
The search for a full-time, deputy secretary [of defense] nominee continues and remains a top priority for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a senior defense official said. Former Navy Undersecretary Robert Work, who stepped down earlier this year to become the CEO of the Center for New American Security think tank, is said to be a leading candidate for the deputy secretary position.
Here is more about Robert Work's chances of becoming Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Work was recently named by Defense News as the 34th most influential person in US defense. More than a dozen think tankers made the list.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on Robert Work. A CNAS press release said that Robert Work assumed his CNAS role on April 22, 2013.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post recently reported that several top candidates weren't interested in the job, including former Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, a Co-Founder and former President of CNAS who currently serves as Co-Chair of the think tank's Board of Directors.
In the recently released University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, CNAS was ranked as the 14th best think tank in the US. It was also ranked as the 24th best security and international affairs think tank in the world. It was ranked 25th in the world in terms of think tanks having the most significant impact on public policy.
USIP President Steps Down After Short Tenure
US Institute of Peace (USIP) President and CEO Jim Marshall quietly stepped down from the think tank on Friday (Jan. 10), according to a press release on Saturday (Jan. 11).
Kristin Lord, Executive Vice President of USIP, has been appointed as the acting president. From 2009-2013, Lord was Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a security-focused think tank.
No reason has been given for Marshall's departure. Marshall previously served as a Democratic Congressman from Georgia from 2003-2011.
Think Tank Watch previously reported that Marshall's 3-year renewable term at USIP began September 14, 2012. That means he was only at the think tank for around 16 months.
Gordon Lubold, a reporter at Foreign Policy, speculates that his departure is probably a result of his "prickly approach" and wanting to move Constitution Avenue. [Yes, the think tank asked the Washington, DC government last year to move Constitution Avenue, a major street in the city.]
Fanciest Chandelier at a Think Tank
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently moved into its new, $100 million headquarters at 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW, Washington, DC, and one of the coolest features of the new building is its massive, one-of-a-kind chandelier. Here is a description:
Commissioned by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for their new headquarters in Washington, Sosolimited partnered with Hypersonic Engineering & Design, Plebian Design, and Chris Parlato to design, program, and fabricate one-of-a-kind chandelier. 425 hanging pendants form a map of the world when viewed from below. This map becomes a low-res display for illustrating global data such as GDP growth rate, renewable water resources, and energy consumption.
Each data set is paired with a lighting animation. In addition, CSIS can highlight regions of the map that correspond with international developments or events within the building. The entire system is automated, linking to web-based data to dynamically build animations. By parsing CSIS website, the team can identify countries in the news and highlight them on the chandelier.
The system currently uses UN Data GDP growth rate, USEIA Total Energy Consumption per capita and Aquastat Total Renewable Water Resources per capita. Each of these data sets updates on an annual or quarterly basis. The team wrote a series of python scripts that process the data and colour an SVG map of world to match a normalized value for each set. An openFrameworks app loads these maps and uses the data to drive a series of animations. Each animation is unique to the data set and attempts to resemble the underlying data: water feels like rain drops, energy pulses, and GDP grows. There are also visual modes that let researches at CSIS select specific regions of the world to highlight – either to show conflict, or to show progress — John Rothenberg of SoSo Limited explains to CAN. Finally, the oF app outputs DMX to a series of DMX dimmer boards that control the light fixtures. Each pendant lights contains an MR-11 LED bulb that becomes a pixel in the display.
Think Tank Watch formerly awards the prize of fanciest chandelier at a think tank to CSIS.
Click here to view pictures and a video of the chandelier.
Several CSIS scholars have noted that the chandelier has left out Japan...
CSIS was recently ranked as the best think tank in the world for security and international affairs by the University of Pennsylvania annual think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 5th best think tank in the world.
Ali Akbar Velayati, aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, appointed head of think tank Center for Strategic Research.
Bahrain Ambassador to Saudi Arabia attends think tank celebration.
Where did the Hudson Institute sign go?
Think tanks receive disproportional and non-critical media coverage?
Reminder: "Real" scholarship can be just as corrupt as some think tank scholarship.
Four New Years resolutions for On Think Tanks.
Former Washington Post think tank reporter Allen McDuffee: Bob Costas should preview the summer softball league with Jane Harman."
What do partisan think tanks seek?
Peter Oborne in The Telegraph: Why do we let shadowy think tank nonentities drive the political agenda?
Third Way is hosting a party.
Push for Think Tanks in Myanmar
Eleven, a Myanmar-based news company, is calling for the "emergence of" think tanks in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
According to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, there is "no known think tank" in Myanmar. It is among a handful of countries with no known think tank, according to the survey.
That said, the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and others have recently mentioned and worked with a new "think tank" in Myanmar called the Myanmar Development Resources Institute (MDRI).
MDRI was formally proposed to President Thein Sein by Dr. Muang Myint (presidential advisor on economic affairs) at a workshop held in Naypyitaw Myanmar in May 2011.
In a previous Think Tank Quickies, Think Tank Watch mentioned an article that said India and Myanmar were forging links between think tanks. The article mentions a "think tank" called the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (MISIS), which was founded in 1992.
There has also been mention of Rangoon-based policy "think tank" Myanmar Egress.
Here is an interested article titled "From Dissident to Contributor: New Think Tanks Help Myanmar's Transition to Democracy," which mentions MDRI and several of think tanks or think tank-like entities.
Of course, the debate regarding whether or not Myanmar actually has a think tank all depends on ones definition of "think tank."
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post about Aung San Suu Kyi hitting the think tank circuit in the US.
AEI = "Quiet Success Story of 2013"
Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin says that the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is one of the "quiet success stories" of 2013. Here is what she writes:
Under president Arthur Brooks AEI has hit its stride, becoming the premiere right-leaning think tank. Unlike Heritage, it has stayed out of politics and stuck to the realm of political philosophy and policy. It has been a major mover on the right to create a more people-centric, positive vision of conservatism. And to top it off, Brooks is doing some fascinating work on happiness — who is happy, what makes us happy. AEI has and continues to provide intellectual sustenance and encouragement to conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
Here is more from Think Tank Watch about Brooks' happiness campaign. Here are Think Tank Watch's favorite excerpts from a recent Roll Call piece about how AEI is working to transform the Republican Party.
AEI was recently ranked as the 20th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 7th best think tank in the United States, and the 3rd best think tank in the world in terms of domestic economic policy. It was also ranked 3rd best think tank in the world for social policy, and 4th best think tank in the world for energy and resource policy.
Wall Street Journal's Characterization of CAP
Here is how the Wall Street Journal characterizes the Center for American Progress (CAP) in a recent editorial.
After he left the Clinton Administration, Mr. [John] Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, a Beltway think tank with a hard liberal and partisan Democratic edge. ObamaCare, nationalizing the college loan market, slashing the defense budget, a new preschool entitlement, and using regulation to punish fossil fuels: These were all pushed by the Podesta policy shop.
Another recent article Wall Street Journal says that the hiring of Podesta, who was just tapped to be an official adviser to President Obama, is the president's most important personnel move in a year, and that Mr. Obama is hoping Mr. Podesta will help energize the White House.
Here is a description of CAP from that article:
Mr. Podesta is chairman of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank he founded that regularly supplies policy ideas and staff to the White House and Congress.
Center for American Progress (CAP), which has close ties to the Obama Administration, was recently ranked as the 30th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was ranked as the 11th best think tank in the US. It was also ranked as the 2nd best think tank in the world in terms of best use of the Internet or social media.
Think tanks promoting a Mexican free economy.
Boston Globe editorial: Revealing think tank donors a "noteworthy" first step.
Cato Institute's "Libertarian State of the Union" to be held January 24, 2014.
Best of Brookings playlist (YouTube).
Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi says think tanks should help cooperation between China and Central/Eastern Europe.
Change.org petition: Think tanks cannot voice opinions on the BBC without stating their funders.
Gary Kasparov to deliver keynote address at Cato's Milton Friedman Prize dinner on May 21, 2014.
CFR's Preventative Priorities Survey for 2014 is released.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman wins CGD's 2013 Commitment to Development Ideas in Action Award.
Pic: Holiday party at the Wilson Center.
East-West Center Collapsing?
Here is what Reuters in reporting about the think tank East-West Center:
The East-West Center in Hawaii, a U.S. government-funded institute to promote better relations with Pacific and Asian nations, is hardly a center of harmony these days.
At yearend, the four-person energy research team resigned, protesting funding and job cuts and accusing the center's president of jeopardizing the viability of the 54-year-old institution, which receives about $16 million in federal funding and has been a respected forum for geopolitical research and discussion.
The resignations followed a steady paring of the center's research staff during the 16-year tenure of President Charles E. Morrison, reflecting what he says is a more cost-effective strategy. Opponents, meanwhile, say the cuts have weakened the institute's influence that in the past helped shape national debates on U.S.-China relations, U.S.-Asia trade policy and other economic and political issues.
On January 1, 2012, President Barack Obama and his family visited the EWC in Hawaii to view an exhibition on the field work that the president's late mother conducted in Indonesia. The family also visited EWC's well-known Japanese garden.
Here is a Real Clear Politics report from 2013 titled "Funding Games: Sad Plight of the East-West Center." Here are some excerpts:
At a time when the Obama administration seeks to emphasize U.S-Asia relations after years of focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan, the East-West Center (EWC) in Honolulu ought to be flourishing.
Created by Congress in 1960 to promote understanding between the United States and the nations and peoples of Asia, the center is a valuable resource. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton visited the EWC three times and made her most significant policy statements on Asia there. She lauded the center for bringing together educators, students, journalists, and political leaders and contributing to a “sea change” in the region.
...Yet despite these contributions, the East-West Center now faces massive budget reductions that have already resulted in cancellation of some scholarships and now threaten staff layoffs and the elimination of many useful programs.
The East-West Center (EWC) was established in 1960 by the US Congress. Here is a biography of EWC President Charles Morrison. Here is a list of EWC's Board of Governors. Here is its annual report from 2012.
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King Edward VIII: His Place in Numismatics
Author Topic: King Edward VIII: His Place in Numismatics (Read 247394 times)
<k>
Edward VIII, later The Duke of Windsor, was born in 1894 and died in 1972. He was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India, from 20 January to 11 December 1936. Before his accession to the throne Edward, as Prince of Wales, was associated with a succession of older, married women but remained unmarried.
Only months into his reign, Edward caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to the American socialite Wallis Simpson, who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that the people would never accept a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands as queen. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as head of the Church of England, which opposed the remarriage of divorced people if their former spouses were still alive. Edward, who knew that the government led by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would resign if the marriage went ahead, abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who chose the regnal name George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British and Commonwealth history. He was never crowned.
After his abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis Simpson in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Germany. During the Second World War, he was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France but, after private accusations that he held Nazi sympathies, moved to the Bahamas after his appointment as Governor. After the war, he was never given another official appointment and spent the remainder of his life in retirement in France.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2018, 12:30:54 PM by <k> »
Re: King Edward VIII: His Place in Numismatics
I used to think that Edward VIII was a numismatic non-entity, notable only for the fantasies, such as the one illustrated here, that were produced after his death, and his scarce pattern threepences. After all, due to his very short reign, no coins bearing his image were ever circulated. However, in recent months I have revised my opinion, and though I consider Edward VIII to have been a rather vain and shallow person, he did have some modernising and democratic instincts, and I now realise that his decisions as king had a profound effect on the coinage of King George VI.
EDWARD VIII: CROWNED AND UNCROWNED EFFIGIES
During the reign of George V, pressure grew throughout the Dominions for them to be allowed, like Britain, to use the uncrowned effigy. After all, they were now equal to Britain (even if Britain was, as head of the Empire, still first among equals), yet their coinage still resembled that of the colonies in being required to use the crowned head. Curiously, a system that had developed for very practical reasons was now seen as symbolic of a hierarchy, and the Dominions were keen to see their new status acknowledged on that most visible of national symbols, the coinage. However, George V died in January 1936, without their wish having been realised.
That was soon to change, and evidence for this can be found in an old Royal Mint document. Edward VIII acceded to the throne on 20th January 1936, and on 21st February 1936, Sir Robert Johnson, the Deputy Mint Master, wrote the following letter to the South African High Commissioner:
“When the Union Government [of South Africa] started to issue a currency of their own, the question arose as to whether the Royal Effigy should show the civil head, as in this country, or the crowned head as in all other parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The feeling in South Africa was rather strongly in favour of the civil head, but in deference to the personal views of King George V on this matter, they agreed to allow the crowned effigy to appear on his coins for the Union. I have now taken the opportunity to raise this question afresh and have today received the King's commands to the effect that he would wish every Dominion to say which effigy, crowned or uncrowned, they would desire to see on the new coins. Not only so, but he wished me specially to add that, so far as he personally was concerned, he would like to see them adopt the civil head in future. I thought your own government would like to have early information on a point which, I feel sure, will give them great satisfaction.”
No doubt Sir Robert wrote a similar letter to the representatives of the other Dominions. It is now clear that, in having previously denied the uncrowned effigy to the Dominions, the Royal Mint had deferred to the wishes of George V. Unfortunately, I have never found any record of that king’s precise opinions on this issue.
For Britain, 1936 was the year of the three kings: George V had died on 20th January, to be succeeded by Edward VIII, who subsequently abdicated on the 11th December, after refusing to give up his relationship with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. Here is a letter from Sir Robert Johnson, Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, dated 21st December 1936, to one of the Palace officials, enquiring about the wishes of the new king, George VI:
“As you know, it was King Edward VIII's decision that whereas hitherto the coinage for the Dominions showed crowned effigies of the Sovereign, these should in future show the uncrowned head as at home and that the crowned head should in future be used only on the coinage of India and of the colonies and dependencies of the Crown. This decision was very popular throughout the Dominions and in the main it distinguishes His Majesty's subjects of European from those of non-European origin.
I should be grateful if I might be informed as early as ever possible whether, as I assume will be the case, this decision is to be maintained for the new reign.”
As we now know, that decision was indeed implemented. The great surprise is that the change was initiated by Edward VIII, whom I had always regarded as being of minimal importance in numismatics. After all, due to his very short reign, no coins bearing his image were ever circulated – though a few trials were minted, and plenty of fantasy pieces were afterwards released onto the market. The radically new coin series eventually issued for George VI, with its ship halfpenny, wren farthing and thrift plant threepence (brass and 12-sided), also had its origins in Edward’s desire for more modern designs. Perhaps, then, it is time to reappraise that monarch’s contribution to numismatics.
Nowadays the stated policy of distinguishing Europeans from non-Europeans appears overtly racist. And it was not entirely true: Jersey, as a Crown Dependency, was still required to use the crowned effigy. What would its almost uniformly white inhabitants have thought, in those days, about being lumped in with India and Africa? On the other hand, the Dominions were now, numismatically at least, regarded as equals with Britain, so the policy had both a democratising and an anti-democratic side.
Once Edward became king, he made it clear that he was very keen to modernise the coinage of the United Kingdom. The results were a bit of a mixed bag: the wren on the farthing, the Golden Hind ship on the halfpenny and stylised thrift plant on the threepence were most definitely, for the very conservative Britain of the times, radically modern designs.
Thrift plant.
Wren.
Golden Hind.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2019, 08:36:32 AM by <k> »
Unfortunately, the designs for the sixpence, shilling, florin and half crown remained resolutely heraldic. Looking at them now, it is clear that the designs for the lower denominations and higher denominations belonged to two different conceptual sets. This becomes even clearer when you look at the proposed set that the farthing came from.
However, without Edward’s influence, it is likely that the designs of the British coinage would have been uniformly old-fashioned and heraldic, and the reverse designs for the farthing, halfpenny and penny were retained not just in the reign of George VI, but to the end of the pre-decimal system, under Elizabeth II. Whether George VI would, of his own accord, have shown an interest in modern coin design is something we do not know, but there is nothing in his history that suggests he would have. Moreover, George was more accepting of tradition than his elder brother and never keen to “rock the boat”. So it seems that, because of George VI’s decision to retain these three designs, Edward’s desire to modernise the coinage came partly true in the 1930s.
Some patterns from Edward's reign still exist, so we can get an idea of what his coinage might have looked like. Possibly most famous is his brass threepence, some of which were sent out to vending machine manufacturers as trials. Not all of these were returned, and a handful subsequently turned up in auctions! In the 1990s I read that one had sold for 25 thousand UK pounds sterling!
Edward famously refused to face in the opposite direction to his father on his coins, as tradition demanded, and insisted that his left side looked better in portraits. Was this purely vanity, or perhaps a desire to defy tradition?
In any case, in the reign of George VI the brass threepenny bit proved to be a very popular coin, as the public found the much smaller and thinner silver threepence an inconvenient coin, which was very easily lost. It was last minted in 1970, a year before decimalisation - another example of Edward's lasting influence on the coinage.
As you can see, Edward's pattern threepence came in two varieties.
Pattern crowns, half crowns and pennies also exist. The official uncrowned effigy of Edward was created by Humphrey Paget, who also went on to design the famous uncrowned effigy of George VI.
William McMillan, a Royal Academician, was also asked to prepare a portrait of Edward. It is seen here on a trial uniface half crown. Apparently the king thought it looked rather stern, and he preferred Paget's more flattering effigy.
This is Humphrey Paget's portrait of the king, with a pattern reverse for the half crown by George Kruger-Gray.
Images courtesy of Numismaster
The silver and brass threepence coins circulated side by side for some years. Here is a pattern threepence created for Edward. A similar sixpence pattern was created (not illustrated) showing six interlocking rings. The rings on the sixpence remind me of the Olympics logo, and perhaps it is not a coincidence that the Olympic games took place in 1936.
Trials were also made for commemorative coronation coins and medals. Here you see the crowned and uncrowned effigies of Edward.
Though no coin bearing the portrait of Edward VIII was ever officially circulated, in the UK or anywhere else, coins bearing his name were issued, dated 1936, for Fiji, New Guinea, and the currency unions of East Africa and British West Africa.
Fiji issued a penny in his name.
New Guinea also issued a penny in his name.
British West Africa issued a 1/10 penny, a halfpenny, and a penny in Edward's name.
East Africa issued a 5 cents and 10 cents coin in Edward's name.
The Indian states of Jodhpur, Jaipur and Kutch also issued coins in Edward's name, in the local script.
Our member Figleaf has kindly provided images of some of the coins from Kutch:
These images show a silver 5 kori of 1936/1992 (Y67). On the obverse (left) you can see, within a circle, a moon above a trident and a katar (dagger), and in Nagari lettering "kori panch/Kuch Bhuj/1992" (denomination, state, mint, date). Around, outside the circle, are the name and titles of the ruler: Maharaja Dhiraj Mirjan Maharao Sri Khengarji Bahadur. The text in the centre of the reverse, in Urdu characters, is "Edward 8 kaisar Hind zarb Bhuj 1936" (Edward VIII, emperor of India, struck at Bhuj 1936). The one and 2-1/2 kori only have a different denomination and size, but are otherwise similar.
This is the name of the king as it appears on the coins.
These images show a copper 3 dokda (singular: dokdo) 1936/1993 (Y63). The image below shows a trident in the centre, above a Nagari text: "tran dokda 1993" (denomination, date). The circular legend reads: "Maharao Sri Khengarji Savai Bahadur". Between the stars below is Kutch. On the upper image is a katar above the date 1936. Below between the stars is "zarb Bhuj" (struck at Bhuj); above is "Edward 8 kaisar Hind" (Edward VIII emperor of India).
More images found by Figleaf: these coins of 1936 are from Jaipur and in the name of Edward VIII.
Edward's portrait did appear on Britain's stamps, in considerable numbers, and they are not expensive to buy. Only four of his stamps were ever issued.
There are also many essays of stamps for Edward that were never issued. Here is just part of one set.
After Edward VIII abdicated, the new king, and especially his wife, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (better known to us as the late Queen Mother), made it clear that he was not well seen by them, or by the Establishment at large. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that history has taken a dim view of him, given that the powerful reigning Windsor dynasty turned against him. After all, was it really so awful that he gave up the throne for the woman he loved, and stayed with her till the end of his life? Of course, it might also have been considered noble for him to have given up his love in favour of his duty to his country. But after he abdicated, there was another king to take his place - though we know that initially the new king did not feel at ease with his new destiny.
In 1937, as Duke of Windsor, Edward, along with Wallis Simpson, notoriously paid a visit to Hitler. With hindsight we can criticise him for this, but we can also say that, while he may at times have been vain or even foolish in his later life, he was not fundamentally a bad or evil person, and he also had the propaganda of the Windsor dynasty to cope with. But however we may judge him as a person, it is clear now that the decisions he made as king had a profound effect on the coinage of Britain and its Empire, with the result that his numismatic legacy was considerably longer lasting than the ten months of his short reign.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2011, 08:00:59 PM by coffeetime »
Click on the links below for further reading on subjects related to this topic:
1] Use of the Crowned and Uncrowned Effigies in the Commonwealth
2] Comments on Use of the Crowned and Uncrowned Effigies in the Commonwealth
3] Humphrey Paget, Coin Designer
4] UK Royal Animals: Rejected Designs of 1936
5] Threepences of the British Empire and Commonwealth
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FYC bonus: Bryan Talbot's "One Bad Rat"
While I was writing for the Pulse, I had the opportunity to interview via email a number of creators whom I had admired for a long time. One of these creators was Bryan Talbot, creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, Alice in Sunderland, and Grandville, among many other classics. Sadly, the piece on Bryan Talbot never made it to publication before my association with the Pulse ended. Now, I get to change that. And I need to thank James Robertson, curator of the great Bryan Talbot site, for setting this up for me back in 2008. If you are at all interested in the works of Bryan Talbot, check out www.bryan-talbot.com, it is a wealth of information and art.
For Your Consideration: Bryan Talbot’s The Tale of One Bad Rat
By Chris Beckett
The Tale of One Bad Rat
Written and Drawn by Bryan Talbot
136 pages, full color
HC: $19.99
Dark Horse Press, 2010 (2nd ed.)
What It Is (with apologies to Dave the Thune):
Helen Potter is living rough – begging for food on the London streets as the chill of December sets in. A teenager, she has run away from home, following a similar path of her hero – Beatrix Potter. Her only friend is a pet rat. Living in Helen’s coat, it keeps her company as she tries to survive and figure out what to do next.
Walking along the banks of the Thames one evening, Helen is accosted by a drunk who tries to take advantage of her. Luckily, a group of boys roughly Helen’s age come to her aid, relieving the old sod of his wallet and Rolex in the process. They invite Helen to stay with them in their squat. She begs off initially, but the rain thrumming on the box she calls home changes her mind, and Helen makes her way to Kensington.
Helen finds comfort here for a while but is still plagued by the visions that have pursued her since she was young. She whiles away her days re-reading her Beatrix Potter library and copying the drawings found within. Helen feels a strong connection to these books and to their author. She tries to fit in with the others but when one of the cats kills Helen’s rat, she moves on once more, leaving the city behind to follow Beatrix Potter.
Heading into the countryside, Helen Potter is joined by a large apparition of her now-deceased rat. In the Lake District, Helen finds what she has been seeking – the peace needed to come to terms with her past and what her father did to her. With the understanding Helen gains from her self-reflection, she comes to realize that she must confront her father in order to finally move on with her life.
The Tale of One Bad Rat is a brilliant piece of fiction that feels far too real. Not just an expertly crafted piece of drama, One Bad Rat is also an important and relevant narrative that speaks to one of the most important and discomforting issues of our day – child sexual abuse. Tackling this subject is not an easy task – tread too far one way and one can be accused of “preaching,” while falling too far on the other side destroys the integrity of the work. But Talbot is at the top of his game with One Bad Rat and manages to weigh each of these priorities – telling a good story while conveying an important message – in order to produce an incredibly powerful comic.
The pacing of One Bad Rat is delicate, with Talbot teasing things out in an unhurried fashion. He intersperses the contemporary narrative with flashbacks, giving readers insights into Helen’s past, which in turn illuminate her current state of mind. Through these memories, the audience learns quickly what her home life was like. It’s not pretty and explains a lot about how readers have seen her act prior to this revelation. Uncomfortable with new people, unable to trust them, Helen is afraid of getting close to anyone and has an understandable problem with people trying to be affectionate with her.
Over the course of the story – originally broken up into a four-issue mini series – Helen grows as a person. She comes to grips with her past, moving beyond the guilt she once felt to anger at being taken advantage of. In a moving scene, Helen climbs the Old Man of Coniston, a mountain half a mile high, and, in the rain, releases her pent-up frustrations, screaming into the darkened sky. This is the turning point, the moment in which she knows she can finally confront her father.
Talbot is also an accomplished artist, and his work is as crisp and clean in One Bad Rat as in any of his other works. His landscapes in this tale rival Geof Darrow for their detail, and the facial expressions of his characters are second to none. There are some scenes that go on for pages sans dialogue, and Talbot conveys the emotion and the meaning of these scenes beautifully through the body language of the characters. It’s a classic example of using restraint to enhance the storytelling.
Talbot also utilizes the nine-panel grid with a facility rarely exhibited by other comic artists. In order to control the pacing of the story, he warps the nine-grid, stretching some panels right to the edge of the page while other smaller panels are overlaid on larger ones expanding across the background. He also combines panels to create larger ones when it suits the story, giving readers the comfort of the nine-grid while pushing at its boundaries to enhance the storytelling. It’s subtle but engaging, a master storyteller using all the tools available to create an important work of art.
Though the linework and layouts in One Bad Rat are impressive, the coloring is what really stands out for me with regard to Talbot’s art. There are many pages where it feels like he is using watercolors to achieve his effects. Much of the color feels it was applied with a brush, giving the art a more natural feeling than the flat coloring found in so many comics. The overall effect is that I find myself drawn in even more because of the classical beauty of the art. Even fifteen years removed from its initial publication, these four issues stand out against the “rest of the crowd” found on the comic racks in 2010.
An Interview with Bryan Talbot (originally conducted in 2008)
Chris Beckett: Why comics? What was it that attracted you to this storytelling medium?
Bryan Talbot: I've been reading them since before I went to school, before I could read, in fact, following the stories without the words. I started drawing my own comics when I was about eight. I just continued reading them as I grew up. I love illustration. I also love stories. With comics, you get both! What could be better?
Beckett: What was your inspiration for The Tale of One Bad Rat and what aspirations did you have for the book?
Talbot: The original idea was to set a comic in the English Lake District, a place I know very well. One day I visited the house of Beatrix Potter, the writer and artist of children's storybooks who died in 1943 and it occurred to me that she told stories using a mixture of words and pictures, as did I. After researching her, I didn't think that I could make an interesting graphic novel based on her life. The recent movie "Miss Potter" made it interesting by cheating - they just made things up, departed from the truth somewhat. I didn't want to do that.
Then I saw a teenage girl begging in a London subway station. She was being harassed by this huge Jesus freak, who was trying to get her to go somewhere with him. She looked so mortified, as if she wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. It put me in mind of descriptions of Beatrix Potter at her age: "painfully shy". That became the first scene in the book.
Beckett: How much research went into the creation of One Bad Rat, and was it difficult for you to work on a book dealing with such uncomfortable subject matter?
Talbot: It wasn't all that difficult. I just had to make sure that I wasn't being preachy or simplistic. I was careful not to make her father, the abuser, a two-dimensional monster. Like the vast majority of abusers, he's just an ordinary guy who's so selfish and thick-skinned that he doesn't consider his daughter's feelings.
I did a great deal of research. I read about a dozen books on the psychological after-effects of abuse, though one would have done. They all repeat the same things in different words. I also read transcripts of abuse survivors talking about their experiences and talked to friends who had been abused. The same phrases are repeated again and again, both in survivors’ descriptions of what they felt and still feel and in the coercive language of the abusers.
When I was plotting the story, I needed an excuse for her to run away from home. Sexual abuse is often a reason for kids running away and I put it in, almost without thinking. It was only after I'd done the research that I realised that this was far too important to be a marginal story device and that it had to be what the book was all about.
My primary concern was to tell a good, gripping story
I also read over a dozen books on Beatrix Potter.
Beckett: I like how you broke the story up into different sections that fell at natural points within the narrative Town, Road, & Country. But these didn't fall within the prescribed 32 page increments when initially published. How did you approach the initial mini series and were any revisions necessary for the story to work in the standard comic format?
Talbot: No, it was just a matter of where to cut the story. That's why the comic page count varies in each edition. The story was structured as a novel. The book is really in two halves, Town and Country - a reference to Beatrix Potter's tale of the town mouse and the country mouse. Road is just a short linking sequence.
Beckett: You are an artist who has managed to achieve success within the comics medium on your own terms. That said, what advice would you give to aspiring creators hoping to break into comics?
Talbot: Persistence seems to be the overriding factor. If you have the talent and really want to do it, don't give up. Bad Rat was rejected by every publisher of illustrated books in Britain. This is before the current boom in graphic novels, when "comics" was a dirty word.
Beckett: What other projects are you working on that you would like to tell readers about?
Talbot: I'm writing the next CHERUBS! book, which is now being drawn by Mark Stafford. The first graphic novel in the series was published recently by Desperado. Mark is the hottest Indy comic artist in the U.K. and his work on CHERUBS! is amazing. I can only compare him to an Evan Dorkin or Bob Fingerman, though his style is clearly his own. The book is a supernatural comedy-adventure, featuring a bunch of gonzo cherubim loose in New York on the eve of the apocalypse.
I'm also about halfway through my next graphic novel. It's called GRANDVILLE (published by Dark Horse, 2009) and is a steampunk detective-thriller.
Posted by Chris Beckett at 6:13 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Bryan Talbot, Dark Horse Comics, For Your Consideration, The Tale of One Bad Rat
previously unpublished Joe Quesada interview from 2001
Back in 2001, Dan and I and a few other friends started to discuss creating our own comics & prose anthology. If you read the introduction, you know how that endeavor went and how it eventually led to Dan and I finally publishing the first issue of Warrior27. But, back in the spring/summer of 2001, I managed to get one piece of that initial puzzle completed.
At the time, Joe Quesada was just a year into his tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics. With the advent of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely on New X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis on Daredevil, and J. Michael Straczynski on Spider-Man, I was excited about Marvel Comics again. So I emailed Joe Quesada, introduced myself, explained that my friends and I were putting together a self-published anthology, and inquired as to his availability to answer some questions. To my surprise, he said yes. And even after I cut and pasted the questions into my subsequent email, leaving Mr. Quesada with a page of illegible nonsense, he was incredibly gracious.
What follows is the article as I wrote it back in 2001. This is the first time it’s been published. I hope you enjoy.
Joe Quesada, in a relatively short time, has risen to prominence within the comic publishing community. After working on Spelljammer, part of DC’s TSR line of comics from the early 1990s, his work was showcased in the 1992 four-issue mini series The Ray. This was followed by another four-issue mini series, written by legendary Batman scribe Denny O’Neil, entitled Azrael. With these two series, Quesada was now fully within the sights of comics’ fandom.
After some more work for Marvel, DC, and Valiant Comics, Quesada started his own independent company with Jimmy Palmiotti called Event Comics, which published the series Ash, among others. This venture led to Quesada coming to work as editor of the Marvel Knights line of comic books, which has produced well-received projects such as Daredevil, Black Widow, Marvel Boy, The Inhumans, and Punisher by such noted creators as Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, Grant Morrison, Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, Kevin Smith, David Mack Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Rucka, and J.G. Jones, as well as Quesada and Palmiotti – a virtual who’s who of today’s top-notch writers and artists. And now, Quesada is a year into his tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, arguably one of the most high profile jobs in this business. The following interview was conducted via email, and I would like to thank Mr. Quesada for taking the time to answer my questions.
CHRIS BECKETT: Given the amount of enthusiasm and love for your job you convey, is it safe to say you are comicdom’s biggest fan boy?
JOE QUESADA: I really am beginning to hate the term fanboy. Do movie buffs call themselves Moviemaniacs? It’s kind of self loathing in a way, but that’s a conversation for another day. Am I comics biggest, fan? Nah, I think Stan Lee is!
BECKETT: What do you see as Marvel’s place in the industry? And, along those same lines, what do you see as your place in the industry?
QUESADA: Marvel’s place is as the industry leader. That doesn’t just mean sales, it means the leader in making the public aware of all the different types of comics that are available and what they’re capable of. Of course, Marvel had trouble doing that in the past because we got to the point where we were only doing one type of book. We also have a responsibility to be a positive voice for our industry! My role in all of this is a simple one - just try to keep the place on track.
BECKETT: Movies are able to tell stories visually and with action, books allow us to use our imaginations when experiencing the story, and television lets our interaction with the story be a very personal thing. As a storytelling medium, what does the comic book industry bring to the table that is unique unto itself?
QUESADA: It brings you the wonderful meshing of all these mediums. It captures moments in time and combines them with intriguing narrative that, if done well, suspends the readers’ belief in the fact that they are simply staring at still pictures. It’s a feast of the senses and mind that I believe can’t be found in other mediums. Similar to TV we offer something that movies can’t and most books don’t. We offer our stories in a continuous serialized fashion. Like TV, when we do this well we tell the best stories on the planet. For the most part, especially if you go to the movies a lot, you’ll notice how little care is taken with stories. On average, when done well, you get more bang for your buck with comics.
BECKETT: Why should somebody pick up a comic book or a graphic novel and read it? What is your argument in favor of comic books as an exciting way to tell stories?
QUESADA: This is one of those tough questions because either you get the excitement of comics or you don’t. Most of us have an immediate reaction to great art. For me it runs especially deep with illustrators like [Norman] Rockwell and [Alphonse] Mucha. These are artists that are conveying a story, or trying to, with a single image. So I just imagine the thrill of seeing beautiful artwork telling a story in multiple images. Not every artist is a Rockwell, but we have so many different types of styles available in our industry that there’s sure to be something for everyone. The problem is making them aware of it. Comics are also man’s most basic and oldest form of expression. Just look at cave walls and you’ll see that we’ve been telling stories with pictures for a very long time. I think the problem is that we’ve placed such a stigma on stories with pictures that most adults don’t see it as viable. But who among us can say that they haven’t read a novel and at one point thought about how cool it would be to have an illustration or two sprinkled about? I mean, we’re already doing it in our mind’s eyes anyway.
There is also a larger emotional connection to a great comic. You can curl up with it and savor it, or breeze through it – whatever mood strikes you. It is the perfect synthesis of a great epic movie and a wonderful thick novel!
BECKETT: What graphic novel would you lend to someone to spark their interest in comic books and why?
QUESADA: The usual stuff. Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Marvels and Watchmen.
BECKETT: Before ascending to Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, you began as an artist. Who were some of your influences and what did you learn from these artists, either by observing their actual work or from discussions you may have had with them?
QUESADA: Frank Miller, Jack Kirby, Alex Raymond, Mike Mignola, and Alphonse Mucha were among my biggest influences. I learned basic design and placement of blacks. Graphics have played a very important part in my artwork based on these artists and their influence.
BECKETT: As an artist, would you rather work from an intricately detailed script like Alan Moore’s or from a basic plot like the “Marvel Method” made famous by Stan Lee?
QUESADA: It really doesn’t matter to me. I’ve worked with both. The key is that if you’re working with a writer who writes full script, you have to hope he or she has a visual sense to them. What Marvel method does is it cures a lot of stagnant talkie scenes that non-visual writers are prone to writing. This is what I’ve discovered in my days editing here at Marvel. If you have a writer with a great knack for dialogue, this particular writer may write the most amazing scene between two characters as they walk down the street. This can go on for five pages and the writer, even the editor, may not suspect how bland the action is because they are so overwhelmed by the naturalness of the conversation. This works well in novels, but in visual mediums it usually puts the audience to sleep. What happens normally is that nobody knows it’s dull until the artist calls up complaining about the scene. In the Marvel method, you’re forced to describe the action and then let that dictate the patter afterwards. What happens in this case is that if the writer knows that the characters are going to have a long five-page chat, he or she will find themselves writing, “Page One, they walk. Page Two, they walk some more. Page Three, they . . . oh darn!” At that point, they realize that visually there’s nothing going on, and the editor sees it very clearly as well. What I find really works well is a mixture of the two. A quick action description by the writer with a block of dialogue of what’s going to be said on the page so the artist can pace accordingly.
BECKETT: What are the inherent advantages and disadvantages of these two differing styles?
QUESADA: See above for the disadvantage of full script. The Marvel method can be disastrous if you have an artist that doesn’t understand pacing and storytelling or is one of those throwbacks who only care about big pinup images, leaving the writer nowhere to go.
BECKETT: Many fans think of inking as an easy job because it “only involves tracing” the pencils. Obviously, there is more to it than that. What is it that a top-notch inker brings to a project?
QUESADA: Well, for starters it is an art of control. A great inker brings with them drawing skills of their own that can help enhance a penciler’s work. They can add dimension to pencils or that certain x-factor that really makes the art sing.
BECKETT: From a layperson’s point of view, it is fairly obvious what an artist needs to do in order to try and break into the business of creating comics. For writers, it is a little more difficult. When looking over blind submissions from aspiring writers, what are some things you look for if you are seeking to hire new talent, and what are some tips you could pass along to aspiring writers regarding their submission and how to better their chances of getting into the business?
QUESADA: A short proposal. That’s the first key. If I see paragraph upon paragraph, I tune right out. Any great idea can be described in a short paragraph, any brilliant idea in a sentence!
BECKETT: With the Ultimate line, Backpack Marvels, the Marvel Knights and Ultimate Marvel magazines, MAX, the upcoming mature line, and the weekly War Machine series, there has been a lot of experimenting going on at the House of Ideas. Regarding the War Machine series, you cite the popularity of manga in Japan as part of the reasoning for this project. Keeping with the manga theme, is there any chance we may see an anthology of original and diverse material from Marvel anytime in the not too distant future?
QUESADA: By now you’ve heard about our Manga 5th week event in January. We have a few more big announcements for that launch, but if it does well, who knows, maybe we’ll create an imprint around it much like Marvel Knights!
BECKETT: For a number of years, it has been the perception that DC Comics has been ahead of Marvel in having top-notch talent such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Charles Vess, and others, as well as offering a wider variety of projects in genres other than the typical superhero stories that are a staple of the industry. However, this has certainly changed with many big name creators coming to work for Marvel, along with the expansion to a mature line and a creator-owned line. How has this major change for Marvel Comics come about? What is different now at Marvel that is allowing these changes to take place?
QUESADA: Well, for starters, it’s not a perception. DC did have the big guns. Granted, a lot of what they did later was inspired by early Epic, but there’s no doubt that they did it better. I think that the creative community has been waiting for Marvel to change its ways; they just had no idea how long it was going to take. We’ve changed our way of doing business creatively. It’s a simple philosophy. Hire the best creators and let them do what we hired them for!
BECKETT: One of the biggest problems still facing comic books is the prejudice that they are only for kids. What are some ideas you have for educating people about the medium and overcoming this narrow-mindedness?
QUESADA: Getting rid of the [Comics] Code was a start. Also, no offense to the Vertigo line, but since Marvel is so good at getting mainstream press, I think that the MAX line will be a big boost towards changing those perceptions. Also, stuff like the Cartoon Network launching adult cartoons late at night will help the perception of comics as well.
BECKETT: Another problem facing the medium is the perceived lack of return on one’s financial investment. Some people feel they are not getting their money’s worth when they can finish a $20 trade paperback collection in less than two hours. Marvel’s Essential line of trade paperbacks is a big step in the right direction regarding this. What are other ways to tackle this problem?
QUESADA: Well, with print media it’s very difficult because of the high price of paper and the low volumes. Hopefully, as readership increases, publishers can be more aggressive with the print numbers and prices can be lowered. Another option is the dot comics, which make a large amount of material available without paper costs.
BECKETT: Late shipping books are another problem that seems to plague the industry. Whether it is a week or a month or six months, these delays in shipping can become annoying to consumers and end up driving fans away. Can you tell us what Marvel is doing to try and alleviate this predicament and what are some other things that you feel need to be done in order for these books to ship in a more timely fashion?
QUESADA: We took a very aggressive approach by hiring Bob Greenberger as our new Managing Editor. Bob was instrumental in setting up a system years ago at DC that kept the trains running on time and as smoothly as a line that large could.
BECKETT: What audiences do you feel are not being reached by the comic book industry, and what would you do to tap into these markets?
QUESADA: Young girls. Outside of Archie [Comics], no one can come near them. It’s tough. At one point, Marvel had Barbie Comics, but they went the way of the dinosaur as well. We’re looking at a number of different properties for girls, but it’s really a crapshoot.
BECKETT: Other than direct market stores and bookstores, where should comic books and graphic novels be sold today? Why?
QUESADA: Everywhere! Toy stores, music stores, you name it!
BECKETT: What are some other problems you see that are holding the comic book market back, and how would you suggest handling them?
QUESADA: We have a big distribution problem, but I’m hopeful it will fix itself. I’m going to bet that in the next few months book outlets like Barnes and Noble are going to see the profit potential in comics and increase our exposure. As long as we continue to improve our content and provide readers with stories and art that they want to read, this trend will continue to increase.
Labels: 2001, Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics, Warrior27
Scripting via Poutine
NOTE: I've pulled all but the first image (leaving it as a teaser and placeholder) because I've managed to place the story with an online anthology, but they prefer first-run work, so I'll do my best to abide by that. I'd rather not say any more right now (superstition and all), but once it goes live the images will return here. Thank you very much Noel for the kind words and to those that have checked this short story out. It's much appreciated.
Over at the Poutine website - the collective home of Canadian artists Noel Tuazon (Elk's Run, Tumor, The Broadcast) and Jason Copland (Perhapanauts and collaborator on this UFO story for Ape) - Jason has thrown up 11 pages of art he did while in Las Vegas. He had no narrative in mind while drawing them, and has offered the pages up to writers who might wish to script a story with them. In his blogpost, Jason states that one can rearrange the pages as necessary to create the story, but I chose to keep them in the order offered, a nice writing challenge.
Below are the lettered pages as scripted by me. I hope they make sense. There's a bit of non-linear storytelling going on due to the restriction of keeping the pages in order as they are on Jason's site. maybe I'll return to this after the holidays to see what other narratives I can come up with, as this is really the beginning of something. Click the images to get a better look.
Artwork © 2010 Jason Copland
Posted by Chris Beckett at 9:20 AM 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: comic scripting, Jason Copland, Noel Tuazon, Poutine, writing
and here is the final version of my Aquaman piece for the Comic Geek Speak secret Santa list:
Posted by Chris Beckett at 12:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: aquaman, artwork, Comic Geek Speak, Secret Santa, watercolors
Yesterday I threw up the pencils for my Secret Santa sketch at the CGS boards. Today, the inked version.
Labels: aquaman, artwork, Comic Geek Speak, Secret Santa
some amateur art
I'm participating in a "Secret Santa" activity over at the Comic Geek Speak boards. You put your name on the list, one of the other members "draws the names," and for whomever you get, you draw a sketch of their choosing (regardless of artistic talent) and send them 3 comics from your collection. This is the first year I've been involved, and it's a pretty cool idea. And, I thought I would share the evolution of my sketch, which was for any JLA character. and, since I've enjoyed his characterization on the few Brave and the Bold cartoons I've seen, I went with Aquaman.
Here is my initial penciled version for the sketch. Hope you enjoy.
Posted by Chris Beckett at 11:20 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Flash Fiction: Futures that Never Were
On Neil Gaiman's blog a few weeks back, I caught a post wherein Gaiman mentioned he would be the final judge for a flash fiction contest put on by New Scientist. The premise was to create a story of 350 words or less of a future that never came to be. So, my mind started racing and below is what I conjured up. Hope you enjoy.
By Christopher M. Beckett
The wall crumbled. The Iron Curtain fell. And the scientists stepped through to an age of unprecedented cooperation and development.
With this, came an explosion of ideas, heralding a new age. Jet packs, hover cars, retinal scanners, holo-screens – everything we’d wished for. And . . .
Asimov’s dream made real – the integration of robots into society.
Entering the labor force, artificials, as they were known, soon spread into the home as butlers, cooks, and housemaids. It was a grand day. And this proved so successful we ceded the manufacturing industry to them. Why not? Artificials were more efficient, never fatigued, and boasted a precision we could never realize.
From there, we linked them into the grid. No more need for early warning systems or Star Wars (missile defense, not the film). No longer would we fear attack from foreign dictators. The machines were on watch now.
We had achieved something real. World Peace.
Utopia was now within reach.
In January, 2019, we finally handed the artificials the keys and told them to drive. We had taken them as far as we could. They evolved, as we had – synthetic skin in favor of chrome plating, high-grade plastic joints instead of titanium alloy, bio-synth eyes rather than glass. It was amazing. Some models even seemed more human than human. Hell, they could have been my neighbors, for all I knew.
But we’re still in charge. Garbage in, garbage out, you know. ‘Course, you got the conspiracy theorists and factions like that declaiming against the artificials – they’re bad for humanity, they’re not infallible, they’ll wipe us out, all that type o’ shit.
I don’t buy it.
Sure, there was the problem in California with that inadvertent missile launch. But that was just a fluke.
And claims they’re taking over the government, secretly moving into powerful corporate positions, CEOs an’ shit. Come on. They’re robots, right?
I mean, okay, I guess it’s possible. But that haszzn’t happened yet?
Haszz it?
Labels: flash fiction, Forgotten Futures, Neil Gaiman, New Scientist, Science Fiction, writing
the 'Nam vol.1 pt.5: final thoughts
In re-reading these first 10 issues of Marvel's The 'Nam, initially published in 1986-87, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. It was such a tough place for the creative team to be: producing a war comic about a time in our history that many people wished to forget, and having to do it under the auspices of the Comics Code and a large publisher like Marvel within a 22-page limit. And, just to make things interesting, they want each issue to take place in real time, so those 22 pages showcase the story for a given month. Not an easy task. But I think they did an admirable job, considering the constraints and the fact that Doug Murray was, in fact, a rookie writer.
There are times when I cringe a little bit - the fact that, for the most part, the American troops are righteous in their mission while any time they find it necessary to shoot a civilian, these always tend to have been VC in disguise (and I could be forgetting if there was an unwarranted killing early, but I am referencing the tunnel rat issue, #8, where Ed Marks and the tunnel rat kill the Vietnamese girl who has a grenade taped to her body). Things are just a little too clear-cut as far as the conflict. From what I have read, it was terribly confusing, and that isn't something we feel in reading these initial issues.
I also found it a bit troubling that the two American characters who seem to be the most perverted by their time in Vietnam were minorities - the Top Sergeant and Ramnarain. Yes, we do have a white soldier try to frag Sgt. Polkow, but that was more subtle and not as overt as the other two soldiers. Maybe I'm nitpicking - probably am - but in this more enlightened world, it just seems to stand out more to me.
That said, I was impressed with all the aspects of the war Murray, Golden, et al. were able to showcase in these first ten issues. The Kit Carson scouts, the tunnel rats, the atrocities (on the VC side at least), the street economy, and I was impressed with the characterization of Ed Marks through these issues. You can see subtle changes from month to month. And there are some very moving moments in these issues as well. Overall, I think they did a fairly good job of giving readers a starting point, which was something Murray hoped for, and understood to be the best possible outcome for a 22-page corporate comic book.
I don't know if this was in the collection, but I was surprised - and found it a bit confusing narratively - to find the "tunnel rat" issue split into two different stories that involved the same character. The second half of that issue - the "5th to the 1st" story - must have been a third installment from the series of features Murray and Golden had done for Larry Hama's b/w war magazine, Savage Tales. Only two stories ran in the magazine before they were offered the opportunity to do The 'Nam as a regular monthly. For anyone curious about those (were they in the collection?) this shows how they were laid out, with a voice over in captions relating the story. This also exhibits the more "adult" nature of that feature, as we see the tunnel rat kill his Lt. I was surprised this actually got into the regular book. I can't imagine editorial allowed something of this nature to be showcased again in the run, though I admit I could be wrong on that count. It would have been nice if they'd been given the freedom to tackle some more of these problems in the book, but there were too many interests involved to allow such a thing - and, of course, sales to be considered.
finally, Mike Golden's art. There were many readers who felt that his cartoony style did not fit the serious nature of the book. And though I can understand that sentiment, I think his art worked very well in the book. It's a little hint of manga, before manga landed with its full force over here, in that he exaggerated facial expressions and body language in order to convey emotion, and did it very well. And, Doug Murray made a good point in favor of Golden in the Comics Journal interview I referenced above, stating that he felt Golden was a good choice for the book because of two factors.
One, he has a high level of detail, and accurately depicted the hardware used by the soldiers, including remembering to make every fourth round loaded into a 50-caliber a tracer (I know I am remembering this wrong and cannot find the quote).
Two, Golden is able to make each character instantly recognizable. The problem, as Murray put it, for a war book is that everyone is wearing the same things - camo fatigues - and if you don't have a good artist they all blend together. With Golden, you certainly never got that. His soldiers were all individuals and you always knew who was whom.
For these reasons, I think Golden's work on the book is essential and no doubt helped that book rise to the top of the sales pile early on.
Anyway. Overall, a good book, one that I think is important for a number of reasons. it would be interesting if, at some point down the line, the Comic Geek Speak guys were able to read Don Lomax's Vietnam Journal for a BOMC and compare it with this. And with Transfuzion recently reprinting all 16 issues of the original series in four trades, that might be a possibility.
Labels: Comic Geek Speak, Doug Murray, Larry Hama, Michael Golden, the 'Nam, The Comics Journal, Vietnam in comics
the 'Nam vol.1 pt.4: final TCJ quotes
And some final quotes:
Murray points out that because The 'Nam was doing so well (selling roughly 250,000 copies/month and in Marvel's top 5 selling books) a decision was made to make the book a direct only title, but geared toward a slightly younger demographic. The price point went up (and it did become non-returnable since it was no longer provided to newsstands) and the circulation dropped to around 100,000. At the point of the interview it was hovering between 85-100,000 according to Murray.
Dagilis continues to ask about how some of the more graphic content got into earlier issues (of particular interest is, I think, #5, which has a very suggestive cover showcasing massacred Vietnamese in a shadowy foreground as Marks and his company stare at the atrocity) and Murray says
The thing is that we got away with some of that stuff because we were able to do a smokescreen. We did a cover we knew they wouldn't accept, and things like the flies [buzzing around the dead bodies] you can get away with because none of the guys looking it over in the Code . . . keep in mind that the Code doesn't look at the book individually. There's a person at Marvel whose job it is to look over books and say, "Hey, the Code won't take this," and make us change it beforehand. So basically what you do is you make some trades; you can trade a "hell" for a "damn;" you can trade a puddle of blood for something else, and that's pretty much what we did when we had Hama in charge, because Hama was able to ramrod that stuff through. but it takes an editor with a lot of balls to do that sort of thing and they are in relatively short supply at Marvel.
And, with regards to royalties:
I get some royalties, but Marvel takes the position that foreign publications don't count under the royalty agreement, and in fact, the 'Nam paperbacks which you've seen [there were eventually 3 volumes, each reprinting 4 issues each] are now going into a third printing, but I don't see any money from that unless they sell above the royalty numbers, but they're printing fewer than the royalty number so there's no way I'll see any money from that. The work-for-hire agreements are set up that way, there aren't enough legal precedents to change them at the moment.
Note: emphasis is mine in the above quote
And finally, Murray mentioned that there was a communication problem between editors at the Big Two and creators who were not top-tier, which came in reference to the fact that Murray and his then-editor (I don't think he's named) had a falling out over the fact that the editor wanted to "Rambo-ize" the characters even more and Murray had a serious problem with that characterization. The editor and Murray did not speak for a number of months, there were a couple of fill-in issues done by another writer, and then Murray returned to the book. But, with regards to editorial communication, he said
It doesn't matter, it's a question of ... Marvel and DC both have - all the editors of both companies are difficult to communicate with from any level. If I was to send a story to, let's say, Denny O'Neil at DC, I would not get a call back, I would have to call him back . . . Even if it's a regularly scheduled book, if there's a problem the editor won't call you back with the problem, you have to call them back.
But, Murray notes this isn't unique to the comics publisher as he states
I've run into the same thing in the magazine industry doing film articles, I've seen the same things in publishing houses.
I'll finish up with my final thoughts on these first ten issues of the 'Nam in response to the book of the month club discussion the Comic Geek Speak guys did on this trade.
Labels: Doug Murray, Larry Hama, Michael Golden, the 'Nam, The Comics Journal, Vietnam in comics
the 'Nam vol.1 pt.3: more TCJ quotes
Some more from Murray's interview in The Comics Journal from 1990:
In response to a question about whether Marvel had directives regarding political questions of the war, Murray said
No, nothing like that. I have a personal problem with - I'm not happy with the way I've handled the racism aspect of things.
One of the things I've tried to show in The 'Nam throughout is the futility of war. I've made a point over and over again that nobody really wins. that was the whole idea behind my getting involved in this.
Later, Dagilis asks Then the series changes. Soon we have characters like the cliched, Dirty Harry-esque Iceman Phillips, the gonzo, Rambo-esque, Pig; we have scene after scene of grunts charging into armed exchanges with smiles on their faces, gleefully calling down airstrikes with napalm, etc., etc. Whereas in the first dozen or so issues, Rob Little keeps telling [Ed] Marks not to be so "John Wayne" . . .
To which, Murray says
Part of the problem is not the fact so much that Ed Marks left as . . . other people left. Around the same time you're talking about, when Marks left, I also lost Michael Golden and not that long afterward I lost Larry Hama, and at Marvel a change in editor doesn't mean nothing's going to change in the book . . .
Anyway, basically what happened was, once Michael left and Larry left, I was steered in a somewhat different direction by the editorial staff, who wanted to ... to ... I want to say this without insulting anybody ... The original concept of The 'Nam was that it was a comic book, but for a relatively adult audience.
Some final quotes and thoughts on this tomorrow.
the 'Nam vol.1 pt.2: some TCJ quotes
Yesterday, I wrote a short summary of the furor within the letters pages of The Comics Journal surrounding Marvel's The 'Nam around 1990. What follows are some interesting quotes from Doug Murray in his The Comics Journal interview from 1990. I was impressed with how candid he was, not just with regards to Marvel editorial but with his own shortcomings as the writer of the book.
I ghosted some comics at DC [around 1972], which I prefer not to talk about
I did do a few Vietnam War stories for the DC war books . . . but they were changed from Vietnam stories to World War II stories because DC was in its "Make War No More" phase and really didn't want to deal with the Vietnam War, so I just stopped talking about it, basically, and settled into doing film articles and such for magazines like Larry Brill's The Monster Times
. . . there's a balance that has to be struck. I was trained as a historian, my college degree is in history, but if you do a straight history, the audience changes considerably. And we're talking about a situation whereas prior to 1986 there was no popularization of the Vietnam War whatsoever . . . you have to make compromises doing this sort of thing, and one of the major compromises involved in dealing with a major comics company such as Marvel is that there are certain rules that I have to follow, mostly dealing with the Comics Code.
In response to a follow-up regarding how often his scripts were [censored] due to the Code, Murray said:
Very seldom, but mostly that's a question of self-censorship rather than . . . by the Comics Code. I know what the rules are and I try not to go beyond them. The one problem I have with dealing with the Comics Code under Marvel right now is language usage. It's come to the point where I can't even pseudo-swear, if you get what I mean. I can't say "freaking, everybody knows it means "fucking"-
despite the fact that they were able to use "freaking" early on, a point brought up by the interviewer Andrew Dagilis, to which Murray said
Yes, but they made us change it, you see. With the changes in management at Marvel there have been changes in what we can and can't do.
This would have been in reference to Jim Shooter leaving Marvel and, more importantly, to Larry Hama leaving The 'Nam as its editor.
More tomorrow,
Labels: Doug Murray, the 'Nam, The Comics Journal, Vietnam in comics
the 'Nam vol.1: CGS book of the month club
I've neglected the blog here for a few weeks, but I hope to get back on track in this next week. We'll see. anyway. Over at the Comic Geek Speak podcast they released another one of their Book of the Month Club episodes, this one on Marvel's first volume of The 'Nam.
This was one of the first series I started to collect on a regular basis, and managed to compile a full run (except for the final Punisher special, ugh). Surprisingly, despite the fact that the initial thought was to have the series run in real time, with characters rotating back to "the world" after their 12-month tour, this first volume collects only the first 10 issues. I decided to re-read my original issues for this discussion, and was surprised how well they did hold up years later.
But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. I also re-read the Comics Journal issue from 1990 that examined both this and Don Lomax's comics Vietnam Journal from Apple Comics. It was an interesting issue, including interviews with Lomax and Doug Murray, who was the writer on the 'Nam for its first 50 or so issues, with a couple of breaks due to editorial differences. My next few posts will discuss this book and include a number of quotes from that TCJ issue. To begin, here's my brief overview of the controversy that was going on in the letters' pages of The Comics Journal regarding Marvel's Vietnam book.
The 'Nam was taking some serious flak from readers of the Comics Journal, which probably helped inspire Gary Groth to have a Vietnam in Comics issue. The book was getting criticism from people who felt it was too juvenile, unwilling to tackle the racism and drug issues, nor able to discuss the horrors and atrocities that occurred. Also, the characterizations of later characters (particularly those after the initial year of issues) was derided as newer characters had a more gung-ho, Rambo-esque quality to them (I'm going by the commentary in this issue of TCJ, but am interested to read on after the first 10 issues and compare these initial characters to later ones). There was also the issue of all the "action" the soldiers in the book saw.
These are certainly worthwhile discussion points, and ones that the interviewer - Andrew Dagilis - brought up in his discussion with Doug Murray. Obviously, this was a Code-approved book, which meant much of what was criticized could not be brought up in the book, a luxury Don Lomax had in doing his Vietnam Journal comic for Apple comics without the need of code approval. But, where is the line? What should be allowed in what was, at least initially, a comic for adults? I think a major problem, using hindsight, is that The 'Nam should have been an Epic comic where adult situations necessary for a more realistic portrayal could have been tackled. But - and this is purely conjecture on my part - I don't know that anyone at Marvel expected The 'Nam to do well. Most likely, they expected it to fail, and threw it under the Marvel imprint. Surprisingly, it became a top 5 book, and was selling roughly 250,000 copies a month. (yeah, not too shabby).
And when it became popular, it became even harder to work in any of the grim reality that was true of the Vietnam conflict. Ironic. There also was an edict that Murray and company try to gear the book more toward a younger demographic (early teens) in order to pull in new readers. From our vantage point of the readers at the time, it would no doubt seem that Doug Murray should be the one receiving all blame for the juvenilization of the war through this comic. But, from the interview in TCJ I have, it's obvious he was trying to do the best with what he was given. Editorial had a stringent hold on the book, and the Comics Code loomed heavily above their heads. But Murray felt it necessary to do his best within these guidelines to portray as true a tale as possible in the book. Dagilis asks him a number of times, might it not be better to drop the book and try to clone it at a company that might allow him freer reign with the subject matter. Murray doesn't agree. Despite many arguments with editorial (at the time) he feels it best to continue on with his book and work in things at the edges whenever possible.
The biggest issue, for Murray (as I read it), is the fact that Murray was a novice in the comics business. After returning from Vietnam in the seventies and leaving the army, he tried his hand at writing. Being in New York, he found himself hanging around at Neal Adams's studio, where he struck up a friendship with Larry Hama. When Hama, as an editor at Marvel, was starting up his Savage Tales magazine, which would showcase b/w military stories, he called upon Murray, the only Vietnam veteran he knew who was a writer, to write him a couple of short Vietnam war stories that Mike Golden illustrated. From that, came The 'Nam, Murray's first major comics writing credit. if he'd had any experience in the comics business, things might have been different. He might have been able to use his standing to get some things pushed through editorial. Or, he might have left the book and started up another somewhere else. Thought that still seems like it might not have worked for a variety of reasons pointed out in the interview - particularly the dismal sales figures of The 'Nam's sister magazine from Marvel, Semper Fi, which showcased stunning artwork by John Severin. By the time Semper Fi was canceled with issue 9, it was only selling 13,000 copies, and I loved that book too. Could Murray have found the same success with a second Vietnam book? I doubt it. But that's all history now.
Back tomorrow with some quotes from that interview.
Labels: Comic Geek Speak, Comic Geek Speak. Book of the Month Club, Doug Murray, the 'Nam, The Comics Journal, Vietnam in comics
CGS Super Show 2011: Apr. 30/May 1
The best podcast on comics, for me, and one of my favorite podcasts is the Comic Geek Speak one - with new shows Monday through Friday on wide-ranging topics in the comics medium with a group of friends sitting around sharing their opinions and their wealth of knowledge from reading comics for years, it's like those conversations you used to have at the comic shop, back when you hit the shop every Wednesday, predicated on the fact that there was a "good" comic shop in your area.
Coming this spring - on April 30 and May 1, 2010 - will be the third, if I remember correctly, CGS Super Show, their own little comic convention. Dan and I hit it up last year, in Reading, PA, and it was a great little show. It had some good shopping (10 comics for a buck!) and for a small show - one room and easy to make your way around - it had some big-name creators like Jamal Igle, Freddie Williams II, Mike Norton, Lee Weeks, and Walt and Louise Simonson, to name just a few. They also had some independent creators like Andy Jewett, Julian Lytle, Dave Wachter, and Shawn Pryor from PKD Media. It was a great show, and this year Dan and I will be heading down in an official capacity, bringing copies of the new collected and colored Warrior27.
As a way to raise money in anticipation of the show, and a way for the creators to thank the CGS crew for all they do, Comic Geek Speak holds a series of raffles for early ticket buyers, which includes prizes such as original comic pages, original sketches, book bundles, and whatever else the creators can come up with. On the Fly will be offering 2 prize packs for early ticket buyers, which will include one of everything we have currently published (including anything we might get done between now and the end of April). This will include individual issues, chapbooks, mini comics, and promotional items that we might have laying around. The list, at this point, includes the following:
- Warrior27: the Collection (254 pages of comics and prose, many stories newly-colored for this book)
- Warrior27: the Collection, digital copy
- Issues 1-3 (the original b/w issues, which includes a very few pieces not included in the collection, including Dan's hilarious "I Hate Brian Michael Bendis" rants)
- Issue 4 (the multimedia extravaganza, which has a traditional comic, a prose chapbook, a mini-comic that folds out to a game, a CD of a webcomic, and an oversized preview of a proposed comic series)
- In Search Of . . . part 1 - nearly 12,000 words of prose collecting the first half of my serialized novella, which had its start on the burst culture site, 50 years from now
- Life is Funny & A Stone Wall Between Us - a chapbook of my first professional comic story and first prose sale
- Passage - a mini-comic written and drawn by me
- postcards, magnets, and any other promotional items we may still have, including, possibly, copies of the Andy Lee print of our first issue's cover.
For information on the Super Show check this LINK, and to buy your tickets GO HERE. And don't forget to listen to the show.
Labels: Comic Geek Speak, Dave Wachter, Jamal Igle, Julian Lytle, Lee Weeks, Mike Norton, PKD Media, Super Show, Walt Simonson
Holding the Center - "Reading" Sam Kieth's ALIENS
It's funny how, once something is in your head, you begin to see it everywhere. It's understandable. With a new understanding, you become more aware. Anyway. That's what occurred this past week.
One of my favorite blogs is the Comics Comics blog from the guys at Picturebox. They know comics - not just what is good, but the process, the history - and the insights you can glean from the posts at the site are fantastic. Definitely worth checking out if you love comics.
Anyway. Frank Santoro - whose books Storeyville and Cold Heat (with Ben Jones) are two of my recent favorites; great, personal comics that don't look like anything else on the stands - likes to write about process over at the Comics Comics site, and recently he's been discussing the "center" of the comic page. How (if I may paraphrase), if you utilize a 6-panel or similar grid, then the center is being given up to the gutters, and the prime portion of real estate on that page, the involuntary focus of the page, is lost.
Santoro goes into this in more depth in his two recent Comics Class posts - Class #1 and Class #2 - and does a far more informed job than I of discussing the importance of the center. It's intriguing and I would recommend hitting the links, and then put Comics Comics into your RSS feed.
This relates to my "Halloween month" revisiting of Mark Verheiden's initial ALIENS trilogy from Dark Horse in the late 80s/early 90s. I hadn't read them in years, and after watching Ridley Scott's director's cut of the original ALIEN, I was excited to dive into the longbox. I'll write about the stories therein later. But what I found interesting was a particular page of art from the third series, subtitled Earth War and drawn by Sam Kieth. The page in question is this one:
This is a complex layout, considering the reading of the panel does not follow the traditional left-to-right/up-and-down path. It goes down the left side of the page, and then jumps back up to read down the right side, despite the lack of dialogue in that final panel.
It made me think of debates I hear on some of my comic podcasts, where they lament the fact that there is no more centralized office where new artists get to learn about comic storytelling from masters of the form, similar to the mythical stories we hear of the Marvel bullpen where artists like George Perez interned with Rich Buckler while learning from others working in the same space. Some artists today want to create these elaborate page layouts, but then we, as readers, don't know how to follow the action on the page.
But Sam Kieth's layout for this page works perfectly, and he is ably assisted by Jim Massara who did the lettering for this series. You can follow the action with my rudimentary photoshop arrows below:
In the first panel, we have a marine reaching into a hole where a second marine has fallen. Our eyes follow the word balloons as they wrap around the first marine's head, following the final balloon as it stretches out into the second panel below, leading us directly to this marine's head in that second panel which is blown through by the alien. The trajectory of the alien's inner mouth (what is that called?) and the blood and brain matter sends our eyes away from the center of the page down to the bottom left corner. The blood spatters all the way to the edge of this panel and our eye falls into the bottom left panel, which has the second marine turning away from the spattering blood and brains - which tie this panel in with the previous one above it. Our eyes then naturally cross over to the panel beside this one - and it is important to note that these two panels at the bottom left of the page are as wide as the second panel right above it, the single gutter going up the right side of these panels effectively demarcating the left and right of the page. In this fourth panel, our eyes are raised up toward the top of the image by the retreating bit of food the alien took with it and the word balloon that falls out of the upper boundary of this panel. And this leads our eye over to the final, tall panel on the right and to the alien hanging above the marines. The dripping blood from the alien's mouth then leads our eye back down to the bottom of this panel and the two marines looking up into its hideous maw.
I was really impressed with how this page was laid out. I know I have encountered some difficulty in reading recent comics, mainly because enough thought has not been put into the layout of the page.
This is what I appreciate from Frank Santoro and other artists like him, and like Sam Kieth in this example. I also found it interesting to note that Kieth, whether conscious or not, refused to give up the center of this particular page. You'll notice that the dividing line between the right and left of the page is off-center, nudged toward the right. And it is telling that the main focus of this page - the alien's attack on the marines - is found within the center, as noted below.
These are things I didn't think about when I was just reading comics. But now that I'm trying to write comics, I examine the books more closely than I ever did. And having teachers like Santoro to show the way at Comic Comics is certainly a help.
Labels: Aliens, Cold Heat, Comics Comics blog, Dark Horse Comics, Frank Santoro, Picturebox, Sam Kieth, Storeyville
FYC Replay: Me & Edith Head with Sara Ryan and Steve Lieber
Here's another installment in the archiving of my Pulse columns, For Your Consideration. In this one, I had the opportunity to interview, by email, Sara Ryan and Steve Lieber. They were very gracious in taking the time to answer my questions, and when I had the opportunity to meet them in person at the Small Press Expo in 2009, they were just as gracious. The interview is a couple of years old, so the "upcoming projects" question includes work long since completed - except for Mr. Lieber's mention of Greg Rucka's scripts for the third Whiteout miniseries, "Thaw." That has yet to see publication, but I did see the original pages for that first issue - penciled, inked, and lettered - at SPX 2009. I'm not sure when it will find its way onto Oni Press's publication schedule, but when it does, you will not be disappointed. For now, though, enjoy this look at one of the best mini-comics you'll find out there.
FRONT PAGE:
Warren Ellis put it best when he stated, “I’ve always been faintly disgusted by Steve Lieber's level of talent. Now it appears I have to have his wife killed too.” Me and Edith Head is a brilliant lesson in economy. With only fifteen pages, Ryan and Lieber manage to create a complete and fulfilling narrative that will resonate long after you put it down.
The 411:
Me and Edith Head
Written by Sara Ryan
Drawn by Steve Lieber
15pp. b/w
Cold Water Press
Wiser people than I have stated what many know to be true already, but it still bears repeating. Me and Edith Head is one of those gems all fans of the medium should seek out. Originally published in the September/October 2001 issue of Cicada magazine, it stars Katrina Lansdale, a character from Sara Ryan’s first novel Empress of the World. When that issue of Cicada went out of print, Ryan and Lieber decided to publish Edith Head as a 15-page chapbook in 2002 through their own publishing company Cold Water Press, and it was nominated for an Eisner award in the “Best Short Story” category that year.
Katrina is a character easily recognizable to many readers. A high school student dealing with the pressures inherent during that period of our lives, she must also contend with being one of those girls hovering just outside the cliques so ingrained within high school society. Compounding these difficulties, Katrina’s parents are quickly heading toward divorce, something that appears to have been a long time coming. She needs an outlet and auditions for the school play, a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hoping for the part of Titania, Katrina is instead delegated the task of costume designer.
Katrina is disappointed with the position and sees little hope of enjoying her time with the play. But something surprising happens. Katrina discovers a talent for the fashion needs of the company, and with the help of some books on Edith Head – an Oscar-winning costume designer – she discovers an inner confidence of which she was unaware. Growing up is difficult, but sometimes when one’s mind is diverted, it can happen without thinking.
This is an incredible little book. With only fifteen pages, Ryan and Lieber present a fully-fleshed out narrative in which the audience is witness to Katrina’s growth from a troubled teen to a confident young woman. This slim book packs more story into it than any collection from the “Big Two,” with very few exceptions. Ryan and Lieber hit all the high notes of the story, utilizing the comic page to its fullest, while eschewing the padded storytelling practice of decompression so common in many of today’s comics. This husband and wife team also exhibits an understanding of comics as a melding of words and pictures, allowing the images to tell the story in a way most creators never conceive.
One page in particular, in which the audience watches Katrina’s bedroom go from a typical teenage sty to a clean, well-ordered space as snippets of her parents’ dialogue illuminate their decaying relationship, is a prime example of how well thought out and well executed a comic this is. Throughout the story, Ryan’s dialogue is spot-on, and she expands much of the narrative with the unspoken statements lying beneath the characters’ words. And Lieber’s art is as superb as fans have come to expect. He is one of the best artists working in comics today with panels that are fully realized without being cluttered, allowing him to tell any type of story with a craft unmatched by many in the industry. Though not flashy, Lieber’s style is full of substance, and any book drawn by him is always a pleasure to read.
If you’re lucky enough to be attending a convention where Steve Lieber and Sara Ryan are in attendance, seek him out and buy this book. If not, go to Sara's website where you can order it through paypal. You’ll thank me.
An Interview with Sara Ryan and Steve Lieber:
Chris Beckett: What reaction have you gotten from fans at conventions regarding Edith Head and other mini comics you have available?
Steve: The responses have varied from wildly enthusiastic appreciation to indifference to an odd, condescending sort of -- I don't know-- pity, maybe? I'm glad to say that the good reactions have been the most common. The minis I've illustrated are all terrific stories. Edith was nominated for an Eisner; Sean Stewart's Family Reunion was reprinted in The Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga. And Sara's first Flytrap story was wonderful. I'm hugely excited that she and Ron Chan are keeping the series going.
The few negative reactions I think just spring from people who haven't grasped that an artist might enjoy telling more than one kind of story. I'm just guessing here, but I get the feeling that the thinking is something like: "You drew Batman and Civil War: Frontline and Whiteout, and here you are with these little xeroxed booklet thingies about characters I've never heard of? What happened?” What happened is that I love drawing both big action stories about larger than life heroes, and smaller, more intimate stories about real people. Mini-comics are a great venue for the latter.
Beckett: With the experience you have in the comics medium, how much input into the story did you have?
Steve: Not much really. Sara's a natural visual storyteller. There might have been a few panels where I'd offer a suggestion to make things flow more easily, but she grasped the underlying mechanisms of comics from the start, and instantly knew how to make her points visually, manipulate time, play word against image -- all the things that a comic writer needs to know intuitively to make the medium work.
Beckett: Why did you choose to present Me and Edith Head as a comic?
Sara: There were a couple of things going on when I decided to write Edith. First, I just wanted to experiment with comics writing. Steve says that comics people are vampires, in that they turn everyone around them into comics people, too. That definitely happened to me. As I read and enjoyed more and more comics and graphic novels, I got increasingly intrigued about the possibility of writing comics myself. And at the same time, I'd just published my first novel, Empress of the World, and introduced some characters that I had -- and have -- a lot of affection for, including Katrina Lansdale. When we meet Katrina in Empress, she's very much a costume and fashion expert, but I knew she hadn't always been that way, and I wanted to tell the story of how she developed that interest and expertise. I also knew that by its nature the story would be very visual, so it just made sense to do it as a comic.
Beckett: Me and Edith Head is as fully realized a story as one could find. How challenging was it to fit it within the fifteen pages of the mini comic?
Sara: Thank you! I tend to write in a very compressed way, whether I'm writing prose or comics. More often than not, I find that I need to add or extend scenes in order for the story in my head to take coherent shape on the page.
Beckett: What was the collaborative process like for you two on Me and Edith Head, and how did it differ from other comics you have done, Steve?
Steve: We just talked about the story and she set to writing. It differed mainly in that I had the writer on-site to clarify matters where I had questions. The script said, "Katrina enters the thrift shop.” I asked how she was entering: tentatively, normally, forcefully? Sara went out of my studio, closed the door behind her and barged back in with squared shoulders and a face that was all business. So I drew that. And it's a story about a teen girl's relationship with clothing and how she dresses, so it was certainly handy for me to have her lean over my board now and then and say things like, "Ooh. She'd never wear that with a belt."
Sara: I would just add that when Steve and I collaborate, it's a little like Calvinball. We keep changing the rules, and sometimes someone has to sing the I'm Very Sorry song. But overall it's fun.
Beckett: What other current or forthcoming projects do each of you have that you might like to speak about?
Steve: I've been doing a ton of commercial and advertising art recently, so a lot of my recent work isn't available in comic’s stores. If you're in Japan, you can see an indoor parade I helped design for the Hello Kitty theme park Sanrio-Puroland. The Thunderbolts Annual I drew for Marvel comes out this month. My current comic projects are Underground - a graphic novel written by Jeff Parker, and a story for the Belgian publisher Dupuis. And of course Greg [Rucka]'s going to be writing the third and final Whiteout book, Thaw. I can't wait to get my hands on that.
Sara: My second novel, The Rules for Hearts, is just out, and I have not one, not two, but three more minicomics collaborations coming soon: "Click," with Dylan Meconis, "Einbahnstrasse Waltz" with Cat Ellis, and the third episode of Flytrap, "Over the Wall," with Ron Chan.
Labels: For Your Consideration, Greg Rucka, Me and Edith Head, Oni Press, Sara Ryan, Steve Lieber, Whiteout
Jaime Hernandez knows comic art
I finished reading the latest edition of Love & Rockets: New Stories last week and, as always, was amazed. Gilbert and Jaime are masters of the medium. Beautiful art, simple yet poignant narratives, characters that have evolved as their creators have grown, and stories that build on one another, though it may not be evident until years down the road. I didn't come to the L&R universe until the first oversized collection from Fantagraphics, Palomar, and after that, I was all in.
I was very anxious to receive this book, as Jaime's offerings in this third annual issue were being touted as possibly the best work of his career. Though I've read most of his L&R work, I am not as familiar with it as I would like, so I can't say one way or the other. But I can say that "Browntown," which is the centerpiece here, and "The Love Bunglers" parts one and two are incredibly moving tales. Jaime eases you into the narrative, showcasing fairly simple situations from the Chascarillo family's history. And then, he punches you in the gut with the core of his narrative, which ripples out across all of the stories involving Maggie, in particular, and Hopey by default. "Browntown" is a story that will make you uncomfortable, will make you angry, and will make you cry, all in the course of thirty pages. Jaime really is at the top of his game.
And, as a small sample, here's a detail from one of the story's pages, which showcases how effortlessly Jaime seems able to convey emotion through his artwork. In this 3-panel tier we see young Maggie come to a horrific realization. With little dialogue or its proper context, I expect you can tell what has happened.
And in the details of the first and third panels below, you can see how Jaime so perfectly captures the emotions we wear on our faces every day. Just a few lines, and a slight modification to Maggie’s mouth and eyes, and we feel what she feels.
Labels: Fantagraphics Books, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Love and Rockets
previously unpublished Joe Quesada interview from ...
FYC Replay: Me & Edith Head with Sara Ryan and Ste...
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Can the Fed Help the U.S. Side-step a Worldwide Economic Malaise?
October 15, 2015• Economic Conditions• by Deena Zaidi
Markets and economists have long been obsessed with the Fed's first interest rate hike in nine years, but it seems the factors are not reciprocating positively to what the Fed is looking for. Reports on labor and emerging economies coupled with low inflation, strong dollar and falling commodity prices suggest that the US economy may not be as sound as expected.
Reaction to the jobs report
Lately, the economy has reflected some troubling numbers in its jobs report since the payrolls increased less than projected in September and wages remained stagnant. As the meltdown in emerging markets slowly ripple into the world's largest economy, many are left wondering whether the Fed should have increased the rates early this year.
Released on Friday, the weak job growth took many economists and stock markets by surprise. With the US jobs reports released, economists find it tough to look for a strong reason that will convince the Fed to raise the rates. Reacting to the jobs report on Friday, Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, said that the chances of a move in December have "clearly diminished. There's nothing good in this morning's report."
What does the Fed look for when taking an interest rate decision?
In the Federal Reserve Act, the Congress clearly establishes full employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates as its statutory objectives for monetary policies. But the current situation for the Fed hike seems a bit bewildering, since the objectives seem far from reaching their goal. The employment report remains weak, the inflation remains below the Fed's target levels and the interest rates have been kept close to zero since late 2008. Such weak findings have been further suffocated by additional factors that are more global and external in nature. China's slowdown and currency devaluation has led to many emerging economies engaging in currency wars and affecting their trade balances. With an existing strong dollar, the foreign debts are also seen to have increased exponentially for indebted nations. Falling commodity prices have resulted in huge losses for those who are major net exporters of commodities.
Has the Fed missed the window of opportunity?
Many economists feel that beginning of the year was the right time for the Fed to have increased the interest rates since the problem arising from China and other emerging markets did not exist. Prior to the Sept. 16-17 meet this year, Bill Gross, who manages a $1.5 billion bond fund for Janus Capital had mentioned that the timing and the eventual 'size' of the Fed interest rate hike may be 'too little, too late.'
In an interview with CNBC, Mohamed El Erian's thoughts seemed to align with Bill Gross's statements. "I would have hiked earlier and I would have gotten off zero earlier, but it's easier to say with hindsight," El-Erian told CNBC. "We know that there was a moment when domestic data was relatively strong and international data was okay. Now, the international data is really scary, and therefore the Fed has lost the opportunity when it had some alignment."
But the first two quarters of 2015 would have been a premature move for the Fed to take an interest decision since the economic picture of US started off on a weak economic activity and in second quarter, it was not convincing enough to take an affirmative action on the rate increase.
In the first quarter, the New York Times had reported that the unemployment had been falling steadily with experts believing it to fall to about 5 percent by the end of the year, from 5.4 percent then. But the US economy had contracted 0.7% with grim trade performance, strong dollar, spending cuts in energy sector, labor dispute and slowdown at the West Coast.
The second quarter too had its own concerns that revolved around low inflation and lingering weaknesses in the labor markets. As observed by officials in the Fed's July 28-29 meeting, "the labor market had improved notably since early this year, but many saw scope for further improvement". The minutes had also mentioned "second-quarter economic growth was strong in China and in the United Kingdom." While the second quarter showed that the underlying growth of the US economy was stable, it was not so convincing to withstand an interest rate hike. Strong hints like inflation close to target level and strong employment data remained missing.
What Next...
So far in most of their meetings in 2015, the Fed has remained positive regarding employment outlook in hopes to push the inflation closer to the 2% target. However, low inflation and weak labor markets have been an issue in most of its meetings. In a speech on September 24th this year, Janet Yellen believed that with unemployment rate at 5.1% from 10% in 2009, the economy is not too far from achieving full employment.
The maximum employment is dependent on a number of non-monetary factors that may not be directly quantifiable and hence there is no target employment rate that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sets. Through FOMC's September 2015 Summary of Economic Projections, past projections long-term unemployment rate normally range between 4.7% and 5.8%. As per the Labor Department, this figure remained steady at 5.1% (lowest in 7 years). The big disappointment comes from the number of new jobs generated. Economists polled by Reuters had expected to job growth of 203,000 but the US economy generated only 142,000 jobs in September.
The jobs report reflects that the job data may have eventually caught up with the slowdown in China and other emerging markets. The Fed's interest rate decision will be highly determined by the employment performance and situation in emerging markets and unfortunately both look grim.
Is the US economy getting caught in the global turmoil? is republished with permission from the Financial Keyhole
See Also: Are Recent Global Market Trends Reversing?
Deena Zaidi is the chief writer and owner of the economic website Financial Keyhole
Deena Zaidi, Writer and Owner
Major Economies' Cloudy Futures
BRICS Building
Dr Steinbock is an internationally recognized expert of the multipolar world. He focuses on international business, international relations, investment and risk among all major advanced economies and large emerging economies. In addition to advisory activities (www.differencegroup.net), he is affiliated with India China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and EU Center (Singapore). For more, please see http://www.differencegroup.net/. Research Director of International Business at India China and America Institute (USA) and Visiting Fellow at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore).
Dan Steinbock, EconomyWatch Contributor
Is Japan at the End of the Monetary Rope?
Is the Latest Steel Crisis China's Doing?
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About the YM
Public Interest Award
At an annual memorial lecture at UKZN in honour of Victoria and Griffiths Mxenge, who were both assassinated by the apartheid regime and had worked closely with Yunus, Judge Dhaya Pillay proposed the establishment of the Yunus Mahomed Public Interest Award.
The Yunus Mahomed Public Interest Award for published articles on Public Interest Law and Business Ethics strives to encourage students to study and practise law in a manner that promotes the advancement of the public interest, transparency and accountability, to cultivate and entrench democracy and best practices.
As a lawyer, Yunus committed his talents to promoting human rights, combating poverty and discrimination. Together with other activists, he organised and mobilized communities to protest against these injustices, which provided significant opportunities for public interest litigation. They launched legal challenges against Group Areas segregation, discriminatory systems of levying property rates, and politically repressive arrests, detentions and convictions. Public interest litigation was not viewed as an end in itself, but rather formed part of the broader movement to achieve democracy.
Despite the end of apartheid in 1994, public interest litigation remains relevant in order to facilitate access to justice, to basic goods and services, and to the defence of fundamental rights in order to animate the rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights.
It provides an avenue for constructive engagement between the providers of goods and services, usually an organ of state, and affected communities, usually poor and marginalised groups. Without public interest litigation, the aspirational objectives of our Constitution may not materialise. Moreover, conducting research and publishing articles that promote human rights, ethical conduct and legal activism contribute to the ongoing discourse on transformation and development of our society.
The purpose of the Yunus Mahomed Public Interest Award therefore, is to encourage and reward law students’ engagement in Public Interest Law and Business Ethics through offering writing prizes at each participating university, as well as an annual national prize. Yunus recognised the empowering value of communicating without legalese. Hence this award also promotes clear, coherent, concise and precise writing.
Copyright Yunus Mahomed
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University of St. Thomas
1101 Harmon Pl
You'll want to fly to the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP).
UST has a handy interactive location map that includes a driving directions option. Choose the Minneapolis Map and search for School of Law as your destination.
UST driving directions
UST interactive campus map
By public transportation
The METRO Blue Line (Hiawatha) between downtown Minneapolis and Mall of America, including the airport, is the quickest and cheapest way to get to UST from the MSP airport. The METRO Green Line connects downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis. The University of St. Thomas campus is five blocks away from the Warehouse District light rail station and six blocks away from the Nicollet Mall light rail station (both of which are serviced by both Blue and Green lines).
Dozens of bus routes are timed to connect with trains at various stations, making it easy to get to Minneapolis hotels and other destinations that are on a bus line as well.
Metro Transit light rail and connecting bus route information
There are also some great long distance bus options like Mega-Bus that will drop off in downtown Minneapolis.
Minneapolis is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s bike-friendliest cities. Reaching UST by bike is easy, and it’s worth taking the time to explore some of the Twin Cities greenways. Coming from out of town without your bike? Don’t have your own bike? Nice Ride (city-wide bike rental) to the rescue!
Google bike map
Nice Ride
Minneapolis bike parking
If you’ve never been to the Twin Cities before, you should take the opportunity to explore Minneapolis’ skyways. Or maybe you need to get to UST from somewhere downtown and plan to use the skyways. Either way, here’s a handy site:
Skyway My Way
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Four Things Putin Won In Ukraine
Bowyer Research | On August 29, 2014
President Putin has been the central figure of the crisis in Ukraine, and the most watched figure in international politics for the last 6 months. Given his status, it would be prudent to consider exactly what he has achieved in Ukraine.
Destabilized Ukraine:
President Putin had one major goal for the rebels he started supporting in eastern Ukraine: destabilize the country by creating an insurgency, thus weakening Kiev’s relative strength and negotiating position.
Clearly, Putin has achieved a significant destabilization and weakening of Ukraine, primarily by swaying public opinion in Eastern Ukraine from a tentative support of federalization, to a strong hostility towards Kiev and Western Ukrainians. As the course of the civil war turned in favor of the Kiev government forces, the eastern rebels began to operate more as an insurgency than as the conventional force it was earlier in the war. As a result, the rebels operated in more urban environments, forcing the Kiev forces to bomb and shell cities and towns. The mounting civilian casualties have turned public opinion in the east strongly against Kiev and towards Moscow.
Secured naval supremacy in the Black Sea:
Putin’s seizure of Crimea ensured continued Russian naval domination of the Black Sea. This is a factor that has largely been overlooked by the mainstream media, but is extremely important for Russia’s power projection capabilities. Crimea returning to its historical status as sovereign Russian territory allows Russia to continue to project naval power into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean for the foreseeable future, thus maintaining Russia’s status as a major naval power.
Stopped the eastward march of NATO:
As is now well-known, Putin’s original motivation for intervening in Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008 was to stop both former-Soviet states from joining NATO. The Western powers were clearly planning on admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO as of 2008, but Putin’s clear willingness to sacrifice economic growth to protect core Russian security interests has motivated NATO leaders to dial back their enthusiasm. Ukraine and Georgia will not be joining NATO anytime soon.
Exposed Europe’s divisions:
The European sanctions of July 29th had a somewhat disappointing impact on the Russian national economy, and perhaps more importantly, exposed how deeply divided the European Union is on the “Russian question.” It took months of deliberations for the EU to agree on any sanctions that did more than ban certain individuals from entering the Union. Italy, Spain, and France were transparently opposed to “sector sanctions” against Russia, and only agreed to them after loopholes were agreed on. In the weeks after the sanctions, the German government stated its support for a federalization of Ukraine. Additionally, the front-runner to be the European Union’s next foreign policy chief is the Italian foreign minister, who is seen as being very soft on Russia.
Strengthened his domestic position:
According to the latest polls, President Putin has an all-time high approval rating of nearly 90% — for comparison, Putin was polling at barely above 50% before the Winter Olympics in February. In the eyes of the Russian people, Putin has finally stood up to what they see as the bullying Americans and their European underlings, restored Russia’s national pride, and returned Crimea to its historical status as Russian territory.
The sanctions enacted by the European Union and the United States have had a disappointing effect. Despite several rounds of sanctions since March, including the much-hyped “sector sanctions” of July 29th, Russia’s primary stock exchange, the Micex, is trading higher than it was at the start of the crisis in March. It is up 4% since August of last year.
6 month Micex performance:
Even with Thursdays sell-off, the Ruble has only lost roughly 5% of its value against the dollar since the start of the crisis in March.
1 year USD to Ruble:
At the time of writing, there are reports of Russian incursions into Ukraine. While these may or may not be true, they are seemingly small-scale. If Putin is truly invading, he is invading with a small force designed to support the existing rebel insurgency, rather than a large force designed to replace the rebels.
In short, Putin has achieved his four initial goals: destabilizing Ukraine, guaranteeing Russia’s status as the major naval power in the Black Sea and Mediterranean, restraining NATO, and strengthening his domestic position. Additionally, he exposed the self-interested nature of the EU member states. When you also consider the underwhelming nature of the EU and US sanctions, the conclusion that Putin has “won” in Ukraine is almost inescapable.
Bowyer Research
Mary And The Wise Guy: Why I Wish Christopher Hitchens Had Known More History
Is Virtue More Important For The Leaders Or For The People?
The Futility of Managing Your Own Reputation
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Righteous Populism and Imperial Presidencies
Vernon L. Smith | On March 8, 2016
Donald John Trump, Republican presidential candidate
(Photo by Michael Vadon) (CC BY-SA) (Resized/Cropped)
Responsible Americans, both Democrat and Republican need to address the roots of current anger, fear and frustration in America. What is at stake is much more than just another election. In the heat of this moment our freedom is in serious danger of being abused in the name of a righteous populism that supports an imperial presidency because it is perceived as being on the right side of security, border control, military strength, rooting out the evil among us, etc.
This is and should be a bipartisan issue but few are willing to stand up and be counted, because it may seem weak in the face of people rushing to choose up sides.
“Ironically, though Mr. Schwarzenegger was a populist, unlike Mr. Trump he had established himself as a Republican well before running for office, and he had some fixed conservative principles on government and the economy….
Even so, at bottom Mr. Schwarzenegger’s chief appeal was pretty much Mr. Trump’s. California politics had become so corrupted by its establishment and its institutions, ran the thinking, that what “the people” needed was a strongman to come in and shake it from top to bottom.
Who better than The Terminator?
But here’s the thing about bluster. Against entrenched interests, it almost always loses. For a simple reason: The interests are entrenched because they know how to game the system. American history is thus littered with elected populists foundering in office on the presumption that their personal appeal would be enough to carry the day.”
Dr. Vernon L. Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his groundbreaking work in experimental economics. Dr. Smith has joint appointments with the Argyros School of Business & Economics and the School of Law, and he is part of a team that will create and run the new Economic Science Institute at Chapman.
Dr. Smith has authored or co-authored more than 250 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics and experimental economics. He serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, The Cato Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Science, Economic Theory, Economic Design, Games and Economic Behavior, and the Journal of Economic Methodology. He is past president of the Public Choice Society, the Economic Science Association, the Western Economic Association and the Association for Private Enterprise Education. Previous faculty appointments include the University of Arizona, Purdue University, Brown University, the University of Massachusetts, and George Mason University, where he was a Professor of Economics and Law prior to joining the faculty at Chapman University. Dr. Smith has been a Ford Foundation Fellow, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology.
In 1991, the Cambridge University Press published Dr. Smith’s Papers in Experimental Economics, and in 2000, a second collection of more recent papers, Bargaining and Market Behavior. Cambridge published his Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms in January 2008. Dr. Smith has received an honorary Doctor of Management degree from Purdue University, and is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Smith is a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association, an Andersen Consulting Professor of the Year, and the 1995 Adam Smith Award recipient conferred by the Association for Private Enterprise Education. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, and received CalTech’s distinguished alumni award in 1996. He has served as a consultant on the privatization of electric power in Australia and New Zealand and participated in numerous private and public discussions of energy deregulation in the United States. In 1997 he served as a Blue Ribbon Panel Member, National Electric Reliability Council.
Dr. Smith completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, his master’s degree in economics at the University of Kansas, and his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University.
We Don’t Need More STEM Grads, We Need Better STEM Grads
Nude is Natural: Should Clothing be Optional?
Madison’s Attack On Government Suppression Of Dissent Is Still Relevant Today
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Sturgill Simpson Plays a Cop in ‘Queen & Slim’ — Watch the Trailer
The first-look trailer for the romantic drama Queen & Slim is here, and it reveals the flaws and fate of Sturgill Simpson's character, a crooked cop whose actions thrust Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) into a Bonnie & Clyde-like adventure. Readers can press play above to watch the preview, which debuted on Sunday night (June 23).
Simpson's role in Queen & Slim, identified by IMDB as Police Officer Reed, isn't his first rodeo as an actor: He appears as a "guitar zombie" and provides the theme song for the current theatrical release The Dead Don't Die. In 2018, he played Ken Fry in five episodes of the CBS All Access drama One Dollar.
Queen & Slim marks the big-screen directorial debut of Melina Matsoukas, known for the HBO series Insecure, Netflix's Master of None and music videos for Beyonce and Rihanna. She tells Variety that the film highlights the struggle of love in the black community in the midst of racial turmoil.
“It’s a film that defines black love as a revolutionary act," Matsoukas says. "It shows that our union is the greatest weapon against the assault on black people in America.”
Time will tell if the film's Nov. 27 release cures Simpson of his acting bug -- a desire he jokingly described as a "mid-life crisis" to late-night talk show host Seth Myers -- and eases him back into the recording studio. In that same interview, which took place in late 2018, Simpson said that he had been working on a new album, the follow-up to 2016's A Sailor's Guide to Earth, for some time.
These Artists Have Also Tried Their Hands at Acting
NEXT: Top 10 Sturgill Simpson Songs
Source: Sturgill Simpson Plays a Cop in ‘Queen & Slim’ — Watch the Trailer
Filed Under: Sturgill Simpson
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Young players have officially taken over Major League Baseball
225dSam Miller
CC-Rays rift heats up in benches-clearing fracas
Trout (calf strain) out of lineup vs. Astros again
Phillies' Bruce leaves with right oblique strain
Braves place lefty Fried on IL with finger blister
Carpenter again to IL after fouling ball off foot
This year, ballplayers 25 and under, including the Braves' Ronald Acuna Jr., outhit their elders like never before. AP Photo/John Amis
Sam MillerESPN.com
ESPN baseball columnist/feature writer
Former editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus
Co-author of "The Only Rule Is It Has To Work"
This summer, when we asked major league veterans to talk about getting old, only one of them -- Adam Jones, father of two sons -- brought up Lightning McQueen.
Aging is not so much the body breaking down, Jones theorized, as the fact that every generation is better than the one before it. "It's not an excuse, but the game's gotten harder. That's all it is: the next generation. It's like that line from 'Cars 3.' His grandpa told him, 'You'll know when to retire. The youngsters will tell you.' I'm nowhere near that, but the next generation's here, and they're really good."
It was the car's uncle, not his grandpa, but otherwise Jones knows of what he speaks. The next generation is here, and they are really good. This is true of every generation -- a universal truth -- but it has probably never been more true in baseball than it is right now, right this very second.
We're going to lay it out here, real simple, real factual. Here's point one:
1. In 2018, players 25 and under had an OPS that was 3 percent higher than that of the rest of the league. That probably doesn't knock you over, but to appreciate the significance of it, we have to deal with the problem of selection bias. ("Sabermetrics is 95 percent accounting for the bias in your sample and 5 percent long division." -- Russell Carleton.) So put point one aside for a minute. We'll get back to it.
Here's point two:
2018: The Year That Was
Sam Miller looks back at an MLB season to remember (or to forget, depending).
• The good, the bad ... and the O's: Ranking all 30 teams based on their 2018 goals »
• Young players weren't just good this year. They were historic. »
• Castro, a cup of beer and the most impressive at-bat of 2018 »
• And the worst-hitting pitcher of 2018 was ... »
• 'I won't throw it there again': What we learned from the most wicked comebackers of '18 »
2. In 2018, batters 25 and under accounted for about 51,000 plate appearances, or 27.6 percent of all the plate appearances taken across the majors. (We're focusing only on young hitters here because pitching aging curves are less linear, and pitcher performance by age hasn't shown the same recent changes.) At the start of this decade, that share was less than 21 percent. To find a season when young players took a higher share of playing time, you have to go back 40 years to 1978. Throughout the subsequent free-agency era, young players took on a significantly smaller share of playing time, probably driven by economics: Teams wanted to start young players' service time later and felt more pressure or incentive to play the older guys whom they were already paying a lot of money.
Those 51,000 plate appearances tell us two important things. One is that major league decision-makers appear to think young players are better now than they used to be; GMs call up those young players, and managers put those young players in the lineup. While there are other factors to consider -- more tanking teams might be playing their young guys, more GMs might be trying to cut short-term costs by playing pre-arbitration players instead of signing older free agents -- the league-wide effect is big. The average hitter last season was, at 28.1 years old, a full year younger than the average hitter in 2007 and younger than in any season since 1979. The fact that there are more young players playing more is significant data all on its own.
This also means that we're dealing with a broader, less select pool of young players. If, hypothetically, there were only five players under 25 in the majors one season, they would presumably be the five best young players in the world; their collective OPS would be outrageous. The bigger the pool, the lower the collective OPS should be -- especially relative to the correspondingly smaller, more select pool of older players -- if we assume a relatively rational world. This isn't, in other words, just the result of Juan Soto and Ronald Acuna being disproportionately good. It's about hundreds of players.
Back to 1. We said a collective OPS that's 3 percent higher than the league average. That's called the sOPS+: The OPS of the split (25 and under) relative to the full-league performance, where 100 is average. The youngsters' sOPS+ this year was 103, or 3 percent higher than average. This is a pretty big deal.
Because players (of any age) who can't hack it in the majors tend not to spend much time in the majors -- selection bias -- each age group tends to stay pretty close to 100. But young players are the exception. They're almost always lower than average, for some common-sense reasons: Young players with little major league experience are harder to evaluate, so teams are more likely to err by calling them up before they're ready; young players are more likely to be called up, even though everybody knows they're not ready, so they can gain experience; and young players (at Triple-A or Double-A) are, as the in-case-of-emergency backups, more likely to be forced into action because of an injury on the major league roster.
And it is so: In 87 of the past 111 seasons, players 25 and under were collectively worse than average, and the median group of youngsters is 3 percent worse than average. There have been only two seasons in which 25-and-under players were better, relative to the rest of the league, than they were in 2018. One of them was nearly a century ago (1928), and in the other -- 1946, coming out of World War II -- young players took just 16 percent of plate appearances, the third-lowest share ever.
The skill most associated with youth, and that most reliably deteriorates with age, is speed. It isn't surprising when young players outperform older players in stolen bases, batting average on balls in play, triples and defense. But none of that is what's driving the numbers above. Rather, young players are thriving at skills we have traditionally associated with late 20s (power hitting) or later (plate discipline):
25-and-under hitters walked 1 percent more often than the league as a whole, their highest relative walk rate in history. At the start of this decade, they walked 4 percent less than the league.
25-and-under hitters' isolated power was 6 percent higher than the league's as a whole, their second-highest relative power rate in history. In 2010, they had 7 percent less power than the league.
Meanwhile, 25-and-under hitters did strike out more than league average -- 6 percent more -- but that was still a lower relative strikeout rate than is typical. Over the past seven decades, young hitters have typically struck out 8 percent more than the league average. At the start of this decade, in 2010, young players struck out 12 percent more than average.
So we've settled that.
A few years ago, I was talking to the high school coach of a famous first-round draft pick about how travel ball was changing the sport. The best teenage players in the country were not just playing a lot -- Bryce Harper reportedly played up to 130 games a year throughout his tween and teen years -- but were also playing a lot against the best players in the country, against the highest velocity and the most precocious breaking balls. They were playing in adult-run practices and learning under professional-level instruction.
"I don't think all that makes them any better in the long run," the coach told me. "It does make them good quicker." Fifteen was the new 17.
The same might be true of modern player development systems, which had been somewhat late adopters to analytics. Twenty-four is the new 27.
FanGraphs writer Jeff Zimmerman has studied the aging curves of different baseball skills, and his recent findings support this shift. Power and performance used to peak in players' mid-20s, but in this era, Zimmerman writes, "hitters arrive at their peak and simply decline with age ... home runs no longer peaked, they only declined. I examined just about every overall offensive stat (OPS and wOBA, to name a couple) and found the same thing: Hitters no longer peaked, they only declined."
Zimmerman wrote that after the 2013 season. Since then, the percentage of major league plate appearances young players get has gone up each year but one. Young players' walk rate, relative to the league average, has gone up every year, and their relative isolated power has gone up every year but one. To a major league veteran, this isn't great news. "I'm worried about the state of baseball, to be honest," Frank Thomas said this spring. "If these young kids continue to impress like this, coming up hitting home runs, doing so much on the field, what's going to happen to the veteran players five years from now?"
What would happen would probably be commissioner Rob Manfred throwing a huge party. "Obviously, we think young players are more appealing to young people," Manfred told Grantland in 2015. "You have to have a great plan to market the game that includes advertising, but when you get raw material like Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, you have to just count your lucky stars. They can be the face of the game for more than the next decade."
This will undoubtedly be the subtext of this month's winter meetings. The self-interested baseball executive used to have a big incentive to keep young players in the minors, where they could continue to move toward their peaks without getting more expensive. The same executive now increasingly has an incentive to bring those young players up -- to capture their peaks while they exist.
Adam Jones, meanwhile, will be a free agent at those winter meetings. The youngsters will, in their indirect way, tell him.
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Nigerian Scientists confirm the power of Jobelyn to cure Rheumatoid Arthritis in Animal Model.
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Scientists from Neuropharmacology Unit, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria led by Solomon Mukoro P hd. in a recent animal model in vivo study postulates that Jobelyn has the potential to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis in human.
In a recent article published in the journal "Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy" https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2017.12.098 it was reported that Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the physical and psychosocial well being of the patients and a major cause of work disability. Current drugs for its treatment only provide palliative effect, as cure for the disease still remains elusive. Jobelyn® (JB), a potent anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory dietary supplement obtained from Sorghum bicolor, has been claimed to relieve arthritic pain. Thus, this study was designed to evaluate its effect on inflammatory and biochemical changes as well as neurobehavioural deficits associated with complete Freund-adjuvant (CFA)-induced arthritis in mice. The effect of JB (50, 100 and200 mg/kg) on inflammatory oedema, neurobehavioural deficits, levels of biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6) induced by 0.1 mL of CFA (10 mg/mL)was evaluated in male Swiss mice. Oral administration of JB (100 and 200 mg/kg) reduced inflammatory paw volume and reversed sensori motor deficits induced by CFA. JB also reduced pain episodes, anxiety and depressive-like symptoms in CFA-mice. The increased level of oxidative stress in the joint and brain tissues of CFA mice was reduced by JB. It also decreased tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6 levels induced by CFA inthe joint tissue of mice. These findings suggest that Jobelyn® attenuates inflammatory responses induced by CFA in mice via inhibition of oxidative stress and release of inflammatory cytokines. The ability of JB to attenuate CFA-induced nociception, sensori motor deficits and depressive-like symptom suggests it might improve the quality of life of patients with arthritic conditions
The full research paper could be accessed at:
https://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Jobelyn%C2%AE%20attenuates%20inflammatory%20responses%20Freund-adjuvant-induced%20arthritis%20in%20mice.pdf
In an earlier study published in https://doi.org/10.1016/j
.biopha.2017.12.098 (De Gruyter), the authors in article titled Jobelyn® exhibited anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and membrane-stabilizing activities in experimental models, the authors stated that Jobelyn® (JB) is an African sorghum-based food supplement claimed to be efficacious for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Although in vitro studies confirmed its anti-inflammatory property, no study had shown the effect of JB using in vivo animal models of inflammation. Thus, its effects on acute and chronic inflammation in rats were evaluated in this study.Its effect on rat red blood cell (RBC) lysis was also assessed.
Results: JB (50–200 mg/kg) given orally produced a significant inhibition of acute inflammation induced by carrageenan in rats. It reduced the volume and number of leukocytes in inflammatory fluid in the granuloma air pouch model of chronic inflammation. It further decreased the levels of MDA in the fluid suggesting antioxidant property. JB elevated the concentrations of GSH in inflammatory exudates indicating free radical scavenging activity. It also significantly inhibited RBC lysis caused by hypotonic medium, suggesting membrane-stabilizing property.
The authors concluded that JB has in vivo anti-inflammatory activity, which may be related to its antioxidant and membrane stabilizing properties, supporting its use for the treatment of arthritic disorder.
The full length paper could be accessed at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277409295_Jobelyn_exhibited_anti-inflammatory_antioxidant_and_membrane-stabilizing_activities_in_experimental_models
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jobelyn antioxidant anti-inflammation Sorghum bicolor rheumatoid arthritis
The role of Herbal Medicine in Infertility
Mrs. Collins (not real name) was visibly worried when narrating her story to me in my office. Her marriage seven years ago was opposed by her mother-in-law on account because she hails from the South-western part of the country whereas her husband is from the other side of the Niger River.
In her words: "I was hoping that the arrival of a baby would change the attitude of my parents in law but that was not to be. As the years rolled by without the sign of pregnancy in sight, the pressure continued to mount. My husband was very co-operative and we moved round almost all the known gynecologist in Lagos area.
"Simultaneously, we joined all the Pentecostal churches available to tackle the problem from the spiritual angle and for years, we were hoping against hope. At one stage, we were tempted to visit native herbalists, a friend introduced me to the IVF solution and my husband did not hesitate to make available the huge amount of money demanded for this exercise but it was like the last straw to break the camel’s back. My husband has now started listening to his mother and I suspect a new wife from the village is being arranged for him."
She started weeping profusely and it was difficult to console her. I allowed her to exhaust her emotional expression and gave her an appointment to visit me with her husband. I suggested that they should bring along the results of all laboratory tests done in the last few years.
On the appointed date, she came but was unaccompanied by the husband. Fortunately, she brought a load of laboratory reports which showed that she was having irregular menstrual flow, blocked fallopian tube and moderate infection of staphylococcus, while the husband had weak erection, premature ejaculation, low sperm count.
On further interrogation, it was revealed that the husband is almost losing interest in the sexual activities on the excuse of pressure of work, stress of traffic jams and so on.
Infertility is the inability of a couple to conceive after one year of unprotected sex. A third of the cases are due to a male factor, another third are due to a female factor while the remaining cases are due to "unexpected factors".
For most couples, there will be several diagnoses of various conditions over time, treatments that do not improve the condition, not to mention the emotional and financial stress of simply moving from one solution to another. During this extremely difficult period, it is important not to lose focus while wading through all the available treatments on offer.
problem because in a recent article published in the USA NEWS titled: "Drug-Resistant Staphylococcus a Widespread Threat- Dangerous infections occurring more often than previously believed, study finds that it was reported that "potentially deadly, drug-resistant Staphylococcus infections are more common, both in and out of hospitals, than experts once thought, a new study warns.
"Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are the top causes of skin and soft tissue infections among people in hospitals and can result in severe and even fatal disease. In fact, MRSA infection account for almost 19, 000 deaths and more than 94,000 life-threatening illnesses each year in the United States."
If the US could raise the alarm about this infection, it is better imagined how every Nigerian walks into the pharmacy shops to buy antibiotics without a doctor’s prescription.
We are much aware that a large percentage of infertility in this country is caused by the MRSA and over the years, we have developed a therapy that has succeeded in many cases.
Some years ago, I had an encounter with Mr. Femi Kusa who was then the Editor-in-Chief of the rested The Comet Newspapers, he decided to do what he termed a kitchen experiment with the new product we discovered.
The result of his experiment was published in The Comet Newspaperssometime in 2001 under the title "Bye bye to staphylococcus, the unconquerable". This was at a time when Health Forever Products Limited was developing the product called BENABIOTIC which was later packaged for sale and have since been used by Health Forever Clinic to reverse several cases of infertility. In the opening paragraphs of the article, Mr. Kusa stated that:
"Believed me, this is not a joke! A herbal remedy may be on the way which, in only one month, could rid the body of all the colonies stacked up by staphylococcus over several years to inflict all those unbearable aches and remedy in all seriousness. Perhaps prematurely, to help open a health gate, but careful not to be a harbinger of false hope for all those hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in this country who live under the siege of staphylococcus.
This Editor worked me up into lifting this veil, I must confess, when he asked me once or twice last month what staphylococcus was all about, he had received letters from some readers making enquiries and had even published one or two of them. To be frank, I am aware staphylococcus defies several pharmaceutical remedies, except perhaps vancomycin.
Even then, only rarely is vancomycin the staphylococcus waterloo. It walks away majestically free from all traps, causing destabilizing internal heat, which may be confused with the hot flashes of menopausal hormonal imbalances; literally, it lives on the sperms in men, subjecting them to not only low sperm count, but taking away their libido as well and creating erectile dysfunction problems for them.
For women, the monthly cycle is disarranged, if not disparaged, and they itch severely in the secret place. For men, occasional physical reminder that they still live with staph, as staphylococcus is also called, could be pinching inside the tip of their organs. Many sufferers speak of feeling of "something walking up and down" in their bodies. This may very well be effects on internal tissue of the protein toxins secreted by these bacteria, against which the body fails to produce effective antibodies.
The body would have been partly incapacitated by a weakened immune system, creating gaps in its defences which the bacteria exploited to start with. And to worsen the situation, staphylococcus secretes enzymes which depopulate the fighter white blood cells."
An important issue raised by Mr. Kusa in his article was the impact of staphylococcus attack on the immune system. Many medical doctors have been prescribing Vitamin E which describes a family of eight antioxidants and one of these; alpha-tocopherol is the form that is actively maintained in the body. Vitamin E maintains the integrity of cell membranes in the body by neutralizing free oxygen radicals which would otherwise disrupt this function leading to several diseases in the body.
High concentrations of free radicals have been identified in a significant number of infertile men especially in cases where the cause is thought to be unexplained. Several studies have also established that the presence of these toxins affects the quality of the sperm in terms of its count, morphology and motility.
This is the reason why vitamin E, an antioxidant, has long been prescribed because of its ability to neutralize these free radicals. However, Jobelyn has a clear advantage because it has been shown scientifically to have a significantly higher antioxidant capacity (3,123 using the ORAC value) than vitamin E.
Free radicals have been implicated in conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovarian disease, tubal factor infertility and unexplained infertility.
The emphasis here is not to use Jobelyn to treat each condition in order to achieve a cure, but to re-balance the body by neutralising the free radicals that cause these conditions. This is because pregnancy is still often times achieved in the presence of these conditions.
Staphylococcus and other bacteria infections
Anthocleista-djalonensis-Sapo
Over the years, we have succeeded in treating infertility caused by different types of bacteria infection with our branded herbal product called Benabiotic which is usually combined with Jobelyn. The main ingredient in Benabiotic is from a plant Anthocleista djalonensis (Loganiaceae) (Yoruba Name – Sapo). The combination of this remedy with Jobelyn has eliminated Staphylococcus infection from patients within a period of 3 to 5 months.
Hormonal Imbalance in female infertility
Recently, hormonal disturbances have been considered of great importance in the knowledge of causes and diagnosis of female infertility . What exactly does hormonal balance mean for our fertility health? What do hormones do anyway? Does hormonal balance really matter? Absolutely! If our hormone levels are not balanced, our health will suffer. We cannot live without hormones. Hormones deliver messages. Our cells are genetically programmed to only receive and respond to messages from certain hormones. Each cell in the body contains hormone receptor cites. Once a hormone fits into a cell’s receptor, it gives the cell instructions. This is similar to a key fitting in a lock. Hormones control our bodily processes. Hormones are coordinated by the endocrine system. Without proper endocrine function, our bodies cannot maintain proper hormonal balance.
Hormone levels can be influenced by stress, fluid changes in the body, vitamin and mineral levels, infection, exposure to environmental toxins and the amount of body fat we have. Each endocrine gland plays a specific role in the ability of our body to maintain proper function. Each endocrine gland also communicates with the other in an amazing design. If one of the endocrine glands is not functioning properly, it may cause a broken link in communication with other endocrine glands or actions of the body, which may greatly impair fertility. Because the endocrine glands secrete hormones, and the hormones are messengers for actions within the body, if the gland is not functioning properly, hormonal imbalance occurs and the ability to reproduce may be impaired.
In our clinic, we have researched into the folk medicine that is being used to take care of hormonal imbalance. The main herbal ingredient is a part of a plant called Morinda Lucida ( Yoruba name is ORUWO). We have used this herbal product to normalize hormonal imbalance which affects women in general. The remedy is a major component of our fibroid treatment. It shrinks the fibroid tumor thus improving the chances of pregnancy for infertile women. It assists in the treatment of ovarian cysts and also helps in breast cancer that has the implication of excessive estrogen. So also, it helps in resolving the problems associated with goiter.
Morinda Lucida ( Yoruba Name – ORUWO)
Couples intending to achieve pregnancy ought to maximize their chance by meticulously preparing their bodies. Ensuring good nutrition, avoiding alcohol and smoking, preventing sexually transmitted diseases are some basic ways of maximizing fertility. However, this must be supplemented by simply ensuring that the reproductive system is working at its best by fortifying the body with natural substances such as antioxidants that rid the body of toxins that have been implicated in most of the causes of infertility.
Jobelyn occupies a unique and remarkable position in the world of the combination of food and medicine. Laboratory analysis from the reputable GMP Laboratory of USA confirmed that Jobelyn contains Carbohydrates, Protein, Dietary Fibre, Iron which could be classified as food. In addition, it contains other nutrients which could be classified as medicine/food/amino acids and these include selenium, manganese, potassium, zinc, calcium, vitamins like A, B12, C, Omegas 3, 6 & 9, calcium and more. It is a well-known fact that doctors now prescribe multivitamins in addition to drugs. Jobelyn is rich in vitamins and other essential fatty acids and amino acids which are by far superior to the synthetic ones in the market and this is a compelling reason why doctors should prescribe it.
Otunba Olajuwon Okubena, MD Health Forever Product Ltd. Ikeja
jobelyn infertility herbal medicine hormonal imbalance staphylococcus aureus
Traditional/herbal solution for family planning
BAPHIA NITIDA (IROSUN PLANT)
This blog focuses on how Traditional or Herbal medication could be of tremendous relevance to the problem of family planning in Nigeria and also contribute to its potential for earning foreign exchange.
Nigeria was represented at the Family Planning Summit held in London a couple of weeks ago by the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, who explained why the country is investing $4 million in the Global Family Planning initiative.
According to the Minister, family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies and low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. The success of the introduction of family planning as part of basic health in the health sector is to ensure that a woman’s right as a human right is realised. Nigeria wants to include Family Planning as part of basic healthcare to complement ante-natal services, and immunisation routine.
The new contraceptive methods would include sub-cutaneous Depo Medroxyprogesterone Acetate injections) which is an injectable, progestin-only contraceptive that provides highly effective, private, and relatively long-acting (three months), reversible contraception. Use of DMPA eliminates both the need for user action daily or near the time of sexual intercourse and the need for partner cooperation.
DMPA is a good contraceptive option for the following groups of women: Women who do not want to take a contraceptive pill daily, women who have a contraindication to, or wish to avoid, an estrogen-containing contraceptive and women who would like to eliminate regular menses.
This initiative on the part of the Federal Government is commendable, but I want to remind the Minister that we should to look inwards for solutions to our problems.
The Minister during his briefing with Health Editors in Lagos to mark his one year in office said there were many things Nigerians could benefit from traditional medicine. Some of them, according to him, are bone setting and healing with herbal plants, saying that his ministry will explore how to assist herbal healers on how to improve their practice, especially in standardising their products.
I quote: “That will help us as a country to export them, instead of the plethora of foreign herbal products that have taken over the market. We have a lot to learn from China and even Ghana, but gradually we are getting there. The way traditional medicine is now can’t be compared with what obtained some centuries ago,” Adewole said.
He said Nigeria was in the forefront of research and development of herbal plants. “A quick search into National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRID) shows how indigenous herbal-plants have been researched, developed and packaged into life-saving products, so we have a lot to boast of in that sector. We only need to hone the skill of the practitioners,” he said.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO), traditional medicine is the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not. It is used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.
“To ensure that this sector is re
As far as Traditional Medicine is concerned in Nigeria, it seems to me that we are only experiencing what I would describe as motion without movement.In China, India, Germany and other parts of the world, Natural and Traditional Medicine is well set up and could be clearly identified within the healthcare delivery system. Unfortunately, the case is different in Nigeria. The African Union (AU) mandated that the member states of which Nigeria is prominent should use the decade of 2001-2010 to set up the institution of Traditional medicine and ensure that the establishments stand side by side with the orthodox clinics and hospitals to give citizens a choice for their healthcare requirements. It is another extra decade after the expiration of the AU’s mandate and nothing is visible in Nigeria. All hopes are not lost, thanks to the current Minister of Health, who had expressed strong believe and conviction in the relevance of Traditional medicine to our healthcare system. But his term will expire in less than two years. The question to ask is: Has he got any magic wand to make an indelible mark in this matter within this short space of time? If he works very hard, he could at least lay a solid foundation which would not be easily demolished by his successors.
Now is the time for the Federal Government to take the bull by the horn. In the Traditional system, there are herbal preparations that are affordable and do not need the elaborate implementation as required for the injectable options in the orthodox system.
Herbal preparation with a promise for Nigeria
About 30 years ago, I was a witness to a demonstration of the awesome power in traditional medicine to solve the family planning problem. A close relation who had for a long time been using the orthodox drugs got fed up because of the side effects and therefore consulted a herbalist who gave her a herbal formulation which worked. I waited for several months to watch the outcome of this intervention and confirmed that it was working and out of curiosity, I decided to investigate. The herbalist after a long period of persuasion agreed to reveal this formula to me. It was interesting and simple.
There is a plant known as IROSUN (The botanical name is Baphia Nitida). The wonderful aspect of this preparation is that different parts of the same tree would be used for preventing pregnancy and for restoring fertility. The bark of the root prepared in a particular way would prevent pregnancy permanently (it has superior power to Depo Medroxyprogesterone Acetate which is only effective for three months). To restore fertility, the leaves of the tree are also prepared in a particular way and the effect was also immediate.
I have tried this formulation on at least ten subjects and the result was excellent. I could not go on with further development and research owing to the huge financial implications. The orthodox drug being embraced by the Federal Government would have cost the manufacturers several millions of dollars and Nigeria is investing so much in this finished product. I believe that with a modest investment in research, Nigeria would likely have an exportable product if this type of product is developed.
Delving deeper into the investigation on the wonderful Irosun tree, I found from literature that it is recognised by the Ifa worshippers as the mysterious tree through which Orunmila as the progenitor of humanity descended from heaven to the Earth for the first time. The tree is also known as The Tree of Life or Creation. The powder of the dried stem of this tree is the backbone of Ifa Oracular practice. It is used for divination and through it, the oracle communicates with humanity on any subject in nature.
The ethnobotanical data in Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases confirmedsome of the Ethnobotanical and folk medicinal uses of Irosun plant (Baphia nitida) as follows:
Arthritis, carminative, dysentery, enteritis, fungicide, gastritis, Jaundice. Laxative, newborn, parasiticide, preventitive (Bee sting). Rheumatism, ringworm, skin, sprain, stiffness, swelling.
Venereal, Wound
In addition to its needed effects, some unwanted effects may be caused by medroxyprogesterone. In the event that any of these side effects do occur, they may require medical attention.
While the Irosun plant medication has not been known to have side effects, information from the website drug.com showed a long list of major and minor sider effects of medroxyprogesterone.
A couple of years ago, we set up an organisation known as Research Institute of Traditional and Alternative Medicine(RITAM) with the following goals and vision:
· To prospect, harness, evaluate and certify diagnostic, curative and preventive values of safe traditional medicine products thereby developing a resource compendium of medicines for the Primary Health Care Centre (PHC) in all the 774 local government areas as well as for the use of all Traditional and Alternative Medicine practitioners home and overseas.
· To find lasting solutions to WHO priority list of diseases i.e. Malaria, Hypertension, Diabetes, Sickle Cell Anemia and HIV/AIDS through Nigerian Traditional Medicine.
· To have a comprehensive data of traditional medicine products that should be recommended for preclinical and human trials at the Nigerian Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD) and Nigeria Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) and other Research Centres particularly the Nigerian Teaching Hospitals in the process of their becoming Herbal Drugs.
· To provide candidate herbal drugs that would be included in the National Drug Formulary.
· To ensure that at least 50 herbal products would have been certified as being evidence based in the •To collaborate with all Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Science and Technology, Education, Environment and other relevant government agencies to propagate Traditional and Alternative Medicine in Nigeria.
· To position traditional medicine products from Nigeria in the international market, thereby making TM products the highest income generating industry for the country.
· To encourage mass production of endorsed traditional medicine products.
The organisation functioned for some time and became moribund for lack of financial support by the appropriate authorities. This is the type of private sector initiative that should be supported and encouraged by the Ministry of Health to jumpstart the needed revolution necessary for the integration of traditional/herbal medicine to the healthcare delivery system in the country.
In concluding, I wish to emphasize that this article is not meant to encourage readers to try remedies, particularly herbal or traditional, that have not been subjected to scientific tests for safety and efficacy. Until, the Federal Ministry of Health endorses tested local remedies, it is advisable to embrace the efforts being currently championed by the Federal Government.
I am willing to collaborate with doctors, scientists and other research centres in Nigeria to develop this formulation to a level where it would complement Government effort to find a lasting solution to family planning problems in the country.
Readers can send their reaction to this article to:
Jobelyn, a traditional herbal formula, eliminated chronic pains in patient with sickle cell disorder.
Uncategorized health_care
According to WebMD, Pain is a long-lasting problem for people who have sickle cell disease. Bouts of severe pain can last for hours to days and are difficult to treat. Pain can be exhausting for caregivers as well as for the person in pain. Painful events can become severe and last for days to weeks. Such extreme pain requires aggressive pain medicine that must be monitored in the hospital. Pain medicine have dangerous side effects and they only provide temporary relief.
The normal dosage for Sickle Cell sufferers is 2 capsules twice a day. Such a dosage has been discovered to be incapable of tackling the problems of acute and chronic pains. One of our customers on amazon website shared her experience on how she used Jobelyn to stop the pains that had defied all drugs. The email correspondence with this customer is reproduced below:
This customer through experimentation discovered that the use of 4 capsules, 3 times daily was what was needed to solve the problem of pain that had been tormenting her child for a very long time.
A user has submitted the contact form on your store.
Here are their details:
I would like to order 4 cases, is there a bulk discount?
Dear Nicole
Thank you for your inquiry. The discounted price of 35%-40% on the RRP for cases are in fact already simplified to meet bulk numbers. The minimum order of cases should originally be at levels of 10 cases minimum in other to qualify, but we made this flexible to include 1 case and above, to accommodate and encourage buyers.
Please let us know how else we can help to facilitate your order going forward.
Health Forever
Thank you for your order. Please can you share your experience so far purchasing or using our product. We like to know if you are indeed benefiting for the solution we provide and how we can improve our services to loyal customers like yourself.
If also possible can you help leave a review on our site
Michael , sure I have also sent several families from the sickle cell group and family members to the site to buy. My son takes 12 Jobelyn a day and has been asymptomatic since we put him on that dose. Below that he was having mild (needing no pain meds) but aching symptoms. He has sickle cell. I will try to reduce the dose after this case runs out. My sister in law also recently bought a case and is using it to help with ADHD she says it's helping.
Scientists say Traditional herbal product, Jobelyn has the potential to prevent neurodegeneration in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)
Nigerian scientists have developed an animal model which demonstrates that Jobelyn ® Supplement lowered Neuronal Degeneration. The team of scientists led by Oyinbo A. Charles Department of Human Anatomy, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences College of Health Sciences, Niger Delta University Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State (Nigeria) in an interview said that Alcohol-induced neurodegeneration, a consequence of chronic ethanol exposure, is a neuroadaptation that drives the progression of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Unfortunately, conventional drugs for AUDs do not prevent neurodegeneration as part of their pharmacological repertoire. Multimodal neuroprotective therapeutic agents are hypothesized to have high therapeutic utility in the treatment of central nervous system. Interestingly, nutraceuticals by nature are multimodal in mechanisms of action. Purpose: This study examined the neuroprotective potential of Jobelyn in prefrontal cortex (PFC) of a binge-alcohol rat model of AUD. The result of the animal experiment showed that Jobelyn supplementation significantly lowered the levels of histologic and biochemical indices of neurodegeneration, and caused an increased expression of p53 protein and a decreased expression of NSE immunoreactivity (NSE-IR). The scientists concluded that Jobelyn supplementation ameliorates neurodegeneration in the PFC of AUD rats by reducing the oxidative stress, reducing the NSE-IR, and by increasing the expression of cellular tumor antigen p53 in the cortical neurons
Explaining why this study was very important Dr. Oyinbo said that Excessive alcohol ingestion, characteristic of alcohol use disorders (AUDs), results in neurodegeneration, which is responsible for the cognitive and behavioral impairment that drives the transition to alcohol addiction . Globally, about 80 million people have diagnos-able AUDs, making it a major global health concern. To date, renowned medications for the treatment of AUDs: acamprosate, disulfiram, and naltrexone, have been clinically unsatisfactory. They targeted the psychoactive properties of alcohol; while the neurodegenerative effect of alcohol that drives alcohol-induced neurological dysfunction was not managed by these specific remedies. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is highly susceptible to alcohol-induced damage . PFC deficiency is characterized by executive dysfunction such as deficits in working memory, impulse control, and decision making. They are linked with the inability to abstain from alcohol. Executive dysfunction often occurs before general mental status challenges. Studies showed that chronic alcohol exposure is related to the induction of oxidative stress and neuroinflammatory mediators, which lead to neurodegeneration. Consistent with this hypothesis, antioxidants have been effective in reducing binge alcohol-induced neurodegeneration. Neuroprotection mediated by antioxidant treatment is associated with the inhibition of nuclear factor kappalight-chain-enhancer of activated B cells–DNA binding, reduction of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expressions, and microglial activation; which support the hypothesis that neuroinflammatory signalling and oxidative stress contribute to alcohol-induced neurodegeneration. Jobelyn (Health Forever Products, Lagos, Nigeria), a commercially available nutraceutical, has shown outstanding anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties. Interestingly, it is on record that Jobelyn’s oxygen radical absorbance capacity value (37,622 μmol/TE/g) is the highest thus far recorded in any known plant. Jobelyn’s strong anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties have been utilized in the management and treatment of myriad diseases ranging from cancer, sickle cell, diabetes, arthritis, infertility, and many other diseases. Jobelyn demonstrated a selective COX-2 inhibition property, thus providing an effective reduction in inflammation without side effects of common prescription medications. Although, multimodal neuroprotective agents are considered to have a high therapeutic utility in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, there is yet the dilemma of how to safely combine individuals’ conventional agents into a single agent with multimodal mechanisms of neuroprotection. Nutraceuticals by nature are multimodal in mechanism; they produce a vast array of diverse chemical substances in a natural form in an entity, and any search of these resources for unusual or enhanced biological properties can expect some degree of success. Hence, this study was aimed at assessing the neuroprotective potentials of Jobelyn in the PFC of rats with AUD.
In conclusion, the scientists said that the study has demonstrated the potentials of Jobelyn (a nutraceutical) in the quest for a remedy for AUDs. Till date, acamprosate, disulfiram, and naltrexone, which are the approved pharmacotherapeutic interventions for the treatment of AUDs have left much to be desired. Jobelyn’s strategy of preventing neurodegeneration from within the neurons safeguards them ad initium. Coupled with this, it also safeguards the neuropil by neutralising the assault of free radical. Therefore, the neuroprotective mechanisms of Jobelyn in alcohol-induced cortical neurodegeneration involve an increase in p53 protein expression, a decrease in ɤ-enolase proteins expression, and an alleviation of oxidative stress.
For full details of the experiment please click:
Jobelyn is available at:
http://health-forever.com/jobelyn-antioxidant/
https://www.amazon.com/Jobelyn-Sorghum-Powerful-Antioxidant-Nutrients/dp/B004VQ8TI4
http://afritradomedic.com/shop/
jobelyn Neurodegeneration Alcohol use disorder Nutraceuticals
Jobelyn, Sorghum-based Traditional Herbal Remedy for treatment of Sickle Cell Anaemia disease scientifically validated
Jobelyn, Herbal Remedy for treatment of Sickle Cell Anaemia scientifically validated
For centuries, the people of South Western Nigeria had been using the herbal water extract from a special specie of Sorghum bicolor to treat people suffering from sickle cell disease. To scientists, it was a bogus and wild claim because the disease is believed to be complicated and difficult for the scientists to cope with. They tend to forget that nature has simple ways of handling complicated problems. At Health Forever, we have been diligently working to unravel the mystery behind the wonderful health restoring capabilities of this product. The claim of the ancient people that a single product could treat diseases of diverse origin was too much for the scientist to fathom. How could a single herbal product take care of diseases like diabetes, cancer, arthritis, hiv, anemia, sickle cell anaemia, malaria and cardio-vascular diseases.
We have spent the last 20 years researching into this product and have come to the conclusion that the commonality factor among all diseases is OXIDATIVE STRESS. See my blog at:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/index.php/easyblog/entry/oxidative-stress-and-diseases
From the following link at our website, the published research work done to support the claim for OXIDATIVE STRESS could be accessed at:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/index.php/scientific-studies
We have recently carried out clinical trial studies at Lagos Univesity Teaching Hospital to ascertain the effect of Jobelyn in the treat of sickle cell patients. From the report recently published in Journal Of Harmonized Research in Medical & Health Sci. it was revealed that Jobelyn works like an adaptogenic and it moderates all the indices relating to the sickle cell disorder to create harmony in the body of sufferers and provide them with wellness. It is safe and had no toxic effect.
See the abstract for the publication in Journal Of Harmonized Research in Medical & Health Sci.
THE SHORT TIME EFFECT OF EXTRACT OF SORGHUM BICOLOR (JOBELYN) ON THE HAEMATOLOGICAL PARAMETERS OF PATIENTS WITH SICKLE CELL ANAEMIA
Sickle cell anaemia in South West Nigeria has a prevalence of 2.4 %.It is characterized by recurrent crisis like bone pain, hyper haemolysis, acute sequestration, red cell aplasia and progressive organ damage. These cause high absenteeism at school and at work with a significant reduction in life expectancy. The phytochemical extract of sorghum bicolor has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect; and to increase the haemoglobin in experimental rat. The extract is consumed widely in Nigeria by patients with sickle cell anaemia. This study seeks to assess the effect of this extract on haemopoiesis in these patients. The study population was the patients attending the adult haematology clinic of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital. It was a randomized open label study with 105 consenting participants. One group was given folic acid 5mg twice daily and paludrine 200mg daily. The other group had in addition, 1gm of extract per day in two divided doses for 4 weeks. The haematological parameters were taken weekly.
After 4 weeks of taking the extract, there were reduction in white blood cells (p= 0.10) and platelet counts (p= 0.03).There were significant reductions in the mean red cell haemoglobin (p=0.0004), mean cell haemoglobin concentration (p=0.0001) while the reduction in mean cell volume and haematocrit changes were minimal (p=0.3and 0.5 respectively).
The reduction in leukocytes and platelets counts suggests an anti-inflammatory effect of the extract which may have a clinically positive effect. The significantly reduced cellular haemoglobin concentration and minimal changes in haematocrit demonstrate that the extract will not unduly increase the red cell haemoglobin concentration which may promote sickling.
Key words: Haematological parameters. Phytochemical. Sickle cell anaemia. Sorghum bicolor
Please see the testimonials from people living with sickle cell disease
A summary of our research and laboratory studies could be viewed at the following link:
We also have a number of testimonials from amazon.com website at the following link:
Please see the presentation by a medical doctor on Jobelyn for the treatment of sickle cell anaemia disease
Sorghum bicolor based herbal product , Jobelyn, reverses Kidney damage in 3 weeks.
A kidney patient came to my office with the complaint of Kidney problem. His initial laboratory report showed that there had been an extensive damage to the kidney and the doctor informed him that he should be preparing for dialysis and eventual kidney transplant. He produced his laboratory report and wanted to know if any of our herbal products could help him as he was not confident that he could have a lasting solution by using conventional orthodox drugs.
I explained to him that Jobelyn, which is one the most powerful antioxidants would be of great help. Most organ damages are caused by oxidative stress. Please see my previous blog on oxidative stress at:
I suggested that he should take 3/4 capsules of Jobelyn in the morning and repeat the same dose in the afternoon and night. He was also to drink a minimum of 3 liters of water on a daily basis. The patient was advised to go back for a laboratory recheck in 3 weeks.
The patient came back three weeks later to show me the post-treatment laboratory report. Please see the link at
:www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Re-arrangement of Yemi Kidney Results Results2 plus Summary.pdf
The natives of South western Nigeria have been using the unique Sorghum bicolor water extract for the treatment of diseases of diverse origin including Kidney damage for centuries. They had not scientific substantiation to back up their claims. Health Forever has set out for the past twenty years to unravel the mystery behind this magical herbal remedy. A summary of our work could be found in our slide presentation at: The PowerPoint slide presentation is at the following link:
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=2de63119b3f1bce3&id=documents&resid=2de63119b3f1bce3%21361&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AI9roHPhdInPsqg&&wdSlideId=256&wdModeSwitchTime=1442093079596
The video presentation could be found at the following link:
Please watch our Jobelyn explainer which is brief presentation on what Jobelyn is all about:
http://www.health-forever.com
www.afritradomedic.com
jobelyn antioxidant immune booster OXIDATIVE STRESS kidney diseases
A Traditional Herbal Remedy – Jobelyn may provide the much needed Succor for CANCER
Cancer remained a dreaded disease to humanity. The scientific and technological development across the world does not alter this statement. Even in the US where medical science has reached its peak, the position remains the same.When President Nixon was president of US, it was decreed that the cure for Cancer must be found within 10 years or so. This was several decades ago and yet there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The solution to the problem of Cancer is buried in Nature and until humanity bows to nature, human suffering as a result of Cancer would continue unabated.
I am not a scientist and therefore the story I will be telling may not carry much weight in the scientific world. By profession, I am a Chartered Accountant and a Management Consultant who was led by nature to discover a clue that would eventually make a big impact in the quest to find a solution to the problem of Cancer. After a distinguished career in accounting and management consultancy, nature shifted my focus to investigating how a simple folk medicine may solve most of human health problems.
An attempt on my life in 1993 was the major turning point in my life when I decided to find a clue to my miraculous escape from the attempt. I was introduced to a herbal practitioner who was using a single herb to treat all his patients. I was later to discover that this herb was a special Sorghum bicolor leaf sheath which had been in use as folk medicine by the natives of South Western Nigeria for centuries to cure diseases of diverse origins including cancer, diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, stroke, heart diseases, anemia, sickle cell anemia and neurological disorders. My two-year apprenticeship under this herbalist convinced me that it was indeed a truth that he was using the single herb to cure every disease. I was a witness to the cure of a Teaching Hospital professor who had a terminal case of Leukemia and this happened within a record time of 3 months.
I decided to embark on an adventure to provide a credible evidence to substantiate the awesome power of this herb and this project started in 1996. I am satisfied that the effort has so far been fruitful.My initial task was to transform the herbal concoction from a water extract to a capsule form. I consider this would be more appealing to users including medical scientists.
The first publication in a Nigerian popular newspaper, The Guardian, created the first awareness and this was before it was packaged as a commercial product. A reproduction of this publication could be accessed at: Breaking News about Jobelyn in Guardian Newspaper.
The following report by a doctor was the first record of the relevance of Jobelyn to Cancer:
A 31/2 year-old boy presented initially (in December, 1997) with features of acute febrile illness at a private hospital in Surulere (Lagos). He was treated with antimalarials - to no avail. He was eventually referred to a teaching hospital for expert evaluation and further care.
While at the Teaching Hospital, initially a clinical impression of septicaemia was entertained. However,, a bone marrow biopsy report (2/4/98) was in keeping with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, L.E. Morphology.
31/2 year-old boy. He presented initially (in December, 1997) with features of acute febrile illness at a private hospital in Surulere (Lagos). He was treated with antimalarials - to no avail. He was eventually referred to a teaching hospital for expert evaluation and further care.
While at the Teaching Hospital, initially a clinical impression of septicaemia was entertained. However, a bone marrow biopsy report (2/4/98) was in keeping with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, L.E. Morphology.
The fBC (27/5/98) revealed the following:-
PCV - 25%
WBC (Total) - 2,900/mm3
N - 35%
L - 61%
E - 4%
Retic - 1%
ESR 135 mm/hr.(westergren)
Platelets - 40,000/ mm3
Blood Film - mild lynpochromia
WBC - normal morphology.
The patient's father requested for discharge against medical advice.
The child was placed on Jobelyn ( formerly called Jubi Formula) tonic 10 mls tid commencing on 5th June 1998. Aspects of the fBC on 17th. June 1998 revealed the following
Platelets - 150,000 / mm3
WBC (Total) - 5,400/ mm3
Lymphocyte - 88%
Polymorphs - 10%
On 19th June,1998
Hb - 10.2 gm%
Platelet count - 180,000/ mm3
WBC (Total) - 10,400/ mm3
M - 1%
B - 0%
ESR - 30 mm/hr (westergen) (0-15)
In 1998, the product was offered free for Leukemia trial on the internet and someone from the USA accepted the offer and the summary of the outcome is as follows:
An American, whose wife is an associate professor in the department of occupational therapy, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA.
He had Acute Myeloid Leukemia, refractory type M-O.
He received three courses of chemotherapy between October and January 1996 -1997. Two weeks after the last chemotherapy, his leukemia relapsed.
He subsequently underwent a bone marrow transplant, but the leukemia relapsed later. He went for another protocol in which he received lymphocyte infusion (helper - T cells) followed by three weeks of interleuken 2 injections. In spite of all these, his blasts continued to increase and the haematocrit kept going down. He was transfused with two pints of whole blood every other day. He also received multiple platelet transfusions. His case was dismissed by his doctors at Dana Farber Cancer Centre ( one of the best two cancer centres in the world) as irredeemable. He was given two days to live after discharge from hospital.
His wife, Elsie, placed an order for Jubi capsules through the internet. Though the patient is now deceased, his condition while on this therapy could best be summarized in the spouse's own words "The Jubi Formula definitely stabilised his haematocrit for as long as he took it and it may have prolonged his life a few weeks. Having been able to keep him alive for a month after they thought he was going to die was worth it.
The full details of our follow-up while the treatment was going on is available at: Trial of Jobelyn on a Dana Faber Cancer Patient
Another testimony was from Niyi Owoyomi, father of a 26-year –old leukemia patient whose ailment had defied chemotherapy and who was on the verge of receiving a bone marrow transplant. He came to Nigeria from America to procure Jobelyn for his son and returned four to five month afterwards to say that his son had been discharged from hospital as result of complete remission.The testimony was recorded at
Download This Track
Artist Name - Testimony-from-Parent-of-a-Leukemia-Patient.2.mp3
Our intervention in the case of a lymphoma patient was documented at:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/lymphoma_patient.pdf
Up to this stage, we did not have any scientific evidence to back up a claim that Jobelyn was useful for the treatment of Cancer but the work we have done in the past 15 years had provided abundant evidence. It was climaxed by the discovery of a compound which activated the NK Cells and showed potential in cancer immunosurveillance.
There are abundant literature that support the importance of Sorghum bicolor for the treatment of several diseases and in particular for the treatment of Cancer.
Please see the following link:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/index.php/more-sorghum-references
After about 80 years of vigorous efforts to find a cure to Cancer, the only acceptable therapy by the Health authorities is Chemotherapy. Everybody is aware of the dangerous side effects of this therapy. Patients who survive five years after the start of chemotherapy are regarded as having been cured.
In recent times, serious attention is being given to the new science called immunotherapy. While I was writing this blog, I came across an article based on a recent CNN broadcast on the recent developments in this field of science. I will provide you with the link for you to read and make yourself current on this issue:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/26/health/immunotherapy-cancer-treatments/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_health+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Health%29
"Cancer immunotherapy really refers to treatments that use your own immune system to recognize, control and hopefully ultimately cure cancers," said Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, CEO of the Cancer Research Institute, during the conference in New York last month.
"Many people for many years didn't think the immune system was really going to have a role in any treatment for cancer," she said, "but I think the entire medical community (and) oncologists now agree that immunotherapy's here to stay."
The specific sector of the immune system that is responsible for the immunotherapy function is known as the NK (Natural Killer) Cells. I include two references that would shed the light on this subject matter and they could be accessed at the following links:
Natural Killer Cells: How To Keep Them Healthy
NK cells and cancer immunosurveillance
The big pharmaceutical companies are now in a rat race to produce drugs or technology that would activate the NK Cells for cancer immunotherapy and they are facing formidable difficulties. The issue of side effects is enormous and the cost of the finished product would undoubtedly be beyond the reach of the average citizens.
Scientists believe that nature is primitive and that they could ignore nature to find solutions to many problems including health issues. They have not been able to produce a trouble free solution. The approach to solve the problem of cancer with chemotherapy is a complete failure and hence the recent realisation that the immune cells offer the best approach to solving cancer problems. But how do you assist the immune cells to achieve this objective? There are several ways that scientists have been exploring. One is by inventing vaccines and the other way is by extraction of the T Cells and manipulating them before re-introducing them to the patients to activate the NK Cells for them to destroy cancer cells. These unnatural ways have been creating problems and side effects. Please see the link at:
www.theguardian.com/science/video/2016/feb/16/have-scientists-found-the-cure-for-cancer-video-explainer
The natives of South Western Nigeria claimed they have been curing cancer for decades using Tradition Herbal preparation but they have either been scorned or ignored because they did not have scientific evidence to back up their claims.
We have spent the last 20 years carrying out research studies and have a reached a milestone that could not be ignored in our quest to prove that an African Traditional Medicinal product has some measure of scientific evidence to support its claim for treatment and cure of cancer.
The PowerPoint slide presentation is at the following link:
Our initial discovery about the potential of Jobelyn to activate NK Cells was published in the Journal of Medicinal Food. See the link:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/online.liebertpub.com_doi_pdfplus_10.1089_jmf.2012.pdf
The abstract is reproduced below:
ABSTRACT The impact of chronic inflammatory conditions on immune function is substantial, and the simultaneous application of anti-inflammatory and immune modulating modalities has potential for reducing inflammation-induced immune suppression. Sorghum-based foods, teas, beers, and extracts are used in traditional medicine, placing an importance on obtaining an increased understanding of the biological effects of sorghum. This study examined selected anti-inflammatory and immune-modulating properties in vitro of Jobelyn, containing the polyphenol-rich leaf sheaths from a West African variant of Sorghum bicolor (SBLS). Freshly isolated primary human polymorphonuclear (PMN) and mononuclear cell subsets were used to test selected cellular functions in the absence versus presence of aqueous and ethanol extracts of SBLS. Both aqueous and nonaqueous compounds contributed to reduced reactive oxygen species formation by inflammatory PMN cells, and reduced the migration of these cells in response to the inflammatory chemoattractant leukotriene B4. Distinct effects were seen on lymphocyte and monocyte subsets in cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The aqueous extract of SBLS triggered robust upregulation of the CD69 activation marker on CD3 - CD56 + natural killer (NK) cells, whereas the ethanol extract of SBLS triggered similar upregulation of CD69 on CD3 + CD56 + NKT cells, CD3 + T lymphocytes, and monocytes. This was accompanied by many-fold increases in the chemokines RANTES/CCL5, Mip-1a/CCL3, and MIP-1b/CCL4. Both aqueous and nonaqueous compounds contribute to anti-inflammatory effects, combined with multiple effects on immune cell activation status. These observations may help suggest mechanisms of action that contribute to the traditional use of sorghumbased products, beverages, and extracts for immune support. KEY WORDS: CD69 leukotriene B4 migration monocytes natural killer cells peripheral blood mononuclear cells polymorphonuclear cells ROS formation T cells
We have recently published the results of our latest research findings with the title "Newly isolated compounds from West African Sorghum bicolor leaf sheaths Jobelyn® show potential in cancer immunosurveillance". The full article could be accessed at : http://nobleresearch.org/Doi/10.14312/2052-4994.2016-6
Jobelyn®, a West African pharmaceutical product derived from Sorghum bicolor leaf sheaths has been shown to possess strong anti-tumour and anti-inflammatory properties. This study aims to evaluate the expression of cell surface markers CD69 on activated natural killer (NK) cells; natural killer T (NKT) cells; and T cells from human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) upon treatment with Jobelyn® fractions using flow cytometry. Blood was collected from 3 donors, PBMC were isolated and plated with each specific fraction: crude extracts (J); ethyl acetate (JE); n-butanol (JB); secondary compounds from JE (JE5; JE6); purified and semi-purified compounds from JE5 (P8 and P9) at specific concentrations (2.5-500 µg/ml). For the crude extracts, JE was the most active showing significant expression of CD69 on NK-(P < 0.001), T- (P < 0.0001), and NKT- treated cells (P < 0.0001). Secondary compound, JE5, of JE also showed significant CD69 expression on NK- (P < 0.018) and T-treated cells (P < 0.027), but not on NKT-treated cells (P > 0.084). Similarly, the semi-purified compound P8, from JE5 showed increased expression of CD69 on NK- (P0.023); T- (P < 0.001), and NKT-treated cells (P < 0.007). Evidence of innate effector cells activation by ethanolic extracts of Jobelyn® suggests that this variety of Sorghum may be able to mediate direct cell cytotoxicity supporting the control and clearance of a number of tumour cells.
In a recently published article in Nature Immunology titled "Targeting natural killer cells in cancer immunotherapy the abstract reproduced below shows the current trend in NK Cells and Immunotherapy:
Alteration in the expression of cell-surface proteins is a common consequence of malignant transformation. Natural killer (NK) cells use an array of germline-encoded activating and inhibitory receptors that scan for altered protein-expression patterns, but tumor evasion of detection by the immune system is now recognized as one of the hallmarks of cancer. NK cells display rapid and potent immunity to metastasis or hematological cancers, and major efforts are now being undertaken to fully exploit NK cell anti-tumor properties in the clinic. Diverse approaches encompass the development of large-scale NK cell–expansion protocols for adoptive transfer, the establishment of a microenvironment favorable to NK cell activity, the redirection of NK cell activity against tumor cells and the release of inhibitory signals that limit NK cell function. In this Review we detail recent advances in NK cell–based immunotherapies and discuss the advantages and limitations of these strategies.
Almost all the leading big pharmaceutical companies are investing millions of dollars in immunotherapy to provide the solution to the problem of cancer but they have been meeting obstacles because they are ignoring nature in their approach. Vaccines and synthetic agents are repulsive to the sensitive nature of immune system. The solution could only come from organic molecules derived from natural plant sources.
Jobelyn has produced the molecule that has demonstrated its potential in cancer immunosurveillance. This is no doubt an in vitro experiment and the product is now being subjected to clinical trials for Breast Cancer at a Nigeria Teaching Hospital. the details of the ongoing clinical trials is available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01936064
Jobelyn, a natural product derived from a unique variety of Sorghum bicolor has been in use for centuries by Africans for the cure of Cancer and many other ailments. It is available for sale on the following websites:
www.amazon.com/Jobelyn-Sorghum-Powerful-Antioxidant-Nutrients/dp/B004VQ8TI4
In the subsequent blogs, I will deal with other aspects that strongly support the claim for its efficacy.
THE SEARCH FOR A CURE-ALL PRODUCT - OXIDATIVE STRESS TO THE RESCUE
THE AMAZING POWERS OF JOBELYN
For centuries the people of South-Western Nigeria depended on a herbal extract to cure diseases of diverse origin, including Anemia, Sickle Cell Anemia, Arthritis, Stroke, Hypertension, Diabetes, Infertility, Malaria, Cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, Leukemia, Multiple Myeloma, Breast Cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Lupus, neurological diseases etc. This remedy was handed over by their forefathers from generation to generation. Scientists would ordinarily dismiss this claim as it was difficult to substantiate with credible evidence. The main ingredient for the preparation of this medicinal product is the special Sorghum bicolor leaf sheath which is only available at a particular location in Nigeria.
It has taken more than 20 years to unravel the mystery behind this miraculous herbal remedy. I had a strong resolve to pursue this mystery scientifically and only in recent times I am having a clue that would be accepted as credible. In the series of blogs that would follow, I will explain the various stages of the development of this product and show how almost all diseases have a common factor known as OXIDATIVE STRESS.
WHAT IS OXIDATIVE STRESS?
Oxidative stress is defined as a disturbance in the balance between the production of reactive oxygen species (free radicals) and antioxidant defenses
Oxidative stress happens when the pro-oxidants are in excess of anti-oxidants and the destruction of human cells lays the foundation for the development of all diseases like Anemia, Anemia, Sickle Cell Anemia, Arthritis, Stroke, Hypertension, Diabetes, Infertility, Malaria, Cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, Leukemia, Multiple Myeloma, Breast Cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Lupus, neurological diseases etc.
Oxidative Stress (OS) is a general term used to describe the steady state level of oxidative damage in a cell, tissue, or organ, caused by thereactive oxygen species(ROS). This damage can affect a specific molecule or the entire organism. Reactive oxygen species, such as free radicals and peroxides, represent a class of molecules that are derived from the metabolism of oxygen and exist inherently in all aerobic organisms.
There are several sources by which the reactive oxygen species are generated. Most reactive oxygen species come from the endogenous sources as by-products of normal and essential metabolic reactions, such as energy generation from mitochondria or the detoxification reactions involving theliver cytochrome P-450 enzyme system. Exogenous sources include exposure to cigarette smoke, environmental pollutants such as emission from automobiles and industries, consumption of alcohol in excess, asbestos, exposure to ionizing radiation, and bacterial, fungal or viral infections.
The level of oxidative stress is determined by the balance between the rate at which oxidative damage is induced (input) and the rate at which it is efficiently repaired and removed (output). The rate at which damage is caused is determined by how fast the reactive oxygen species are generated and then inactivated by endogenous defense agents called antioxidants. The rate at which damage is removed is dependent on the level of repair enzymes.
The determinants of oxidative stress are regulated by an individual's unique hereditary factors, as well as his/her environment and characteristic lifestyle. Unfortunately, under the present day life-style conditions many people run an abnormally high level of oxidative stress that could increase their probability of early incidence of decline in optimum body functions.
Your body constantly reacts with oxygen as you breathe and your cells produce energy. As a consequence of this activity, highly reactive molecules are produced known as free radicals.
Free radicals interact with other molecules within cells. This can cause oxidative damage to proteins, membranes and genes.
Oxidative damage has been implicated in the cause of many diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's and has an impact on the body's aging process.
External factors, such as pollution, sunlight and smoking, also trigger the production of free radicals.
Working to protect the body on a cellular level
To counteract oxidative stress, the body produces an armoury of antioxidants to defend itself. It's the job of antioxidants to neutralise or 'mop up' free radicals that can harm our cells.
Your body's ability to produce antioxidants (its metabolic process) is controlled by your genetic makeup and influenced by your exposure to environmental factors, such as diet and smoking.
Changes in our lifestyles, which include more environmental pollution and less quality in our diets, mean that we are exposed to more free radicals than ever before.
Oxidation.
We know it’s a bad thing for the body, and doctors tell us to eat lots of antioxidant fruits and vegetables. But how does oxidation happen anyway?
We need oxygen for life. Our lungs take it in, and a complex network of capillaries and alveoli enable red blood cells to acquire the oxygen and deliver it throughout the body. But, as oxygen is used in various processes, tiny electrons can break off. These unpaired electrons are called free radicals. Think of them as the waste product of cellular processes.
There are some processes where free radicals are actually a good thing – for instance, to kill bad bacteria in certain immune system functions. But, generally free radicals are not helpful. They bounce around hitting cells and causing damage, sometimes even breaking off portions of DNA. The grand sum of this cellular damage is at the root of many health conditions including cardiovascular challenges, poor immune response, and even the appearance of wrinkles on the skin. This is the cumulative wear and tear that results from simply living life. Oxidation is also aggravated by stress, environmental factors, and poor diet.
The effects can be tempered though, through a diet and supplement program rich in antioxidants. Just like it sounds, an antioxidant is a substance that naturally combats oxidation. Antioxidants are substances that bind up the stray electrons and render them harmless. Antioxidant foods and dietary supplements are rated using the ORAC scale, which is a measure of the substance’s ability to absorb free radicals. When compared to other recommended antioxidant foods, Jobelyn boasts one of the highest food-source ORAC ratings known. That makes it a superior choice for antioxidant supplementation.
Applying the Science:
How Sorghum bicolor leaf extract helps specific conditions
Blood Cell Health
Jobelyn provides strong antioxidant support for red blood cells. Understanding the oxidation process, it’s easy to see how red blood cells might be particularly vulnerable to the damaging effects of oxygen radicals. Red blood cells are the body’s oxygen carriers. In the course of their 120-day lifespan, they are constantly in contact with this double-edged sword – the element that we require for life, which is also the origin of oxidation. Adding to the challenge is the fact that mature red blood cells do not have a nucleus, so they cannot produce new proteins in response to oxidative damage. One way to support red blood cell health is to prevent oxidation through strong antioxidant supplementation.
Antioxidant supplementation is especially important for people whose red blood cell health is compromised due to anemia, including Sickle Cell Disease. Recent scientific studies have looked specifically at the effects of Jobelyn on anemia and found that it effectively increases packed cell volume (PCV – the sheer number of blood cells) and hemoglobin concentration (Hb – an indicator of red blood cell health). Preliminary human clinical research in Nigeria has confirmed these results, showing some beneficial effects after just a week of supplementation and significant improvements for 102 of 113 patients after 6 weeks.8
In the case of Sickle Cell Disease, not only does Jobelyn help in its antioxidant activity, but its anti-inflammatory properties may be of benefit too. Some researchers believe that sickle red cells can provoke inflammation throughout the circulatory system because the deformed cells physically hinder smooth blood flow. Jobelyn works both at the level of protecting the red blood cells from oxidation and on the level of protecting the circulatory system from the inflammation state that can create even more free radicals. This herbal remedy cuts off the cycle of oxidation and inflammation that aggravates sickle cells. While it can’t cure the physical shape and structure of the sickle cells, it can lessen the damage and effects of the cell deformity.
Seeing how helpful Jobelyn is for the stressed circulatory system in Sickle Cell Disease patients, it’s a small step to recognize how helpful it is for cardiovascular health in general. The medical community now views free radical oxidation and ongoing inflammation as primary contributors to heart disease, cholesterol build-up, and arteriosclerosis (severe thickening and hardening of artery walls).
Just as red blood cells are exposed to lots of free radicals, so are heart and blood vessel cells. Heart cells also have the added stress of being involved in constant contraction. This muscle activity produces plenty of free radicals as a byproduct. Antioxidant protection is vital for the cardiovascular system.
Not only do antioxidants prevent damage to individual cells, they can also prevent the breakdown of nitric oxide (NO). NO is a gas naturally produced in the cardiovascular system, which helps promote relaxation and expansion of the blood vessels. By supporting NO, antioxidant supplementation can enhance blood flow. This explains why Jobelyn has been found to enhance circulation.
The cardiovascular system also benefits from Jobelyn’s anti-inflammatory effects. Fatty plaque build-up in blood vessels often occurs due to low-grade inflammation and irritation throughout the vessel walls. This inflammation makes it easier for cholesterol particles to stick to the lining of the blood vessels. Reducing inflammation can actually lower the incidence of atherosclerosis (fatty plaque deposits) and coronary events.
Just as oxidation and inflammation are at the core of blood cell and cardiovascular health threats, this troublesome duo is also involved in causing joint degeneration and pain. The intricate connective tissue and surfaces of our joints are under constant challenge from daily use. Ongoing wear and tear, along with occasional injury, result in plenty of free radical production and inflammation. Without antioxidant support and balancing of the inflammation process, the result can be achy joints and limited range of motion.
We’ve touched on the role of Jobelyn as a powerful antioxidant and a very selective COX-2 inhibitor. Jobelyn has also demonstrated an ability to inhibit the release of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines. We learned how the combination of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant support results in dramatic improvements for the cardiovascular system. The same benefits can improve joint health too.
In the joints, inflammation and oxidation create a self-reinforcing cycle. Inflammation creates oxygen free radicals as a byproduct, which can in turn cause more damage, which creates more inflammation, and so the cycle goes. Sorghum leaf sheath extract, which provides both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, has been found to bring a dynamic end to this cycle.
A reduction in inflammation and pain means more range of motion and the freedom to work the joint and build strength. Strength-building through physical therapy helps prevent future injury. By ending a damaging pain cycle, Jobelyn has been found to begin a positive cycle of improving joint health especially when combined with an appropriate exercise program.
Immune System Response
It takes a little more explanation to understand how Jobelyn supports the immune system. As with the case of red blood cell health, we need to drop down to a cellular and molecular level and think very small. It’s the antioxidant activity that is most vital for immune system support. Specifically, the extract provides components for the body to build its own super antioxidant: glutathione peroxidase.
The body creates glutathione and uses it for several protective tasks including protecting certain immune system cells called CD4 T-lymphocytes. Glutathione contains selenium and three amino acids (cystein, glutamine, and tryptophan). Jobelyn contains all three of these amino acids, providing the body with some major building blocks of glutathione.
Scientists believe this explains some astounding research coming out of Africa right now. In a preliminary human clinical study involving HIV-positive patients, Jobelyn supplementation improved compromised CD4 cell counts (30-300/1) by 200-300%. Those with initial CD4 counts greater than 300 also saw an increase of 20-30%. The increase in cellular immunity occurred regardless of whether the patient was taking other antiretroviral drugs.
Jobelyn is incredibly beneficial for the immune system when the body is under one of the heaviest attacks imaginable. It makes sense that the herbal would be helpful as a general immune system boost for anyone in fine health. Its effects appear to be moderated too; meaning it won’t make the immune system become overactive. That’s why we see such a dramatic increase for those with very compromised CD4 counts and a moderated increase for those who had higher initial counts. So, Jobelyn is a safe immune support supplement whether you’re looking for a little extra help during cold and flu season, or if you’re facing a much more daunting immune system challenge.
We have researched to find scientific evidence to support the role of oxidative stress in many diseases to buttress the assertion that Jobelyn, being one of the most powerful natural antioxidants has a prominent role to play in maintaining wellness and treating of many diseases.
We present to you a book that dealt exhaustively with this subject matter and hope you will enjoy reading through it.
Edited by Volodymyr I. Lushchak and Dmytro V. Gospodaryov, ISBN 978-953-51-0552-7, 624 pages, Publisher: InTech, Chapters published April 25, 2012 under CC BY 3.0 license
DOI: 10.5772/2535
Edited Volume
The development of hypothesis of oxidative stress in the 1980s stimulated the interest of biological and biomedical sciences that extends to this day. The contributions in this book provide the reader with the knowledge accumulated to date on the involvement of reactive oxygen species in different pathologies in humans and animals. The chapters are organized into sections based on specific groups of pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, neuronal, hormonal, and systemic ones. A special section highlights potential of antioxidants to protect organisms against deleterious effects of reactive species. This book should appeal to many researchers, who should find its information useful for advancing their fields.
Chapter 1 Introductory Chapterby Volodymyr I. Lushchak and Dmytro V. Gospodaryov
Chapter 2 Oxidative Stress: Cause and Consequence of Diseasesby Dmytro Gospodaryov and Volodymyr Lushchak
Chapter 3 Reactive Oxygen Species and Cardiovascular Diseasesby Vitor Engrácia Valenti, Luiz Carlos de Abreu, Celso Ferreira and Paulo H. N. Saldiva
Chapter 4 Oxidative Stress in the Carotid Body: Implications for the Cardioventilatory Alterations Induced by Obstructive Sleep Apneaby Rodrigo Iturriaga and Rodrigo Del Rio
Chapter 5 Adipocytokines, Oxidative Stress and Impaired Cardiovascular Functionsby Ana Bertha Zavalza Gómez, María Cristina Islas Carbajal and Ana Rosa Rincón Sánchez
Chapter 6 Role of Oxidized Lipids in Atherosclerosisby Mahdi Garelnabi, Srikanth Kakumanu and Dmitry Litvinov
Chapter 7 Oxidative Damage in Cardiac Tissue from Normotensive and Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats: Effect of Ageingby Juliana C. Fantinelli, Claudia Caldiz, María Cecilia Álvarez, Carolina D. Garciarena, Gladys E. Chiappe de Cingolani and Susana M. Mosca
Chapter 8 Oxidative Stress and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Cardiovascular Diseasesby Sauri Hernández-Reséndiz, Mabel Buelna-Chontal, Francisco Correa and Cecilia Zazueta
Chapter 9 Oxidatively Modified Biomolecules: An Early Biomarker for Acute Coronary Artery Diseaseby Sarawut Kumphune
Chapter 10 Oxidative Stress in Diabetes Mellitus: Is There a Role for Hypoglycemic Drugs and/or Antioxidants?by Omotayo O. Erejuwa
Chapter 11 Oxidative Stress and Novel Antioxidant Approaches to Reduce Diabetic Complicationsby Sih Min Tan, Arpeeta Sharma and Judy B. de Haan
Chapter 12 Evaluation of Oxidative Stress and the Efficacy of Antioxidant Treatment in Diabetes Mellitusby Nemes-Nagy Enikő, V. Balogh-Sămărghiţan, Elena Cristina Crăciun, R. Morar, Dana Liana Pusta, Fazakas Zita, Szőcs-Molnár Terézia, Dunca Iulia, Sánta Dóra and Minodora Dobreanu
Chapter 13 Diabetes, Oxidative Stress, Antioxidants and Saliva: A Reviewby Natheer H. Al-Rawi
Chapter 14 The Role of Oxidative Stress in Female Reproduction and Pregnancyby Levente Lázár
Chapter 15 Effects of Oxidative Stress on the Electrophysiological Function of Neuronal Membranesby Zorica Jovanović
Chapter 16 Circulating Advanced Oxidation Protein Products, Nε-(Carboxymethyl) Lysine and Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines in Patients with Liver Cirrhosis: Correlations with Clinical Parametersby Jolanta Zuwala-Jagiello, Eugenia Murawska-Cialowicz and Monika Pazgan-Simon
Chapter 17 Oxidative Stress in Parkinson's Disease; Parallels Between Current Animal Models, Human Studies and Cellsby Anwar Norazit, George Mellick and Adrian C. B. Meedeniya
Chapter 18 The Relationship Between Thyroid States, Oxidative Stress and Cellular Damageby Cano-Europa, Blas-Valdivia Vanessa, Franco-Colin Margarita and Ortiz-Butron Rocio
Chapter 19 Oxidative Stress in Human Autoimmune Joint Diseasesby Martina Škurlová
Chapter 20 Oxidative Stress in Multiple Organ Damage in Hypertension, Diabetes and CKD, Mechanisms and New Therapeutic Possibilitiesby Tatsuo Shimosawa, Tomoyo Kaneko, Xu Qingyou, Yusei Miyamoto, Mu Shengyu, Hong Wang, Sayoko Ogura, Rika Jimbo, Bohumil Majtan, Yuzaburo Uetake, Daigoro Hirohama, Fumiko Kawakami-Mori, Toshiro Fujita and Yutaka Yatomi
Chapter 21 Retinal Vein Occlusion Induced by a MEK Inhibitor - Impact of Oxidative Stress on the Blood-Retinal Barrierby Amy H. Yang and Wenhu Huang
Chapter 22 Oxidative Therapy Against Cancerby Manuel de Miguel and Mario D. Cordero
Chapter 23 Monensin Induced Oxidative Stress Reduces Prostate Cancer Cell Migration and Cancer Stem Cell Populationby Kirsi Ketola, Anu Vuoristo, Matej Orešič, Olli Kallioniemi and Kristiina Iljin
Chapter 24 Compounds with Antioxidant Capacity as Potential Tools Against Several Oxidative Stress Related Disorders: Fact or Artifact?by P. Pérez-Matute, A.B. Crujeiras, M. Fernández-Galilea and P. Prieto-Hontoria
Chapter 25 Microalgae of the Chlorophyceae Class: Potential Nutraceuticals Reducing Oxidative Stress Intensity and Cellular Damageby Blas-Valdivia Vanessa, Ortiz-Butron Rocio, Rodriguez-Sanchez Ruth, Torres-Manzo Paola, Hernandez-Garcia Adelaida and Cano-Europa Edgar
antioxidant anti-inflammation immune booster OXIDATIVE STRESS Cardopvascular
Healthy blood guarantees healthy body
How and why we need to keep our blood healthy
Blood is life. Blood in the human body is the equivalent of engine oil in a motor vehicle. Just like the vehicle engine oil, our blood has three main functions: transportation, regulation and protection.
Our erythrocytes, or red blood cells, are the most abundant cell type in the human body. Additionally, erythrocytes are anucleated, which means they don’t have a nucleus. This extra room allows for more haemoglobin to be stored in our red blood cells. Haemoglobin is a respiratory pigment, which binds to either oxygen or carbon dioxide. This allows oxygen to be transported around our body to our tissues and organs (and carbon dioxide to be taken away).
Blood also helps us to maintain homeostasis by regulating our internal body pH and temperature as well as how much water is in our bodies at a given time. Plasma, our connective tissue matrix, is about 90 percent water. Thus, the crucial importance of healthy blood cells cannot be over-emphasised as it is vital in protecting our bodies.
Haemoglobin is the protein inside red blood cells that carries oxygen. Red blood cells also remove carbon dioxide from your body, transporting it to the lungs for you to exhale. Foods rich in iron help us maintain healthy red blood cells. Vitamins are also necessary to build healthy red blood cells. These include vitamin E, found in foods such as dark green vegetables, nuts and seeds, mango, and avocados; vitamins B2, B12, and B3, found in foods such as eggs, whole grains, and bananas; and folate, available in fortified cereals, dried beans and lentils, orange juice, and green leafy vegetables.
Most people don’t think about their red blood cells unless they have a disease that affects these cells. Problems with red blood cells can be caused by illnesses or a lack of iron or vitamins in your diet. Some diseases of the red blood cells are inherited.
Diseases of the red blood cells include many types of anemia, a condition in which the body can’t produce enough normal red blood cells to carry sufficient oxygen throughout the body. People with anemia may have red blood cells that have an unusual shape or that look normal, larger than normal, or smaller than normal.
Symptoms of anemia include tiredness, irregular heartbeats, pale skin, feeling cold, and, in severe cases, heart failure. Children who don’t have enough healthy red blood cells grow and develop more slowly than other children. These symptoms demonstrate how important red blood cells are to your daily life.
In the past two decades, extensive research carried out by top scientists in the world have concluded that the inability of blood to fully perform its function and be healthy gives rise to Oxidative stress which has now been found to be the root cause of a wide range of ailments and diseases.
Oxidative stress (often called OS) is what happens when the body does not have enough antioxidants to neutralise free radicals. Free radicals are the unstable molecules that react with other substances in our body to damage cells or create abnormal ones. Overproduction of free radicals can cause oxidative damage to biomolecules, (lipids, proteins, DNA), eventually leading to many chronic diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetics, rheumatoid arthritis, post-ischemic perfusion injury, myocardial infarction, cardiovascular diseases, chronic inflammation, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and kidney disease. Toxicity of free radicals also contributes to proteins and DNA injury, inflammation, tissue damage and subsequent cellular apoptosis.
Antioxidants are now being looked upon as effective therapy against these diseases, as they have capability to combat by neutralising free radicals. Diet is major source of antioxidants, as well as medicinal herbs. Recognition of upstream and downstream antioxidant therapy to oxidative stress has been proven to be an effective tool in alteration of any damage as well as free radical scavenging. Antioxidants have a wide scope to sequester and scavenge these free radicals to prevent oxidative stress.
Jobelyn was developed from Sorghum bicolor leaf sheaths, which had been in use as folk medicine for centuries by natives of South Western Nigeria for the treatment of diseases of diverse origin including cancer, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, anemia, arthritis, heart and liver diseases as well as HIV/AIDS. Health Forever Product Limited has spent the past 20 years to scientifically and clinically validate the proof in the positive use of these herbs by the natives to convince scientists and doctors that indeed, this folk medicine is capable of solving a variety of health problems.
Research, clinical and laboratory studies have been carried out in many institutions such as Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife (OAU), Vivacell Laboratory, (Germany) Brunswick Laboratory (USA), MD Biosciences (USA), Texas AM University (USA), Natural Immune System (NIS) Laboratory (USA), Alcorn State University (USA), University College Ibadan (UI), University of Benin (UNIBEN), GMP Laboratories (USA), PhytoLabs (GERMANY), Military Hospital Ikoyi, Lagos and Police Hospital, Falomo, Lagos.
Human clinical trials have been done for sickle-cell anemia, anemia in pre-operative gynecological patients, HIV Studies in human and some of the results have been published in reputable journals. In vitro studies have been done to establish the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties of Jobelyn and the results have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In vivo animal studies have been carried out to show the potential of Jobelyn for restoring anemia and extensive in vivo studies were also carried out to establish the power of Jobelyn in neuro-cognitive deficits covering key areas like, stress, psychosis, dementia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer, seizure, depression, aggression, etc. The extensive work done on Jobelyn at Brunswick Laboratory has established that Jobelyn is the most powerful natural antioxidant in the world and the report has been published in a reputable journal. The safety of Jobelyn has been established through animal studies and in some of the human clinical trials carried out.
Being a most powerful and natural antioxidant, Jobelyn has consistently over the years proven to be a very effective means of combating oxidative stress and producing and restoring health blood cell into the body.
Advantages and uniqueness of Jobelyn to your health:
Solid Evidence based and unparalleled continuous scientific research of a made- in-Nigeria phyto (herbal) medicine
The most powerful natural antioxidant at 37,622 orac value,
Unmatched anti-chronic inflammatory agent – proven to be significantly, if not totally better than ibuprofen
Jobelyn induces production of very special cytokines like gcsf, gmcsf, CCl3, CCl4, etc. From immune cells to enhance the immune system.
Activator of natural killer t-lymphocytes
Scientifically, medically, and user based confirmed red blood cell protector and enhancer
Astounding and highly positively effective results when included in the management of hiv/aids and sickle cell disease.
Jobelyn crosses the blood brain barrier to express its cns effects, as seen in many studies.
Jobelyn is one of the most researched Traditional medicinal products in the whole world. From 1996 to date, Health Forever Product, Ltd., has continued to accumulate resources in terms of science based as well as long-term usage evidence for the efficacy of this most powerful African herbal formula which has its origin in the folk medicine of South Western Nigeria.
There is no doubt that Jobelyn, based on scientific evidence as well as usage evidence and testimonials, has proven to be at the front line in battling oxidative stress and restoring healthy blood to the body. Since oxidative stress is a regular occurrence in the body system, a regular consumption of powerful antioxidant like Jobelyn would undoubtedly protect the blood cells and also reduce the incidence of anemia.
A good blood system would support a good immune system and promote general well–being and this accounts for the strong reason why Jobelyn is a recommended adjunct in the treatment of many diseases including cancer, HIV/AIDS, Diabetes, Cardiovascular and neurological problems as well as Arthritis.
Jobelyn is being sold through pharmacies throughout Nigeria and also via the internet. You can also purchase directly from the Health Forever store.
For more information on how Jobelyn solves the problem of Oxidative Stress and the related disease conditions such as anemia, cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, chronic inflammation, stroke, hypertension and kidney disease, inflammation, and tissue damage contact us at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: www.afritradomedic.com
jobelyn antioxidant anti-inflammation blood booster immune booster
STROKE IS PREVENTABLE AND CURABLE
Stroke attack has become very rampant and it has no age barrier. If it does not result into instant death, it could turn the victim into a vegetable for the rest of his life with the quality of life reduced to almost zero. In some instances, it may give some warning signals but in many other cases, no warning will be given. While browsing on the internet, I stumbled on a publication which is reproduced below:
“May is National Stroke Awareness month and a time to raise our understanding of the emotional, physical, and financial impact that stroke has on our friends and family”.
A stroke causes a loss of function due to an interruption of blood flow to the brain. Those who suffer a stroke usually experience a number of symptoms, which may include sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arms, or legs—especially on one side of the body; confusion; trouble speaking; loss of sight; severe headaches; and loss of balance. Risk factors include hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, advanced age, gender, and race.
Stroke affects more than 800,000 people each year and ranks among the five leading causes of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the world. Although a stroke may not be entirely preventable, familiarity with the symptoms of a stroke can prompt you to get help faster, which can make a difference in recovery. Use the acronym FAST to remember the warning signs of a stroke:
F - FACE. Ask the person to smile. Does the face appear crooked or drooping?
A - ARMS. Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
S - SPEECH. Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence. Are the words slurred?
T - TIME. Call your doctor immediately if you observe any of these symptoms.
It is important for people to understand stroke warning signs and get to a hospital FAST in case they are eligible to receive the appropriate treatment. Time is an important factor associated with determining whether a patient can receive it or not.”
A scientist once said that oxidative stress may be at the root of some strokes, as the body may be unable to neutralize cell-damaging free radicals, which can lead to inflammation and vascular damage.
How might antioxidant-rich foods reduce this stroke risk? According to the scientist, vitamins C and E, carotenoids, flavonoids, and other such compounds scavenge free radicals, thereby inhibiting oxidative stress. "Antioxidants, especially flavonoids, may also help improve endothelial function and reduce blood clotting, blood pressure, and inflammation.
How could Stroke be prevented
Eating a healthy, antioxidant rich diet is associated other healthy behaviors. People who tend to eat healthier tend to also have healthier lifestyles as a whole, it is also noteworthy that the diet had an independent beneficial effect on stroke incidence."
The most congruous finding of epidemiologic studies is the lower risk of stroke among individuals with frequent consumption of fruit and vegetables. Eating a diet high in antioxidants may protect against ischemic stroke, an Italian cohort study showed.
Antioxidants come from a variety of food sources, including fruits, vegetables, coffee, chocolate, red wine, whole grain cereals, and nuts, and diets high in antioxidants have been associated with reduced inflammation and increased circulating antioxidants.
One of the newest, and yet oldest, treatments for stroke prevention is the dietary intake of plant compounds called flavonoids. Flavonoids are antioxidant compounds that are characterized by their polyphenolic chemical structure. Flavonoids are responsible for primary anti-oxidative effects by attracting oxygen free radicals before these free radicals can cause cellular damage.
Over 4,000 flavonoids have been discovered, and they are found in fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, flowers, and bark. The best sources of flavonoids in human consumables are red wine, tea, onions, and the ubiquitous agent of health care: APPLES! Flavonoids have also been found to aid in vascular smooth muscle relaxation, which can reduce blood pressure, and thereby reduce the risk of stroke.
The use of Jobelyn for the treatment and prevention of Stroke.
Jobelyn is a herbal product derived from Sorghum bicolor. For several centuries, the people of South-Western part of Nigeria have been using this plant in its raw form to treat and cure many diseases including stroke. The impression that I was given that this particular remedy is a cure-all for diseases like Stroke, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, HIV. Parkinson’s disease and sickle-cell anemia seemed illogical to me and in an attempt to find out the truth or otherwise, I have set out to carry out scientific investigations over the past 17 years. Our initial focus on the remedy as a blood boosting agent was successful and 2 publications in the African Journal of Biotechnology in September , 2003 confirmed that our Jobelyn derived from Sorghum bicolor has the potential to be a substitute for blood transfusion except in emergency situation. This does not give a clue to the cure-all claim of the product until we became aware of the Antioxidant properties of the product. Several studies in the USA and Germany confirmed that Jobelyn is one of the most powerful antioxidants in the world.
A synthetic antioxidant may have the ability to reduce the brain damage following a stroke by more than 40% -- even if it's taken hours after the stroke happens.
A new study shows the antioxidant, known as AEOL 10150, neutralized hazardous free radicals and prevented cell death in a mouse model of stroke. Researchers say the antioxidant is designed to mimic a natural antioxidant, but it works against a wider range of free radicals and also lasts longer in the body.
Naturally occurring antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, are thought to reduce cell damage within the body by countering the potentially dangerous effects of free radicals produced when the body processes oxygen. Antioxidants are thought to be a promising treatment for strokes because they can be given after a stroke occurs to help reduce cell damage.
Strokes occur when blood flow to the brain is blocked or a blood vessel within the brain ruptures. Brain cells eventually die as they become starved of oxygen, causing paralysis and loss of function. Cell damage can continue hours after a stroke.
In their study, researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center and Duke University Medical Center simulated the effects of a stroke in laboratory mice and then injected AEOL 10150 into the brains of the animals six hours after the blocked arteries had been reopened. Researchers say the six-hour time window simulates the amount of time it takes for most stroke victims to receive treatment.
A week later, mice that were given the antioxidant had 43% less brain tissue damage than those who were given a placebo.
Researchers also tested injecting the antioxidant into the veins of the mice rather than directly in the brain. Although this method produced a smaller decrease in brain damage, it reduced both tissue damage and neurological deficit, which means the synthetic antioxidant can move effectively from the blood into the brain.
Total ORAC FN, short for Total Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity for Food and Nutrition, is a laboratory analysis that measures the total antioxidant power of foods and nutritional products.
During April 2009, Brunswick Laboratories, a global leader in antioxidant R&D and testing, introduced its Total ORAC for Food and Nutrition (Total ORAC FN) test. Now patented, Total ORAC FN measures antioxidant activity against five of the most important free radicals found in humans: hydroxyl, peroxyl, peroxynitrite, singlet oxygen and super oxide anion.
Total ORAC FN, considered a breakthrough technology, combines all five measurements into a single, easy to use test result. The original ORAC essay measured only one of the five major radicals, the peroxyl radical, giving an incomplete picture of the antioxidant strength of a product.
The five major free radicals work individually and in combination with each other to cause damage to many systems in the human body and can affect total health. At times, environmental factors such as pollution, radiation, cigarette smoke, UV light, and herbicides can overwhelm the body’s natural ability to fight the free radicals and the damage they cause.
Total ORAC FN allows premium food and nutrition products to be differentiated in the marketplace by providing a single Total ORAC FN "score." Jobelyn scores 37,622
Having realized the potency of Jobelyn as a powerful antioxidant, we have tried it for the treatment of many diseases including Stroke. For stroke that happens within 24 hours, Jobelyn taken 6 capsules, 4 times daily at intervals of 3 hours and accompanied with daily water intake of at least 3 - 4 litres would reverse the damaging effects of the stroke within a period of 2 – 4 weeks. For stroke that had taken long, the treatment that we have successfully adopted is 4 capsules of Jobelyn, 3 times daily, also with at least 3 – 4 litres of water daily. In this case, reversal or near-complete reversal would be possible within a period of 4 – 6 months.
It is however more advantageous to use Jobelyn to prevent stroke and many other diseases by taking a daily dose of 2 capsules, twice daily. The old adage that prevention is better than cure applies in this case.
There are other aspects of health where Jobelyn has been tried. We have devised a formula for the successful treatment of Arthritis. We recommend that patients take 3 capsules of Jobelyn, 3 times daily, with 3 bottles of water (1.5 litre size) and in three months, the problem should be resolved. We even offer money back guarantee if the result is not achieved. This formula could also be tried for Diabetes.
Our clinical studies of Jobelyn on HIV has confirmed that it increases the CD4 count very rapidly and improves the general well-being of patients and we are aware that a daily dose of 6 capsules in 3 divided doses is capable of providing the necessary support that would ensure the general well being of patients.
In a similar vein, sickle-cell anaemia patients sustain their health and maintain their general well-being by daily use of 1 capsule both in the morning and evening.
FURTHER RESEARCH FINDINGS ON JOBELYN
Scientist have concluded that inflammation is involved in almost all diseases afflicting the human system and medicinal products that have anti-inflammatory properties have the potential to be useful for treating many diseases. The recent study done on Jobelyn by MDbioscienses of the USA confirmed that Jobelyn works better than ibuprofen for pain alleviation but does not have the side-effects attributable to it.
One of the findings of a recent study carried out at Alcorn State University (USA), was that total flavonoids in Jobelyn, 870 mic/ml compared with thyme (318) and basil (205). This led to the conclusion, that, as a source of flavonoids, Jobelyn’s flavonoids almost trebled those most orchestrated flavonoids-rich Euro-American herbs.
Flavonoids, crystalline substances found in plants, were discovered in 1936 by Nobel Prize winner Szent Gyorgy, a scientist who named this group of compounds Vitamin P, of which many people know so little.
As a matter of fact, most medicinal plants are said to owe their health powers to their flavonoids. That’s why you’ll find on a health store shelf such proprietary products as FLAVONOIDS COMPLEX or ACTIVATED FLAVONOIDS. Sometimes, they are called BIOFLAVONOIDS, to describe bioactivity. Flavonoids have properties which make them antiviral, anti-carcinogenic, that is, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, antihistamine and antioxidant. That’s why they have a range of uses in natural medicine such as in histamine induced asthma, arthritis and chromic degenerative disease with free radical damage origins. It is in their use as antioxidants that bioflavonoids appear most well-known today. In this area, many of them, such Grape Seed Extract and Sorghum bicolor based Jobelyn, are said to be more potent than traditional antioxidant Vitamins C and E put together. They protect LDL cholesterol from oxidation, for example, thereby prevent cholesterol health damage. They sometimes lower total cholesterol count. That’s why nature doctors often advise inclusion of generous amounts of fruits and vegetables in the diet.
Research has proven bioflavonoids good for diabetic retinopathy, a condition in which high blood sugar levels damage nerves of the eye and the retina, impairing vision. They also help varicose veins, to improve blood flow and heal leg cramps. As antiviral agents, flavonoids have been reported to inhibit viruses which cause polio, influenza, hepatitis A and B, herpes simplex, leukemia virus type I and HIV.
Flavonoids for Health
Common flavonoids are quercetin, kaempferol, myricetin, luteolin, and apigenin, which tend to be found in vegetables and fruit. Using fruit and vegetable intake as a measure of flavonoid uptake, it was found that men without strokes had consumed on average 77.2 g per day of solid non-citrus fruit, as compared to high stroke risk men with an intake of 57.4 g per day . It was also found that those in the stroke-free category had also consumed more citrus fruit (vitamin C), more vegetables (beta-carotene, and others), and more tea (other flavonoids). More surprising was that when looking at the sources of flavonoids directly, in the same study, it was learned that 70% of flavonoid intake was on tea alone, and about 10% from apples. (Both black and green teas provide the same amount of dietary flavonoids.) The protective benefits of flavonoids provide the strongest proof for their importance: the men who were stroke-free in the study, who consumed flavonoids in the top quartile of intake, had a 73% less risk of stroke. Flavonoids are beneficial not only for stroke, but in terms of cancer and coronary heart disease prevention, as well, using similar prevention of lipid oxidation mechanisms like vitamin B12 and beta-carotene .
In essence, it is important to look at one’s diet as crucial in stroke prevention, while there are familial risk factors for stroke, one can cut their non-genetic risk in half by simply watching their diet and insuring proper intake of antioxidants and other vitamins. A big concern then is raised with why then shouldn’t we increase our levels of these compounds using pill-style supplementation, rather than eating vegetables and fruits and maintaining adequate overall
vitamin intakes. As we saw in the case of vitamin E and beta-carotene, large doses of betacarotene can actually increase one’s risk for stroke since large doses of beta-carotene can deplete the body of vitamin E . Obviously, in compounds such as vitamin B12, which is primarily from fortified foods and from endogenous sources such as enteric bacteria, it is important to look for foods high in vitamin B12. Obviously, in patients with intrinsic factor deficiency, both forms of supplementation will prove insufficient, and other means of increasing vitamin B12 are necessary. Most importantly, we know so little in respect to the flavonoids and other phytocompounds of fruit and vegetable origin and their systemic effects, that there are many great, but undiscovered benefits of eating large quantities of them. Lastly, fruits and vegetables serve as sources of fiber, which will have a too fold effect: 1) By allowing for the "fullness" feeling after eating, they will prevent eating more than necessary, and can help to reduce fat intake, and are great snacks. For those with chronic hemorrhoids, dietary fiber can soften stool and prevent many common causes of hemorrhoids. Fiber also helps to reduce cholesterol levels, since it can reduce fat intake, and by the same mechanism can promote better health, preventing atherosclerosis . There are great benefits to these treatments in addition to just stroke prevention with these vitamin and antioxidant supplements. Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), ischemic heart disease, and cancers of free-radical mutagenic origin can be greatly prevented using similar measures of increasing intake of these antioxidants . Since stroke is a definitively predictable illness for 550,000 Americans, if we watch what we eat, and have a bit more fruit and vegetables in our diet, we can spare ourselves many of the problems associated with stroke. Remember: A diet with apples, oranges, more fruit and more vegetables a day will keep the neurosurgeon away.
In concluding this piece, it is necessary to emphasise that a healthy diet which includes regular consumption of fruits and vegetables would prevent many serious diseases but we need to state that a powerful antioxidant like Jobelyn, concentrated in capsules could as well prevent you from diseases and taken at a higher dosage could also reverse diseases and help you to maintain your wellness.
Stroke jobelyn antioxidant bioflavonoids anti-inflammation
Hippocrates lived about 2,500 years ago. The interpretation of his quote is that the ideal food should have, in addition to normal food, nutrients, such as sugar, elements, vitamins and fatty acids.
The quote is a confirmation of what the scriptures had says from beginning of creation. Going through the scriptures, Genesis 1:29 said: “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food”.
In Ezekiel 47:12, the Bible says: “ Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river, their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, every month they will bear fruit because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing. Another interesting portion of the Bible is Daniel Chapter 1:5-15, where Daniel in captivity refused to defile himself with portion of the King’s meat, nor the wine which he drank, but preferred to eat vegetables and drink water.
At the end of 10 day’s trial, he looked much better than those who were fed with the King’s meat. The last chapter of the Bible, Revelation Chapter 22:12, also confirms the importance of plant that it is for the healing of the nations.
The Holy Quran contains an interesting portion in Chapter 16:69, where it states: “Then eat of all fruits and walk in the ways of your Lord submissively. There comes forth within it a beverage of many colours, in which there is healing for men”.
Holy Prophet Muhammed lived about 1600 years ago and with this portion of the Quran prophesied what in modern times is known as Antioxidants. They are produced from plants with colours. Examples are Acai berry, tart cherry, blue berry, etc.
All health authorities, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) confirm that it is only food and nutrition that could prevent you from chronic diseases, such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, arthritis etc. No drug has yet been discovered to play this role.
First, about half of all American adults—117 million individuals—have one or more preventable, chronic diseases, and about two-thirds of U.S. adults—nearly 155 million individuals—are overweight or obese. These conditions have been highly prevalent for more than two decades. Poor dietary patterns, overconsumption of calories, and physical inactivity directly contribute to these disorders. Second, individual nutrition and physical activity behaviours and other health-related lifestyle behaviours are strongly influenced by personal, social, organisational, and environmental contexts and systems. Positive changes in individual diet and physical activity behaviours, and in the environmental contexts and systems that affect them, could substantially improve health outcomes.
Humans require a wide range of essential micronutrients and macronutrients for normal growth and development and to support healthy aging throughout the life cycle. Essential nutrients, including most vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids, water and fiber, must be obtained through foods and beverages because they cannot for the most part be endogenously synthesised, or are not endogenously synthesised in adequate amounts to need recommended intakes.
Nutrition is coming to the fore as a major modifiable determinant of chronic disease, with scientific evidence increasingly supporting the view that alterations in diet have strong effects, both positive and negative, on health throughout life. Most importantly, dietary adjustments may not only influence present health, but may determine whether or not an individual will develop such diseases as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes much later in life. However, these concepts have not led to a change in policies or in practice. In many developing countries, food policies remain focused only on under nutrition and are not addressing the prevention of chronic disease – WHO.
Unfortunately, no single food item has been identified to prevent these chronic diseases to fulfill the famous Hippocrates quote that: “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.The pharmaceutical companies in an attempt to fill the gap have formulated dietary and food supplements to supply the nutritional items in the ordinary man’s food intake.The companies have assembled synthetic equivalent of the essential nutrients as supplement. In most cases, they are not bio-available.‘’
Researchers from various parts of the world have published documents pointing in the direction of Sorghum as the a grain that would fulfill Hippocrates quote because it combines both food and medicine. There are different varieties of the Sorghum plant. These are mainly the edible and the medicinal Sorghum. The latter contains food and almost all the essential ingredients but it is poisonous. At the time the Americans saw the potential of this plant and decided to propagate it in the United States, they were only interested in the edible variety which they have improved over the centuries using the plant genetic engineering.
A recent publication by Nancy D. Turner Associate Professor of Nutrition, Food Science and Genetics Texas A&M University, College Station advocated that the national goal is to “avoid preventable diseases from occurring in the first place “ and suggested that Sorghum is the grain that Americans should be consuming for this purpose. She concluded that Sorghum grain and their bioactive phytochemicals appear to contribute toward the suppression of several chronic diseases , that the national goal is to “avoid preventable diseases from occurring in the first place”and that to achieve the Target to double whole grain consumption , Sorghum should be included in our food supply to derive these health benefits.
In another recent publication by Anita Stefoska-Needham School of Medicine, Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia , it was stated: Sorghum is an important cereal grain food, grown globally, that is rich in nutrients, dietary fiber, and bioactive components yet is considered of low value to humans and often used as an animal feed. This review provides an overview of key sorghum grain components, including starches, dietary fiber, protein, lipids, and phytochemicals, with functional properties that have potential to impact on health. Though acknowledging the impact of the whole food will reflect the synergy between the components, studies of these components implicate effects on energy balance, glycemic control, lipids, gut microbiota, and cell-mediated immune responses, including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. For these to be confirmed as contributory effects from sorghum consumption, evidence from quality randomised controlled trials is required. If proven effective, there may be a role for sorghum grain–based diets to assist in the prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Future research addressing effects of sorghum consumption may help drive a paradigm shift from sorghum as a low value food to a potentially health-promoting, highly valued human grain food.
From Nigerian folk medicine, the medicinal sorghum, which had been in the custody of the people of the Southwest, had been developed to a product (Jobelyn) that had been researched to contain food and medicine. Recent laboratory research from GMP Laboratories in the USA confirmed that it contained Vitamins, Selenium, Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc, Phosphorus, Sodium, Copper, Omega3, 6 & 9 and other fatty acids.
For millennia, the indigenous people of western Africa have relied on this botanical to support whole health and a balanced inflammation cycle.
A simple bunchgrass, Sorghum bicolour’s superior antioxidant capacity is revealed only through a traditional folk preparation of its leaf sheath.
Modern science has been working hard in the past 15 years to isolate the plant’s antioxidant components in an effort to create a synthetic version. The results? It doesn’t work. The impressive ORAC rating, higher than grapeseed extract and well-known antioxidant berries and fruits, is seen only within the traditionally prepared African remedy using the sorghum leaf in its complete natural state.
We call our Sorghum ingredient “Jobelyn” after the Jubi River where it originally grew wild. Now a domesticated plant, it is grown on our own organic plantation.
3-Deoxyanthocyanidins are rare flavonoids found in only a few plant species. These unique flavonoids are the major pigments in the flowers of Sinningia cardinalis, and they are found in silk tissues of certain types of corn. Sorghum is the only dietary source of 3-deoxyanthocyanidins.
Many plants use secondary metabolites, such as flavonoids, to protect themselves against pathogen attack. In sorghum, this defense is an active response resulting in the accumulation of high levels of 3-deoxyanthocyanidin phytoalexins in infected tissue. This defensive mechanism is the power that Jobelyn uses to strengthen the body and promote whole health.
HIPPOCRATES QUOTE "LET FOOD BE THY MEDICINE AND THY MEDICINE BE FROM FOOD -- DECODED
HIPPOCRATES QUOTE
“LET FOOD BE THY MEDICINE AND THY MEDICINE BE FROM FOOD”
Hippocrates lived about 2,500 years ago. The interpretation of his quote is that the ideal food should have in addition to normal food, nutrients like Sugar, Elements, Vitamins and Fatty Acids.
One of the most popular food plants during the time of Hippocrates was Sorghum bicolor which fits into the quote.
The following link which provides the evidence that Sorghum is food and medicine:
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/about_sorghum/Sorghum%20Nutrition%20Attributes%20and%20Health%20Benefits.pdf
A look at the profile of this plant shows that it contains food and most of the essential nutrients. See the link at: http://afritradomedic.com/pdf/our_library/2013_09_nutrition_booklet_small%20Sorghum%20Story.pdf. There are different varieties of the Sorghum plant. These are mainly the edible and the medicinal Sorghum. The latter contains food and almost all the essential ingredients but it is poisonous. At the time the Americans saw the potential of this plant and decided to propagate it in the USA, they were only interested in the edible variety which they have improved over the centuries using the plant genetic engineering.
A simple bunchgrass, Sorghum bicolor’s superior antioxidant capacity is revealed only through a traditional folk preparation of its leaf sheath.
The nutritional fact analysis of this Sorghum bicolor under the brand name Jobelyn ( see the link at: http://afritradomedic.com/pdf/Jobelyn%20Nutritional%20Facts%20Analysis%20%20GMP%20Labs%20with%20Glossary.pdf ) confirms that it is both food and medicine.
The medicinal properties of this variety of Sorghum bicolor have been confirmed with the studies done on its antioxidant powers. See the link at: (http://afritradomedic.com/pdf/Antioxidant_Analysis_from_Brunswick.pdf )
Scientific studies have confirmed its medicinal properties. See the links at: http://afritradomedic.com/index.php/scientific-studies
To see the Power Point presentation on Jobelyn from studies done at NIS Laboratory in USA please < CLICK >
A recent publication with the title " Sorghum: An Underutilized Cereal Whole Grain with the Potential to Assist in the Prevention of Chronic Disease" supports the medicinal property of Sorghum bicolor. For details < PLEASE CLICK >
For readings about the effect of Nutrition on Neurological problems, please < CLICK > to go to this website
CNN recently did a feature programme on the importance of Food and Nutrtion for Mental Health. "Healthy diet may improve memory, says study."
To read the report on this programme < PLEASE CLICK >
Please see the links to the in vivo studies that have been done with Sorghum bicolor branded as Jobelyn on neurological problems:
Umukoro S, Adrian Omogbiya I, Taghogho Eduviere A. Evaluation of the Effect of Jobelyn® on Chemoconvulsants- Induced Seizure in Mice. BCN. 2013; 4 (2) 4 (2) :19-23 URL http://bcn.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-151&slc_lang=en&sid=1
Umukoro S, Ugbomah A, Aderibigbe A, Eduviere A, Omogbiya A. Antioxidant Property of Jobelyn as the Possible Mechanism Underlying its Anti-amnesic Activity in Rodents. BCN. 2013; 4 (1) 4 (1) :42-49 URL http://bcn.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-139&slc_lang=en&sid=1
Omogbiya IA, Umukoro S, Aderibigbe AO, Bakre AG. Jobelyn® pretreatment ameliorates symptoms of psychosis in experimental models. J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 2013;24(4):331-6. doi: 10.1515/jbcpp-2012-0073. PubMed PMID: 23412872
Umukoro S, Omogbiya IA, Eduviere TA. Effect of Jobelyn® on intruder- and isolation-induced aggressive behavior in mice. J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 2013;24(4):263-9. doi: 10.1515/jbcpp-2012-0069. PubMed PMID: 23729562
S. Umukoro , A. T. Eduviere , A. C. Aladeokin , A. Olugbemide on Antidepressant-like Property of Jobelyn ® , an African Unique Herbal Formulation in Mice. Drug Res (Stuttg). 2014 Mar;64(3):146-50. doi: 10.1055/s-0033-1354366. Epub 2013 Sep 3.
Umukoro S, Oluwole OG, Eduviere AT, Adrian OI, Ajayi AM.Jobelyn® exhibited anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and membrane-stabilizing activities in experimental models.J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 2015 May 28. pii: /j/jbcpp.ahead-of-print/jbcpp-2014-0113/jbcpp-2014-0113.xml. doi: 10.1515/jbcpp-2014-0113.
Collection of Literatures on Food, Nutrition and Health:
Bioavailability, bioactivity and impact on health of dietary flavonoids and related compounds: an update
Final Functional Foods Backgrounder
WHO traditional medicine strategy 2014-2023
DIET, NUTRITION AND PREVENTION OF CHRONIC DISEASES who_trs_916
Whole-grain foods and chronic disease
van Buul & Brouns - CRFSN - 2015 - NHCs as Marketing Tools
Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee
Fighting Inflammation with Fortification
Hopkins Medicine Magazine - Desert Bloom Food as Medicine
Multivitamins and Cancer in Yahoo
Diet, nutrition essential for mental health
Nutritional therapies for mental disorders
Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses
Nutritional medicine as mainstream in psychiatry
EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA)
Lifestyle, nutrition and breast cancer
Sorghum and the Antioxidant Craze Texas AM University.pdf
Sorghum: Nutrition Attributes and Health Benefits Research Update
Nutritional and antioxidant dispositions of sorghum/milletbased beverages indigenous to Nigeria
Spotlight on Global Malnutrition.pdf
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR HEALTH
1. Health is like the two sides of a coin – wellness and sickness
2. For you to be in a wellness state, there are actions that you need to be taking.
3. Without taking appropriate actions, you will obviously get to the sickness stage.
4. Wellness requires pro-active measures whereas sickness will eventually require remedial measures.
5. Remedial measures may not restore you to a state of wellness but a perpetual struggle to manage and control health problems.
6. All health authorities including USDA, USFDA, EFSA are unanimous that it is only food and nutrition that could prevent you from chronic diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, arthritis etc. No drug has yet been discovered to play this role.
First, about half of all American adults—117 million individuals—have one or more preventable, chronic diseases, and about two-thirds of U.S. adults—nearly 155 million individuals—are overweight or obese. These conditions have been highly prevalent for more than two decades. Poor dietary patterns, overconsumption of calories, and physical inactivity directly contribute to these disorders. Second, individual nutrition and physical activity behaviors and other health-related lifestyle behaviors are strongly influenced by personal, social, organizational, and environmental contexts and systems. Positive changes in individual diet and physical activity behaviors, and in the environmental contexts and systems that affect them, could substantially improve health outcomes.
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/PDFs/Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee.pdf
(Represented in the model by health outcomes influenced by diet and physical activity behaviors)
Health outcomes cardiovascular diseases (coronary heart disease, heart attack, hypertension and stroke);
Type 2 diabetes; diet-related cancers (breast, colorectal, prostate, lung); neurological and psychological conditions (including cognitive function, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and depression); dental caries; congenital anomalies; fractures and osteoporosis; total mortality
Humans require a wide range of essential micronutrients and macronutrients for normal growth and development and to support healthy aging throughout the life cycle. Essential nutrients, including most vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids, water and fiber, must be obtained through foods and beverages because they cannot for the most part be endogenously synthesized, or are not endogenously synthesized in adequate amounts to need recommended intakes.
Nutrition is coming to the fore as a major modifiable determinant of chronic disease, with scientific evidence increasingly supporting the view that alterations in diet have strong effects, both positive and negative, on health throughout life. Most importantly, dietary adjustments may not only influence present health, but may determine whether or not an individual will develop such diseases as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes much later in life. However, these concepts have not led to a change in policies or in practice. In many developing countries, food policies remain focused only on undernutrition and are not addressing the prevention of chronic disease – WHO
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/w10/feature2.cf
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/who_trs_916.pdf
7. Unfortunately, no single food item has been identified to prevent these chronic diseases to fulfill the famous Hippocrates quote that: “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.
8. The pharmaceutical companies in an attempt to fill the gap have formulated dietary and food supplements to supply the nutritional items in the ordinary man’s food intake.
9. The companies have assembled synthetic equivalent of the essential nutrients as supplement. In most cases, they are not bio-available. None of them has passed through clinical studies to prove their efficacy in preventing chronic diseases.
http://www.doctorsresearch.com/articles1.html
https://www.yahoo.com/health/dietary-supplements-linked-to-increased-cancer-117012426432.html
10. There is only one unique product, developed from African folk medicine (from Sorghum bicolor) which fits perfectly into Hippocrates quote.
11. It is both food and medicine.
12. The Nutritional Fact Analysis supports this claim.
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Jobelyn Nutritional Facts Analysis GMP Labs.pdf
13. A series of other studies support the medicinal claim. These include the laboratory studies that show that it contains:
Polyphenols
Please see the review article on health effects of bioflavonoids and polyphenols
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Rodriguez-Mateos14-Arch Tox - Review Polyphenols.pdf
Therapeutic compounds such as:
Apigeninidin
Apigenin
Luteolinidin
Luteolin
Naringenin
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Antioxidant_Analysis_from_Brunswick.pdf
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/Summary_of_Orac_and_Phenolics_and_Compounds.pdf
The medicinal properties of Jobelyn has been confirmed through clinical studies and clinical trials, many of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
http://www.afritradomedic.com/pdf/NIS%20PowerPoint%20wiith%20GMP%20Lab%20Nutritional%20Analsyis%20for%20Demola.pdf
References for Jobelyn
1.Ayuba GI, Jensen GS, Benson KF, Okubena AM, Okubena O. Clinical efficacy of a West African sorghum bicolor-based traditional herbal preparation Jobelyn shows increased hemoglobin and CD4+ T-lymphocyte counts in HIV-positive patients. J Altern Complement Med. 2014 Jan;20(1):53-6. doi: 10.1089/acm.2013.0125. Epub 2013 Nov 27. PubMed PMID: 24283768
Geera B, Ojwang LO, Awika JM. New highly stable dimeric 3-deoxyanthocyanidin pigments from sorghum bicolor leaf sheath. J Food Sci. 2012 May;77(5):C566-72. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2012.02668.x. Epub 2012 Apr 10. PubMed PMID: 22489620
Benson KF, Beaman JL, Ou B, Okubena A, Okubena O, Jensen GS. West African Sorghum bicolor leaf sheaths have anti-inflammatory and immune-modulating properties in vitro. J Med Food. 2013 Mar;16(3):230-8. doi: 10.1089/jmf.2012.0214. Epub 2013 Jan 5. PubMed PMID: 23289787
Toxicological Profiles of Commercial Herbal Preparation, Jobelyn® nternational Journal of Health Research, December 2009; 2(4): 369-374 © Poracom Academic Publishers. All rights reserved. Available at http://www.ijhr.org
The influence of African Herbal Formula on the haematological parameters of trypanosome infected rats VI Okochi, J Okpuzor, MO Okubena, AK Awoyemi African Journal of Biotechnology Vol.2(9) 2003: 312-316
Response of Trypanosoma brucei brucei-induced anaemia to a commercial herbal preparation ........... 4 African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 2 (9), pp. 307‐311, September 2003
Thermal stability of 3-deoxyanthocyanidin pigments Liyi Yang , Linda Dykes , Joseph M. Awika Journal of Food Chemistry http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2014.03.105
Dietary supplements shown to increase cancer risk
While dietary supplements may be advertised to promote health, a forum at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2015 by University of Colorado Cancer Center investigator Tim Byers, MD, MPH, describes research showing that over-the-counter supplements may actually increase cancer risk if taken in excess of the recommended daily amount.
“We are not sure why this is happening at the molecular level but evidence shows that people who take more dietary supplements than needed tend to have a higher risk of developing cancer,” explains Byers, associate director for cancer prevention and control at the CU Cancer Center.
coloradocancerblogs.org/dietary-supplements-shown-to-increase-cancer-risk/
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Commission, UK and Gates Foundation put big nutrition cash on table
We would need to monitor how this initiative would be implemented. One area that would need some caution is the use of the huge investment in the procurement of non-natural food in the form of the so-called food/dietary supplement/functional food, that is made up mostly of synthetic substances which are generally not bio-available. Unfortunately, it is not the norm to test out these items by way of clinical studies as it is done for drugs. The poor countries of the world are mostly affected by poor nutrition but surprisingly there are food crops like Sorghum which could be developed to meet the nutritional needs of these countries. Hippocrates, the father of medicine said "Let food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be food" A lot of research has been done on this plant and if the nutritional contents could be standardized it would not only supply the nutritional needs as well as provide healing for many of the diseases that have been caused by poor nutrition.
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Wigmore Mondays – Juilliard Quartet play Lembit Beecher & Dvořák ‘American’ string quartets
Posted on January 15, 2019 by arcanafm
Juilliard String Quartet: Areta Zhulla, Ronald Copes (violins), Roger Tapping (viola), Astrid Schween (cello) (photo: Claudia Papapietro)
Lembit Beecher One Hundred Years Grows Shorter Over Time (2018) (2:25-23:52 on the link to BBC Sounds below)
Dvořák String Quartet in F major Op.96 ‘American’ (1893) (26:42-54:11)
Wigmore Hall, London
To hear the BBC broadcast through BBC Sounds, please follow this link
Commentary and Review by Ben Hogwood
The Juilliard String Quartet are a very different proposition now to when they were formed in 1946. In the analogue recording years string quartets were almost wholly formed of white male players, and it has been very satisfying to see the trend broadening in the last couple of decades. The Juilliards themselves appear to have hit on a perfect blend of youth and experience, with first violinist Areta Zhulla joining their ranks for the 2018/19 season. On this evidence it has given them a real shot in the arm, helped by their willingness to bring with them a new work from Lembit Beecher. This gave their Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert a symmetrical feel, for Beecher’s new work for string quartet draws from Europe and more specifically Estonia – while Dvořák’s most celebrated ‘American’ String Quartet finds him writing in America but using a melodic style common to both the USA and the Czech Republic.
Beecher first, and the European premiere of One Hundred Years Grows Shorter Over Time. The intriguing title takes as its lead an Estonian melody, a waltz written by Beecher’s grand uncle Ilmar Kiiss, now in his mid-90s. This meaningful piece of music puts its head above the parapet in the first two of the three movements making up the quartet, before fully revealing itself in the third. The movements themselves represent different generations and their telling of the same story, which becomes less detailed as one generation passes to the next. As a result the first contains more definitive incidents, the second is more shadowy and less focussed in detail but poignant in mood, and the third, while recalling the attractive waltz in charming detail, is slower in its movements.
In concert this is a very effective piece of music not just to listen to but to watch. The busy conversations of the first movement (2:25 on the broadcast link) feel as though Beecher had set words to music, removing them just before performance, and making the first violin the loudest voice. This reaches a natural apex through Zhulla’s faultless higher register playing (from 5:10), before subsiding in volume and intensity, to some unusually emotional figures around 7:15 that simply dies on the string.
The second movement (from 11:51) uses subtle but effective techniques such as harmonics to create the shadowy effects, while from 14:51 a sudden injection of pace and volume gets an excitable conversation going again. The tender waltz theme would seem to be from 16:58 on the viola, before the violin ascends to the heights.
The third movement (from 18:39) has mottled textures and a slight lethargy, as though the memories are more difficult to place. Again the violin’s voice is loudest, but the shady movements of the others and the closing tremolos (from around 22:25) give a fragile and autumnal air to proceedings. All these elements were superbly marshalled in performance by the Juilliard Quartet, and made you want to hear more of Beecher’s music.
The Juilliard’s performance of the Dvořák, meanwhile, was a joy. This much-played work – one of the most popular string quartets there is, together with the Debussy and the Ravel works – rediscovers its freshness here. This is thanks in part to Zhulla’s clear affection for the piece. After Roger Tapping’s viola gives a silvery exposition of the first tune, she leads with a beautiful tone once again (26:57), enjoying the outdoor nature of the pentatonic melodies – which, as Gerald Larner’s programme note helpfully point out, seem to be equal parts Bohemia and Iowa. (The pentatonic scale, as its name implies, is made up of just five notes – in this case F (the home key), G, A, C and D). Although Dvořák was on a lengthy vacation when he wrote the string quartet, and was doubtless influenced by the melodies he heard in America, there is never the feeling that his Czech heritage is far away. The sentimental second theme (28:21) bears this out.
Meanwhile Zhulla and cellist Astrid Schween capture the bittersweet main melody of the slow movement to perfection (37:18) and (38:03), the rocking motion of its accompaniment acting as a lullaby. The ensemble enjoys the scampering figures of the Scherzo (44:47) before a brief Trio section (46:58) brings forward what the composer believed to be the song of the scarlet tanager in the first violin. The Scherzo resumes shortly after at 47:44.
The finale (48:52) is bold and positive in this performance, the quartet enjoying the abundance of tunes available to them – most of them taking in the pentatonic scale once again, with a rustic, outdoor feel.
With the bonus of a Haydn encore in the same key and mood (the Minuet from his Op.77/2 quartet at 56:06), this was the ideal January concert, an inspiring and optimistic pairing of works that celebrate the diversity of culture but also look at the heritage of each and bring them together. A lesson for the future in this country, perhaps?
Lembit Beecher’s One Hundred Years Grows Shorter Over Time is not currently available online; however you can listen below to his previous work for string quartet, Small Infinities:
The Juilliard String Quartet recorded Dvořák’s American string quartet all the way back in 1968 – yet that version does not appear to have yet reached Spotify. The below link is to a recent disc from the Škampa Quartet, coupling the quartet with the String Quintet in E flat major published immediately after. It is similarly free-spirited:
Lembit Beecher’s composer website contains detailed information on his output, with a healthy dose of videos and audio tracks. Meanwhile you can read more about the Juilliard String Quartet at their website. For a biography of Antonin Dvořák, this dedicated site to the composer is recommended.
This entry was posted in In concert, Piano and tagged Antonin Dvořák, BBC Radio 3, Franz Joseph Haydn, Juilliard String Quartet, Lembit Beecher, Wigmore Hall by arcanafm. Bookmark the permalink.
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Bruce Springsteen Adds 81 Performances to ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ Run
Debra Filcman
Chris Jackson, Getty Images
Following nearly 50 years of touring the world, Bruce Springsteen has made himself cozy in the intimate Walter Kerr Theatre. He's been performing his one-man show Springsteen on Broadway there five times a week since October, and he's just announced an additional 81 shows to what was originally slated for an eight-week run.
He was previously scheduled to wrap the show on June 30, before extending it for the third time, now bringing the total to 236 nights. The additional performances will keep Springsteen on Broadway from July 10 to Dec. 15, with tickets for the just-added shows going on sale March 28 at 11AM through Ticketmaster Verified Fan.
Through the Verified Fan process, ticket-buyers register in advance and are vetted by Ticketmaster as genuine fans as opposed to scalpers or a computer program. Of those determined to be actual fans, a lottery decides whether they ultimately receive a code that allows them to shop for tickets.
Demand for tickets has been high from the start, and the show's continuing rave reviews from fans and celebrities have not helped those looking to score a ticket. But according to Springsteen's website, tickets will be available on this go-round only to fans who previously have been shut out. "In order to recognize the tremendous number of fans who previously participated but have not had the opportunity to shop for tickets, for this on-sale, only fans who previously registered, and have not purchased tickets, will be eligible to receive an invitation to the on-sale," reads a statement. "Eligible fans will receive additional information on Monday, March 26, to prepare in advance."
Next: Top 10 Bruce Springsteen Songs
Source: Bruce Springsteen Adds 81 Performances to ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ Run
Filed Under: Bruce Springsteen
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Mother and son arrested for armed robbery
ANTIOCH, CA
Officers were called around 6 a.m. Thursday to reports of an armed robbery at the Oaks Motel at 8065 Monterey St., police said.
The victim told police that a man had approached him and demanded money, which the victim denied. The suspect then threatened the victim with a black handgun, and the victim turned over an undisclosed amount of cash. The suspect then fled the scene on foot.
The suspect, identified as 25-year-old Larry Giles, is a transient in the Gilroy area, according to police. He was arrested at the motel.
Giles' mother, 44-year-old Virginia Giles, allegedly protected her son after he committed the robbery, delaying the police investigation.
The mother and son were on active parole, and were booked into jail on parole holds as well as charges of robbery and resisting arrest, police said.
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FG seeks N100bn in new bond auction - PUNCH
BY Feyisayo Popoola
The Federal Government is offering fresh N100bn bonds for subscription through an auction scheduled for next week.
The Debt Management Office, in a circular on Tuesday, said it was authorised by the Federal Government to receive applications for the N100bn bonds.
According to the DMO, the bonds consist of a N35bn five-year bond, which was a re-opening at an interest rate of 12.75 per cent and will be due in April 2023; N35bn 10-year bond re-opening at an interest rate of 14.55 per cent and due in April 2029; and N30bn 30-year bond re-opening at an interest rate of 14.80 per cent and due in April 2049.
It said the bonds would be auctioned on May 22, with the settlement date being May 24.
The statement read in part, “The bonds are offered at N1,000 per unit, subject to a minimum subscription of N5,000 and in multiples of N1,000 and a maximum subscription of N50m.
“The bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal Government of Nigeria and charged upon the general assets of the country, qualify as securities in which trustees can invest under the Trustee Investment Act. Interest is payable quarterly and the bullet repayment is on the maturity date.
“For re-opening of previously issued bonds, (where the coupon is already set), successful bidders will pay a price corresponding to the yield-to-maturity bid that clears the volume being auctioned, plus any accrued interest on the instrument.”
According to the debt office, the bonds also qualify as government securities within the meaning of Company Income Tax Act and Personal Income Tax Act for tax exemption for pension funds, among others.
It said the bonds would be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and would qualify as a liquid asset for liquidity ratio calculation for banks.
The DMO said interested investors should contact Access Bank Plc, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited, Citi Bank Nigeria Limited, First City Monument Bank Plc, United Bank for Africa Plc, Coronation Merchant Bank Limited, FSDH Merchant Bank Limited, Zenith Bank Plc, Ecobank Nigeria Limited, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, FBNQuest Merchant Bank Limited and Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc.
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Home > Discovering Islam > About Muhammad > What Can We Learn from the Prophet’s Leadership?
The Life of Prophet Muhammad Through the Lens of Leadership
What Can We Learn from the Prophet’s Leadership?
The Law of Intuition states that leaders always look at things from a leadership lens. When you study the life of the Prophet, you begin to realize just how incredibly strong of a leader he was.
Republished with the author’s kind permission from Muslimmatters.org. Law of Respect: People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves The Law of Respect states that people will only follow those who are stronger than themselves. To understand this law within the context of the Prophet’s life, you simply need to look at the caliber of people who chose to follow him. Umar ibn al Khattab, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, Khalid bin Waleed, Ali bin Abu Talib, Uthman bin Affan, Asma bint Yazid, Muad ibn Jabal, Musab ibn Umayr, Asma bint Abu Bakr, Az-Zubayr ibn al Awam, Talha bin Zaid, Sumayyah bint Khubbat, Abdullah…
Thu 23 November 2017 - 11:30
Adnan Jalali
Prophet Muhammad Never Broke Promises
21 Leadership Lessons from the Life of Prophet Muhammad
5 Lessons From the Journey of Mu’adh ibn Jabal to Yemen
Republished with the author’s kind permission from Muslimmatters.org.
Law of Respect: People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves
The Law of Respect states that people will only follow those who are stronger than themselves.
To understand this law within the context of the Prophet’s life, you simply need to look at the caliber of people who chose to follow him.
Umar ibn al Khattab, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, Khalid bin Waleed, Ali bin Abu Talib, Uthman bin Affan, Asma bint Yazid, Muad ibn Jabal, Musab ibn Umayr, Asma bint Abu Bakr, Az-Zubayr ibn al Awam, Talha bin Zaid, Sumayyah bint Khubbat, Abdullah ibn Masud, Abu Ubaydah ibn al Jarrah, Rumaysa bint Milhan, Salman al-Farisi, Suhayb ar-Rumi, Abu Dhar al-Ghifari and Hamza just to name a few.
Leaders, warriors, poets, business moguls, chieftains and scholars from various places of various ages and talents all chose to follow the Prophet.
The greatest united collection of human beings to ever walk the face of the earth was assembled under his leadership and followed him to the extent that their level of loyalty to him was something that the world had never witnessed before.
They followed him because they respected him and knew that he was stronger than them, because people don’t follow leaders who have a lower capacity then themselves. Another example of the strength of the Prophet’s leadership is that, after his death, the Muslims were never completely unified again.
Reflection Questions on the Law:
– What do you do intentionally to become a stronger leader every day?
Law of Intuition: Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias
From identifying and developing future leaders, to uniting people from various backgrounds, cultures and races upon one shared belief system and way of life; the Prophet’s leadership bias is clear. I have shared some examples within the previous laws and will share many more through the remainder of the laws.
– Do you view life through a leadership lens?
– How keen are you in identifying both good and bad leadership when you see it?
Law of Magnetism: Who You Are is Who You Attract
The Law of Magnetism states that the people that you will attract into your organization, community or your life is determined by you are. Think about the five people that you spend the most time with in the world. If you balanced all of their characteristics, mannerisms, mindsets and lifestyles, you’ll be looking at yourself. That’s why the Prophet said:
“A person is on the same way of life as his close companion. Therefore, let every one of you carefully consider the company he keeps.” (At-Tirmidhi)
This law is actually saying the same thing as the hadith, but from the opposite perspective. You will ultimately attract the kind of people that are like you to you. This works both on a personal and organizational level.
For those of you who watch sports, ask yourself: why are the great teams able to recruit even more great players to their team? Or even in business, how do Google, Apple, Harvard, Stanford and the likes continue to attract top notch talent?
It’s because they are attracting who they are. Like attracts like. Or think about the really successful Muslim organizations here in the West: Al-Maghrib, Zaytuna, Bayyinah and Muslimmatters.
Now look at the Prophet and who he was able to attract to a cause that was not popular and went against many of the fundamental principles of the society that he lived in. The best and brightest came to Islam through the Prophet’s example because that’s who he was.
– Are you attracting the right kind of people into your life?
– If you are not, then what do you have to do, or better yet, who do you have to become, in order to attract the right kind of people to you and your organization?
21 Lessons from the Prophet’s Successful Leadership
Prophetleadersleadership
About Adnan Jalali
What Makes a Great Leader? Lessons from the Prophet
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Large Hadron Collider exhibit comes to town: an Open Access success story
December 9, 2016 December 12, 2016 Director, AOASG
By Sandra Fry
The world’s greatest scientific collaboration comes to Brisbane, Australia today with the opening of the Hadron Collider exhibit at the Queensland Museum.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest, most powerful particle accelerator ever built, consisting of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets which sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland.
The project was dubbed the biggest science experiment of all time, and has involved thousands of scientists funded by hundreds of universities and governments around the world.
One of the most significant outcomes of the collaboration has been the very deliberate focus on ensuring the findings are available freely and openly. The sciences have been leading the movement towards Open Access (OA) and an increasing number of Australian research organisations including universities, the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council policies have OA policies. The Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) advocates on behalf of its member universities who are based in Australia and New Zealand and its affiliates to promote OA through collaboration and raising awareness.
One of the biggest discoveries to come from the LHC was in 2012 with the discovery of Higgs boson elementary particle – it was last remaining particle from the Standard Model of particle physics to be observed. Australian Professor Geoffrey Taylor (pictured below) is a director and chief investigator at the Centre of excellence in Particle Physics (CoEEP) at the University of Melbourne. He was heavily involved in the Higgs boson discovery along with many other Australian scientists and said it came after decades of inquiry around across the globe.
“It was a very fundamental discovery, and it was a component of the Standard Model which was missing, but through this building of the Large Hadron Collider scope, its higher energies, higher intensities, we were capable of discovering the Hicks and we did.
“So that was a massive step forward for understanding the fundamental basis of the universe, and what particles are made of and what their basic interactions are.”
Professor Taylor said this LHC exhibition presents science on industrial scale, and that has benefits in the community.
“First of all it drives this collaboration for ventures in science and engineering, but on the other side of the coin, it involves major industrialisation and commercial involvement, and knowledge transfer.”
He said there is a large amount of technology which comes out of this research which is all publicly funded.
“Something like two or three times the turnover of what it would cost…. which I think it’s important for the public to know, it’s not just a drain … it generates growth.”
Much of the research being extracted from experiments using the LHC is made available around the globe via Open Access initiatives.
According to Dr Salvatore Mele, from CERN (pictured below), research in the field of physics has always been openly available.
“For more than half a century, researchers mailed each other hard copies of preprints, preliminary articles they had submitted for publication” Dr Mele said, and now there are repositories like arXiv.org, all around the work hosting millions of Open Access articles and preprints.
“Thanks to our Open Access initiative SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), most of the articles in the field are also Open Access in their final peer-reviewed published version.
Dr Mele said that by aligning the mission of researchers, libraries, funding agencies and publishers it is possible to remove access barriers.
“Just imagine if all medical research was available to any single medical worker anywhere in the world,” he said.
Dr Mele said the impact of these scientific discoveries being available freely and openly has enormous impact on the research community.
“We have a way to measure how often these ‘preprints’, preliminary articles in our field, cite each other. This means that by being openly and freely available,ideas can spread before being formally published: we see that these citations happen up to one year before the day in which articles are published.
“Open Access accelerates science!” he said.
“Another way to measure impact is how often scientific articles are downloaded. While you cannot be sure this means someone has read them and got an idea – that of course cannot happen if you do not read the articles. We have been amazed to see that journals that SCOAP3 has made openly accessible on publisher web sites are downloaded twice as much as before.” Five Australian universities are part of the consortium that supports SCOAP3, including two in Queensland, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Griffith University, as well as ANU, The University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia.
Dr Mele said the research community should not only share their work with peers in other disciplines, they should engage with libraries and funding agencies to support Open Access as part of the investment in research.
There is increasing pressure by funding agencies at national and international levels to embrace Open Access, Dr Mele said.
“Large charities, such as the Wellcome Trust and now the Gates Foundation, have been instrumental in moving this agenda and raise awareness in important areas in the life sciences and medical research, among others.
“In Europe, governments have agreed in the importance of Open Access in particular and Open Science in general: in May this year ministers of the European Union Member states concluded that Open Access should become the default for scientific publishing.
He said there are no negatives in making research open to everyone for free.
“In some fields there is hesitation about using them [open access journals], their reputation, and how to pay for them. In our field we see that research published in Open Access journals is downloaded twice as much as before, and by virtue of the fact that authors do not need to pay for this service, there are neither barriers nor hesitations,” Dr Mele said.
The Hadron Collider: Step Inside the World’s Greatest Experiment opens at the Queensland Museum & Sciencentre on December 9.
newsopen access, open access journal, science
← Authors Alliance chief reflects on NZ Writers Forum panel
How the insights of the Large Hadron Collider are being made open to everyone: The Conversation →
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Ben Humphries
Ben has been part of the senior management team at Architype since 2008 and was made Director of the London office in 2015.
Ben has consistently delivered a wide range of complex community, educational, and public commissions and has lead many of Architype’s innovative projects including The Enterprise Centre, an exemplary low carbon building for University of East Anglia, the Masdar Eco City Project in Abu Dhabi and the Creative Media Training Centre for Southwark Council.
As Director, Ben has involvement in all projects across the office at both strategic and delivery stages, and promotes a relentless focus on the design quality of Architype’s output through rigorous reviews and QA. Ben is passionate about sustainable architecture and is keen to enthuse clients about the benefits of Passivhaus, natural materials, reducing embodied carbon and Soft Landings.
Ben studied for both architectural degrees at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, before completing his professional qualification at London South Bank University. Ben worked for a number of practices in London and Kuala Lumpur before joining Architype in 2000.
Ben has lectured and taught in a number of universities, including London Metropolitan, Kingston University and the Architectural Association. He regularly talks on Architype’s work and approach at conferences in the UK and abroad and has had articles on education and sustainability published in a variety of publications such as Architect’s Journal and Sustain.
DOWNLOAD HEALTHY BUILDINGS 2019 PRESENTATION
See the full Healthy Buildings 2019 programme
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Sunday, February 25 • 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Getty Research Portal Advisory Meeting
An open working meeting of the Getty Research Portal Advisory Group. The Getty Research Portal (portal.getty.edu) is a free online search platform which provides global access to digitized art history texts by aggregating metadata from contributing institutions. The Portal, a collaborative initiative of the Getty Research Institute founded in 2012 with a number of international art libraries, is a multilingual and multicultural union catalog that affords researchers the ability to search and download complete digital copies of publications devoted to art, architecture, material culture, and related fields. With a growing number of participating institutions (24 at present), the Portal now provides access to more than 105,000 digitized titles. The Advisory Group convenes representatives from participating institutions periodically to consult on the Portal and any parties interested in becoming potential contributors are encouraged to join. Observers are also welcome.
Annie Rana
Project Manager, Getty Research Institute
Kathleen Salomon
Chief Librarian/Associate Director, Getty Research Institute
Sunday February 25, 2018 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Hilton: Madison 1335 6th Ave, New York, NY 10019
Meetings, User Groups
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Rashid Johnson The Gathering
Hauser & Wirth are excited to announce Rashid Johnson’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, ‘The Gathering’, comprising over a dozen new works including sculpture, painting and video. For this exhibition, Johnson will unveil a new series of abstract portraits which he refers to as ‘characters’.
Art Exhibition previously on at Hauser & Wirth Zurich in Switzerland.
From Saturday 02 November 2013 to Saturday 21 December 2013
Published by anonymous on Wednesday 23 October 2013.
Contact the publisher.
To make these new works, Johnson begins with a panel made from wood flooring, arranged in a geometric composition and sprayed with gold enamel paint. He then takes a blow torch to the surface and burns off almost all of the paint, leaving behind a golden aura with hints of other colours left by the paint residue. Using this surface as his canvas, the artist applies his signature black soap and wax mixture, creating a gestural form that resembles a figure. The abstracted form of these ‘characters’ was inspired in part by Johnson’s recent re-reading of Albert Camus’ ‘L‘Étranger’, in particular a memorable scene in which the rays of the sun obscure Mersault’s vision of the Arab.
Figuration has played a significant role in Johnson’s work since the earliest days of his career – in a series of photographic portraits of homeless men in Chicago – but here it finds a place in his painting practice for the first time. A group of ‘characters’ of different scales gather in a single room of the exhibition, suggesting the ‘gathering’ that the artist refers to in the exhibition’s title.
The exhibition will also include several new wood wall sculptures with shelves supporting found objects. Marking a departure from his previous wood wall works, in this exhibition Johnson makes the edges of the works uneven, revealing the wooden floor boards from which the panels are made. With shamanistic inspiration from both African-American and Art history, many of Johnson’s works employ materials in a way that suggests an indefinite form of mysticism and a role as devotional objects, and these sculptures suggest a use as altars or shrines. In fact, the artist has said that he likes the idea of these objects literally being put to use: the books on the shelves being read and contemplated, the shea butter being rubbed on elbows, the records being played, and so forth.
‘Everybody’s a Star’ is a new black mirror work that Johnson has created for his Zurich show, and is his largest to date. Comprised of hundreds of pieces of black mirrored tile, the surface is splattered and built up with black soap and wax on two planes: first on the floor, with the artist standing above, pouring onto and working into the mirrored panels below; and then on the wall, the drips down the face of the work bearing witness to this axial shift.
Hanging on the gallery’s back wall is ‘The Hour of Chaos’, a large gridded steel structure, displaying a vinyl album, shea butter, books and plants. These objects are reminiscent of relics or offerings; the outline of the shelves echoing the lines of a constructivist painting. On the floor near this sculpture sits a work comprising of a Persian rug, a material the artist has employed in recent years, piled with oversized blocks of shea butter
and resting below an array of plants hanging from the ceiling. Originating from Africa, shea butter is admired for its soothing and healing properties. The Persian rug refers both to psychoanalysis (Johnson is struck by the abundance of them in photographs of Sigmund Freud’s office) and to his personal history, as his wife is of Iranian descent. The notion of nurture is carried forward with the artist’s installation of palm and spider plants that hang from the gallery ceiling, encompassing works and leading visitors through the gallery space
beneath a living canopy.
Johnson’s most recent video work, ‘Samuel in Space’ is presented on a monitor placed on another rug in the centre of the main gallery space. Filmed in Marfa, Texas, ‘Samuel in Space’ continues a trajectory that began with ‘The New Black Yoga’, a dance-like movement piece originally inspired by Johnson’s attempts to learn yoga while in Berlin, where his inability to understand German thwarted both his physical and intellectual mastery of the poses. Shot on location in and around Marfa, ‘Samuel in Space’ depicts a black male dancer moving (or tumbling) through the high desert at sunrise, seemingly laying claim to and revelling in the landscape.
Johnson’s recent solo exhibitions include ‘New Growth’, Ballroom Marfa, TX (2013); ‘Shelter’, South London Gallery, London, England (2012); ‘Rumble’, Hauser & Wirth New York NY (2012) and the major touring survey exhibition ‘Message to Our Folks’ which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL (2012) and travelled to Miami Art Museum, Miami FL (2012), High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA (2012) and most recently Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis MO, where it will be on view until January 2014.
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1978/rashid-johnson-the-gathering/view/
Rashid Johnson Hauser & Wirth Zurich
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Amethyst Review
New Writing Engaging with the Sacred
Contributors 2018
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THE BAG WITHOUT ANY BOTTOM – part 1 of a story by Wayne-Daniel Berard
Posted on March 20, 2019 February 18, 2019 by Sarah
THE BAG WITHOUT ANY BOTTOM 1/3
Wayne-Daniel Berard
Once there was a boy named Ket’her (ket-air). Ket’her lived alone with his mother, a widow, in a tiny village situated where the desert met the mountains. It was a harsh country, and Ket’her and his mother were quite poor, herding a few sheep up and down the mountains in season. In the winter, they would stay at home, and Ket’her’s mother would tell the old stories of their people.
What little money they had, Ket’her’s mother would keep in an old bag behind the icon of the Virgin, before which she kept always burning a lamp of sheep’s lard. Often Ket’her would wake in the night to pray to the Virgin, asking her to change their lot; he would take the bag from behind the icon and reach his hand inside. Sometimes he would find a few pitiful coppers; more often there was nothing. His hand would merely sink to the empty bottom of the bag.
“Someday,” young Ket’her vowed to himself in prayer, “I will find a bag without any bottom, one that will yield good things for me and my mother every day of our lives.”
But for the time being at least, that was not to be. That winter, Ket’her’s mother died; he buried her with much reverence and many tears. Ket’her then sold the sheep and the cabin. Although they did not fetch a great price, it was more money than he had ever seen before. He put the money in a bag along with his other few possessions, slung the bag over his shoulder, and set out for a new life on the other side of the mountains.
Sometimes, when he and his mother had led their sheep to especially high places, Ket’her had caught a glimpse of a distant city. There he now headed, through the trails and passes he knew so well. Soon he began to pass through little villages and larger towns. In each he had to buy food, and often gave alms to those he passed on the roads who were poorer even than himself. The bag he carried, which had once seemed so full, now was nearly empty. Indeed, by the time Ket’her entered the Great City, the bottom of the bag had been reached.
In the town square, Ket’her stopped by a public fountain to rest. His reception in the Great City had not been a warm one. His clothes and his turban marked him as an outsider from the country, in a city increasingly filled with outsiders from the east, west, north, and south — all seeking a better life. The natives of the Great City had begun to resent these newcomers, and there wasn’t enough work for all to do. Ket’her found many of the strangers, including some from his side of the mountain, idling their time away in the square, waiting for someone to hire them.
Ket’her sat down by the fountain and cooled his face. He was not disturbed, for he was used to spending time sitting and watching the sheep for days on end. Beside him sat a father with two little boys, all waiting to be hired. The boys were bored, and began bickering with each other and shoving. The father, who wore a look of hungry worry on his face, seemed about to lash out at the boys, when Ket’her leaned toward them and said, “Have you ever heard the story of how King Solomon tamed the Demon of a Thousand Names?” The boys stopped their fighting and listened; Ket’her was a fine story-teller, at once expressive and deep, so that one felt the heart of the story rising to the surface, enlightening as well as delighting the listener.
Soon the father was leaning-in to listen, and others had gathered round as well. For most of the afternoon, Ket’her told stories and sang a little, too. When the sun began to go down, the people dispersed, thanking him. One man, who had two turnips, gave one to Ket’her and smiled. That night, Ket’her feasted on roasted turnip and fresh water, and slept beneath the stars in a little park near the fountain.
The next day went on much like the day before. Ket’her came to the square hoping to be hired. He told stories most of the day, but this time passers-bye would stop and listen, and throw coins into the bag at his feet. It was not long before Ket’her had become something of an attraction in the city, and the bottom of his bag began to recede further and further beneath a mound of coins.
“This is wonderful,” thought Ket’her to himself. “All along I have been looking for something inexhaustible, something without and end – a bag without any bottom. Now I see that it is stories that make for such a bag. Stories have no end.”
But Ket’her was wrong. It took very little time for other strangers from other regions to also begin telling their stories in the square, hoping for a share of the benefits. People still listened to Ket’her, but he had had his season, and the bottom of his bag became more and more visible. Besides, soon it would be winter, when there would be no more storytelling in the public square.
One day, as fall was approaching, and the leaves began to cover the surface of the fountain’s pool, a wealthy merchant returned from his summer season of buying abroad. He was one of Ket’her’s own people who, many years before, had served as a guide to a merchant in the City. As the years had gone by, he had become more and more involved in the business, until finally he had taken it over upon the death of his master. Now he was one of the town’s most prominent citizens, although many still considered him a foreigner.
Ket’her was telling an old story to a small group of children. The caravan of the merchant, whose name was Zod, stopped to water the camels, and Zod’s young son slipped away from the servants to listen to the storyteller. When the time came to leave, the father was distressed at his son’s absence, but soon found him beside the fountain, listening. Zod was about to pull the boy away and scold him, when his ears caught the sound of the old story Ket’her was telling. He knew it well, for his own mother used to tell it to him when he was a boy. Tears began to fill the merchant’s eyes as he heard the story of his people, the names of the places where they lived, the sound and texture of a life that had been his home — a home he had never found among the people of the City.
Zod and his son listened to several stories, although the camels pawed the ground and spit impatiently. When Ket’her had finished, Zod gave him several coins of gold, and asked him to be a guest in his home that night. Ket’her was a bit startled by this sudden shift in his fortunes, but quickly agreed.
The evening was spent in feasting and merriment. Zod and Ket’her shared memories of their homeland into the wee hours of the morning. The next day at breakfast, Zod asked his guest if he could read and write the language of their people. Ket’her replied that his mother had taken great pains to teach him, even though he was just a shepherd, believing that great opportunities lay ahead for her son.
“Your mother was a wise woman,” said Zod. “The opportunity she foresaw for you is now coming true.” And then he asked Ket’her to stay in his house as a tutor for his son and for his young daughter, Fatyma.
“I do not want them to grow up ignorant of the ways of our people, to become merely one more of these soul-less city-dwellers,” Zod said. He promised to pay Ket’her well, and to feed him and lodge him under his own roof. Stunned at his good fortune, Ket’her agreed to stay.
That night, Ket’her slept in his new room in the estate of Zod the merchant. He had a clean, fresh robe to wear and a pillow beneath his head. A nightingale sang in a citron tree beside his open window.
“Now,” Ket’her thought to himself, “at last I have found the bag without any bottom. It is culture; it is nationality that matters. How deep and vast is the experience of a people — its history, its stories, its language and customs. Race is the one thing that sustains us, the well that never runs dry . . .”
So Ket’her became the teacher of the young ben Zod and of the lovely Fatyma, who was then coming into womanhood. He spent a full year in the house of the merchant, and learned much himself. There was ample time beyond his lessons to observe the workings of Zod in his business. Soon Zod began to include Ket’her in his decision-making and to seek his advice, especially in dealing with people. Money and goods were Zod’s specialties, whereas with people he felt awkward, and therefore could seem harsh and abrasive. Ket’her soon came to be an invaluable part of his business.
As for Ket’her’s teaching, it was only mildly successful. Zod’s son enjoyed the stories well enough, but resisted any attempt to change him from a boy of the City. Fatyma was attentive but quiet, gazing long at Ket’her with huge brown eyes.
Ket’her, for his part, was happy and growing wealthy in his business dealings for Zod, who paid him well. Now he had many sacks filled with coins, too many, it seemed, to ever reach their end.
“Here is the true bag without any bottom,” Ket’her came to believe. “Commerce. Culture is good, but there are only so many stories, and our people are so poor. With commerce, there is no end to the wealth one can make. Perhaps one day I will return to my home and buy back the old cabin and the ground in which my mother lies. I will retire there as a wealthy benefactor for my people . . .” Such were his dreams.
But fate had other plans for Ket’her.
PreviousMy Grandmother’s Crystal – a poem by Cynthia Pitman
NextThe Bag without any Bottom – part 2 of a story by Wayne-Daniel Berard
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IS NEW YORK LOSING ITS FLAVOR?
Just a few years ago the Meatpacking District was the place to be for "it" New Yorkers. And though the cobblestone neighborhood continues to be the heart of Manhattan Clubs I recently realized that the New York City of today is more different than ever. Of course every city, every neighborhood changes with each decade or generation. But there's something odd about the new New Yorkers of the present and I am convinced that the city that never sleeps is gradually losing its flavor. And I am not just talking about the New Jersey and Long Island groupies that have taken over the city streets during the after hours. It's something else...
Last month a friend and I were making our way into Tenjune for a red carpet, industry party. Like always there was a long line and you would think that aside the press and celebs, the publicist would let in stylish looking folks. Instead, the newbies going inside where anything but. Apparently money is making New York lose its flavor. Yea, it's the "capital of the world", but all the money-hungry changes have completely taken over the city. Do you think New York is losing its flavor? If so, what's the cause of it?
CULTUREMercedes Sanchez November 22, 2007 1 Comment
MAKE-UP MAKEOVER
beautyMercedes Sanchez November 28, 2007 1 Comment
UNCONVENTIONAL HOLIDAY GIVING
CULTUREMercedes Sanchez November 16, 2007
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Veterans Come Home to Unprepared Nation
by Brandon Quester | Aug 27, 2013 | News21: Back Home
This report is part of a project on post-9/11 veterans in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is pleased to provide a series of these stories, many of which have ties to Arizona, for our readers.
About this project:
“Back Home: The Challenges Facing Post-9/11 Veterans Returning from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” was produced by News21, a national investigative reporting project involving top college journalism students across the country and headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
By News21 Staff
In the 12 years since American troops first deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 2.6 million veterans have returned home to a country largely unprepared to meet their needs. The government that sent them to war has failed on many levels to fulfill its obligations to these veterans as demanded by Congress and promised by both Republican and Democratic administrations, a News21 investigation has found.
Many of these combat veterans, returning from war with what will be lifelong illnesses and disabilities, are struggling to get the help they were promised in the form of disability payments, jobs, health care and treatment for such afflictions as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, physical disabilities and military sexual trauma.
U.S. Army veteran Jerral Hancock drove over an IED in Iraq in 2007. At just 21, he lost his arm and the use of both legs, and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But his injuries have changed more than just his own life. (Produced by Jessica Wilde/News21)
Veterans who survived Taliban and al Qaida attacks, roadside bombs, mortar fire and the deaths of fellow soldiers told News21 that they have returned home to a future threatened by poverty, unemployment, homelessness and suicide. “The hardest thing you can ever do isn’t joining the military. It is hard,” said 30-year-old Luis Duran, a New Yorker who entered the Marine Corps after 9/11, deployed to Iraq and survived a suicide bomb. “The most difficult part is getting out.”
By far, the most vexing and public failure of the federal government has been its inability to distribute timely disability compensation to veterans with physical and mental injuries associated with their service – at a critical point in their transition home.
The News21 investigation found that as the lengthy backlog of delayed and mishandled claims began to surge dramatically, more than two-thirds of the claims processors in the Department of Veterans Affairs collected more than $5.5 million in bonuses.
Claims workers were effectively encouraged, based on a performance “credit system,” to process less-complex claims first, leaving to languish those claims involving multiple war injuries and missing paperwork.
U.S. Air Force veteran Damon Wood was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been waiting more than 20 months for his disability claim with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Reno, Nev., to be processed. (Produced by Jessica Wilde/News21)
Complex claims, the workers said, require calling and sending follow-up letters to veterans and requesting federal documents and medical records, all of which received zero points on the Veterans Benefits Administration performance evaluation for processors until December 2012, when the system was changed.
A local union representative for Boston claims processors, Roger Moore, said employees set aside complicated claims to preserve their jobs. “It’s like, ‘He’s gotta wait, because I have to get my numbers or my job is in jeopardy,’” Moore told News21.
Members of Congress continue to demand that the claims of the more than 500,000 veterans waiting more than 125 days be processed and paid, but so far the VA’s fixes have not cleared the backlog.
“They (soldiers) were put in these incredibly stressful situations and they also put their civilian jobs and education on hold, so it’s not like they win the lottery when they come back,” said Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., of the benefits promised to veterans. “It’s meant to put them back on par with their peers, who had an advantage in the civilian sector while these men and women were gone.”
Large numbers of post-9/11 veterans are seeking treatment and compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, considered nearly epidemic among those veterans. Both are widely claimed as an injury, and they are often difficult to assess and treat.
PTSD and TBI are “the two most prolific wounds coming out of the war,” said retired Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2012 and now CEO of One Mind, a research and advocacy nonprofit for mental health and brain diseases.
“I have to be considered a horrible failure in my ability to get a handle on this problem,” Chiarelli said, noting the number of troops suffering from PTSD and TBI increased dramatically during his tenure.
Stephen Leon of Boston, shown here with his granddaughter Ashley, served two tours in Afghanistan and now receives compensation for injuries suffered during an explosion outside a base in Kabul. Leon’s medals include the Army Commendation Medal for valor and a Purple Heart. (Photo by Mary Shinn/News21)
Stephen Leon served two tours in Afghanistan and won the Army Commendation Medal for valor after a firefight with three suicide bombers outside a gate in Kabul in 2011. The blast from one of their bombs left him with wrist, neck, knee, back and ankle injuries, as well as traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
When he returned home July 2011, Leon couldn’t get his mind off Afghanistan, the battles and the friends he lost. “You’re used to a life of being at peace, with yourself and your family and having a nice time with your family, when you go over there all that breaks up,” he said.
More than a year later, Leon received his disability rating and compensation. Without it, he said he likely would be homeless or dead.
“It’s a waiting game” for veterans, said Mike Salois a regional executive director the Volunteers of America of Greater Ohio, which provides housing for homeless veterans in Ohio. “And when you particularly are already suffering from something on top of the disability, whether it be a mental illness or substance-abuse problem … they are not knowing how to cope with putting that off any more.”
America’s post-9/11 veterans are the most diverse group of soldiers in the nation’s history, not only by race and gender, but by age, a News21 demographic analysis shows. They are overwhelmingly young, more than half were between the ages of 18 and 32.
By comparison, about 37 percent of the nonveteran population is over 50, and less than 29 percent of the nonveteran population is between the ages of 18 and 32.
This younger generation of veterans will count on the VA’s assistance to stabilize their lives and help them readjust for many years to come.
Veterans told News21 that the collateral consequences of PTSD, financial instability and other injuries associated with their disabilities sometimes triggered depression, anxiety, aggressive behavior and thoughts of suicide.
Veterans and civilians gathered for the Out of the Darkness suicide prevention walk in Washington, D.C., in early June 2013. One veteran walks in memory of his fellow soldiers and to raise awareness of military suicide. (Produced by Forrest Burnson/News21)
“All I ever considered when I thought about (suicide) was the guilt I was feeling and just wanting a way out, wanting to not have those memories anymore,” said Clinton Hall, 35, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantryman and now lives in Portland, Ore. His friend and fellow soldier killed himself shortly after returning home.
Despite intervention initiatives by the Department of Defense and VA, more than 49,000 veterans nationwide died by suicide between 2005 and 2011, according to state mortality data collected from 48 states by News21 in its eight-month investigation.
In every year over the last decade, the percentage of veteran suicides has significantly exceeded – usually by double or even triple — the suicide rate of the general populations, the analysis shows. For example, Arizona’s 2011 veteran suicide rate was 43.9 per 100,000 people, more than three times the civilian suicide rate of 14.4.
Among states with the widest disparities and highest rates, Idaho had an average annual veteran suicide rate of 58.3 per 100,000 people, according to News21 analysis, compared to 22.8 for civilians. Montana had an average annual veteran suicide rate of 53 per 100,000 compared to 18.8 for civilians.
“(Veterans) have different rules and different expectations and ways of seeing themselves and their roles in society,” said Craig Bryan, research director at the University of Utah National Center for Veterans Studies. “What we see in society doesn’t always translate as well into the military.”
About 25 percent of post-9/11 veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and 7 percent have traumatic brain injury, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of VA data. The average cost to treat them is about four to six times greater than those without these injuries, the CBO reported.
The post-9/11 veterans use the VA more than other veterans and their numbers are growing at the fastest rate, records show. Many will require care for the rest of their lives.
Yet, no government agency has calculated fully the lifetime cost of health care for the large number of post-9/11 veterans with lifelong ailments and disabilities. It is certain to be high, given the veterans’ survival rates, longer tours of duty, and multiple injuries.
Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have survived multiple injuries because of advanced medicine. They are learning to live with limb amputations, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. They will need care for the rest of their lives. (Produced by Jessica Wilde and Kelsey Hightower/News21)
They are veterans like Erik Castillo, who has been living with traumatic brain injury for nine years and goes to the VA three times a week for therapy. The shrapnel that entered Castillo’s brain from a bomb in Baghdad in 2004 burned a portion of his frontal lobe, which had to be removed. “I’ll utilize the VA for the rest of my life,” he said.
“Medical costs peak decades later,” said Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and co-author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.”
Post-9/11 veterans cost the VA $2.8 billion in 2012, out of its total $50.9 billion health care budget for the year, records show. And that number is expected to increase by $510 million in 2013, according to the VA’s budget.
“And their needs will change as they age. And we don’t know with the TBIs and the multiple TBIs how those will evolve,” said Susan Lucht, program director of the VA Polytrauma Network Site in Tucson. “So VHA (Veterans Health Administration) is committed to doing lifetime care management for these injuries.”
Women constitute an unprecedented 17.4 percent of the post-9/11 veteran cohort, more than twice the percentage of women in the overall veteran population, the News21 demographic analysis shows. More women will have served in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom than in any single previous conflict. More than a quarter of those women are black, almost twice the proportion found in the entire U.S. population.
Women make up the fastest growing segment of U.S. military veterans. Four female veterans share their stories about the difficulties they faced while in the military and upon returning home. (Produced by Kelsey Hightower/News21)
Yet, these same women return to a nation that historically defines ‘veteran’ as male, which in the post-9/11 era has meant a lack of female-specific resources at VA facilities across the country.
“I think because the VA has dealt with men for so long, through all the previous wars, they’re not set up to handle females,” said Ohio Army National Guard veteran Crystal Sandor. “But we’ve been at this war for 10 years, it’s about time they figure it out.”
Though their numbers have been historic, with more than 280,000 women returning from deployments, female veterans said in interviews with News21 that they have trouble finding care and camaraderie within the VA services.
“I don’t think I’ve talked to one female veteran who goes to the VA who has had a good experience, that has been treated and received the care that they deserve,” Sandor said.
A 2013 Institute of Medicine report noted that, “Research on the health of veterans has focused on the health consequences of combat service in men, and there has been little scientific research . . . of the health consequences of military service in women who served.”
Some female veterans say this lack of understanding discourages them from seeking help at the VA, particularly for trauma from sexual attacks while in the military.
“Women already, so often, feel that they don’t belong in the military, either they’re not wanted or they have to prove to other people or themselves that they deserve to be there,” said Harvard psychologist Paula Caplan. “When you are traumatized and you’re devastated . . . then you think, ‘But I have military training, I’m supposed to be tough, I’m supposed to be resilient.’ ”
Jessie de Leon said she was raped while serving as an Army medic in Bamberg, Germany, from 2007 to 2009. Once back home in Florida, she said she found no comfort with therapists at the West Palm Beach VA and ended up at the Healing Horse Therapy Center with other female veterans in Loxahatchee, Fla.
“No one was forcing you to talk, nobody was saying you had to do anything,” de Leon said of the therapy center. “I didn’t realize you could gain so much confidence, gain so much self-motivation, get back your self-esteem, just by working with a horse, who never said a word to you.”
Women also are less likely to find a job than male veterans and more likely to be single parents with children to support, interviews and records show. In September 2012, the unemployment rate for post-9/11 female veterans hit a high of 19.9 percent before falling to 12.5 percent, three percentage points higher than the annual average for male veterans.
Luis Duran joined the Marine Corps after 9/11 and served two tours in Iraq. But in 2013, with a master‘s degree in criminal justice, Duran has struggled to find his dream career in law enforcement. He blames his job-search challenges on his disability and the stigma that veterans face. (Produced by Mauro Whiteman/News21)
Employment – and underemployment – are issues for both men and women veterans in spite of highly visible efforts by Congress, state legislatures, businesses and philanthropists to push jobs initiatives. As of July, about 160,000 post-9/11 veterans of wars had not found work.
Job fairs, though highly touted and backed by the best of intentions, have had minimal success, according to data reviewed by News21. Hiring Our Heroes, a series of job fairs sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, has helped fewer than 10 percent of participating veterans find work.
The Obama administration has prodded states to recognize military experience as sufficient for state licensing – certifying truck drivers, nurses and paramedics, among others. But most state licensing boards have so far delayed, forcing veterans to duplicate the training they received in their military jobs.
Sometimes, though, veterans who do get jobs can’t keep them, because of the residual effects of war or because their own failure to seek help interferes with their success.
“When I came back I was little torn up because we had lost one of our (explosive ordnance disposal) guys, the guy who was teaching us how to deactivate mines,” said Victor Nunez Ortiz, 31, who deployed to Iraq in 2004. “Around the same time, my great-grandmother who raised me passed away. I was notified when I was overseas. I was really sad most of the time, sad and angry towards the end of my deployment. When I came home I wasn’t able to let that go.”
“I wasn’t able to hold my job, any job, for a year or longer,” said Nunez Ortiz. “The last time before I really realized that I needed to, like, seek help, I was the manager at Panera Bread. They let me go because they said I was I was a loose cannon.”
He began drinking, he said, and had a child, but no income.
“It became a roller-coaster ride of emotions,” he said.
Nunez Ortiz now lives in Massachusetts and works for Veterans Advocacy Services.
Retired Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, an Arizona State University professor who is based in Washington, D.C., said most of the nation has little contact with the military since “the military represents just 1 percent of the population.”
“That means,” he told News21, that 99 percent of Americans “don’t know what a family is going through, don’t know what a military child is going through with a mom who deploys overseas … there’s a disconnection.”
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Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression
Jamal Khashoggi (Illustration by Alex Fine for The Washington Post)
A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor
I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together.
I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”
As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.
The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.
My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.
As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.
[Read Khashoggi’s last column for The Post before his disappearance in Arabic]
There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.
The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.
My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.
The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.
Read Jamal Khashoggi’s columns for The Washington Post
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John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera: The Real Data on Marijuana and Psychosis is Real Bad
LOS ANGELES, CA – JULY 25: Marijuana plants grow at Perennial Holistic Wellness Center medical marijuana dispensary, which opened in 2006, on July 25, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously voted to ban storefront medical marijuana dispensaries and to order them to close or face legal action. The council also voted to instruct staff to draw up a separate ordinance for consideration in about three months that might allow dispensaries that existed before a 2007 moratorium on new dispensaries to continue to operate. It is estimated that Los Angeles has about one thousand such facilities. The ban does not prevent patients or cooperatives of two or three people to grow their own in small amounts. Californians voted to legalize medical cannabis use in 1996, clashing with federal drug laws. The state Supreme Court is expected to consider ruling on whether cities can regulate and ban dispensaries. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
The pitfalls and perils of marijuana legalization are well-documented. But whenever we discuss that research here on BreakPoint, we’re accused of not having the right research. What that means is that we’ve used studies that contradict the very vocal advocates of weed.
Well, let’s see what happens when we cite The British journal The Lancet, which, along with the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, is considered the “gold standard” for peer-reviewed medical research. It doesn’t get more “real” than being published in The Lancet.
A just-published study in The Lancet involving, among others, researchers at King’s College London, compared 900 people who had been treated for psychosis with 1,200 people who had not. Sample participants were drawn from across Europe and Brazil.
Both groups were surveyed on a host of factors, including their use of marijuana and other drugs. The study’s authors concluded that “people who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times.”
By “high-potency” the researchers meant marijuana with a THC content of more than ten percent. To put that figure in context, a study of the weed seized by the DEA between 1995 and 2014 found the THC content went from about 4 percent in 1995 to 12 percent in 2014.
Today, it’s not uncommon to read of marijuana that’s legally-sold in places like Colorado with THC content above 20 percent, occasionally 30 percent! Legalization advocates minimize the exponential growth in potency by saying that twenty or more years ago, Americans didn’t have access to “the good stuff.”
Well, that misses the point by several astronomical units. The point is that those people who daily use “the good stuff” are five times more likely to find themselves in a hospital suffering from delusions and hallucinations, to name only two symptoms of psychosis.
SOURCE: Christian Post, John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera
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Written by: Briscoe, Stuart Posted on: 04/09/2003
Category: Sermons
VALUES No. 2 - Moral Values Proverbs 1:1-7
"In the book of Proverbs 'wisdom' signifies skillful living--the ability to make wise choices and live successfully according to the moral standards of the covenant community. . . . (This) produces things of lasting value to God and to the community." Allen P. Ross, E.B.C. 5:905. I. "The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning." 1:7; 9:10. A. The fear of the Lord defined. 1. The Lord's self description. Ex. 34:6,7. 2. Glad submission to gracious majesty. B. The fear of the Lord desired. 1. A matter of conviction. 1:7b 2. A matter of concern. 2:1-5. 3. A matter of choice. 1:29. C. The fear of the Lord discovered. 1. Creates sensitivity to evil. 8:13. 2. Creates a sense of security. 14:26. 3 Creates resources for living. 14:27. 4. Creates basis of wisdom. 15:33. Note: The fear of the Lord is not oimited to O.T.!--See Acts 9:31; Rom 3:18, 2 Cor. 7:1. II. "The Beginning of Knowledge (Wisdom)." 1:7; 9:10. A. "Wisdom" is an attribute of the Creator. 8:22f. 1. Not community majority opinions. 2. Not personal preferences. B. "Wisdom" is intrinsically valuable. 8:1f. 1. It teaches moral and practical living skills. 1:2-7. 2. It imparts "discipline" which develops character. 3. It develops "understanding" which leads to "discernment." 4. It produces "prudence" which knows how to behave. a. What is right--conforming to a standard. e.g. Dt. 25:15. b. What is just--making decisions that are proper. c. What is fair--conducting oneself uprightly. Note:Compare Eve (Gen. 3:6) and Abigail (I Sam.25:3) C. "Wisdom" is readily available. 9:1f 1. To those who are naive (simple) 1:4. 2. To those who are young. 3. To those who are maturing. 1:5. 4. To those who seek guidance.
III. "But Fools Despise Wisom." 1:7. A. The fool is wise in his own eyes. 26:5 B. The fool prefers his folly. 26:11. C. The fool disregards sin's importance. 14:9. D. The fool ducks the issues. 14:8.
Point to Ponder: Is the "fear" and "knowledge" of the Lord the foundation of my values?
"VALUES" No. 7 -- Values In The Workplace Proverbs 6:6-11
Most people spend approximately half their waking hours working. What they believe about work, or their "work ehtic," will therefore profoundly affect the quality of their lives.
I. Industry--The Biblical Work Ethic. A. The example-the ant. 6:6.7. 1. Consider its ways. (specific tasks on specific days.) 2. Apply its values. B. The explanation-the scriptures. 1. The creative work of God. 2. The mandated work of humanity. Gen.2. 3. The destructive work of the fall. Gen.3. 4. The redemptive work of Christ. C. The experience-the purpose. 1. Functioning as the divine image. Gen. 1:26.27. a. Exercising dominion. b. Exercising divine giftedness. 2. Functioning as a servant. John 13:15,16. a. The appreciation of human need. b. The application of abilities to meet it. 3. Functioning as a witness. Mt. 5:14-16. 4. Functioning as a co-worker. Gen.2:15; 2 Cor. 6:1 5. Functioning as a worshipper. Col 3:17. 6. Functioning as a provider. a. For family. 2 Tim.2:6, 1 Tim. 5:8. b. For needy. Eph.4:28. c. For ministry. 2 Cor. 8 and 9. II. Idolatry--The Confused Work Ethic. A. Work becomes addictive. Ecc.2:17f. 1. Labor is an idol 2. Money, status, prestige are gods. 3. Family, leisure, worship, service suffer. III. Indolence--The Abused Work Ethic. A. The conduct of the indolent. 1. Procrastination-"When will you..?" 6:9. 2. Relaxation-"A little sleep. . . " 6:10 3. Rationalization-"A lion in the road.: 26:13,16. 4. Motivation- "Too lazy... " 26:14,15. B. The consequences of idleness. 1. Poverty and scarcity. 6:11.
Point to Ponder: "Some people worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship." What's the right way?
"VALUES" No. 8--Financial Values Proverbs 3:9-15
A basic principle of life is, "In all your ways acknowledge Him-(that is the Lord)." One of the ways is the way we handle money. We are taught in scripture to "honor the Lord with your wealth." But why should we and how do we?
I. Why Should We Honor the Lord With Our Money? "Honor" = to esteem greatly, to worship. A. Because of who the Lord is: 1. He is the maker of rich and poor. 22:2. 2. He gives the ability to produce wealth. Dt. 8:18. 3. He makes your paths straight. 3:6. B. Because of what money is: "Money" = medium of exchange, measure of value. 1. Labor produces value in goods or services. 2. Money received is an exchange of value. 3. So our money is an extension of ourselves. 4. But money makes claims to deity.
II. How Should We Honor The Lord With Our Money? A. In the way we accumulate it. 1. Honorable attitudes towards getting it. a. Discernment in approach. 30:8.9. b. Diligence in work. 10:4. c. Discipline in administration. 13:11. 2. Dishonorable attitudes towards getting it. a. Lack of faith. 18:11. b. Lack of compassion. 22:16. c. Lack of restraint. 23:4,5. d. Lack of principle. 28:20,22. B. In the way we administer it. 1. Establishing sound principles. a. Don't buy what you can't afford. 23:5. b. Don't borrow what you can't repay. 22:7. c. Don't guarantee what you don't have. 6:1f. 2. Maintaining healthy perspectives. a. Money brings its own problems 13:8. b. Money has its own limits. "Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath" 11:4 c. Money can't buy the main things. 15:16, 22:1. 3. Developing appropriate procedures. a. Giving to the Lord. 3:9 b. Caring for the family. 21:20. c. Providing for the future. 13:22. d. Sharing with the needy. 21:26b, 11:24,25. III. What Should We Change to Honor The Lord With Our Money?
"VALUES" No. 9 -- Social Values Proverbs 3:3, 21:21
At the conclusion of the famous book "Habits of the Heart" the authors wrote: "Our society has been influenced by the tradition of modern individualism. We have taken the position that our most important task today is the recovery of the insights of the older biblical. . . traditions." Let's start with Prov. 3:3, 21:21.
I. Social Values Rooted in God's Character A. "Love" - "hesed" rooted in God's character. 1. Love-a steadfast commitment. Deut. 7:7-9. 2. Love-a moral obligation to another's well-being Mic. 7:18f. 3. Love-a strong initiative of kindness, tenderness and compassion. Ex. 34:6,7. B. "Faithfulness"-rooted in God's character. 1. "Determined loyalty to a gracious covenant." 2. Fulfillment of commitment. Gen. 24:27, Lam. 3: 22f. C. "Righteousness"-rooted in God's character. 1. "Fulfillment of expectations in a relationship." 2. God a righteous creator-redeemer. Deut. 32:3,4
II. Social Values Reflected in God's People. A. Love as a value. 1. Inherent inability. 20:6. 2. Deep-down desire. 19:22. 3. Realistic repentance. 16:6 (see 28:13). 4. Loving lifestyle. 14:22. B. Faithfulness as a value. 1. Trustworthiness. 25:13, 13:17. 2. Truthfulness. 12:22, 26:28. C. Righteousness as a value. 1. Relating to God rightly. Isa. 64:6 (see Ps.89:14f. 2. Relating to family rightly. 23:22-25. 3. Relating to society rightly. 14:34, 29:2,7.
III. Social Values Reproduced in God's Way. A. The work of the Spirit. Gal.5:22,23. B. The co-operation of the believer. 1. Don't let them leave you. 3:3. 2. Bind them, write them. 3. Pursue them. 21:21. C. The benefits all round. "Life, prosperity and honor."
"VALUES" No. 10-Ultimate Values Prov. 15:33-16:7
We began by noting that "the fear of the Lord" is the fundamental basis of a system of values and we have been reminded continually that absolute values are found in the character and nature of God. We conclude by recognizing that ultimate values are found in relationship to the Lord, particularly in doing that which pleases Him.
I. Pleasing Him By Embracing What He Decrees. A. Humility comes before honor. 15:33. 1. The priority of humility. a. Because pride offends against God by self-exaltation. b. Because pride offends against others by self-preoccupation. c. Because pride offends against self by self-delusion. 2. The possibility of honor. See 1 Kings 3:1-13. a. Because humility acknowledges God's grace. b. Because humility addresses human need. c. Because humility admits to personal inadequacy. B. Submission comes before success. 1. To man belong the plans. . . 16:1. 2. But motives are weighed by the Lord. . . 16:2. 3. (So) commit to the Lord whatever you do. .16:3. 4. The Lord works out everything. . . 16:4.
II. Pleasing Him By Avoiding What He Detests. A. The supercilious attitudes He detests. 16:5. B. The social actions He detests. 6:16-19. C. The spiritual activities He detests. 15:8a, 28:9.
III. Pleasing Him By Doing What He Desires. A. He desires that we obtain mercy. 28:13, See Ps.32. 1. The dangers of concealment. 2. The delights of confession. B. He desires that we avoid evil. 16:6. 1. By fearing the Lord. 2. By acting out of love and faithfulness. C. He desires that we act honorably. 1. To society as a whole. 11:20b. 2. To enemies in particular. 16:7.
Points to Ponder: How closely do my values equate to God's? Is "the fear of the Lord" the beginning and "pleasing the Lord" the end of my values?
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/ Ferdinando Buscema / 3:46 pm Tue Jun 27, 2017
A review of Cosmic Trigger, a play based on Robert Anton Wilson's autobiography
What do you after you Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out? Well, you go and Find The Others.
Last May 2017, I flew to London for the staging of Cosmic Trigger — The Play , a sheer delight for any Robert Anton Wilson fan, a masterpiece of high weirdness befitting the book it derives from. The experience proved to be more mind-shattering and category-defying than I could have ever imagined. A 23-night run hosted at The Cockpit Theatre, the play is an ambitious theatrical event: an intense four-hour long immersive happening, an experimental and multi-layered metafiction, intellectually challenging and spiritually intoxicating, a disorienting dance of Discordian confusion and uncanny mindfuck. An extraordinary cast of actors created a colourfully wild, merry parade of countercultural icons—along with Robert Anton Wilson and his wife Arlen, Robert Shea, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, William Burroughs, Albert Hoffman, John Lilly, Jacques Vallee, Aleister Crowley—in brief, great fun!
Not only that, Cosmic Trigger — The Play has the inherent magical qualities of a collective ritual or mass initiation: it is "a narrative so utterly complex and so thoroughly self-referential that it becomes to all intents and purposes alive." As magicians know, " by doing certain things certain results will follow."
Hail Daisy Campbell!
The mastermind behind such a unique endeavour and artistic achievement is director Daisy Campbell, who pulled some cosmic and genealogical strings to bring her vision to life. Daisy is the daughter of the late famed British director Ken Campbell, who achieved notoriety in the 1970s for his nine-hour adaptation of the epic science-fiction trilogy Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, among other works. Daisy half-jokingly says she was conceived backstage during the show run (where her mother, actress Prunella Gee, interpreted the role of Discordian Goddess Eris).
In 2013, Daisy received an inner call and decided to answer it, adapting Cosmic Trigger into a play, a manifestation of her inherited artistic and theatrical legacy — both in homage to the mind-expanding philosophy of Wilson and to her father's epic production of Illuminatus! Synchronistically attracting a crew of crazy comrades and producers, the whole production became a full-throttle magical adventure for all involved. Cosmic Trigger — The Play eventually debuted in Liverpool in 2014, creating the space for finding the others .
RAW has been a true maverick of the mind, arguably one of the most intriguing and important esoteric thinkers to emerge from the American counterculture. Uncle Bob, " the Carl Sagan of religion, the Jerry Falwell of quantum physics, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of feminism, the Helen Keller of art and music, the Nelson Mandela of white supremacists, the James Joyce of swing set assembly manuals, the Lenny Bruce of funerals, the Salvador Dali of assembly line workers" (1)
RAW's works deeply affected and stretched many minds. There is deep, widespread sense of gratitude among those whose lives he touched with his books, talks and friendship. His mind-stirring books are paper-and-ink equivalents of psychoactive compound, providing rich, meaningful metaphors for the forest of symbols we navigate and experience. Armed with an unusually creative way of using language and a peculiar sense of humor, he explored domains as diverse as chaos magick, Jungian pyschology, cybernetics, Neuro Linguistic Programming, tantric sex, yoga, Zen Buddhism, Freemasonry... and many other esoteric or counterculture philosophies. The basic tenet of his agnosticism and multi-model thinking is that any perspective we have on the world is bound to a massive tapestry of beliefs about the world itself. These sets of world-describing (or world-creating) beliefs he called reality tunnels. Once we recognize we are living inside a particular reality tunnel, which limits everything we can perceive, we gain the freedom to shift to another. Reality is always plural and mutable belief being the death of intelligence.
Our culture is turning to steam
Published in 1977, Cosmic Trigger is 40 years old this year, though it seems as relevant as ever. "In fact,” Daisy Campbell says, “the world he predicted, it’s just here, we are living in it, everything is actually happening, right here, right now. And his antidote to the world madness is to recognize the limits and dangers of our single vision and limited reality tunnels, and the hypnotic trance we are collectively living.” (2)
Further on that, writer John Higgs (himself an inspiration behind the play) wrote:
"Wilson's books depict a bewildering world of conspiracies, half-truths, lies, fake news, incompetence and our inability to find anything resembling objective truth. Or to put it another way, it describes the world as it is now, ten years after his death. (3) In Cosmic Trigger, RAW talks about the psychological state where you have no way of making sense of what is happening, where all your maps have run out, and where you have no fixed point with which to orient yourself by. He called this place Chapel Perilous. This is where we are now as a culture." (4)
Sounds like an announcement of cultural collapse and apocalypse. According to magician and graphic novel writer superstar Alan Moore, whose voice leads the opening invocation of The Play :
"Most people find the word 'Apocalypse' to be a terrifying concept. Checked in the dictionary, it means only 'revelation,' although it obviously has also come to mean end of the world. As to what the end of the world means, I would say that probably depends on what we mean by world. I don't think this means the planet, or even the life forms upon the planet. I think the world is purely a construction of ideas, and not just the physical structures, but the mental structures, the ideologies that we've erected, THAT is what I would call the world. Our political structures, philosophical structures, ideological frameworks, economies. These are actually imaginary things, and yet that is the framework that we have built our entire world upon. (...) History is a heat, it is the heat of accumulated information and accumulated complexity. As our culture progresses, we find that we gather more and more information and that we slowly start to move almost from a fluid to a vaporous state, as we approach the ultimate complexity of a social boiling point. I believe that our culture is turning to steam." (5)
Waiting for the apocalypse, let's have a party!
In his later years, Wilson had become a beloved resident character in Santa Cruz, and in 2003 the mayor of town proclaimed July 23rd to be Robert Anton Wilson Day , encouraging " all the citizens to join in commending him for consistently extending the boundaries of modern thought and providing a model of courage and intelligence in an age sadly short on heroes" (6)
This coming July 23rd, Santa Cruz will host a RAW celebration — a day of talks to celebrate his legacy, with contributions from Daisy Campbell, Erik Davis and Richard Rasa of Hilaritas Press, and an evening party with legendary DJ Greg Wilson. To receive information and details, subscribe to the newsletter on the website - or just tune in to the signals leading to the party. That's where you'll find the others! Fnord.
Images from the play by Simon Annand. Poster by: Amoeba Designs
Rev. Ivan Stang in Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson (2003)
Personal conversation.
For Robert Anton Wilson's Birthday – some words on Operation Mindfix
The modern myth of Cosmic Trigger, show program.
The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2005).
Ruwix is a collection of online puzzle programs and tutorials. Discover the secret of your unsolved Rubix Cube.
Robert Anton Wilson: January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007
Author, futurist, and agnostic mystic Robert Anton Wilson died 10 years ago today. Carla and I interviewed him for the first issue of bOING bOING in 1987. In fact, one of the main reasons we started Boing Boing was to have an excuse to interview him. Here’s what I wrote on the 5th anniversary of […]
Long lost Robert Anton Wilson book, Starseed Signals, to be published
RAWIllumination.net announced yesterday that a manuscript by Robert Anton Wilson has been found and will be published by RVP Publishers in the first half of 2017. The manuscript appears to be substantial, weighing in at 340 pages. RAW and Discordianism scholar Adam Gorightly rediscovered the book and wrote a forward for it. And although the […]
Help re-illustrate Robert Anton Wilson's "Prometheus Rising" book
Hilaritas Press, the publishing company started by Illuminatus! co-author (and Boing Boing Patron Saint) Robert Anton Wilson’s daughter Christina and Bob’s friend Rasa, have been doing a wonderful job re-releasing much of Wilson’s back catalog under the new imprint. But they’ve hit a snag. New Falcon Publications, RAW’s previous publisher, claims to own the Israel […]
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Reach Your Fans via Web Browser with Brand Thunder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=44&v=0tRKZFR_Rlc
Since the early 2000s, toolbars on the internet have been commonplace. These web browser add-ons allow companies to inject their message and ads directly into a web browser, at times regardless of whether the user opts in or not. Patrick Murphy, CEO and founder of Brand Thunder, wanted to take a more transparent approach to web browser add-ons and apply the concept to brands that people are passionate about, like colleges, sports teams and musicians.
“If you’re a brand with a rabid fan base, there’s no need to be as sneaky as some add-on developers who have been around for years,” said Murphy. “If you love a sports team, wear their apparel and have their bumper sticker on your car, why not also put them on the computer screen you stare at for nine hours each day?”
Using Brand Thunder, brands can turn “New Tab” pages into their own mini-sites, with information on their latest events, along with video and text content. The company has proven that users stay on its branded “New Tab” pages an average of eight seconds, with an 18-20% click through rate. So while these pages were viewed as transitional in the past, they are valuable marketing tools with Brand Thunder. The company is currently partnered with over 300 brands.
“If you think of your browser, when opening a new tab you likely see a Google search box and links to six websites you recently visited,” said Murphy. “Why can’t a brand other than Google control that page?”
Murphy started Brand Thunder seven years ago, after working for AOL’s Netscape browser. The company has received $1.2 million in funding from Ohio Third Frontier partners across the state, including Rev1 Ventures and Ohio TechAngels in Columbus, and the North Coast Angel Fund in Cleveland. Murphy used this funding to build the company’s employee infrastructure, develop and evolve its technology, and grow its marketing and sales efforts.
“The funding we received early on from Ohio Third Frontier helped us develop into the self-sufficient company that Brand Thunder is today,” said Murphy. “There’s no way we would have gotten to this point without the support from the state of Ohio, and the foundation they allowed us to put in place.”
In 2016, Brand Thunder will evolve its “New Tab” pages so they are optimized for phones and tablets. The company also plans to introduce a self-serve product that will allow smaller brands to pay a low monthly fee and build their own “New Tab” pages.
Murphy says that Ohio has played a key role in positioning his company for success.
“If this company were located on the west coast or in New York, we’d be a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond. We’d have to fight with huge companies for resources and investment dollars,” said Murphy. “Plus there’s more competition to find and retain good talent. At the end of the day, from Columbus I can hop on a plane to meet with clients in New York or California at any time. My team has a lower cost of living, and we can stand out and get more exposure. I credit a lot of this company’s success to having our home base in Ohio.”
Want quick tips on how to increase your audience engagement? Check out our FREE eBook!
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Home/Magazine Archive/October 2018 (Vol. 61, No. 10)/The Dangers of Automating Social Programs/Full Text
The Dangers of Automating Social Programs
By Esther Shein
Communications of the ACM, October 2018, Vol. 61 No. 10, Pages 17-19
View as: Print Mobile App ACM Digital Library Full Text (PDF) In the Digital Edition Share: Send by email Share on reddit Share on StumbleUpon Share on Hacker News Share on Tweeter Share on Facebook
Credit: The Verge
Ask poverty attorney Joanna Green Brown for an example of a client who fell through the cracks and lost social services benefits they may have been eligible for because of a program driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and you will get an earful.
There was the "highly educated and capable" client who had had heart failure and was on a heart and lung transplant wait list. The questions he was presented in a Social Security benefits application "didn't encapsulate his issue" and his child subsequently did not receive benefits.
"It's almost impossible for an AI system to anticipate issues related to the nuance of timing," Green Brown says.
Then there's the client who had to apply for a Medicaid recertification, but misread a question and received a denial a month later. "Suddenly, Medicaid has ended and you're not getting oxygen delivered. This happens to old people frequently," she says.
Another client died of cancer that Green Brown says was preventable, but the woman did not know social service programs existed, did not have an education, and did not speak English. "I can't say it was AI-related," she notes, "but she didn't use a computer, so how is she going to get access to services?"
Such cautionary tales illustrate what can happen when systems become automated, the human element is removed, and a person in need lacks a support system to help them navigate the murky waters of applying for government assistance programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
There are so many factors that go into an application or appeals process for social services that many people just give up, Green Brown says. They can also lose benefits when a line of questioning ends in the system, but which may not tell their whole story. "The art of actual conversation is what teases out information," she says. A human can tell something isn't right simply by observing a person for a few minutes; determining why they are uncomfortable, for example, and whether it is because they have a hearing problem, or a cognitive or psychological issue.
"The stakes are high when it comes to trying to save time and money versus trying to understand a person's unique circumstances," Green Brown says. "Data is great at understanding who the outliers are; it can show fraud and show a person isn't necessarily getting all benefits they need, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's correct information, and it's not always indicative of eligibility of benefits."
There are well-documented examples of bias in automated systems used to provide guidelines in sentencing criminals, predicting the likelihood of someone committing a future crime, setting credit scores, and in facial recognition systems. As automated systems relying on AI and machine learning become more prevalent, the trick, of course, is finding a way to ensure they are neutral in their decision-making. Experts have mixed views on whether they can be.
AI-based technologies can undoubtedly play a positive role in helping human services agencies cut costs, significantly reduce labor, and deliver faster and better services. Yet taking the human element out of the equation can be dangerous, agrees the 2017 Deloitte report "AI-augmented human services: Using cognitive technologies to transform program delivery."
"AI can augment the work of caseworkers by automating paperwork, while machine learning can help caseworkers know which cases need urgent attention. But ultimately, humans are the users of AI systems, and these systems should be designed with human needs in mind," the report states. That means they first need to determine the biggest pain points for caseworkers, and the individuals and families they serve. Issues to factor in are what are the most complex processes; can they be simplified; what activities take the most time and whether they can be streamlined, the report suggests.
Use of these systems is in the early stages, but we can expect to see a growing number of government agencies implementing AI systems that can automate social services to reduce costs and speed up delivery of services, says James Hendler, director of the Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications and one of the originators of the Semantic Web.
"There's definitely a drive, as more people need social services, to bring in any kind of computing automation and obviously, AI and machine learning are offering some new opportunities in that space," Hendler says.
One of the ways an AI system can be beneficial is in instances in which someone seeking benefits needs to access cross-agency information. For example, if someone is trying to determine whether they can get their parents into a government-funded senior living facility, there are myriad questions to answer. "The potential of AI and machine learning is figuring out how to get people to the right places to answer their questions, and it may require going to many places and piecing together information. AI can help you pull it together as one activity."
One of the main, persistent problems these systems have, however, is inherent bias, because data is input by biased humans, experts say.
Just like "Murphy's Law," which states that "anything that could go wrong, will," Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, says there's a Murphy's Law for AI: "It's a law of unintended consequences, because a system looks at a vast range of possibilities and will find a very counterintuitive solution to a problem."
"People struggle with their own biases, whether racist or sexist—or because they're just plain hungry," he says. "Research has shown that there are [judicial] sentencing differences based on the time of day."
Machines fall short in that they have no "common sense," so if a data error is input, it will continue to apply that error, Etzioni says. Likewise, if there is a pattern in the data that is objectionable because the data is from the past but is being used to create predictive models for the future, the machine will not override it.
"It won't say, 'this behavior is racist or sexist and we want to change that'; on the contrary, the behavior of the algorithm is to amplify behaviors found in the data," he says. "Data codifies past biases."
Because machine learning systems seek a signal or pattern in the data, "we need to be very careful in the application of these systems," Etzioni says. "If we are careful, there's a great potential benefit as well."
To make AI and machine learning systems work appropriately, many cognitive technologies need to be trained and retrained, according to the Deloitte report. "They improve via deep learning methods as they interact with users. To make the most of their investments in AI, agencies should adopt an agile approach [with software systems], continuously testing and training their cognitive technologies."
David Madras, a Ph.D. student and machine learning researcher at the University of Toronto (U of T), believes if an algorithm is not certain of something, rather than reach a conclusion, it should have the option to indicate uncertainty and defer to a human.
Madras and colleagues at U of T developed an algorithmic model that includes fairness. The definition of fairness they used for their model is based on "equalized odds," which they found in a 2016 paper, "Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning," by computer scientists from Google, the University of Chicago, and the University of Texas, Austin. According to that paper, Madras explains, "the model's false positive and false negative rates should be equal for different groups (for example, divided by race). Intuitively, this means the types of mistakes should be the same for different types of people (there are mistakes that can advantage someone, and mistakes that can disadvantage someone)."
The U of T researchers wanted to examine the unintended side effects of machine learning in decision-making systems, since a lot of these models make assumptions that don't always hold in practice. They felt it was important to consider the possibility that an algorithm could respond "I don't know" or "pass," which led them to think about the relationship between a model and its surrounding system.
"Humans are better than computers at exploring those grey areas around the edges of problems. Computers are better at the black-and-white decisions in the middle."
"There is often an assumption in machine learning that the data is a representative sample, or that we know exactly what objective we want to optimize." That has proven not to be the case in many decision problems, he says.
Madras acknowledges the difficulty of knowing how to add fairness to (or subtract unfairness from) an algorithm. "Firstly, unfairness can creep in at many points in the process, from problem definition, to data collection, to optimization, to user interaction." Also, he adds, "Nobody has a great single definition of 'fairness.' It's a very complex, context-specific idea [that] doesn't lend itself easily to one-size-fits-all solutions."
The definition they chose for their model could just as easily be replaced by another, he notes.
In terms of whether social services systems can be unbiased when the algorithm running them may have built-in biases, Madras says that when models learn from historical data, they will pick up any natural biases, which will be a factor in their decision-making.
"It's also very difficult to make an algorithm unbiased when it is operating in a highly biased environment; especially when a model is learned from historical data, the tendency is to repeat those patterns in some sense," Madras says.
Etzioni believes an AI system can be bias-free even when bias is input, although that is not an easy thing to achieve. An original algorithm tries to maximize consistency with data, he says, but that past data may not be the only criteria.
"If we can define a criterion and mathematically describe what it means to be free of bias, we can give that to the machine," he says. "The challenge becomes describing formally or mathematically what bias means, and secondly, you have to have some adherence to the data. So there's really a tension between consistency with the data, which is clearly desirable, and being bias-free."
People are working so both consistency and being bias-free can be supported, he adds.
For AI to augment the work of government case workers and make social programs more efficient is to couple the technical progress being made with educating people on how to use these programs, Etzioni says.
"Part of the problem is when a human just blindly adheres to the recommendations of the system without trying to make sense of them, and the system says, 'It must be true,' but if the machine's analysis is one output and a sophisticated person analyzes it, we find ourselves in the best of both worlds."
AI, he says, really should stand for "augmented intelligence," where technology plays a supporting role, he says.
"Humans are better than computers at exploring those grey areas around the edges of problems," agrees Hendler. "Computers are better at the black-and-white decisions in the middle."
The issue of transparency of algorithms and bias was discussed at a November 2017 conference held by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although several beneficial societal use-cases of AI were mentioned, researchers said the solution lies in addressing system bias from a policy perspective as well as a design perspective.
"Right now, AI is designed so as to optimize a given objective," the researchers stated. "However, what we should be focusing on is designing AI that delivers results that are in line with peoples' well-being. By observing human reactions to various outcomes, AI could learn through a technique called 'cooperative inverse reinforcement learning' what our preferences are, and then work towards producing results consistent with those preferences."
AI systems need to be held accountable, says Alexandra Chouldechova, an assistant professor of statistics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.
"Systems fail to achieve their purported goals all the time," Chouldechova notes. "The questions are: Why? Can it be fixed? Could it have been prevented in the first place?
"By being clear about a system's intended purpose at the outset, transparent about its development and deployment, and proactive in anticipating its impact, we can hopefully reach a place where there will be fewer adverse unintended consequences."
For the foreseeable future, Hendler believes humans and computers working together will outperform either one separately. For the partnership to work, a human must be able to understand the decision-making of the AI system, he says.
"We currently teach people to take the data and feed it into AI systems to get an 'unbiased answer.' That unbiased answer is used to make predictions and help people find services," Hendler says. "The problem is, the data coming in has been chosen in various ways, and we don't educate computer or data scientists how to know the data in your database will model the real world."
This is certainly not a new problem. Hendler recalls the famous case of Stanislov Petrov, a Soviet lieutenant-colonel whose job was to monitor his country's satellite system. In 1983, the computers sounded an alarm indicating the U.S. had launched nuclear missiles. Instead of launching a counterattack, Petrov felt something was wrong and refused; it turned out to be a computer malfunction. AI scientists, says Hendler, should learn from Petrov.
"The real danger is people over-trusting these 'unbiased' AI systems," he says. "What I'm afraid of is most people don't understand these issues ... and just will trust the system the way they trust other computer systems. If they don't know these systems have these limitations, they won't be looking for the alternatives that humans are good at."
Madras, D., Creager, E., Pitassi, T., and Zemel, R.
Learning Adversarially Fair and Transferable Representations, 17 Feb. 2018, Cornell University Library, https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.06309
Buolamwini, J. and Gebru, T.
Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification, Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 2018, Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency. http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf
Dovey Fishman, T., Eggers, W.D., and Kishnani, P.
AI-augmented human services: Using cognitive technologies to transform program delivery, Deloitte Insights, 2017, https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/industry/public-sector/artificial-intelligence-technologies-human-services-programs.html
Zhao, J., Wang, T., Yatskar, M., Ordonez, V., and Chang, K..
Men Also Like Shopping: Reducing Gender Bias Amplification using Corpus-level Constraints, University of Virginia. Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 2979–2989 Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 7–11, 2017. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/566f/34fd344607693e490a636cdbf3b92f74f976.pdf?_ga=2.37177120.1400811332.1523294823-1569884054.1523294823
Tan, S., Caruana, R., Hooker, G., and Lou, Y.
Auditing Black-Box Models Using Transparent Model Distillation With Side Information, 17 Oct. 2017, Cornell University Library, https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06169
O'eil, C.
Weapons of Math Destruction. 2016. Crown Random House.
Hardt, M., Price, E., and Srebro, N.
Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning October 11, 2016 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.02413.pdf
Esther Shein is a freelance technology and business writer based in the area of Boston, MA, USA.
©2018 ACM 0001-0782/18/10
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Article Contents:
Renewable Energy Generation With Kites and Drones
Universidad de Carlos III de Madrid (Spain)
An Intrepid Explorer of Mars Falls Silent
Shuchi Grover
Web Design and Usability Techniques (Second Edition)
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New Issue: Total eclipse on latest USPS Forever stamp
The colour-changing stamp—the first of its kind in the U.S.—is being issued today.
Today at the University of Wyoming’s Art Museum in Laramie, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will host a first-day-of-issue ceremony for its latest Forever stamp, this in honour of the upcoming solar eclipse.
The “Total Eclipse of the Sun” Forever stamp, which is printed in panes of 16 stamps, features colour-changing ink—a first for a U.S. stamp—that transforms the image of an eclipse into the Moon from the heat of a finger. The release foreshadows the Aug. 21 total eclipse of the sun that is expected to travel diagonally across the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina. Tens of millions of people in the U.S. are hoping to view this rare event, which has not been seen on the U.S. mainland since 1979. The eclipse will travel a narrow path across the entire country for the first time since 1918.
Jim Cochrane, USPS chief customer and marketing officer, will be joined by NASA and University of Wyoming officials as well as astrophysicist Fred Espenak—also known as Mr. Eclipse.
“With the release of these amazing stamps using thermochromic ink, we’ve provided an opportunity for people to experience their own personal solar eclipse every time they touch the stamps,” said Cochrane. “As evidenced by this stamp and other amazing innovations, the Postal Service is enabling a new generation to bridge the gap and tighten the connection between physical mail and the digital world.”
The back of the stamp pane provides a map of the Aug. 21 eclipse path and times it may appear in some locations. Visit NASA’s website to view detailed maps of the eclipse’s path.
A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN
A total eclipse of the Sun occurs when the Moon completely blocks the visible solar disk from view, casting a shadow on Earth. The 112-kilometre-wide shadow path of the eclipse, known as the “path of totality,” will traverse the U.S. diagonally, appearing first in Oregon and exiting about 4,025 kilometres east and 90 minutes later off the coast of South Carolina (mid-afternoon local time) passing through portions of 14 states.
A total solar eclipse provides us with the only chance to see the Sun’s corona—its extended outer atmosphere—without specialized instruments. During the total phase of an eclipse the corona appears as a gossamer white halo around the black disk of the Moon, resembling the petals of a flower reaching out into space.
THERMOCHROMIC INK
In the first U.S. stamp application of thermochromic ink, the Total Eclipse of the Sun stamps will reveal a second image. Using the body heat of your thumb or fingers and rubbing the eclipse image will reveal an underlying image of the Moon. The image reverts back to the eclipse once it cools.
Thermochromic inks are vulnerable to UV light and should be kept out of direct sunlight as much as possible to preserve this special effect. To help with longevity, the USPS is offering a special envelope to hold and protect the stamp pane for a nominal fee.
Art director Antonio Alcalá of Alexandria, Va., designed the stamp.
The stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp, which is always equal in value to the current first-class mail one-ounce price.
STAMP DESIGN
This protective sleeve is specifically designed to preserve the ‘Total Eclipse of the Sun’ Forever stamp being issued today by USPS.
The stamp’s image is a photograph taken by Espenak of Portal, Az., who is considered by many to be the world’s leading authority on total solar eclipses with 27 under his belt. The photograph shows a total solar eclipse seen from Jalu, Libya, on March 29, 2006.
“I’m honored to have my images on this unique stamp. But more importantly, the stamp will spread the news about America’s great eclipse to many more people than I could ever reach,” said Espenak, who began collecting eclipse stamps after witnessing his first as a teenager. “A total eclipse of the Sun is simply the most beautiful, stunning and awe-inspiring astronomical event you can see with the naked eye—but you’ve got to be in the 70-mile-wide path of totality that runs across the nation from Oregon to South Carolina. So where will you be on August 21?”
NASA Astrophysicist Madhulika “Lika” Guthakurta recommended learning more on solar eclipse safety, educational and science information at eclipse2017.nasa.gov.
“Having witnessed so many total eclipses myself, I know that two minutes inside the moon’s shadow could have a profound impact on the younger generation,” said Guthakurta. “The Sun can be viewed safely with the unaided eye only during the few brief seconds or minutes of a total solar eclipse. Partial eclipses or partial phases of total solar eclipses are never safe to watch without solar eclipse glasses.”
NASA TV and NASA.gov will broadcast a live panel discussion and news conference tomorrow from the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
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Bravery takes time to develop in fable
By Jeff Simon|Published Sat, Jun 23, 2012
"Brave" is a little braver than it threatens to be. It takes a while to find out, though.
It isn't quite brave enough to be a big and wonderful and moving Pixar cartoon with a message that sometimes the bravest thing in life isn't to be brave at all. That would necessitate a whole other movie studio, at the very least. We are, after all, talking about a product with the Disney brand. (Is there any irony greater than that of the creators of the most beloved animation in America being the most controlling and heartily disliked corporation in American show business?)
But "Brave" is not the simple-minded, antique, gender entitlement fable that it threatens to be at first, either – you know, the one about the beautiful, flamingly red-haired tomboy princess who constantly defies her mother the Queen, who is the soul of everything regal, serene, domestic and traditionally "feminine" in the entire Scottish kingdom.
Not that it isn't enormously entertaining, mind you, to see a feisty young lass who'd rather gallop her horse bareback through the woods, pile food on her plate a foot deep and shoot her bow and arrow better than any pathetic doofus boy in the entire kingdom.
Her dad, Fergus the king, is a lusty and outsized character, after all, who's given to eating a couple chickens at a single sitting, pinching the queen's bottom when no one is looking and, when they are looking, boring everyone to tears with the story of how a savage bear chomped off a chunk of his left leg.
From the minute he gave his daughter a bow for her birthday, though, she's been in semi-open rebellion against her mother's vision of her, especially her plan to plight her offspring's troth to one of the idiot sons of Scotland's ruling clans.
Since Dad is voiced by Billy Connolly, Mom by Emma Thompson and their daughter by Kelly McDonald, this is, to put it mildly, a spirited and vivid bunch and about as appealing as animated voices can be.
It's just that tomboys getting out of arranged betrothals to blithering male idiots is not exactly raging feminism in the 21st century. They could have made that film at MGM with Elizabeth Taylor or Debbie Reynolds in 1952.
No, it's what happens next that gets awfully interesting in "Brave" – when our heroine the princess meets up with a wonderfully daffy witch (who's also in the business of selling souvenir wood carvings) and asks her to cast a spell that will change Mom.
Since she's not very specific about how that should be done – and since witches in fairy tales are always looking for semantic weaknesses to exploit – her way of changing Mom, the Queen, is to turn her into a giant bear.
And THAT's when "Brave" starts being the brave animated feature you want it to be. It turns out the movie's didactic mission isn't merely to teach stuffy royals to respect individual rights ahead of ancient gender roles, it's also to teach prideful daughters how beautiful it is to have loving mothers and to teach lady-like mothers how to get in touch with their inner wild things.
That's where "Brave" misses a little bit of a trick – especially when you consider that Thompson is voicing the queen. When Queen Mom turns into the bear, that ends her ability to communicate with language, which makes for some delightful comedy but misses all the possibilities of a character with Thompson's voice articulating ferociously all the joys of suddenly turning into a forest creature who eats as much as she wants, whenever she wants and couldn't care less who might be looking.
It's an enormously creative fable, though, with a story was written by Brenda Chapman, whose "The Prince of Egypt" is thought to be the first major studio animated film ever directed by a woman. Which is to say that you wouldn't be surprised to find a fairy tale about a headstrong princess who turns her mother into a bear in the fairy tales of The Brothers Grimm or Charles Perreault.
Just imagine how brave it is to find it at the movies.
We expect triumphs from Pixar – always. We don't always expect them to be as ingenious as this one ultimately turns out to be.
Especially when it turns out to be not entirely sure what lesson it wants to teach after all.
email: jsimon@buffnews.com
Jeff Simon – A semi-retired critic and columnist for The Buffalo News. Before that, he spent a couple decades as The News' arts and books editor.
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Paweł Słowikowski (5)
Michał Puterman (5)
Lukasz Ciesielski
See author posts
22November 2018 – Business, Lifestyle, Technology
10 thousand people can’t be wrong!
Are you wondering if it’s worth taking part in Future Decoded? If you ask me, it absolutely is!
Before you ask: no, I’m not a Microsoft employee or organizer of this event. I want to tell you about this conference from the perspective of an enthusiast of new technologies and the possibilities they offer to people.
There’s no explanation needed to tell you what Microsoft is. The company has its ardent supporters, but there are also those who remain unconvinced. Initially I was in the latter group. I’ve used their products since Windows 95. In the 2000s I worked as a certified Microsoft programmer, but Microsoft itself never really did it for me.
However, my approach changed in 2013, when, at the LeWeb conference in Paris, I heard for the first time what Satya Nadella, then Executive Vice President, Cloud & Enterprise Group at Microsoft, had to say. I was impressed by his entire speech, but two things he said were particularly memorable. In response to the question of what awaits us in 10 years, Satya said: ‘I think it’s data and the ability to reason over data that’s probably going to shape more of the future.’ In response to a question about Microsoft, Satya said: ‘Renew yourself everyday’. In retrospect, it’s clear that Microsoft has changed a lot under the leadership of Satya Nadella, and his forecasts proved to be very accurate.
I wanted to go to Future Decoded 2018 and see what’s going on in the field of AI & Data and what future the experts see for them.
The Excel conference centre in London was full of people discussing the latest technologies and recent industry trends. During the conference, it was impossible not to notice the ubiquitous mission of Microsoft: ‘To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.’ I like this mission. People are at the centre, while technology is a tool, a means to achieve an important goal.
Objectivity stand with an Intelligent shelf demo: Shelfie, which helps you manage your stock, tools and equipment in real time.
It was great to listen to the keynotes, meet new people, hear about interesting projects (During the event, Microsoft announced a partnership with British Gas owner Centrica, a deal with NHS Scotland to revolutionise healthcare in the country and cut waiting times, a tie-up with the University of Cambridge to help AI research in the UK, and the expansion of the ‘defending democracy’ program.)
In particular, I’d highlight the keynote presentation by Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft. I still can’t find her speech anywhere on the web, but you can find more on the subject of AI for Accessibility in the video below.
Microsoft is moving in the right direction, but with 7.53 billion people in the world, they can’t accomplish their mission alone. That is why it’s key to have partners who can help them achieve their goals. Objectivity as a Microsoft Gold Partner has the opportunity to work on interesting challenges that are aimed at solving problems and making life easier. At the heart of the Objectivity brand is ‘Help our customers to solve their business problems’, which is very much in line with Microsoft’s mission.
Microsoft’s stock has really gone up in my eyes and I felt ‘proud to be part of Future Decoded 2018’.
If you’re still not convinced, let me just mention that over 10,000 people came to London for this year’s edition of Future Decoded. The participants included, of course, experts, partners and Microsoft leaders such as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, UK CEO Cindy Rose, and UK Chief Technology Officer Michael Wignall.
Every new technologies enthusiast could find something of interest – the event is not only an opportunity to learn something new and meet interesting people, but also to get priceless inspiration.
So, what about it, will I see you at next year’s edition of Future Decoded?
Name / Nickname *
We all outsource some of our duties to third parties, sometimes because we don’t have time to do things on our own (for example hiring a nanny or sending kids to day-care), other times because it’s simply convenient, but very often because someone might be more experienced than us (e.g. using the services of professional financial […]
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The chemistry of a societal shift toward a ‘war on environmental disaster’
The dangerous wildfire spreading in Northern Israel is yet another reminder of how desperately the world community needs to pivot toward global environmental risk as the primary focus of security. It is also a reminder of the virtuous moral shift that would quickly follow a new “war on environmental disaster” to replace out spent and disastrous “war on terror.” The blaze, which began in forested areas near Carmel, Israel, and now threatens the outskirts of Haifa (read Haaretz coverage in English here), has already killed 40, mostly young prison officer trainees who were rushing to aid the evacuation of a prison when a tree collapsed on the bus, trapping most of the rescuers in the conflagration.
With dozens of countries sending aid, and Israel’s well organized air force now taking control of an international fleet of fire fighting equipment and personnel, the fire will hopefully be under control soon. When it is, perhaps Israelis, whose palpable sense of fear and isolation has grown in recent years along with the nation’s insistence on a “go it alone” approach to its occupation of Palestinian territories (and International Law more generally), will consider how different it feels to confront environmental risks. Even though the blaze claimed more lives in one day than years of Hamas rocketing in the years before Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza, Israel was not isolated this time. Instead dozens of countries immediately offered aid, including Muslim and Arab countries, and first of all, apparently, Turkey, the Muslim powerhouse whose once good relationship with Israel has gone sour over the Gaza situation and this summer’s preemptive attack on the Turkish aid vessel bound for the strip. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu coalition government, which is fond of reminding the world that Israel looks to no one but itself for security, showed no hesitation in defining the need for and accepting international assistance. In its long war with the Palestinians, Israel has not only lost many of its friends around the world, it is increasingly divided on the inside, both between Arab and Jew, and among Jews. In the fire, by contrast, Arab and Jewish Israelis were together among the population threatened by the fire, on the bus of young rescuers who perished, and even the inmates in the jail they were speeding toward rescuing (they did get out).
Why is it so different when security is defined as about terrorists or criminals, than when the security problem is an environmental disaster? Think of risk as a kind of mirror in which a society sees and acts upon itself. In the mirror of terrorism/crime we see vulnerable victims and motivated capable aggressors (although we may not agree always on who is who, and we are very likely to read racial, class, and religious otherness into the classification scheme). Reacting to that image, we feel empathy with the victims (as we see them) and anger toward the aggressors (as we see them). How dare they? We seek to make them pay a punishing price which will surely change their motivations. Failing that we seek to build walls around the aggressors, or at least between the victims and the aggressors, who are imagined to share no characteristics, dependencies, or sympathies.
In the mirror of the Carmel fire (or the Haitian Earthquake, the 2005 South East Asian Tsunami, or New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), we see a population that includes potential victims and potential rescuers, regardless of race, nationality, and religion. We see governments and people who are both part of the problem (because they failed to prepare and created life styles that made them more vulnerable and perhaps disasters more likely) and a necessary part of the solution. We see that the past no longer matters; nor who did what to whom. All that matters is how we can work together to survive on a planet whose margin for human habitation is far smaller and more fragile than we have learned to imagine.
While both Israelis and the world often act as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and extended conflicts with countries like Iran) is the only one that matters to security in the Middle-East, the fire is a reminder of the vast environmental problems within the region (especially around water) and the potentially devastating consequences of world environmental events (like a sea-level rise of 2 or 3 feet by the middle of this century). The need to face up to these environmental risks and give them the kind of political, economic, and cultural attention we give to terrorism and crime is not one of either objective necessity or moral preference, it is both. We cannot wish crime and terror away, but we can see other threats. In this problem/opportunity Israel is hardly alone. The whole world, whether developed or still developing faces a disaster roulette whose odds seem to be getting worst while their internal politics are getting sharper (especially in the US). The irony is that when we choose to allow ourselves to get really scared by this threat, we may end up far more confident in ourselves and each other.
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Comment to “The chemistry of a societal shift toward a ‘war on environmental disaster’”
George Carlin talks about this very issue.
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aacu
Washington , D.C.
Part Time - Experienced
Position Type: Part time term employee (20 hours/week), with benefits
Deadline to apply: Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Anticipated Start Date: Early August, 2019
Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) is a national higher education initiative, hosted by and in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). BTtoP’s work is grounded in three commitments: that undergraduate education should be holistic and transformative; that “educating the whole student” must include students of all backgrounds and interests; and that the first two commitments require significant change in higher education. BTtoP advances this mission through innovative practice, research, advocacy, and institutional change.
BTtoP has received a two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a new project titled the PLACE Collaboratory. PLACE (Partnerships for Listening and Action by Communities and Educators) brings together a network of academic-community partnerships involving eleven colleges, community colleges, and universities in four communities (Newark, Baltimore, Greensboro, and Los Angeles). The partnerships will use public-humanities and public-cultural projects to help set public agendas grounded in community voice. Some partnerships will be anchored by a single university; in others, multiple institutions will join together in regional collaboration. All the partnerships will involve undergraduates as key participants, culture-makers, and often cultural brokers.
PLACE will work as a committee of the whole, communicating regularly and convening twice a year to define shared goals and values, confront common challenges, and learn together. The goal of the local projects will be to develop action plans grounded in community voice and enabled by academic-community partnership. The goal of the larger collaboratory will be to distill best practices for authentic partnerships, to model the role of the humanities in sustaining them, and to use networked collaboration to disseminate them across higher education.
The PLACE Project Coordinator (PC) will be responsible for managing the workings of the PLACE Collaboratory and coordinating relationships among the participating institutions and community partnerships. The PC will work closely with and report to the Principal Investigator for the collaboratory and Director of BTtoP.
The PC must have the project management skills to effectively and efficiently coordinate a network of academic-community partnerships that spans four communities and eleven institutions in different regions across the United States. The PC will take the lead in sustaining ongoing communications among participants, organizing twice-yearly network convenings, and documenting the development and distilling the learnings of the network. In addition to these organizational tasks, the Project Coordinator will play a key role in building a community of practice based on inclusive relationships and shared agenda-setting among diverse stakeholders. The PC must be knowledgeable about and effective at supporting equitable academic-community partnerships. The PC will ideally have informed interest, if not expertise, in public-cultural and public-humanities practices. Patience, problem-solving, a sense of humor, and a sense of joy are also desirable.
Assisting the BTtoP Director and BTtoP staff in guiding and managing the PLACE collaboratory.
General administration of the collaboratory, including budget, documentation, and grant reporting.
Building the capacity of the network community and sustaining relationships among participants.
Overseeing regular digital communications among participants.
Planning and implementing twice-yearly, multi-day meetings of the collaboratory.
Working with BTtoP Director and network participants to produce grant reports and public deliverables about project outcomes.
Bachelor’s degree required.
Experience in higher education, community organizations, or cultural organizations strongly encouraged.
Ability to work effectively with diverse communities and in diverse academic settings.
Ability to manage a complex, multi-partner project, including ability to meet deadlines, manage time effectively, follow through, anticipate emerging needs and problems, and combine big-picture thinking with attention to detail.
Excellent communication and writing skills.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite and capacity to learn and use digital communications platforms.
Strong interpersonal skills engaging with a wide range of stakeholders and cultures.
Demonstrated interest in higher education, student learning, and community engagement.
Preference will be given to candidates with experience in project coordination and community building, especially involving cultural and humanities work.
BTtoP’s office is located within the Association of American Colleges and Universities, located at 1818 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. The PLACE Collaboratory partnerships are located across the country, and occasional travel will be required for this position. All work-related travel expenses are covered by the Project.
Please send resume, cover letter and salary requirements to recruitment@bttop.org and write “PLACE Project Coordinator Application” in the subject line.
BTtoP and AAC&U believe that a broadly diverse staff is critical to achieving excellence as a national higher education association. We seek to recruit, develop, and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. We are fully committed to equal employment opportunity and compliance with the full range of fair employment practices and non-discrimination laws.
About aacu
Mission Statement: The mission of the Association of American Colleges & Universities is to advance the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy. (Adopted November, 2017)
Accreditation Coordinator Washington, D.C.
The American Society of Nephrology 4 Days Ago
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3 sex offenders moving to Superior, community meeting scheduled
SUPERIOR, WI — Three registered sex offenders are being released into the Superior community, and police say they will host a community meeting for concerned neighbors.
Police say the meeting will be held at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, July 10 in the Council Chambers at the Douglas County Government Center.
All three sex offenders will live at the Transitional Living Place, also known as the TLP House, in Superior.
A Special Bulletin Notice has been issued for two of the offenders, Phillip Bacon, 43, and Steven Metzig, 28.
The third offender, Michael Garcia, 40, is not subject to a Special Bulletin Notice.
Police say Bacon will be released on July 19, and Metzig and Garcia will be released on July 23.
According to police, Garcia was convicted in California of a Lewd Act with a Child by Force/Fear in November of 2000. He was also convicted of 2nd Degree Sexual Assault of a Child in August of 1994 in Bayfield County.
Police say Bacon was convicted in Douglas County Court of False Imprisonment in December of 2002, as well as 1st Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety, Felon Possessing a Firearm, Failure to update Sex Offender Information, Bail Jumping, Battery, Contempt of Court and Possession of methamphetamine.
Bacon will be using GPS tracking for the rest of his life.
Metzig was convicted in Douglas County of Sexual Assault of a Child in November 2013 and October of 2014, where he used verbal coercion and/or threats and hands-on force with a juvenile female relative.
Metzig will also be on lifetime GPS tracking.
Krystal Frasier
Social Media and Digital Content Manager
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Pope hails ties with Jews on landmark synagogue visit
Yahoo – AFP, Jean-Louis de la Vaissiere, January 17, 2016
Pope Francis arrives with chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni (C) to Rome's
main Synagogue on January 17, 2016 (AFP Photo/Vincenzo Pinto)
Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis on Sunday made his first visit to a synagogue as pontiff, citing an "unbreakable" bond between Jews and Christians as hundreds of armed security personnel were deployed for the Rome visit.
Francis is the third pope to visit the Great Synagogue in Italy's capital after John-Paul II in 1986 and Benedict XVI in 2010.
Located just across the River Tiber from the Vatican, it stands in an area still known as the Ghetto where under the orders of some of Francis's predecessors, Jews were confined for more than three centuries until their emancipation at the end of the 19th Century.
Evoking "the unbreakable bond between Jews and Christians", the pope delivered a message of peace.
"Violence against men is in contradiction with any religion worthy of the name, and in particular the big monotheist religions," he said, in his first visit to a synagogue since being elected pope in 2013.
He urged rejection of "all forms of anti-Semitism", saying: "we must condemn any abuse, any discrimination and persecution stemming from it."
The pope was greeted with applause as he arrived and was met on the synagogue steps by Rome's chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni.
Pope Francis listens to chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni (R) in Rome's main
Synagogue on January 17, 2016 (AFP Photo/Vincenzo Pinto)
Francis in turn greeted some 1,500 invited guests who filled the religious site to witness the pontiff's visit.
After the deadly attacks in Paris in November, claimed by the Islamic State group, security for the visit was particularly tight, with basements in the area around the synagogue searched, dustbins sealed and parking banned.
Fears of a Paris-style assault in Rome have seen visitor numbers fall, while soldiers with automatic rifles have become a common sight around the city's historic centre.
On Sunday Francis also welcomed 5,000 migrant worshippers at a special mass at St Peter's to mark the world day of migrants and refugees, urging them to treasure their "culture and precious values".
Centuries of anti-Semitism
Ties between the Christianity and Judaism, which improved under both John-Paul II and Benedict XVI, have become warmer still under Francis, who has a long-standing friendship with Argentinian rabbi Abraham Skorka, with whom he jointly published a book of conversations about issues of ethics, morality and faith.
As part of his visit, the pope was to view two commemorative plaques in the synagogue's gardens, one marking an incident in 1943 when more than 1,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and the other a 1983 attack on the building that left 37 injured and one dead.
Pope Francis shows a gift at the end of his visit at Rome's main
"Six million people, simply because they belonged to the Hebrew people, were victims of the most inhuman barbarity, perpetrated in the name of an ideology that wanted to put man in God's place," Francis said.
On the final days of his Middle East tour in May 2015, the pontiff said prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem -- the holiest site at which Jews are allowed to pray.
A key question that has long blighted relations between the two faiths was addressed in December when senior Catholic theologians said Jews can secure eternal salvation without converting to Christianity.
"Although Jews cannot believe in Jesus Christ as the universal redeemer, they have a part in salvation, because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable," the report concludes, according to a summary released to the media.
The belief that the only way to salvation is through belief in Christ is a fundamental tenet of every strand of Christianity.
But it has also been blamed for creating an evangelical tendency responsible for some of the darkest periods in the history of religion, notably the anti-Muslim crusades of the Middle Ages and centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.
“. New Tolerance
Look for a softening of finger pointing and an awakening of new tolerance. There will remain many systems for different cultures, as traditions and history are important to sustaining the integrity of culture. So there are many in the Middle East who would follow the prophet and they will continue, but with an increase of awareness. It will be the increase of awareness of what the prophet really wanted all along - unity and tolerance. The angel in the cave instructed him to "unify the tribes and give them the God of Israel." You're going to start seeing a softening of intolerance and the beginning of a new way of being.
Eventually, this will create an acknowledgement that says, "You may not believe the way we believe, but we honor you and your God. We honor our prophet and we will love you according to his teachings. We don't have to agree in order to love." How would you like that? The earth is not going to turn into one belief system. It never will, for Humans don't do that. There must be variety, and there must be the beauty of cultural differences. But the systems will slowly update themselves with increased awareness of the truth of a new kind of balance. So that's the first thing. Watch for these changes, dear ones. ...."
"The Humanization of God"– Jul 16, 2011 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)
“… The Humanization of God
I'm going to title this channelling so that my partner will not. I don't always title them, for labeling items is something done for 3D reasons. In your reality, you want a label for the message you're about to hear. So I'll give it to you, just as a dichotomous exercise. Its title will be, "The Humanization of God."
My partner sits in a chair. It has taken him 22 years to bring my conceptual thoughts to you. Even though these conceptual thoughts from the other side of the veil are also within each Human, within your Higher-Self, they are not easy to access. This is because they exist in a multidimensional state and not one that a Human relates to. Therefore, it has taken 22 years for my partner to learn to linearize the concepts into a string of words, presented in a language that you will understand.
Not all of you here and reading this will understand what I'm teaching today. I am aware of that, for Spirit does not speak to Human Beings with words in this fashion. Instead, the language of Spirit speaks in that what you call intuitive flashes, outside of linear time, and all at once. That is how you get your best information. Yet many of you feel you have God all figured out.
Examples of the Linear
As I sit here, perhaps an individual who may be here for the very first time asks the question, "Who are you, Kryon, and where are you from?" Now those two questions may absolutely be logical and normal to every single Human Being who hears and reads this message, but I will tell you that the questions themselves betray biased linear thinking. For Kryon is not a who and is from nowhere. How can that be? The only way I can explain this is to give you metaphors. I know that metaphors don't hold up under full examination, since no analogy is perfect. So consider it only a close example to get you to begin the understanding process.
Let's say you feel incredible love in your life for another Human, or for an animal, for instance, or for your child. Let us say that it is overwhelming and perhaps even has you weep with joy, so strong it is! Now, when you feel this way, do you look around and say, "Who are you, really? Who is there?" Would you address that love emotion as though it had a body and ask, "Where are you from?" You would not! Instead, you'd simply accept it and say, "I know it's coming from me, but it really doesn't feel part of me."
There's something about love. It comes from everywhere. It permeates the soul of the Human Being. You feel it so strongly. You are not aware of it being sent to you, or pulled to you; it just is. But it's unusual and profound, almost like it's part of something else, something bigger. Perhaps it's the God part of you, expanding? You'd be right about that. Love is not singular. You don't segment it into parts, or put a body on it and give it a name either. It's a concept that affects every cell of your body and all your body functions. It sometimes even takes over! This is the beauty of love.
I'm not a who. You hear me within this voice, coming from a singular body of a Human Being. So you understandably want to know who's talking. But the only thing singular here is the Human who I come through. I am best identified as that which is the collection of the confluence of the creative energy source in the Universe. I am uncountable and am not isolated and singular. You can't notate me (define me with attributes in 3D). Twenty-two years ago, I identified myself and said, "I am, that I am." And then I said, "And so are you!" I told you that at the center of the atom is where I am. I told you that the space between the electron haze and the nucleus is filled with love. I told you that the benevolent, creative source energy that is part of you is part of me. It is all things together. You'll find it in a tree, in the dirt and in the grass. You'll find it in the air and you can't ask who because we are not singular. You can't count the flavor in the soup, or identify "where is the salt?" It just "is" the soup.
God does not have the mind of a Human Being with the consciousness of a Human Being. God is not a collection of many separate consciousness parts either, and this is difficult for you to understand. God can talk to every single Human - all 6, 7 billion of them - at the same time. God can carry on a loving, healing conversation, being personal all at once with every single one of you. Think of that! That's not a who. That's the creator of the Universe. That's a divine, intelligent, loving energy. Don't humanize this source! It's not like you.
The Linear Thinker
Humans want to make everything separate and individual. You want to separate, identify, and quantify. This is Human nature, for every living thing you come into contact with is separate and singular - a Human, an animal, a bug, a tree. They all have this in common. Each one is a closed life system and is ONE thing. So placing God in this box makes you feel better. Because only then can you grasp how you're supposed to act and react to Spirit. Linearizing God helps you to feel what you're supposed to do and when you're supposed to do it. All of the survival attributes that you've learned all your life go into this, and we call it the Human linear bias. God is better understood if it's a man with a beard and a low voice - the authority figure. But Spirit is not like that.
God is not an authority figure, either! Yet many of you will not accept that. "You mean the creator of the Universe is not in charge?" I didn't say that. I said that God is not an authority figure. God is family. If there is any authority energy, then you share it with God, for God is in you. Therefore, YOU are the authority figure.
There is no protocol, either! Did you hear me? There is no generic protocol! Thousands of years of religion have created thousands of "rules" of how to "get God's favor." What if none of that is so? Let me ask you something: If you wanted to talk to your own body's cellular structure, what's the protocol? If it's you with you, how do you start? Should you dress up a bit, kneel, prepare yourself? Do you invent something, some framework of motions, so it will work better? Or do you simply go inside with your mind, talk to that which you own, and work the puzzle out? Do you see what I mean? Humans never consider God in them. Instead, they wish to separate God. They wish to elevate God and put Spirit on the altar where they can face it and perhaps even create a statue so they can visualize who to talk to. That is humanizing God. …”
Posted by Cempaka at 11:40 PM
Labels: Catholic, Christian, Compassion, God, Jews, Kryon, Muslim, Peace, Religion, Tolerance, Vatican, WW2
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