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‘The Big Bang Theory’ Seasons 8, 9 and 10: CBS Renews for Three More Years!
Surprise, surprise, and a hearty "bazinga" to fans everywhere. CBS' unstoppable juggernaut 'The Big Bang Theory' continues to reign supreme as one of the most-watched series on television, and the CBS empire has no intention of letting it go quietly into the night. The nerd comedy has been renewed for an additional three seasons, keeping Sheldon, Leonard, Penny, Howard, Raj, Bernadette and Amy Farrah Fowler on the air through at least 2017.
Despite its sheer scope, the move can hardly be considered a surprise, given the ratings and awards 'The Big Bang Theory' continues to rake in each season. Not only that, but this is actually the CBS comedy's second three-season renewal, further strengthening relations with sitcom magnate Chuck Lorre overall. Worth noting is that the licensing renewal does not include cast salary negotiations for series stars and original cast members Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar, the former three of which will no doubt secure a major payday for their involvement.
Says CBS Entertainment Chairman Nina Tassler of the renewal:
Comedy is a big part of our schedule, and 'The Big Bang Theory' is the biggest comedy force on television. This multi-year deal further strengthens our network’s position for future seasons and marks another chapter in the great partnership CBS enjoys with Warner Bros. Television for delivering audiences the best in comedy. We’re proud to work with and showcase the incredible talents of Chuck Lorre, Steve Molaro and this amazing cast every week.
Currently in its seventh season, 'The Big Bang Theory averages 19.79 million viewers in most current ratings, garnering a 6.1/19 scoring among adults 18-49. The nerds are certainly here to stay, so tell us what you want to see from future seasons of 'The Big Bang Theory' in the comments!
Source: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Seasons 8, 9 and 10: CBS Renews for Three More Years!
Filed Under: Renewal, The Big Bang Theory
Categories: Newsletter, TV
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Senator Warner: On-demand firms need regulatory timeout
by Sara Ashley O'Brien @saraashleyo October 1, 2015: 8:50 PM ET
On-demand firms need a regulatory timeout -- a breather from legal battles while they figure out a new way to classify their workers, according to Virginia Senator Mark Warner.
Warner sang the praises of the on-demand workforce during a keynote presentation delivered via livestream at the TAP Conference on Thursday. But he also warned that policy has a lot of catching up to do.
Companies like Uber, Handy, and Alfred are giving Americans unprecedented flexibility, he said.
"People can suddenly monetize their time, their apartment, their car, their bike, their parking space, their personal services in ways that never before have taken place," said Warner, who added that he's been a venture capitalist and businessman for longer than he's been a politician. "This opens up a whole new series of opportunities."
But with new opportunities comes a need for new policies.
Many companies, like Uber, rely on contract workers to perform services. While it allows workers flexibility, there's a lot of downside. Independent workers aren't entitled to minimum wage, overtime compensation, unemployment insurance or protection from workplace discrimination. They also aren't entitled to benefits and don't have the right to join a union.
Other companies like Managed by Q and Alfred hire workers as part time W-2 employees. They say this allows them to offer flexibility, but there are still limitations.
Warner says there needs to be a third option.
"Quite honestly, what I found is that neither one of those two classifications are going to work in the 21st century," he said. "We have to think more creatively."
However, current regulatory constraints are deterring companies from testing out what those might look like. And Warner emphasized that experimentation was vital, since "we don't know what would really work."
But he did have a couple ideas of where to start. He discussed a model similar to the healthcare exchange where people could shop an electronic marketplace with various benefit programs, or possibly a benefit pool that let workers bank contributions from various employers.
Mostly importantly, Warner said there will needs to be a short-term regulatory timeout so firms can experiment without the fear of being sued.
"It may not be New York or California -- but certain states who are willing to give a little bit of regulatory forbearance to allow some of these enterprises to actually try social insurance models," he said. "If we're going to get it right, we have to be more nimble with this."
After all, on-demand workers are a sizable piece of the U.S. workforce -- and it's not just millennials. Baby Boomers and even senior citizens are taking advantage of the flexibility and supplemental income that this type of work offers.
"No longer do you ask somebody where do you work, it's, 'What are you working on?'" he said. "What I hope I can be is your partner in getting [a new social policy] right."
CNNMoney (New York) First published October 1, 2015: 8:50 PM ET
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This record was based on one I made in 2010 called No.5 Collaborations Project with a load of artists I liked. I had a little folder on my laptop called No.6 Collaborations Project, so I started ringing up people who I wanted to work with. I think the first was Camila, and then it sort of opened up from there. I based myself in Nashville, set up a studio there and started making songs, so whenever an artist passed through Nashville I would hit them up and they would come to the house. We’d make a song, and the record was made over the course of three months, with lots of people I like. I really stepped out of my comfort zone on some stuff. It was very fun and I hope you enjoy it. —Ed
No.6 Collaborations Project Ed Sheeran
South of the Border (feat. Camila Cabello & Cardi B)
Cross Me (feat. Chance the Rapper & PnB Rock)
Take Me Back to London (feat. Stormzy)
Best Part of Me (feat. YEBBA)
Remember The Name (feat. Eminem & 50 Cent)
Feels (feat. Young Thug & J Hus)
Put It All On Me (feat. Ella Mai)
Nothing On You (feat. Paulo Londra & Dave)
I Don’t Want Your Money (feat. H.E.R.)
1000 Nights (feat. Meek Mill & A Boogie wit da Hoodie)
Way To Break My Heart (feat. Skrillex)
Ed Sheeran, Chris Stapleton & Bruno Mars
2019 An Asylum Records UK release, a division of Atlantic Records UK; ℗ 2019 Warner Music UK Limited except track 6 ℗ 2019 Warner Music UK / Def Jam Recordings, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc
More By Ed Sheeran
÷ (Deluxe)
+ (Deluxe Version)
x (Wembley Edition)
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Hear Why Theatergoers Are Falling Head Over Red High Heels for Kinky Boots
August 19th, 2014 | By Broadway.com Staff
The Tony-winning musical Kinky Boots is making its way across the country in its first national tour! Featuring a hilarious, high-energy and, of course, high-heeled cast, hear what theatergoers have to say about the show in the video below. Inspired by a true story, Kinky Boots features an infectious, Tony-winning score by Cyndi Lauper, direction and Tony-winning choreography by Jerry Mitchell and a hysterical, uplifting book by four-time Tony winner Harvey Fierstein. The story follows a struggling shoe factory owner who works to turn his business around with help from the most unlikely person. Together, these two become an unstoppable team, and find that they have more in common than they ever dreamed possible.
Tags: Sound Bites
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Herbert Brewer
Graduate Program Handbook
History, Geography, and Museum Studies
Dr. Herbert Brewer
301 BSSC
herbert.brewer@morgan.edu
African Diaspora; Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World
Ph.D. History - Univ. of Maryland, College Park
M.A. History - Univ. of Maryland, College Park
B.A. History - Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Diplôme d'Études de Langue Français - C.A.R.E.L., Université de Poitiers, France
Inroduction to the African Diaspora; Introduction to the African Diaspora (Honors); History of the US I & II; World History I & II; History of Food in the African Diaspora
Selected Research:
• Review of Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013). History: Reviews of New Books 43:4 (2015): 126-127.
• "The Antinomies of Black Identity Formation in West Africa, 1822-1848," African Historical Review 43:1 (2011): 2-27.
• "UM Examining a History Intertwined with Slavery," Baltimore Sun, February 24, 2008.
• Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland (Annapolis: Maryland State Archives 2007).
• "Making Africa, Making African America, 1790-1840," paper presented at the conference: African American Identity Travels, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, September, 2004.
• "Jesse Brown," "Alexis Herman," "Rod Paige," "Rodney Slater," and "Togo West," in The United States Executive Branch: A Biographical Directory of Heads of State and Cabinet Officials, eds. Robert Sobel and David Sicilia, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).
• "Historical Afro-American Communities in West Africa," paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Panel: Directions in Diaspora Research, Washington, DC, December 5, 2002.
• "Ousmane Sembene, African Cinema and the Black World," paper presented at the conference: Cinema Arts in the Black World, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2002.
• "J Gus Liebenow and the Origins of Liberian Studies in the United States," paper presented at the 19th Annual Conference of Liberian Studies Association, University of Akron, Ohio, March, 1987.
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NIH Resources for Students
About ASCEND
Summer Research Institute
ASCEND Scholars
ASCEND Cohort 1
Individual Development Plans (IDPs)
Faculty Development Opportunities
Core Laboratory
Trending Now 2016
ICPHR
Research & Economic Development
Summary of NIH Opportunities for Students (PDF)
Choosing an Appropriate Mentor
https://www.training.nih.gov/mentoring_guidelines
Clinical Training at NIH
http://www.cc.nih.gov/training/index.html
http://www.cc.nih.gov/training/gme.html
Demystifying Medicine
http://demystifyingmedicine.od.nih.gov
Earl Stadtman Investigator Search
http://irp.nih.gov/careers/trans-nih-scientific-recruitments/stadtman-tenure-track-investigators
http://tenuretrack.nih.gov/apply/faq/stadtman.html
Global Recruitment for Medical Officers And Health Science Administrators
http://www.jobs.nih.gov/globalrecruitment/
Link to Fellowships and Positions of Interest to Fellows
https://www.training.nih.gov/
https://www.training.nih.gov/career_services/jobs
Link to NIH Jobs
http://www.jobs.nih.gov/
NIH Clinical Center Grand Rounds
http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/about/news/grcurrent.html
http://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents.asp?c=27
NIH Common Fund Diversity Initiatives
http://commonfund.nih.gov/diversity/
NIH Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program
http://www.nih.gov/science/laskerscholar/index.html
NIH Loan Repayment Programs
http://www.lrp.nih.gov/index.aspx
NIH Scientific Workforce Diversity Website
https://diversity.nih.gov/
NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series
http://wals.od.nih.gov/
http://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents.asp?c=3
NIH Women in Science Website:
http://womeninscience.nih.gov/
Online Resources for NIH Fellows
https://www.training.nih.gov/nih_resources#Other%20Online
Scientific Interest Groups
http://www.nih.gov/sigs/sigs.html
Searchable Database of All NIH Intramural Research Projects
http://intramural.nih.gov/search/index.tml
The NIH Intramural Research Program
http://irp.nih.gov/
http://irp.nih.gov/careers/tenured-and-tenure-track-scientific-careers
Undergraduate Scholarship Program (UGSP)
https://www.training.nih.gov/programs/ugsp
Women of Color Research Network
https://womeninscience.nih.gov/women-of-color/
"Tenure-Track Positions at the NIH" (Scientists Committed to Science), Presented by: Dr. Roland Owens and Dr. Charles Dearolf, Assistant Directors, NIH Office of Intramural Research, 6/10/2014
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=14202&bhcp=1
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GRADUATE ASSISTANT – MEN’S SOCCER
Defiance, Ohio
Part-time - Graduate Assistant
Coaching, Coaching - Soccer
Defiance College, an NCAA D-III institution located in Northwest Ohio, seeks qualified applicants for an anticipated opening for a graduate assistant men’s soccer coaching position. Responsibilities include serving as the primary assistant to the head coach; recruiting; game preparation; practice organization; fundraising; scheduling; assisting head coach in all phases of student-athlete mentoring and evaluation; academic monitoring; and other administrative duties as assigned.
This is a two-year assistantship with a start date of August 1, 2019. Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree, have previous soccer playing or coaching experience, possess a valid driver’s license, and have a clean driving record. The successful candidate must be accepted into the Defiance College graduate program in Education (MAE) or Business (MBA) and will be awarded a full graduate school tuition scholarship covering a maximum of 36 credit hours. Applicants pursuing a graduate degree in Education must hold a teaching license to be eligible for the Defiance College MAE program. Additionally, a tuition waiver of up to 12 credit hours will be applied toward any pre-requisite courses which may be needed for the MBA program, provided they are taken at Defiance College. Compensation includes stipend, College-provided housing, and a meal plan on campus when meals are served to students during the academic year.
Send letter of application for employment, complete resume, and the names and contact information of four references electronically to: employment@defiance.edu. Applicants must also apply separately for admission to Defiance College’s Graduate School by submitting a completed application, official transcripts from all previous college work, a goal statement, and two letters of recommendation specifically written in support of admission to the graduate program. The letters must attest to academic competence and to your ability to work with people and demonstrate appropriate interpersonal and social skill. To complete the admission application online, visit http://www.defiance.edu/graduate-programs/index.html. For more information on the graduate programs, contact the Office of Admissions at admissions@defiance.edu.
About Defiance College
Defiance College, chartered in 1850, is an independent, liberal arts institution affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The campus is located on 150 acres in a residential area in the city of Defiance in Northwest Ohio. The College offers more than 40 undergraduate majors, graduate programs in education and business, sponsors 20 intercollegiate athletic teams, and has received national recognition for its educational experience of service and engagement. Defiance is a college where students learn to lead and serve in a democracy; learn to understand, appreciate, and have the skills to interact with other cultures; and learn to not only receive knowledge but to make their own knowledge by engaging in interactive experiences. Our Vision creates an educational experience of engagement in civic, cultural, and learning dimensions for all students and is home to the McMaster School for Advancing Humanity, a unique research program serving as a focal point for teaching, service, scholarship, and action to improve the human condition. Defiance College is an equal opportunity employer committed to the diversity of faculty, staff, and students. Applicants who will enrich the diversity of our campus and promote a spirit of inclusivity are especially encouraged to apply.
Head Women's Soccer Coach Salina, Kansas
Kansas Wesleyan Unveristy 2 Weeks Ago
Head Men's Soccer Coach Farmington, Maine
Univ. of Maine at Farmington 3 Weeks Ago
Assistant Coach, Men's Soccer, Goalkeeping Romeoville, Illinois
Lewis University 3 Weeks Ago
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NESN Fuel
Haas To Keep Four Teams In 2018, But Maybe Not Danica Patrick, Kurt Busch
by Pat McAssey on Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 2:30PM
Two big names in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series now have questions surrounding their futures in the sport.
Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Gene Haas recently told Motorsport.com that his team again will run four cars in 2018, though it isn’t clear if Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick will be behind the wheel of two of them.
Although some teams, such as Roush Fenway Racing, have scaled back in recent years, Haas doesn’t feel that would make sense for SHR. Due to NASCAR’s current business model, teams not only get revenue from the sport, but also from manufacturers and sponsors, so Haas said running fewer cars would be a missed opportunity.
“So, to say, ‘If we don’t have a sponsor, does that mean we shouldn’t run?’ No, that means we’d lose the money from the other sources,” Haas told Motorsport.com. “I think it’s kind of a business decision. If you can get money from all the sources, you can actually make a little money from this. If one of them drops out, you just might have to wait for a year or so until you line up another one.
“It would be foolish to drop a team, because then we would lose money from the manufacturer and NASCAR, which is a substantial amount of money.”
Haas’ philosophy is something SHR already has been practicing for a while with his company, Haas Automation, sponsoring Clint Bowyer and Busch for a total of 27 races this year. Though the latter ran a paint scheme that shared the sponsorship with Monster Energy in 15 of those.
Because Busch has long been a Monster-sponsored athlete, and the beverage company now sponsors all of Cup, he likely will be back with the team in 2018. But Haas said negotiations with Busch won’t happen for a while because of one of the driver’s backers.
“A sponsor, who will remain nameless, typically likes to negotiate in January, so it’s a problem,” Haas said, via Motorsport.com. ” … I know a lot of people have these options, but a lot of people don’t like to make a decision until a month after the last possible time you can make a decision.”
Patrick’s future seems far less certain, though, based on another comment Haas reportedly made.
“If we can have a driver that wins races — and with a reasonable sponsor — all the teams can be profitable,” Haas said. “And that’s what we’re here for is to try to make a little money at this.”
The 35-year-old Patrick is still chasing her first Cup win, and one of her main sponsors, Nature’s Bakery, gave SHR a major headache ahead of this season.
Thumbnail photo via Mike DiNovo/USA TODAY Sports Images
Danica Patrick ‘Sorry’ For Crash With Boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
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the grammys
Prediction Time: Who’ll Be Nominated for Grammys Tonight?
By Daniel D'Addario • 12/05/12 1:27pm
Rihanna, one album cycle and several hairstyles ago. (Getty Images)
Tonight at 10p.m., CBS airs the Grammy Awards Nomination Concert, a splashy special co-hosted by Taylor Swift (whose album Red, despite having come out in 2012, won’t be recognized this year due to the eligibility calendar). So who will be nominated? We have a few minimally educated guesses:
Babel, Mumford and Sons
El Camino, The Black Keys
Kisses on the Bottom, Paul McCartney
Take Care, Drake
Talk That Talk, Rihanna
Mumford and Sons and the Black Keys, in varying ways, tie the Grammys into historically popular and nostalgic genres, while the kids are served by nods to Drake and Rihanna. Rihanna, whose album Loud also took what’s become the pure-pop spot occupied previously by Katy Perry, seems like the safest way to honor the EDM vogue (and, yes, we know she’s released an album since Talk That Talk). Drake is a young, sensitive rapper getting a nomination that could also go to young, sensitive R&B singer Frank Ocean for his risky Channel Orange, but it seems likely Mr. Ocean will get his due in the New Artist category. And, finally, you may have forgotten or never known perennial nominee Paul McCartney released an album called (ew) Kisses on the Bottom, but his Olympics performance and the fact that it’s an album of standards (Grammy’s favorite thing!) mean he could end up at the ceremony.
Record of the Year
“Diamonds,” Rihanna
“I Will Wait,” Mumford and Sons
“Somebody That I Used to Know,” Gotye feat. Kimbra
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Taylor Swift
“We Are Young,” fun. feat. Janelle Monaé
Taylor Swift and Rihanna both scored #1 Hot 100 hits within the eligibility, and both sound pretty vanguard-y (Ms. Swift’s record is as palatable for a non-country audience as anything she’s ever recorded). Meanwhile, Gotye and fun. both came out of nowhere with comparable Billboard hits–inescapable through the summer months and yet seemingly more accessible to the fuddy-duddy Grammy voter than the airy (and perfectly so) “Call Me Maybe.” And Mumford and Sons, given their commercial success and appeal to a traditional aesthetic that sounds nothing like EDM, will likely be the Adele of this year’s Grammys once nods to Calvin Harris et al. are dispensed with. For Song of the Year, a category honoring songwriters, sub out “Diamonds” for Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain.”
Much as we hope the year’s most forcefully debated singer, dead-eyed semiotic student Lana Del Rey, could snag a nod, this race is between fun. and Frank Ocean, with Gotye inducted for his inescapability, Ellie Goulding for her persistence (she was a “new artist” several years ago but only now getting her due), and One Direction because Justin Bieber and the Backstreet Boys were once nominated in this category, too.
Filed Under: Entertainment, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Drake, Drake, Ellie Goulding, Frank Ocean, the grammys
SEE ALSO: Jesse Eisenberg on What You Can Learn From Getting Yelled at in Karate Class
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Forgetting Orwell’s Lessons for the Left: Useful Idiots and Fellow Travelers in the 21st Century
Posted on August 13, 2007 by newcentrist
[Visit Zombietime for more images like this…]
George Orwell was a complex individual whose political ideology is difficult to precisely define. His writings have been usurped and his statements rehashed by countless polemicists on the left and right. His most well-known works—Animal Farm and 1984—describe dystopian worlds where the state has sublimated the individual. Orwell was a British imperial civil-servant in Burma, a volunteer in the international struggle against Spanish fascism and a propagandist for the U.K. during WWII. He was also a socialist. These experiences influenced his perception of political events and his writings about these events.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, left-wing activists and authors flocked to the insurgent Soviet Union to view the accomplishments of the revolution first-hand. John Reed is the most well known but numerous authors, intellectuals and journalists made their way to the USSR. A few were not pleased with what they saw.
In the U.K., a distinctly anti-Leninist, democratic socialist milieu allowed the space for critique of capitalism and Soviet totalitarianism. In addition to democratic socialists like Orwell, anarchists including Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eichenbaum (“Voline“) penned numerous articles, pamphlets and books decrying the emergence of a totalitarian regime in Russia (Voline’s, The Persecutions of the Anarchists in Soviet Russia, was published in 1922 [?], Goldman’s My Disillusionment in Russia in 1923, Berkman’s The Bolshevik Myth in 1925.)
Lenin thought so highly of Western apologists for the Soviet Union that he evidently coined a term for them, “useful idiots,” while Communists in the West were deemed “fellow travelers.” Both groups provided intellectual, moral and material support to totalitarians: the former unwittingly, the latter willingly. Those in the socialist camp who disagreed with Lenin were denigrated as “infantile leftists” just as Marx had belittled his libertarian opponents as “utopian.”
Orwell’s experiences in Spain led him to be highly critical of Stalinism. When he returned to the U.K. he wondered why relatively wealthy people who enjoyed economic and political freedom would support radical ideologies that would render both individual wealth and human freedom an impossibility. His personal experiences led him to write Homage to Catalonia (1938) while his concern with the broader questions of totalitarianism and democracy led him to write both Animal Farm (1946) and 1984 (1949).
For Orwell, the obvious threat was totalitarianism in both its left and right wing guises. Concurrently, he felt that British passivity in the face of Nazism amounted to appeasement: “Appeasement is like feeding a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last.” In Orwell’s time, most of the opposition to fighting Nazism was emanating from British pacifists and Communists. In an essay titled “Pacifism and the War” he argues that pacifism in the face of fascist aggression is pro-fascist, “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you
automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one…”
Orwell’s critics remarked that “according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be ‘objectively pro-British.’”
What was Orwell’s reply?
“[O]f course it would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of fascism in Britain and American territories…In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.”
For Orwell, such reasoning is the result of a “bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.” Orwell did not disparage middle-class Englishmen who supported a military power that sought to destroy them and their way of life. To the contrary, he supported their right to free speech. However, he was incensed by the “intellectual cowardice” of those who were objectively—if not actually—pro-fascist but ignored this intellectual linkage and instead took “refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone but…’” Today, the extreme left doesn’t even bother claiming, “I do not support Islamist extremists but…” Instead, they call for victory by the “resistance”.
In a similar fashion, some who support the GWOT —particularly those on the right—have been claiming that those who voice their opposition to the current war are appeasers of Islamic fascism. To a certain extent, I agree. However, I think a more apt analogy than appeasers would be “fellow travelers” or “useful idiots.” The appeaser believes that the best way to ensure international peace—or at least peace in his neck of the woods—is to allow totalitarians to oppress their own domestic populations.
The useful idiot and fellow traveler, by contrast, truly believe that western capitalist democracies are qualitatively and quantitatively worse than authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. Mention political prisoners in the PRC and they bring up Guantanamo. Mention the hundreds of thousands killed in a Darfur and they bring up police misconduct in the inner cities. Mention kangaroo courts in Cuba and they bring up Lynne Stuart. And so it goes…
By the 1960s, the New Left was burned out on Soviet-style totalitarianism and became enticed by the national liberation struggles occurring in the Third World. Organizations like the Beider-Menhoff gang/Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany and Revolutionary Cells in Italy engaged in terrorism against democratic states they denigrated as “fascist.” At the same time the German RAF supported Palestinian terrorists in their murders of Israelis at home (Munich, 1972) and abroad (Entebbe, 1976).
Like Lenin and the Communists—from the Russian Revolution until the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s—Islamists have their contingents of useful idiots and fellow travelers in the halls of academia and the press. Granted, the situation in the US is not nearly as bad as in Europe. However, the familiar knee-jerk anti-American rhetoric of Noam Chomsky and Arundati Roy has crept into mainstream political discourse. Today, people like Chomsky, Roy, Michael Moore, Tariq Ali and Alexander Cockburn may best be described as the lslamists useful idiots and fellow travelers. Moore is a particularly easy target, “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.”
And of course there are no lack of pundits on the far left—Cockburn, Ward Churchill—who claim that America got what it deserved in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. London’s useful idiots and fellow travelers are making similar claims today. Never mind the fact that a majority of the victims in both attacks were working class folks and that a good percentage of those murdered were immigrants or people of color.
While he may not have recognized its importance at the time, Orwell—and the UK in general—was privileged in having a libertarian, anti-Leninist, socialist tradition. This led some socialists and most anarchists to have a healthy dose of skepticism when the Bolsheviks were victorious in Russia. By the time The Bolshevik Myth and My Disillusionment in Russia were published, one would be hard-pressed to find any anarchist who empathized with the revolutionary vision of the Bolsheviks. For the socialists it would take a bit more than the polemics of disenchanted anarchists. But when Hitler began the Blitz and the bombs started raining down on London only the most suicidal would claim that the best policy was neutrality in the face of fascist aggression.
One wonders where the anarchists and other libertarian socialists are today? Yes there are some voices of reason, Paul Berman, the Eustonites, the writers at Democratiya and a few other places. What’s most interesting is the visibility of intellectuals who experienced totalitarianism first-hand and their perceptions of the current war against Islamic totalitarianism. Most of these individuals support it.
Of course one can see the left-wing anarchists at the rallies and demonstrations organized by the totalitarian left. One can read their polemics against American imperialism and transnational capitalism. However, when it comes to Islamist imperialism and transnational terrorism–i.e actually existing totalitarianism–the silence is deafening. Where are the Goldmans, the Berkmans, the Volines of today?
Filed under Archives, History, and Historiography, Radicalism, U.S. Politics | 8 Comments
Chuck Morse on August 23, 2007 at 1:36 pm said:
I don’t think your characterization of the anarchist position–that we’re silent “Islamist imperialism and transnational terrorism”–is fair. For example, here’s a piece that I co-authored after September 11 that advances a fuller position: http://www.negations.net/?p=48 I also think that Bill Weinberg is a good example of someone who opposes authoritarianism in all its forms (I haven’t read much of his work, but I’m pretty sure). Anarchists typically focus on fighting their own governments. So, if you’re reading material in English, you’ll read more about the American government than the Iranian (for example), but that doesn’t mean that anarchists aren’t fighting back in Iran (they are).
newcentrist on August 23, 2007 at 1:59 pm said:
Thanks for the comment, Chuck. I’ll definitely have a look at your post.
I was involved with the anarchist movement for quite a while and am simply speaking from my experience(s). My first general point is that anarchists are marching, rallying and engaging in protests with the totalitarian left whereas in the past, anarchists would have been fighting these scumbags in the streets. My second point is anarchists seem more concerned about liberal capitalism than Islamist totalitarianism. A big mistake, IMHO.
Yes, Bill is definitely against all forms of authoritarianism and is a swell guy. I linked to Bill’s website and “Three Way Fight” (you should check them out) in another article. I disagree with both of them but think they are good folks.
Does Anti-Imperialism Trump Anti-Totalitarianism?
https://newcentrist.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/does-anti-imperialism-trump-anti-authoritarianism/
A more contentious point–and I think this is much more important–is that liberal capitalist regimes provide the breathing space for libertarian socialists to “create a new world in the shell of the old.” I realize this is a controversial claim.
“This is not to argue that liberal capitalism is the end all, be all. However, liberal capitalism at least provides the opportunity for the construction of that free space that libertarians strive to provide as an example of building a new world in the shell of the old, to borrow that wonderful I.W.W. slogan. Liberal capitalism provides the potential to start a revolutionary-syndicalist local, infoshops, and other counter-institutions that many libertarian socialists view as necessary.”
mnuez on September 6, 2007 at 9:52 am said:
Yah, I read this piece when it first came out and just read it again. Your point is of course valid (at least in my opinion) and is also something that anyone remotely familiar with Orwell would realize as likely being his position today.
I do however believe that there are two major lacuna in all of our ramblings on the subject.
1. Chickenhawking.
It’s easy as hell being in favor of this war when you don’t have to pay any price for it. The “volunteer” army is actually no such thing, it’s an army composed almost entirely of people who would not join were they members of the wealthier classes. These, in fact, are people who are submitting to temporary slavery, extreme discomfort and a strong likelihood of being casualitied because they see all of the wonders of what they’re told by every media venue is “The American Dream” and they know that their best chance of getting within ogling distance of it is by joining up with the armed forces. Were they the daughters or sons of the architects of the war – all people of some means – they would be “fighting for their country” by going off to some ivy league school and writing for the “Campus Republican” or they might inherit some cushy job handed to them on a platter and rail with patriotism and a bosom full of freedom about the need to fight Islamo-fascism while they righteously write a big check to some soldiers’ cause.
2. Competence.
Capitalists or not, we all know that if your goal is the generation of wealth and the invention of cooler and cooler gadgets for cheaper – aint nothin’ gonna work like free-market capitalism. Or at least, to be exact, nothing to date has been shown to work even remotely as well as capitalism. Why? Because greed is good. Cut-throat competition is Darwin smiling from ear to ear. The best ideas are selected and the rest allowed to languish until they die. Heartwarming it may not be, but you can’t argue with its effectiveness.
Our political system however ensures that no such “fight for survival” takes place in the halls of power when it comes to deciding how the war will be won. The Congresscritters have precious few of their (precious) critters in this fight and thus the safety of our troops and decisive victory are matters that may be appreciated by these men but they are rarely matters that keep them awake at night with a knot in their stomachs and an urge to heave.
The political system is awash with the only sort of characters who can survive it – careerist hacks. Competence in governance is unimportant, fundraising is. The ability to grant favors to wealthy political supporters without ending up behind bars in the single most important talent required for becoming an elected official. Being able to lambast your opponents through the carefully crafted words of your professional “opponent researcher” is more importance than any innate eloquence or erudition of your own. Tactics are rewarded with electoral success and character is worth less than a plug nickel.
And eventually, after years and years of standing by idly watching this political system play kingmaker we arrive its pinnacle of success, George Walker Bush.
It takes a special man to have so successfully fucked up what should indeed have been something approximating a cake walk. His inability is stupendous. The breadth of his knowledge microscopic. His bona fides for being our Commander in Chief – nil.
And no one with the ability to do so tries to stop him. No one pushes him from the saddle. No one speaks a bad word about him (what with their being them dirty Democrats out there to argue with).
And so –
we arrive at a situation where we are indeed stuck in a quagmire of the most disgusting sort and the dumber among our human relatives fail to see our failure (that IS what it is, btw) as being the result of an incompetent leadership but rather as our having fought a war that was unwinable and that should never have been started in the first place. Yes, they’re dumb. Had we have had a Churchill, a Begin or a Washington at our helm and would thus have been victorious and ushered in a truly new age in the Middle East, these same people would be greater supporters of that war than any of us are today. They’d be throwing parades, wearing flag pins, traveling the world in order to be admired in person and liberating despotic countries around the globe. But they don’t realize that. They have little imagination for that. They know what is, know that it sucks and believe that this is the very best that it could possibly have been. They know that we have cut-throat capitalism in this land when it comes to selling widgets so they assume that this must be the case (only more so) when it comes to the question of who assumes the thrones of power in our “Democracy” – the absolutely Most Qualified is invariably elected. It’s the less qualified ones that are all weeded out by the electoral process. And furthermore – in the great halls of power, all of the finest and smartest and most learned and most experienced minds come together to decide on our war strategies. And again, it’s the very best ideas that prevail and it’s the very best and most capable people who subsequently implement them.
And, despite this, Iraq is failing. And That’s why they believe that we should fight this war no more.
If we are to convince them otherwise, these two issues must be addressed, and must be rectified.
mnuez
http://www.mnuez.blogspot.com
newcentrist on September 7, 2007 at 4:53 pm said:
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, mnunez.
However, I think the term “chickenhawk” is, frankly, pretty weak. The vast majority of the people who use this term feel you can’t be pro-military if you don’t (or didn’t) serve in the military. This is nonsensical. After all, to be for “law and order” must one serve in the police? Of course not. Same with the military.
As you are aware, many officials in the Pentagon are civilians. We can debate whether this is good or bad. I think it is more preferable than having the military dictate policy (as opposed to military strategy and tactics), as was often the case in Latin America.
Your claim about the class composition of the military does not hold up to close scrutiny. If you have any evidence to support your claim, I am very interested.
Have a look at this report produced by The Heritage Foundation:
Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11
by Tim Kane, Ph.D.
Center for Data Analysis Report #05-08
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda05-08.cfm
In a New York Times op-ed on December 31, 2002, Representative Charles Rangel (D, NY) claimed, “A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.” This claim is frequently repeated by critics of the war in Iraq. Aside from the logical fallacy that a draft is less offensive to justice than a voluntary policy, Rangel’s assertions about the demographic makeup of the enlisted military are not grounded in fact…
We found that recruits tend to come from middle-class areas, with disproportionately fewer from low-income areas. Overall, the income distribution of military enlistees is more similar to than different from the income distribution of the general population…
According to the 2000 Census, the national median income per household in 1999 was $41,994 in 1999 dollars. By assigning each recruit the median 1999 household income for his hometown ZIP code, we calculated that the mean 1999 income for 1999 recruits before entering the military was $41,141 (in 1999 dollars). The mean 1999 income for 2003 recruits was $42,822 (in 1999 dollars). In other words, on average, recruits in 2003 were from wealthier neighborhoods than were recruits in 1999.”
Check it out. There are other reports with similar findings. As far as data and evidence supporting the other side, I am not aware of it. Lots of unfounded claims, but very little evidence. If you know of any studies produced by social scientists, please let me know.
Take it easy and have a nice weekend.
“We found that recruits…”
Jesus Horatio Christ. I hope that’s part of a cut n’ paste and you aren’t implying that you personally engaged in this research. That would be a pretty long journey for a former anarchist to have taken, bro!
Anyhow, I was of course aware of this study and therefore – despite the fact that I find it to be at least a little bit disingenuous – I said absolutely nothing in my comment that would be contradicted by it. If you read my post closely I think that you’ll see that.
I know that politicians are supposed to answer the question that they “wish they had been asked” but, as you of course know, that would be nothing more than propping up a strawman to demolish. And I fear that in your haste to defend the economic system that makes this sad human state possible (of people risking life and limb so that they can pay for college) you seem to have engaged in this sort of rhetorical political maneuver.
So again, though I don’t buy the impression that this study aims to foster, I won’t spend any time refuting any of those impressions being as nothing in my comment was in any way dependant on its findings not being accurate.
P.S. It saddens me to see you walking down Hitchens Lane. Just because the “Left” appears to have some really loud voices of insanity emanating from its midst nowadays doesn’t mean that it’s intellectually wise to start identifying with the Right. When almost all of Hitch’s writings regarding current affairs pertain to the Single issue where the right happens to be correct, you can’t blame people for miscategorizing him.
As for me, I don’t care for what labels or directions happen to be attached to any particular view at any time but I do recognize that just because I happen to be allied with the Michigan Militia on the matter of Iraq or with Ayn Rand on the matter of one’s personal attitude or with Hugo Chavez on the dangers and evils of capitalism – doesn’t make any of these people my friend and in no way makes it even slightly likely that I’ll start to see other issues their way as well, simply because we happen to be allied together against the world on any single particular issue.
newcentrist on September 8, 2007 at 12:28 pm said:
As you may have noticed, rhetoric is not that impressive to me, data and evidence are.
Check it out, these are your words:
“The “volunteer” army is actually no such thing, it’s an army composed almost entirely of people who would not join were they members of the wealthier classes. These, in fact, are people who are submitting to temporary slavery…”
Your position is pretty clear to me and the study I linked to certainly challenges this perspective. There are others. This is just one of many. Again, if you know of *any* studies that refute this–studies by social scientists, not simply opinion–I am very open to changing my mind. Just because something conforms or confirms our particular ideological perspective does not mean it is correct.
If not, we can agree to disagree.
kibeer on June 30, 2014 at 11:43 pm said:
thanks for the article. I found it looking for some answers to a question which haunts me.
Why are othetwise hardcore libertarians so willing to cut some slack to Mr. Putin & Co ?
Even those who otherwise appear reasonable are just useful idiots parroting Russian disinformation and demagoguery. Same can be told about Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.
Easy political points? from all sorts of” disidents”?
Common enemy – western democracy?
Simple cowardice or naivete?
Well, you helped answer a few. Thanks
Pingback: Meaningless Terms: Chickenhawk « The New Centrist
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Democratic Recriminations
David Leonhardt argues that the administration grew too complacent about recovery and lost its sense of urgency:
On the evening of Dec. 3 last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics sent an advance copy of the next morning’s jobs report to the White House. It’s standard procedure for top White House and Federal Reserve officials to get an early look at the numbers, but there was nothing standard about this particular report.
It showed that job losses had all but stopped in November, after nearly two years of big declines. White House aides exulted. Christina Romer, a top economist, brought a copy of the numbers to the Oval Office, and President Obama embraced her. A photograph of the moment, with a Christmas tree off to the side, was hung in the office of the Council of Economic Advisers. The good news — and the optimism — would continue for the next few months.
Today, that brief period of optimism looks like one of the worst things that could have happened to the White House, other Democrats and, above all, the economy. The nascent recovery removed the urgency that the Obama administration and Democratic senators felt in early 2009. They still favored more action, like aid to states and tax cuts, but it was no longer their top priority.
They assumed a recovery was under way.
I don't know. The question isn't really whatOobama and Democratic Senators wanted. There was a small window of time, after Al Franken was seated and before Scott Brown was elected, when the 60th vote was Ben Nelson, who had whittled down the first stimulus and resolutely opposed any further stimulus. Before and after, the 60th vote was Olympia Snowe, who behaved about the same. As Leonhardt notes later in the piece, the House subsequently passed a smaller stimulus only to see it whittled down to almost nothing in the Senate. You can argue that the administration could have done more by placing more emphasis on the issue, but I'm skeptical.
You can further argue that Obama made a tactical error by pre-emptively making tax cuts 40% of the stimulus, giving little room for concessions to Republicans. You can also argue that he devoted too little attention to selling the stimulus. I don't think either of these factors would have had much effect. I just don't see many ways the political system, with its extreme partisanship and routine filibustering, could have accomodated more fiscal stimulus.
Meanwhile, Gerald Seib brings up a recrimination I'm surprised more people haven't made:
In June 2009, just six months into the Obama era, House leaders brought to a vote a broad, highly ambitious bill to attack climate change, in part by changing American energy habits and in part by instituting a new cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gases. That bill presented an extraordinarily tough vote for lawmakers from coal-producing and industrial states, because the carbon cap was seen as a threat to both the coal industry and to energy and manufacturing plants across the upper Midwest.
That might have been a political risk worth taking if the legislation was about to roar ahead on the wings of popular demand. Instead, House members cast this hard, politically risky vote on a bill that proceeded to go—nowhere. The Senate not only didn't take up the bill, it moved on instead to health care, while a handful of senators sought to write a different version of climate-change legislation that failed to fly.
So a handful of brave Democrats put their necks on the line for what has turned out to be a meaningless vote. Now those lawmakers—Rick Boucher in Virginia and John Boccieri and Zack Space in Ohio most notably—are being pilloried for their troubles. If those Democrats lose, and Democrats lose the House by a couple of seats, they can look back on cap-and-trade and wonder.
There was never a likely path to passing cap and trade through the Senate. Passing a bill through the House improved the chances, but the most probable outcome of that choice was always that the House would be stranded with a tough vote that went nowhere. If there's one decision that clearly backfired on Democrats, it's cap and trade.
Jonathan Chait, David Leonhardt, Senate, White House
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Law to limit vehicle purchase in Davao City sought
Subscribe Now August 07, 2017 at 02:14pm
THE Land Transportation Office (LTO) said Davao City is still 25 percent congested with vehicles and it hopes for a city ordinance that would prohibit people from buying vehicles if their houses do not have garages.
LTO-Davao regional director Gomer Dy, in an interview with SunStar Davao, said it is good to start it in the city as it is already known for having city ordinances being used in the national level or in other cities in the country, such as the anti-smoking ordinance and firecracker ban.
The proposed ordinance, he said, is a move to control vehicle purchases in the city as regional transport office and the Davao City Transport and Traffic Management Office (CTTMO) observed that many people park their vehicles along the road, occupying spaces and disrupting traffic.
Dy said the city has approximately 200,000 registered public and private vehicles as of last July 31. He said the number, however, do not yet cause severe traffic on the city's main roads.
"But it is important not to wait for the moment when our cars cannot move anymore on the streets for two hours at least," he said.
In Metro Manila, Dy said vehicle congestion has reached 85 percent, causing traffic for two to eight hours.
He added that the proposed ordinance was also pushed by other regional LTO branches in the past years. However, it was not approved due to varied reasons.
"We are hoping that the mayor would see this appropriate. Although this will be going through a lot of processes, I am hoping for this implementation," Dy said.
Source: sunstar.com.ph
« Cebu Pacific launches new flights from Davao Davao is 3rd most competitive city in PH »
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A rally in support of Dreamers at Illinois State University.
Conference explores social, ethnic, racial boundaries, February 9-10
Rachel Hatch February 1, 2018 Filed Under College of Arts and Sciences Dean of Students History Languages, Literatures, and Cultures LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute Media Relations Milner Library Politics and Government Social Work Sociology and Anthropology Student Affairs University
Illinois State University will host a two-day conference to explore how people see race and ethnicity in the time of Donald Trump.
Social, Ethnic, and Racial Boundaries on Campus and Community in the 21st Century will be February 9-10 in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University. The conference is free and open to the public.
“This conference examines race, ethnicity, and microagressions in light of the new political developments in the United States, both local and national,” said conference organizer and Associate Professor of Anthropology Nobuko Adachi.
Each day will carry its own theme, with Friday dedicated to “Race and Immigration Under the Trump Administration” and Saturday examining “Microaggressions in Everyday Life.” Both days will include international scholars, speakers, and local community leaders who will explore issues through panels, roundtables dialogues, and films.
Topics will include speakers on guns and policing, Middle Eastern travel bans, undocumented students and immigration policy, and the impact of microaggressions on communities and higher education.
Friday’s lunch will include a free showing of the film And Then They Came For US. The documentary highlights the registration and incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which bears an eerie resemblance to modern-day attitudes toward Muslim-Americans, and the Muslim travel ban.
The keynote address will be by Professor of Psychology Yolanda Flores Niemann of the University of North Texas, who will present “Subjective Experiences of Microaggressions from the Lenses of Others: Being an Ally and Developing Alliances Across and Within Demographic Groups” at the Saturday lunch session.
See a schedule of Friday’s events.
See a schedule of Saturday’s events.
Sponsors for the conference include Illinois State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, Multi-Ethnic Cultural and Co-Curricular Programming Advisory Committee (MECCPAC), the School of Social Work, the Department of History, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Department of Politics and Government, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute, Milner Library, the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT), and the Harold K. Sage Fund and the Illinois State University Foundation. The event is organized by the Ethnicity and Ethnography Laboratory and Research Center (EELRC) at Illinois State University.
The Vagina Monologues performances, February 24-25
Illinois State University Speaker Series announced for Spring 2018
Research shows small insults have large impact
University Club: Identifying obstacles for undocumented students, February 9
Faculty service to be recognized during Founders Day ceremony
Valentine’s Big Band Dance, February 11
Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning to host film series
Community Engagement Award nominations open
Higher education resources
K-12 education resources
ISU hosts therapeutic recreation summit
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Does social forestry always decrease deforestation and poverty? (commentary)
Commentary by Erik Meijaard on 17 September 2017 |
Many governmental and non-governmental organizations see community forestry in Indonesia as a new approach to reducing environmental degradation and increasing social welfare. Despite a decade of experimentation with the concept, very little is known, however, about actual impacts.
Studies by the Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Forestry program (MEPS) reveal that Village Forest (Hutan Desa) areas reduce deforestation in forests allocated for watershed protection and limited timber extraction
In forest allocated to normal timber production and conversion, Hutan Desa areas, however, have higher deforestation than comparable forests not managed by communities. Community forestry can achieve positive outcomes, but not everywhere. The government needs to take this insight on board to help in allocating licenses and investments for this scheme.
This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.
Despite decades of hard environmental battle against deforestation, tropical forest losses continue unabated. Forests are cut down to make way for cattle-grazing land, oil palm plantations or other non-forests uses. Often, governments justify this deforestation by pointing to the prospective economic and social benefits that are generated when a natural forest is turned into a plantation or other agricultural use.
While deforestation continues in many parts of the world, there is, at the same time, a growing realization that forests are actually quite important for many rural communities. For example, 66 percent of Indonesia’s poor live in or around forest, and these forests provide vital goods and services to those communities, including flood prevention, clean water, fish, medicinal plants, bushmeat and many others.
The tricky question for governments is where the balance lies. How much forest needs to be kept to maintain traditional forest livelihoods and other services derived from natural systems, and how much forest could be cut down to provide land for agriculture-based development? Which of these two options provides the best overall outcome in terms of economic development, increasing social welfare and protecting the environment? Unfortunately, with the true costs and benefits of deforestation unknown, such crucial questions remain largely ignored, and governments generally remain supportive of the well-worn path of deforestation.
Figure 1. Degraded peat swamp area in West Kalimantan where currently very little agricultural production is possible because of high fire risk, low soil fertility, frequent flooding, and remoteness of the area. When do the benefits of deforestation exceed the costs? Was this area worth more when still forested, and, if so, to whom?
Community forest management is currently often championed as a way to benefit both local livelihoods and forest conservation. This is especially relevant in Indonesia, which still has some of the highest deforestation rates in the world, but is also increasingly recognizing community forest rights.
A 2012 decision of Indonesia’s Constitutional Court and subsequent ministerial regulations in late 2014, oblige local governments to reallocate 12.7 million hectares of state forest to forest-dependent communities. To put this in perspective, this equals about 7 percent of the total land area of Indonesia, which makes it one of the largest social and environmental experiments in recent history.
Two major assumptions underlie this Indonesian experiment. The first assumption is that integrating communities into forest management will increase their social welfare. The second assumption is that communities are better land managers than the industrial operators that would otherwise log or clear forests. Both assumptions combined result in the untested premise that community-managed forests in Indonesia will have lower deforestation rates than forests under government or company management.
Figure 3. The estimated mean avoided deforestation rates (ha/km2) contributed by Hutan Desa in Sumatra and Kalimantan every year between 2012 and 2016 across different land use histories (protection HL, limited production HPT, and permanent and convertible production HPTK).
To assist the Indonesian government in its decision-making, these assumptions are currently being tested through the Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Forestry program — Monitoring dan Evaluasi Perhutanan Sosial (MEPS). This program is funded by the UK-based Darwin Initiative and the Woodspring Trust, and implemented by a consortium of organizations, including the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, Flora and Fauna International (FFI), The University of Queensland, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and Borneo Futures.
The initial MEPS findings give food for thought. A recent paper published in the journal Global Environmental Change looked into the extent to which deforestation has been avoided as a result of Indonesia’s community forestry scheme, Hutan Desa (Village Forest).
The study found that Hutan Desa management has successfully achieved avoided deforestation overall, but performance varied substantially between study sites and between years (see figure below). Hutan Desa allocated on watershed protection forest or limited production forest typically avoided between 0.6 and 1.5 ha/km2 of deforestation compared to non-Hutan Desa sites with similar characteristics, with performance in different years being relatively constant. Conversely, Hutan Desa granted on permanent or convertible production forest did not always reduce deforestation, especially during very dry years when extensive areas of degraded forest and peatland burned. Overall, Hutan Desa on peat land performed poorly, because of the associated fire risk.
The study further indicated that limited management capacity at the village level underlies some of this underperformance in Hutan Desa, and that capacity building is a crucial component of successful community forest management. It seems that blanket deployment of community forestry programs is unlikely to lead to improved outcomes across the board, and therefore careful evaluation of this new policy is called for.
Results of these studies were recently presented to and discussed with local governments in the Ketapang and Hulu Kapuas Districts in West Kalimantan. Government representatives were surprised to see that the performance of village forest could be monitored remotely through study of satellite imagery. So far, the MEPS program is piloting its approaches in two districts and government representatives have requested a rapid scaling-up of the program to cover larger parts of Indonesia.
Figure 2. A village forest (Hutan Desa) in West Kalimantan. The sign says: “Reminder. Based on the Ministerial Decision SK 493/Menhut-11/2011, the Manjau village forest in de Laman Satong village is declared to have an area of 1,070 ha. It is prohibited to fell trees, burn the forest, damage the village forest, or hunt protected species”.
To complement the landscape-scale analysis, the MEPS team is currently also looking at social dynamics at the site-scale to investigate the role of different actors in the process of decision-making and management of Hutan Desa and how these internal and external networks influence the environmental and social performance of Hutan Desa.
Finally, the same MEPS program is also assessing the impacts of Hutan Desa development on various aspects of social welfare and a range of poverty indicators. Preliminary analysis indicates that Hutan Desa approaches do not always achieve positive outcomes for social welfare. Such studies provide valuable insights as to where and when community forest management programs are most likely to achieve their environmental and social objectives.
The tricky questions about the relative costs and benefits of alternative land uses can only be answered through robust evaluation of land use policy and on-ground outcomes. This takes time, but it ultimately facilitates better decision-making and prevents adverse outcomes for the most marginalized people in Indonesia.
Commentary, Community Forests, Conservation, Deforestation, Editorials, Forests, Indigenous Communities, Land Rights, Peatlands, Rainforests
Indonesia’s president signals a transition away from coal power
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Mongabay Series: Amazon Agribusiness, Amazon Infrastructure
COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
by Justin Catanoso on 14 December 2018
In October, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. During the campaign, he threatened to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, implement extreme environmental deregulation policies, and introduce mining into Amazon indigenous reserves, while also using incendiary language which may be inciting violence in remote rural areas.
Just days before his election, Bolsonaro contradicted his past utterances, saying he won’t withdraw from the Paris accord. At COP24, the Brazilian delegation has fielded questions from concerned attendees, but it appears that no one there knows with certainty what the volatile leader will do once in office. He begins his presidency on the first of the year.
Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t pull out of Paris, his plans to develop the Amazon, removing most regulatory impediments to mining and agribusiness, could have huge ramifications for the global climate. The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, stores massive amounts of carbon. Deforestation rates are already going up there, and likely to grow under Bolsonaro.
Some in Brazil hope that environmental and economic realities will prevent Bolsonaro from fully implementing his plans. Escalating deforestation is already reducing Amazon rainfall, putting aquifers and agribusiness at risk. Agricultural producers also fear global consumer perceptions of Brazil as being anti-environmental could lead to a backlash and boycotts.
President-elect Jair Bolsonaro pretends to shoot a gun, a signature gesture he uses to punctuate a point in his speeches. The gesture has become a sort of meme and accompanies incendiary language which critics say may be inciting some Brazilians in remote rural areas to violence against indigenous groups and other minorities. Image by Carlos Eugênio.
KATOWICE, Poland – One by one, Brazilian representatives from science, government and civil society gamely responded publicly in a press conference this week to a question they’d been fielding privately since arriving at the 24th United Nations climate summit, COP24, here in Poland:
Would the volatile and staunchly anti-environmental President-elect Jair Bolsonaro follow the path of another volatile and staunchly anti-environmental president to the north and join the United States as the only other nation on earth to promise to leave the historic Paris Agreement?
The answer is critically important not only to Brazilians, but to the world. The South American country is the world’s eighth largest economy and is guardian to much of the Amazon rainforest – the world’s largest carbon storehouse.
“I don’t think he will leave,” said Alfredo Sirkis, a former presidential candidate and member of Brazil’s Congress, now executive director of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change. “But I didn’t think the Trump government would leave either. It depends on a lot of political circumstances. There will be very strong pressure, especially from agribusiness, to remain in the Paris Agreement. At the same time, this is a very idiosyncratic group of people on the very top of the power structure.”
The Brazilian pavilion at COP24 in Poland. But will Brazil have a pavilion at COP25, which is to be held in Latin America? President-elect Bolsonaro has already reversed Brazil’s previously commitment to host COP25, citing expenses. Photo by Justin Catanoso.
Paulo Barreto, who tracks Amazonian deforestation for the NGO Imazon, said, “I can show the data. Deforestation has hurt many parts of our country and our economy. The evidence is very clear. I think this is really important to keep showing the evidence. We need to stay in the Paris Agreement.”
During his presidential campaign, Bolsonaro said he would pull Brazil out of the accord, a position upon which he has seemingly reversed himself since then.
As a result of these contradictory statements, Brazilians at the climate summit seemed caught in a twilight zone of despair and hope similar to the one that possessed U.S. delegates two years ago in Marrakesh, Morocco, at COP22. The surprise election of Donald Trump that November marred the entire two-week negotiation in 2016. .
Bolsonaro, who unlike Trump, enjoyed a clear majority presidential win, has remained a Trumpian figure of discord and divisiveness during his transition to power. He has assailed environmental regulators, given lethal encouragement to gun owners, and struck fear deep in the hearts of indigenous peoples and environmental activists in a country that already sees more forest guardians murdered annually than any other country in the world. Violence has been rising since the campaign’s start, and included indigenous and landless movement assassinations, which some critics say have been incited by Bolsonaro’s incendiary language.
Amazon deforestation is also seeing a rapid rise, reaching the highest levels seen in ten years. Analysts fear that, based on Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental ministry appointments and his plans for deregulation, that deforestation will continue to surge threatening the nation’s Paris Agreement carbon reduction pledge, biodiversity, and indigenous and traditional communities.
“The biggest threat to Brazil is the president-elect himself,” said indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara, the Liberty Party candidate for vice president in the recent elections. “He wants to take away our rights, our land and our culture. This is a very dangerous moment. An urgent moment. People are just starting to understand the role indigenous people play in protecting our forests, and now we are fearful.”
Brazilian indigenous leader and former vice presidential candidate Sônia Gujajara. She railed against president-elect Jair Bolsonaro at a press conference this week at COP24. Gujajara and other indigenous people throughout the Brazilian Amazon hope Bolsonaro doesn’t keep his campaign promise to invite mining operations and agribusiness onto their lands. Photo by Justin Catanoso.
But even as Brazilian scientists, activists and socio-environmental NGOs fear the worst, they cling to a hope that reason may prevail, data will be persuasive, and that international pressure to conserve the Amazon will help curb Bolsonaro’s most-extreme economic development policies.
“The message from science is clear, and the signals from our new government are really concerning,” said Carlos Rittl, who leads the Climate Observatory, a consortium of environmental NGOs in Brazil. “They put the battle against climate change and the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement at risk.”
He added, seizing on a theme others expressed in trying to derail Bolsonaro’s extreme positions: “Climate change and deforestation are already bringing a lot of problems to Brazil’s capacity to grow crops. We won’t be able to produce where temperatures are increasing and there is less rain. The health of our forests play a huge role in the health of agribusiness.”
Agribusiness producers, while supportive of Bolsonaro, are also very concerned about not being perceived internationally as anti-environmental extremists. They fear that their supply chains, markets and profits could be put at risk by a global consumer backlash against Bolsonaro’s Amazon mining and agribusiness development policies, resulting in a boycott of Brazilian commodities.
Amazon deforestation has escalated since protections were eased in 2012, following eight years during which Brazilian regulation and enforcement greatly reduced deforestation rates, which established the Latin American nation as a conservation role model in the global community.
But, as forests have steadily been converted to cattle pastures and soy plantations, the most productive rainforest on earth has produced less rain and created more drought in a country where 90 percent of farmland has no irrigation. And scientists fear a tipping point may be near when drought will dominate, and vast sections of the Amazon rainforest will convert to savanna. As things stand today, the vastly influential agribusiness industry is experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand and every day.
Will Bolsonaro make the same connection soon, and recognize that his plans for growth are intricately linked to the vitality of the rainforests he has vowed to level in order to make Brazil’s economy thrive? Recent events suggest the answer to be a clear no, but only time will tell.
Meanwhile, in Katowice, Poland, far from home and surrounded by environmentalists from every nation on earth, Brazilians seemed to prefer the nurturing of optimism.
“Indigenous peoples are here to share our contributions and knowledge of the earth, which go back thousands of years,” Guajajara said. “Mother Nature is being brutalized and she says she needs our help. And we want to help her.”
Because Bolsonaro has yet to take office, it has pretty much been business as usual for the Brazilian delegation at COP24, with panel discussions held every day at their pavilion. But Bolsonaro and the future are on everyone’s mind. Photo by Justin Catanoso.
Business and Plan B
Ana Carolina Szklo and Keyvan Macedo brought their own brand of optimism to Katowice, buoyed by a consortium of Brazil’s 60 largest companies, representing 45 percent of the nation’s GDP. Szklo is development director of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development; Macedo is head of sustainability at Natura, the nation’s largest cosmetic company with $4 billion in annual revenue, 17,000 employees and a global footprint.
If Bolsonaro means business, then the pair, who spoke together at a COP24 side event, intend to demonstrate to the president-elect that business not only respects but depends on the environment.
“At this point, it’s not yet about pushing back, it’s about constructing a dialogue,” Szklo said. “Where we stand right now is finding new ways, building a new narrative, getting to know the new people in the new government.”
She added: “Agribusiness is a huge example for us because of the exports for Brazil and because they understand the importance of climate change, the environmental standards we have nationally, and international standards expected from Brazil. We are together on this. The private sector is committed. The NGOs are committed. And we are going forward exactly as we have in the past. This is a concrete contribution to the public sector.”
Brazilians from science, government and civil society discussed their hopes and fears regarding the incoming Bolsonaro administration at a COP24 press conference. Seated from left: Paolo Barreto of IMAZON, Andre Guimaraes of IPAM, Alfredo Sirkis, a former member of Congress, and Carlos Rittl who leads Climate Observatory, a consortium of environmental groups in Brazil. Photo by Justin Catanoso.
Macedo went further: “I agree that we need to start to regrow the economy of Brazil. But we need to make clear that the environmental agenda does not conflict with an economic agenda. He [Bolsonaro] can’t really change his mind until he gets into office. I think we can bring him along to see these opportunities.”
However, such assertions aren’t always well received by new governments. In the U.S., former Vice President Al Gore, one of the world’s leading environmentalists, believed he could reason with Trump and convince him that leaving the Paris Agreement would be bad for the country and bad for business. He was ignored.
So today, Gov. Jerry Brown and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have built a coalition of 3,600 cities, states, universities and businesses who aim at sticking with the carbon-reduction goals of the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States. A similar subnational initiative is already forming in Brazil.
“Absolutely, we have a contingency plan if we need it,” said Sirkis with the Forum on Climate Change. “We will register the forum as an association of civil society and link it to subnational governments. We have about six or seven [of 26] state governments that will be in. But our states are not as powerful as those in the U.S. We don’t have a California.”
Baretto, with Imazon, explained further: “Brazil’s government is more centralized. So the balance of forces is way different [than in the U.S.] Part of the solution will be to aggregate some national units. But most likely the solutions will come from the private sector, led by agribusiness.”
Mostly, though, Baretto appeared to be speaking for many a committed Brazilian environmentalist when he said, “I am preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”
So is Latin America. Shortly after his election, Bolsonaro reneged on Brazil’s offer to host the climate summit next year. United Nations officials have been scrambling to find another host.
Costa Rica Environmental Minister Carlos Manuel Rodriguez confirmed to reporters Friday, the final official day of COP24, that his country and Chile are giving serious consideration to hosting COP25.
Rodriquez noted that the estimated US$100 million that it costs to host an international summit that draws more than 30,000 attendees would be beyond the grasp of either Costa Rica or Chile to afford themselves. International assistance would be required, he said, adding that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change hopes it can decide on a 2019 venue within a month or two.
Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor to Mongabay, is covering his fifth UN climate summit. Follow him on Twitter @jcatanoso
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Article published by Glenn Scherer
Adaptation To Climate Change, agribusiness, Agriculture, Amazon Agriculture, Amazon Conservation, Amazon Destruction, Amazon Drought, Amazon Mining, Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Soy, carbon, Carbon Conservation, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Footprint, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Climate Activism, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Climate Change Negotiations, Climate Change Policy, Climate Change Politics, climate policy, Climate Politics, Climate Science, Conservation, Controversial, Emission Reduction, Energy, Energy Politics, Environment, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Law, Environmental Policy, Environmental Politics, Forest Carbon, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Global Warming, Global Warming Mitigation, Globalization, Green, Green Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Impact Of Climate Change, Industrial Agriculture, International Trade, Law, Mining, Monitoring, Murdered Activists, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Soy, Supply Chain, Sustainable Development, Trade, United Nations, Violence
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Rutgers Today > Health & Wellness
New Rutgers App Seeks to Reduce Infant Mortality
The SIDS Info app developed by Rutgers medical experts puts safe sleep recommendations in the hands of health care providers and new parents
Patti Verbanas
Barbara Ostfeld and Thomas Hegyi of the SIDS Center of New Jersey developed the SIDS Info app to educate parents and caregivers on safe infant sleep practices, such as placing an infant on his or her or back in a crib that does not contain blankets or bumpers.
Photo by Nick Romanenko / Rutgers University
patti.verbanas@rutgers.edu
Premature Infants at Greater Risk of SIDS
A Call to Action to Decrease Maternal Mortality Rates
Peter LaMont’s second child will be born next month, but the last time he put an infant to bed was 16 years ago. So, the Bridgewater father turned to the SIDS Center of New Jersey’s new SIDS Info app to catch up on safe sleep recommendations for babies.
The app was launched this month by the SIDS Center of New Jersey, which is based at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Hackensack Meridian Health.
“When my teenage daughter was a baby, she slept with blankets and crib bumpers,” LaMont said. “Today, the rule is that nothing is placed in the crib. Even though I already have a child, things have changed a lot and I want to be an informed parent. This app is convenient and allows me to access the most up-to-date guidelines.”
The free app, which was developed by Barbara Ostfeld and Thomas Hegyi, the center’s program and medical director, respectively, includes the American Academy of Pediatrics’ safe sleep guidelines for infants from birth to 12 months. The app also includes links to educational websites, a Q&A on safe infant sleep and resources, such as contact information for smoking cessation and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 3,500 infants under the age of one year die in the United States due to a sudden unexpected infant death, a grouping consisting of sudden infant death syndrome, accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed or unknown causes.
Although there are a few other apps that include safe infant sleep information, SIDS Info provides the most comprehensive educational material, Ostfeld said.
As parents scroll through the app, they see animations that feature a maternal voice combined with text, which educates the user on topics such as selecting a safe crib, how to dress an infant for sleep and what not to place in a crib. Parents then can click on the “Baby Talk” component, which provides additional information in a baby’s voice. A Spanish-language, text-only mode is also available.
“While handouts with crucial safe sleep guidelines can get lost or become outdated, the app places educational information literally at people’s fingertips – right on their phones,” said Ostfeld. “Our goal is to provide hospital nurses who educate new families at discharge with an efficient and standardized tool that parents can download to their phone for continued reference. It also allows practitioners who interact with parents after discharge to reinforce this information.”
The SIDS Info app is available for free on iPhone and Android.
SIDS Info is available on iPhone and Android and was funded by the center through a grant from the New Jersey Department of Health. The app is being promoted to professionals who interact with families at organizations such as hospitals, the Maternal and Child Health Consortia, the Division of Child Protection and Permanency and child care programs. The app also serves as a continuing education tool for health care providers, who can download courses on safe sleep for free.
Parents are encouraged to share the app with those caring for their infants, such as grandparents, siblings and babysitters, which is crucial for infant safety, Ostfeld said. “I’m a grandmother, and in our day, we were told to put babies to sleep on their stomachs,” she said. “I realize that people from our generation struggle with the concept that ‘back is best.’ The app helps them remember to put this into practice.”
The developers hope the app will broaden the reach of the AAP guidelines, which have been associated with a drop of more than 50 percent in infant sleep-related deaths since they were introduced. “Although New Jersey has one of the lowest rates of sudden unexpected infant deaths in the nation due to our education and outreach, we have to stay vigilant,” said Hegyi.
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Saunders Reflects on Life After Winning the Man Booker Prize
Thursday, October 26, 2017, By Sawyer Kamman
College of Arts and SciencesliteratureMan Booker Prize
What is life like after winning one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards? Arts and Sciences Professor George Saunders is just finding out, and was interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald about the days following his Man Booker Prize victory, and where he’s going from here.
“This is the first time in my life that I haven’t had something at home mid-process when I went on the road. So it’s a little worrisome for me, because I don’t have something back there waiting for me,” he said. “But I also have this theory that I’ve been doing this awhile and there are certain habits that kick in just from sitting down in front of a computer.”
Alumni Lead the Fight Against ALS in Upstate New York
Thursday, April 11, 2019, By Eileen Jevis
FNSSI to Hold Open House
Monday, January 27, 2014, By Sarah Scalese
Dulye Leadership Experience prepares SU students to stand out in tough job market
Wednesday, November 28, 2012, By News Staff
Physicists Aid in Study of Elusive Neutrinos
Monday, November 2, 2015, By Rob Enslin
Biologists Point to Climate Change Impacting Ecosystems
Tuesday, May 24, 2016, By Amy Manley
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Africa (1 of 54)
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Democratic Republic of the Congo US Consular Information Sheet
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) located in central Africa, is the third largest country on the continent. The capital Read More Show Less
s Kinshasa. French is the official language. Years of civil war and corruption have badly damaged the country's infrastructure. Read the Department of State Background Notes on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for additional information.
A passport, visa and evidence of yellow fever vaccination are required for entry. Some travelers arriving in the DRC without proper proof of yellow fever vaccination have been temporarily detained, had their passports confiscated, or been required to pay a fine. Information about yellow fever vaccination clinics in the U.S. may be found at http://www2.ncid.cdc.gov/travel/yellowfever/.
Visas must be obtained from an embassy of the DRC prior to arrival.
Travelers to the DRC frequently experience difficulties at the airport and other ports of entry, such as temporary detention, passport confiscation and demands by immigration and security personnel for unofficial “special fees.”
All resident foreigners, including Americans, are required to register at the office of the Direction General de Migration (DGM) in the commune of their place of residence.
Visitors who wish to travel in any mining areas must first obtain government approval from various government agencies or ministries, an often cumbersome and time consuming process.
Dual nationals arriving in the DRC should carefully consider which passport they use to enter the DRC. For departure from the DRC, airlines will require a valid visa for all destination countries before they will issue a ticket or allow a passenger to board. Airlines also require that the passenger have the correct entry stamp in the passport they wish to use to exit the country. Passengers who are unable to leave the country on the passport they used to enter the DRC may not be able to continue on their travel itinerary.
Additional information about visas may be obtained from the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1726 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20036, tel. (202) 234-7690, or the DRC's Permanent Mission to the UN, 866 United Nations Plaza, Room 511, New York, NY 10017, tel. 212-319-8061, fax: 212-319-8232, web site http://www.un.int/drcongo. Overseas, inquiries should be made at the nearest Congolese embassy or consulate. Information about dual nationality or the prevention of international child abduction can be found on our web site.
See the Department of State’s Travel Warning for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Though the DRC is now significantly more stable than it has been over the past decade, security remains problematic. The first democratic elections in more than forty years were held in 2006, and a new government is now in place. Post-election disturbances occurred as recently as March 2007 in Kinshasa, resulting in deaths of civilians and military personnel. During civil disturbances in 2007 there were incidents of hostility towards U.S. citizens and other expatriates.
Both inside and outside Kinshasa, there can be roadblocks, especially after dark. Vehicles are often searched for weapons and valuables, and travelers are checked for identity papers. Security forces regularly seek bribes. If confronted with such a situation, it is suggested that U.S. citizens remain courteous and calm. If detained, report the incident to the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa as soon as possible.
The United Nations has its largest peacekeeping operation in the world in the DRC. Known by its French acronym of MONUC, it has close to 17,000 peacekeepers deployed in the country – primarily in the east. Violence nevertheless persists in the eastern DRC due to the presence of several militias and foreign armed groups, with sporadic outbreaks occurring in North Kivu, South Kivu, and northern Katanga provinces, as well as in the Ituri District of Orientale province. Members of the Lord’s Resistance Army entered into northeastern DRC from Sudan in 2005, and have camps in an isolated region of the DRC, Garamba National Park, where they killed eight MONUC peacekeepers in January 2006.
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the U.S. and Canada, or for overseas callers, a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.
In the DRC, poor economic conditions continue to foster crime, especially in urban areas. Travel in many sections of Kinshasa, Kisangani, Lubumbashi and most other major cities, is generally safe during daylight hours, but travelers are urged to be vigilant against criminal activity which targets non-Congolese, particularly in highly congested traffic and areas surrounding hotels and stores. Outlying, remote areas are less secure due to high levels of criminal activity and the lack of adequate training, supervision, and salary payments to the security forces present.
Vehicle thefts, burglaries, and armed robbery occur throughout the country; there have been recent reports of after-dark carjackings, resulting in deaths in the North Kivu area. It is recommended to drive with doors locked and windows closed at all times. If confronted by members of the military or security forces, visitors should not permit soldiers or police officers to enter their vehicles nor get into the vehicle of anyone purporting to be a security official. It is recommended that in such instances U.S. citizens remain courteous and calm and, if threatened, not resist. All incidents should be reported to the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa.
Consistency in administering laws and regulations is notably absent. Travelers should note that in cases of theft and robbery, legal recourse is limited. Therefore, valuable items may be safer if kept at home or another secure location.
Security officials and/or individuals purporting to be security officials have detained and later robbed American citizens and other foreigners in the city of Kinshasa. This type of crime has increased in recent months, but generally occurs more frequently during the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
Travelers using public transportation or visiting high pedestrian traffic areas of any type are advised to be vigilant against robbery and pick-pocketing which is a persistent problem in all major cities in the DRC. The presence of “street children”, who can be persistent and sometimes aggressive, remains a problem particularly in Kinshasa.
Although the investigation and prosecution of the crime is solely the responsibility of local authorities, consular officers can help you to understand the local criminal justice process and to find an attorney if needed.
In the DRC, medical facilities are severely limited, and medical materials are in short supply. Travelers should carry properly labeled prescription drugs and other medications with them and should not expect to find an adequate supply of prescription or over-the-counter drugs in local stores or pharmacies. Payment for any medical services required is expected in cash, in advance of treatment.
Malaria is common throughout the DRC and outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, the Ebola virus, and hemorrhagic fever occur.
Travelers should take appropriate precautions to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Tuberculosis is an increasingly serious health concern in the DRC.
For further information, please consult the CDC's Travel Notice on TB at: http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/yellowBookCh4-TB.aspx.
The U.S. Department of State is unaware of any HIV/AIDS entry restrictions for visitors to or foreign residents of the DRC.
Further health information for travelers is available at http://www.who.int/ith/en
For planning purposes, the minimum estimated cost of medical air evacuation to the nearest suitable health care facility (in South Africa) is $35,000.
While in a foreign country, U.S. citizens may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States. The information below concerning the DRC is provided for general reference only, and may vary according to location or circumstance.
Inter-city roads are scarce, and throughout the DRC roads are generally in poor condition, and often impassable in the rainy season. When driving in cities, keep windows up and doors locked. At roadblocks or checkpoints, documents should be shown through closed windows. In the event of a traffic incident involving bodily injury to a third party or pedestrian, do not stop to offer assistance under any circumstances. Proceed directly to the nearest police station or gendarmerie to report the incident and request official government intervention. Attempting to provide assistance may further aggravate the incident, resulting in a hostile mob reaction such as stoning or beating.
Presidential and other official motorcades pose serious risks to drivers and pedestrians in Kinshasa. When hearing sirens or seeing security forces announcing the motorcade's approach, drivers should pull off the road as far as possible, stop their vehicles, and extinguish headlights. Vehicles should not attempt to move until the entire motorcade has passed by; the security forces will physically indicate when this has occurred. Failure to comply may result in arrest, and/or vehicle damage with possible personal injury.
Public transportation of all forms is unregulated and is generally unsafe and unreliable. Taxis, mini-buses, and trains are in poor mechanical condition and are invariably filled beyond capacity.
Drivers should stop their cars and pedestrians should stand still when passing a government installation during the raising and lowering of the Congolese flag. This ceremony occurs at roughly 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT:
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of the DRC’s Civil Aviation Authority as not being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for the oversight of the DRC’s air carrier operations.
For more information, travelers may visit the FAA’s web site at http://www.faa.gov/safety/programs_initiatives/oversight/iasa.
Civil aviation in the DRC continues to experience air incidents and accidents; more than a dozen crashes and in-flight accidents resulted in more than 300 fatalities between 2000 and August 2008. Incidents included hard landings, engine failures, collapsed landing gear, and planes veering off the runway.
In-country air travel schedules are unreliable and planes are frequently overloaded with passengers and/or cargo.
The U.S. Embassy in the DRC has prohibited official travel by U.S. government employees and contractors on all DRC-owned and -operated commercial air transportation services due to concerns regarding safety and maintenance.
International flights on foreign-owned and -operated carriers are not affected by this notice.
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES:
Photography: Travelers should note that photography in public places in Kinshasa and around any public or government building or monument in the DRC is strictly forbidden. Persons caught photographing such sites will likely have their photographic equipment confiscated and risk detention and possible arrest.
Travel to and from Congo-Brazzaville (Republic of Congo): Ferry service to and from Kinshasa and Brazzaville stops running in the late afternoon, does not operate on Sundays, and may close completely with minimal notice. If ferry service is functioning, a special exit permit from the DRC's Immigration Service and a visa from the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) are required for U.S. citizens to cross the Congo River from Kinshasa to Brazzaville.
Ferry and riverboat service to the Central African Republic is suspended due to rebel control of the Ubangui River.
Phone Service: In the DRC, cellular phones are the norm, as other telephone service is unreliable. Depending on the type of phone, it may be possible to locally purchase a SIM card to use an American-compatible cell phone in the DRC.
Currency: U.S. currency is widely accepted in the urban areas, but most vendors and banking institutions will accept only Series 1996 bills or newer, with the large, off-center portraits, that provide stronger protection against counterfeiting. In addition, bills must be in near perfect condition; even those with minor stains or small tears will be rejected. One dollar bills are rarely accepted, even if in mint condition. U.S. bills should be examined before they are accepted to ensure that they are legitimate, as counterfeit currency is widely circulated. It is recommended that currency exchange be conducted at reputable banks and not on the street where several schemes exist to either short-change the unwitting customer or to pass counterfeit bills.
While in any foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country's laws and regulations, which sometimes differ significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law. Engaging in sexual conduct with children or using or disseminating child pornography in a foreign country is a crime, prosecutable in the United States. Please see our information on Criminal Penalties.
Penalties for breaking the law can be more severe in the DRC than in the United States for similar offenses.
Persons violating Congolese laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned. Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in the DRC are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines. Accusations of engaging in crimes against the security of the State, which are loosely defined, often result in detention for prolonged periods without being formally arrested. The DRC’s justice system remains plagued by corruption and uneven application of the law. Attorney fees can be expensive and are expected to be paid in advance of services rendered.
REGISTRATION / EMBASSY LOCATION:
Americans living or traveling in the DRC are encouraged to register with the U.S. Embassy through the State Department’s travel registration web site, so that they can obtain updated information on travel and security within the Congo. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the U.S. Embassy.
By registering, American citizens make it easier for the Embassy to contact them in case of emergency. The U.S. Embassy is located at 310 Avenue des Aviateurs; tel. 243-081-225-5872 (do not dial the zero when calling from abroad). Entrance to the Consular Section of the Embassy is on Avenue Dumi, opposite the Ste. Anne residence. The Consular Section of the Embassy may be reached at tel. 243-081-884-6859 or 243-081-884-4609; fax 243-081-301-0560 (do not dial the first zero when calling from abroad).
This replaces the Country Specific Information for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dated April 29, 2008, to update sections on Entry/Exit Requirements and Medical Facilities and Health Information.
DR Congo Ebola death toll exceeds 1,600 mark
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2019 16:16:15 +0200
Kinshasa, July 5, 2019 (AFP) - Deaths from an 11-month-old epidemic of Ebola in eastern DR Congo have crossed the 1,600 mark and a new fatality has been reported near the border with Uganda, the health ministry said on Friday. As of Thursday, the health authorities had recorded 2,382 cases of Ebola, of which 1,606 had been fatal, it said. A ministry spokesman told AFP that a patient whose infection had been reported on Monday in Ariwara, in Ituri province bordering Uganda, had died.
The fatality is a mother from neighbouring North Kivu province whose five children had become infected with Ebola, two of whom had died. She had gone to Ituri in order to evade Ebola response teams, the ministry said. Ariwari lies in northern Ituri, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Uganda and some 60 kms from South Sudan. "So far, 177 people who have been in contact with the family have been identified in Ariwara and 40 have already been vaccinated," the ministry said.contacts The disease broke out in North Kivu before spreading to Ituri.
Two people also died in Uganda in June after a family returned from eastern Congo where they had buried an Ebola-stricken relative. The current epidemic is the worst on record after more than 11,300 were killed Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in an outbreak between 2014-2016. Ebola spreads among humans through close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person, or objects contaminated by such fluids.
Separately on Friday, the UN said the Ebola risk in Ituri was being heightened by violence that has caused people to flee their homes, forcing them to gather in places with poor hygiene that were vulnerable to disease spread.
DR Congo death toll mounts - new fatality near Ugandan border
The fatality is a mother from neighbouring North Kivu province whose five children had become infected with Ebola, two of whom had died. She had gone to Ituri in order to evade Ebola response teams, the ministry said. Ariwari lies in northern Ituri, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Uganda and some 60 kms from South Sudan. "So far, 177 people who have been in contact with the family have been identified in Ariwara and 40 have already been vaccinated," the ministry said.contacts The disease broke out in North Kivu before spreading to Ituri. Two people also died in Uganda in June after a family returned from eastern Congo where they had buried an Ebola-stricken relative.
The current epidemic is the worst on record after more than 11,300 were killed Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in an outbreak between 2014-2016. Ebola spreads among humans through close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person, or objects contaminated by such fluids. Separately on Friday, the UN said the Ebola risk in Ituri was being heightened by violence that has caused people to flee their homes, forcing them to gather in places with poor hygiene that were vulnerable to disease spread.
Fire razes 150+ homes in Bukavu (DRCongo)
Disturbances Congo, Democratic Republic - 12 days ago
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2019 17:43:41 +0200
Bukavu, DR Congo, July 1, 2019 (AFP) - A massive fire sparked in a house where a woman fried donuts near cans of petrol, has razed more than 150 homes in the eastern DR Congo, killing a seven-year-old girl, officials and residents said Monday. The fire broke out Sunday evening in the city of Bukavu, where locals were celebrating the country's 4-0 African Cup of Nations victory over Zimbabwe. "The fire started in a house where a woman was preparing donuts and where a fuel seller kept at least ten cans of petrol," civil protection official Aime Lubago told AFP.
Mayor Gerard Munyole of the Kadutu commune struck by the blaze said a child was killed, three people injured, and 150 homes burned down, leaving about 400 families roofless. Another source said more than 200 homes were destroyed. "We have nothing left. We spent the night under the stars, (me,) my six children and my wife," said 59-year-old victim Boaz Bahati. A fire truck sent to the scene Sunday could not find its way through the tightly-packed maze of houses built in contravention of urban planning regulations, Lubago said. Another fire razed dozens of houses in another Bukavu suburb last August. Constructed on the flanks of hills overlooking Lake Kivu, the city -- a mix of shacks and villas -- is densely populated.
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Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman
Posted by Nicolas Sawaya in American Current Events, Law
Martin, Stand Your Ground, Zimmerman
So I finally had a chance to look into the details of the Martin vs. Zimmerman case. It seems to me, after much reading and thought, that the jury reached the correct verdict in acquitting Zimmerman of the charge of second degree murder and manslaughter. Furthermore, I don’t believe it is fair to say that the jury was racist or prejudiced in arriving at their acquittal. There is no evidence that they were, and there is good evidence to support the not-guilty verdict based on the existing laws on the books and the judge’s instructions to them (as to how the laws were to be interpreted and what parts of the law were to be discarded). As such, it is unfair to say that they were motivated by anything other than evidence, laws and their interpretation (through the judge’s instructions).
To be clear, just because I think the jury was correct in acquitting Zimmerman doesn’t mean that I consider Zimmerman to be (morally) innocent; simply, that there was reasonable doubt as to whether he was guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter per the laws on the books and per the judges’ instructions. Zimmerman, the person, does seem to be a creepy wannabe failed policeman, and it does seem somewhat plausible to assume that he pursued Martin because of his prejudice about what a “suspicious” person looks like, which seems to have “precipitated” the confrontation that ended up costing Martin his life. As such, the intuition rebels against the notion that such a person who behaved in this fashion and that ended up killing an innocent 17 year old who was originally minding his own business could be left unpunished by the legal system. As sympathetic as I am to this intuition, the laws on the books and the judge’s instructions make for a strong case in acquitting Zimmerman. As such, it makes you think about the laws more than anything (and I’m not talking about Stand Your Ground, which I believe is irrelevant to this case, as discussed below).
Finally, I know this case has inflamed passions on both sides, so I know that by virtue of arriving at any conclusion, some people are going to be upset, regardless of how well reasoned your case is. Having said that, I’m obviously no legal expert, so if you disagree with my reasoning, I’m glad to entertain counter-arguments with whomever objects.
With that as a preface, let’s start by examining Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, which was used to get an acquittal. The defense argued that at the moment right before lethal force was used, Zimmerman was on his back being pounded into the cement by Martin, and given that he reasonably believed that he faced great bodily harm or the threat of death, he was justified in shooting Martin in self-defense.
So then the question is this: was Zimmerman truly in a situation where he was facing grievous bodily harm or death at the time lethal force was used? Now, we’ll never know what exactly happened that night, but the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was not in a situation at the time lethal force was used where he reasonably believed that grievous bodily harm or death could result, for a guilty verdict of second degree murder or manslaughter to be upheld. Given that the forensic evidence and eye/ear witness accounts seemed to support Zimmerman’s version of the story, the prosecution’s case was next to impossible: clearly there was reasonable doubt.
Interestingly, the defense never used the Stand Your Ground clause, and it was never brought up by the prosecution during the trial either.The reason why Stand Your Ground wasn’t invoked was because the defense argued that he had no option to flee when he was (supposedly) on his back with Martin on top pounding him. As such, given that they argued that there was no option to flee at the time the deadly force was used, the Stand Your Ground provision is irrelevant. Even in “Duty To Flee” states, if retreat is not an option, you are justified, in self-defense, to use deadly force if you reasonably believe that you are facing great bodily harm or death. To show this, take a look at the relevant language after the Stand Your Ground Law was enacted in Florida in 2005:
“In deciding whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you must judge him by the circumstances by which he was surrounded at the time the force was used. The danger facing George Zimmerman need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of deadly force, the appearance of danger must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person under the same circumstances would have believed that the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force. Based upon appearances, George Zimmerman must have actually believed that the danger was real.
If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
And the language before the law was enacted:
“In deciding whether defendant was justified in the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm, you must judge him by the circumstances by which he was surrounded at the time the force was used. The danger facing the defendant need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm, the appearance of danger must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person under the same circumstances would have believed that the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force. Based upon appearances, the defendant must have actually believed that the danger was real.
The defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force. The fact that the defendant was wrongfully attacked cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force. However, if the defendant was placed in a position of imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and it would have increased his own danger to retreat, then his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm was justifiable.”
Clearly then, if retreat was not an option as the defense argued, then we arrive at the same conclusion whether “Stand Your Ground” or “Duty to Flee” clauses are at play. To counter this, the prosecution, under a hypothetical “Duty to Flee” scenario, would have had to show beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman could have retreated at the time lethal force was used. Again, given that the forensic and eye/ear witness accounts seem to corroborate Zimmerman’s story that he was pinned underneath Martin and that he was being pounded from up top, it’s next to impossible to make the case beyond reasonable doubt that he could have fled (see here and here).
Furthermore, to preempt some of the commonly made objections that Stand Your Ground did indeed play a role in the verdict (contra what I said above), I will state that yes, it was in the judges’ instructions, and that yes, juror B-37 did mention Stand Your Ground in the Anderson Cooper interview.
But just because it was in the instructions doesn’t mean it was relevant to the case; to wit, the Castle Doctrine was also in the judges’ instructions, and clearly had nothing to do with the case as the crime scene happened outside of anyone’s house. Furthermore, regarding juror B-37, it seems that his invocation of Stand Your Ground and his description of it and his reasoning are at odds, as the seems to be describing plain old self-defense.
So far, I have avoided focusing on the fact that Zimmerman stalked Martin because he thought he was suspicious, or that his pursuit of him “provoked” the confrontation that ensued (given that you have a creepy male trailing you in a car, and then on foot, in the middle of a rainy night). Could one not argue that since Zimmerman provoked the confrontation, surely he could not invoke “self-defense”? As it turns out, Florida does have a clause in the law that would prevent the aggressor (the one that “started it”) from claiming self-defense if lethal force was used against someone.
The problem, however, is 3-fold:
1) It is not clear how “aggressor” is defined. It seems to be commonly interpreted as the use of force or the threat of force against someone else. Given that pursuing someone (even if the police dispatcher says: “we don’t need you to do this”) is not illegal and not necessarily tantamount to using force or the threat of force, I’m not sure that Zimmerman would have been viewed as the aggressor per this clause in the law (even though he clearly “provoked”, in some sense, the ensuing confrontation); see here and here.
2) Even if it could have been hypothetically proven that Zimmerman was the aggressor, the judge dismissed the use of this clause in his instructions to the jurors. As such, the jurors never had a chance to consider this part of the law in the first place.
3) Finally, even if Zimmerman was hypothetically deemed to be the aggressor and the judge had allowed the clause in the instructions, there is an exception to the clause that no deadly force can be used by the aggressor, and that is if the aggressor has no option to retreat and is being subjected to grave bodily harm or death (see 2a in statute 776.041, linked above). As such, we’re back to the notion of proving beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman could have actually fled when the use of lethal force occurred (and that he was the aggressor on top of that); quite the difficult task.
In conclusion, this case is the definition of a tragedy. A sequence of events where a 17 year old kid that lost his life in circumstances that did not need to happen because of behavior that could have been avoided, for which there is no real recourse within the law. Not sure how you remedy this in the future.
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Orthodox Synaxis
that they all may be one
Prayer for Unity
Ukraine FAQ
March 9, 2019 Petrus Antiochenus
The Holy Synod of Albania’s Letter to Patriarch Bartholomew
Greek original here.
Your All-Holiness and Most Divine Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, the greatly beloved in Christ God brother and concelebrant of our Mediocrity, Bartholomew , embracing Your Most Divine All-Holiness in the Lord, we affectionately greet you.
“Christ our God has appeared and has enlightened the world.” May He enlighten the perceptions, the decisions and the actions of all the Orthodox in the new year, guiding aright the Church “which He purchased with His own blood” to the path of peace.
Gathering in Synod on January 4, 2019, we thoroughly read the letter that Your Most Divine All-Holiness sent on December 24, 2018 and extensively treated the issue of granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. With sincere respect and love, as always, we summarize the assessment of the Albanian Church, chiefly with regard to the issue of the activities of the Holy Spirit.
Our criticism of the Church of Russia for refusing to take part in the Great and Holy Orthodox Council on Crete is already well-known, as well as similarly recently for hastiness in breaking Eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Specifically, in our letter (November 7, 2018) where, among other things, we pointed out to His Beatitude the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, “… Is it possible that the decision and order of the Hierarchy of the Church of Russia may cancel the energy of the Holy Spirit in the holy Orthodox churches that operate under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate? … We proclaim that it is impossible for us to agree to such decisions. It is imperative that the Holy Eucharist, this mystery of unfathomable sacredness and unique importance, remains far removed from all ecclesiastical disagreements.”
The very same distress and anguish for safeguarding the unity of the Orthodox Church obliges us to formulate a fundamental doubt about the retroactive validity of ordinations performed by a deposed, excommunicated and anathematized person. The career of the one who committed the actions in question, Mr Filaret Denysenko (the protagonist of the ecclesiastical crisis in Ukraine) is revealing. Consecrated as a bishop of the Patriarchate of Moscow in 1962, he acted, among other functions, as president of its Department of External Affairs and Metropolitan of Kiev. In 1991, he sought autocephaly, not from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but from according to him the “Mother Church”, the Patriarchate of Moscow. In 1992 he was deposed, while in 1997 he was excommunicated and anathematized by the Church of Russia, an organic part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, actions that were recognized by all the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches.
While Filaret was deposed and excommunicated, he performed uncanonical liturgical actions, which do not constitute valid mysteries. Therefore the ordinations performed by him are non-existent, void, deprived of the divine grace of the Holy Spirit. Among them are the ordinations to deacon, priest and finally bishop of his pupil Sergei Dumenko, now Metropolitan Epiphany. In your letter from December 24, 2018, it states “… have returned them to the hierarchical and priestly ranks…” We question, nevertheless, whether the ordinations performed by Filaret, while he was excommunicated and anathematized, acquired thereafter, without canonical ordination, validity from the Holy Spirit and a genuine seal of apostolic succession.
It is recognized by all of Orthodoxy as a fundamental ecclesiological principle that the ordinations of schismatics and heretics, as “mysteries” performed outside of the Church, are invalid, so all the more so ordinations by someone who is deposed and excommunicated. We believe that this basic principle, which is inextricably tied to Orthodox teaching about the Holy Spirit, constituting an unshakeable foundation for the apostolic succession of Orthodox bishops, cannot be neglected.
It is difficult for us to understand that invalid and non-existent things are being made Spirit-bearing “by economy” and that actions constituting repeated blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (such as the invocation by the then-excommunicated Filaret, “Divine Grace… is placed into the hands… let us pray for him upon whom the grace of the Holy Spirit comes…”) are being recognized retroactively “by economy”. It is, finally, well-known that according to the recent Unifying Council, the selection and election of the new Primate of the Church of Ukraine was the result of the insistence of Filaret, who moreover today is officially called in Ukraine “His Holiness the honorary Patriarch of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine.” After all the above, we question adding the name of Metropolitan Epiphany to the diptychs.
The expected peacemaking between Ukrainian Orthodox, who have in the past suffered various persecutions by atheistic regimes, has not yet been acheived, inasmuch as millions of Orthodox believers under Metropolitan Onufry (according to the statistics of January 2018, organized into 12,069 parishes under 90 bishops, counting 12,283 clerics, 251 monasteries and 4412 monastics) have refused to participate in the process of granting autocephaly, indeed breaking Eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, wehereas in the past the ecclesiastical pleroma of countries (Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Albania, Chechia and Slovakia) to which autocephaly was granted was united.
We regret that the concerns that we expressed to the three-member delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate (July 2018) as well as at our personal meeting on Crete (October 2018) have been confirmed: instead of making peace among and unifying the Orthodox of Ukraine, the unity of Orthodoxy throughout the world is threatened with division.
The predictions that the current conflict and the obvious division will last a short time and that all the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches will eventually accept what has happened can only be perceived as unfounded speculation by those familiar with the history of ecclesiastical schisms and the durability of religious fanaticism. But the reassuring conjectures of some that perhaps this will take place… in the next century are rather cynical. Serious injuries that are not treated in time are not healed by time. Rather, they expand and develop into incurable wounds.
The situation existing today requires new approaches and inspired initiatives for promoting peace in Ukraine, above all for safeguarding the dangerously wounded unity of Orthodoxy. In this regard, we unshakeably believe that a solution is found in recourse to the synodality inspired by the Holy Spirit, which was stressed on Crete: “The Orthodox Church expresses her unity and catholicity “in Council”. Conciliarity pervades her organization, the way decisions are taken and determines her path” (Message of the Great and Holy Council, paragraph 1).
We still think that the Pan-Orthodox Synaxes of Primates and the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church were unique achievements of the Orthodox in recent decades, due to the tireless efforts of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of Your Most Divine All-Holiness personally. In accordance with the spirit of synodality of the Great and Holy Council, the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church warmly requests that the Ecumenical Patriarchate, making eminent use of coordination of the Orthodox Churches, convenes as soon as possible a Pan-Orthodox Synaxis or Council in order to prevent the immanent danger of creating a painful schism that endangers the credibility of Orthodoxy and her persuasive witness to the contemporary world.
From the depths we pray and humbly supplicate that God in Trinity will guide all of our steps toward securing the unity of Orthodoxy. “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
And so, embracing You with a holy kiss, we remain, with all respect and most profound love in Christ God who has appeared to us and has enlightened the world.
Tirana, January 14, 2019
Yours [literally: belonging to Your Most Divine All-Holiness],
+Anastasios of Tirana, president
Previous Met. Emmanuel’s Homily for the Enthronement of Epiphany (Dumenko)
Next Agreement Between Ukraine and the Ecumenical Patriarchate
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Home » Education
Reimagining Career Pathways for (and with) Youth, Educators and Employers
Despite a growing economy, a tight labor market and low-unemployment, job gains for young adults in New York City over the last five years have largely been in low-wage, part-time jobs with limited opportunities to transition to full-time, family-...
Issue-Based
The Turmoil in Four-Year Private Colleges and Why Foundations Should Care
Tuesday, May 21, 2019 -
Private four year colleges are under unprecedented pressure. Hampshire College, the College of New Rochelle, Sweet Briar, Mount Ida and many others have closed, merged into other institutions, or announced their intention to "explore strategic...
Respected and Reflected: Dismantling Racial Bias in Schools through Culturally Responsive Education
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 -
In a city where most students are students of color, few reforms have focused on racial bias and discrimination in our schools. To address the root causes of persistent inequalities in the New York City schools, advocates and community leaders are...
Meet Chancellor Richard A. Carranza
Wednesday, December 12, 2018 -
Richard A. Carranza has served as Schools Chancellor of New York City schools since 2018. Since taking office, Chancellor Carranza has spoken about his four priorities for the 2018-2019 academic year: 1) accelerate learning and instruction, 2)...
Roundtable Discussion
*Postponed* Getting Through the Front Door: A Campaign to Make Public Schools Accessible
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 -
In 2016, an investigation by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York found that over 80% of the City’s elementary schools were not fully accessible.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Conversation about Education with the Gates Foundation’s Bob Hughes
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 -
Robert Hughes has served for many years as an advocate and champion of public education in New York City. In 2016 Bob transitioned from being President of New Visions Public school to becoming the K-12 Strategy Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates...
Funding Our Future – the ABCs of Early Care and Education Financing in New York
Wednesday, October 31, 2018 -
Today, 82% of children in the U.S. live in households with working parents, and more than 5 million (or approximately 1 in 5) under the age of 6 live in poverty. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, expanding access to high-quality early care...
Comprehensive, Long-Term Supports for NYC Foster Youth: Part III of “Helping Foster Youth Succeed” Series
This is a follow-on session to last year's “ Helping Foster Care Youth Succeed: Skills and strategies that support the transition to adulthood " and " Helping Foster Care Youth Succeed, Part II ".
How International Education Funders Facilitate Learning Among Grantees - and Translation of Practice into Policy - A Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, September 26, 2018 -
International education funders have been working with a wide spectrum of primary and secondary schools, community-based organizations, NGOs and governments to improve access, quality, and relevance of primary and secondary education. We have made...
International/Foreign Affairs
TRANSformational Grantmaking: Understanding Gender Identity to Increase Impact
Thursday, September 13, 2018 -
As funders have committed themselves to reduce inequity, there is a growing recognition that transgender and gender nonconforming people – who often use the acronym TGNC – face a constellation of barriers in education, justice, health services,...
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Lake Manyara
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Category: Destinations Hits: 258
Arusha National Park covers Mount Meru, a prominent volcano with an elevation of 4566 m, in the Arusha Region of north eastern Tanzania. The park is small but varied with spectacular landscapes in three distinct areas. In the west, the Meru Crater funnels the Jekukumia River; the peak of Mount Meru lies on its rim. Ngurdoto Crater in the south-east is grassland. The shallow alkaline Momella Lakes in the north-east have varying algal colours and are known for their wading birds.
Mount Meru is the second highest peak in Tanzania after Mount Kilimanjaro, which is just 60 km away and forms a backdrop to views from the park to the east. Arusha National Park lies on a 300-kilometre axis of Africa's most famous national parks, running from Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in the west to Kilimanjaro National Park in the east.
The park is just a few kilometres north east of Arusha, though the main gate is 25 km east of the city. It is also 58 km from Moshi and 35 km from Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA).
Mount Meru is a dormant stratovolcano located 70 kilometres (43 mi) west of Mount Kilimanjaro in the country of Tanzania. At a height of 4,562.13 metres (14,968 ft) it is visible from Mount Kilimanjaro on a clear day, and is the fifth-highest mountain in Africa, dependent on definition.
Mount Meru is located just north of the city of Arusha, in the Arusha Region of Tanzania. It is the second-highest mountain in Tanzania, after Mount Kilimanjaro. The Momella route – which starts at Momella gate, on the eastern side of the mountain – is used to climb Mount Meru.[6]
Much of its bulk was lost about 8,000[citation needed] years ago due to an eastward volcanic blast, similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in the U.S. state of Washington. Mount Meru most recently had a minor eruption in 1910. The several small cones and craters seen in the vicinity probably reflect numerous episodes of volcanic activity. Mount Meru's caldera is 2.2 miles (3.5 km) wide.
Mount Meru is the topographic centerpiece of Arusha National Park. Its fertile slopes rise above the surrounding savanna and support a forest that hosts diverse wildlife, including nearly 400 species of birds, and also monkeys and leopards.
Mountain Rwenzori National Park is located within the “Mountains of the Moon”, as Mount Rwenzori is called. Mountain Rwenzori is situated in Western Uganda in the East African Rift Valley and straddles also to the Democratic Republic of Congo and its conservation area known as Virunga National Park. The mountain is the third highest in Africa rising up more than 16,700 feet above sea level and its highest peaks rise above the clouds and are permanently snow capped. The Rwenzori Mountain ranges are higher compared to the Alps and they have glaciers which are one of the sources of the longest river on earth, the River Nile. Margherita Peak is the highest peak on the ranges making it the 3rd highest peak in Africa together with its twin peak, Mount Stanley, which is within the park. The 4th and 5th highest peaks, Mount Speke and Mount Baker, are also within the park. The mountain ranges were first brought to the worlds notice in CE 150 by Alexandrian geographical researcher and photographer, Pletomy, when he described a stunning mountain which he christened “mountain of the moon.” Later in 1899, English explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, was as spell bound as Pletomy when he beheld the ranges and christened them the “Cloud Mountains.”
The Rwenzori national park, which is the conservation area for the mountain, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and covers almost 1000 sq. km and strides across the districts of Kabarole, Kasese and Bundibudyo. It includes most of the center and the eastern half of the mountain and is known for its beautiful plant life coupled with waterfalls, glaciers and a lot of other unique mountainous vegetation. The park has glaciers, snowfields, waterfalls and has been portrayed as one of the mainly attractive Alpine areas around the world.
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) is in south-western Uganda. The park is part of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and is situated along the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border next to the Virunga National Park and on the edge of the Albertine Rift. Composed of 331 square kilometres (128 sq mi) of both montane and lowland forest, it is accessible only on foot. BINP is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-designated World Heritage Site.
Species diversity is a feature of the park. It provides habitat for 120 species of mammals, 348 species of birds, 220 species of butterflies, 27 species of frogs, chameleons, geckos, and many endangered species. Floristically, the park is among the most diverse forests in East Africa, with more than 1,000 flowering plant species, including 163 species of trees and 104 species of ferns. The northern (low elevation) sector has many species of Guineo-Congolian flora, including two endangered species, the brown mahogany and Brazzeia longipedicellata. In particular, the area shares in the high levels of endemisms of the Albertine Rift.
The park is a sanctuary for colobus monkeys, chimpanzees, and many birds such as hornbills and turacos. It is most notable for the 400 Bwindi gorillas, half of the world's population of the endangered mountain gorillas. 14 habituated mountain gorilla groups are open to tourism in four different sectors of Buhoma, Ruhijja, Rushaga and the Nkuringo all under the management of Uganda Wildlife Authority.
Mombasa, city and chief Port
Mombasa, city and chief port of Kenya, situated on a coralline island in a bay of the Indian Ocean. The island is linked to its mainland municipal territory of 100 square miles (259 square km) by causeway, bridge, and ferry and has an area of 5.5 square miles (14.25 square km).
Before Mombasa became well established as an important port for trade across the Indian Ocean, the general area had long been the site of settlements inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples who engaged in farming, fishing, and local trading. It was visited in 1331 by the Arab traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭah and in 1498 by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. Because of its strategic position, it was continually fought over, passing among the Arabs, Persians, Portuguese, and Turks until 1840, when the sultan of Zanzibar finally gained control. It came under British administration in 1895 and was the capital of the East Africa Protectorate until 1907. Mombasa became a municipality in 1928 and assumed council status in 1959.
Mombasa has two ports, Mombasa Old Port on the island’s east side and Kilindini Harbour on the west. The old port is now used only by dhows and small craft, bringing trade from Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and India. The old city is strongly Middle Eastern, with narrow streets, high houses with carved ornamental balconies, and mosques and temples. It is the site of Fort Jesus, built by the Portuguese (1593–95) and now a museum. There are Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals. A Hindu temple built in 1952 has a gilded dome. Mombasa’s many historical and cultural attractions have made it a popular tourist destination.
Kilindini is a modern deepwater port of numerous berths in a landlocked anchorage. Mombasa serves as the market for the region’s agricultural products (sisal, cotton, sugar, kapok, coconuts, fruits, and vegetables), and it exports many of these as well as the products of northeastern Tanzania and Uganda, with which it is connected by rail. Industries include shipbuilding and repair, metal and cement works, sugar processing, a fertilizer plant, and an oil refinery at Changamwe.
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Top 5 Iconic Moments in Cardinals History
Posted on January 21, 2012 by Bob Netherton
For the January project, United Cardinal Bloggers members will be writing about their top five iconic moments in Cardinals history. Really, Daniel ? Just five ? No way. Seriously. I can think of five iconic moments, just in the 1964 season alone (the Lou Brock trade, Al Jackson nearly ending the season for the Cardinals, the final game of the regular season, Ken Boyer’s grand slam, and Gibson throwing a gem in Game Seven).
But rules are rules, so I give you my Top 5 Iconic Moments in Cardinals history, or at least the last half century.
5. September 8, 1998 – Mark McGwire hits number 62
For the next few moments, we will have to suspend any pretense of indignation over the steroids era. We all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when Mark McGwire passed Roger Maris for the single season home run record. That’s why this is Iconic Moment Number 5.
I was passing through the Salt Lake City airport, on my way home from Boise, Idaho. Between the two gates, and with about 15 minutes of time before my next flight boarded, I found a little bar that was showing the game. As I stepped in, the Cardinals were batting in the fourth inning, and Fernando Tatis had just struck out. The huge crowd noise from St. Louis, and raised voices in the bar, told me that Mark McGwire was coming up to the plate.
All I saw was the one Steve Trachsel delivery, but it was enough as McGwire hit a hard line drive down the left field line. The only question was whether it was high enough to clear the outfield wall. It was and then there was pandemonium in the stadium, the small Salt Lake City airport bar, and just about everywhere else in the country. Baseball was back, and we had a new hero.
It is easy to forget that baseball had suffered a black eye just a few years earlier when a strike ended the 1994 season prematurely and deprived fans of a season champion. Even die hard baseball fans stayed away once play resumed in 1995. Attendance was down all across both leagues and the sport was seriously in need of some sort of event or charismatic hero to bring them back. Three men did exactly that: Cal Ripken closing in on Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record and the single season home run record chase by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.
What made they McGwire and Sosa race so special is that they were generally likable players who played for rival teams, both with their own rich history. In many respects, this was similar to the great home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 1961, just with a twist. Cardinals fans may have been a bit more personally committed during this historic battle because the legacy of Busch Stadium was one of hostility towards the long ball. Even after major renovations in 1995, it was at best a fair ballpark. While there had been some great power hitters in St. Louis, there was never a thought of a Cardinal winning the home run title, much less setting the single season record.
Until 1998.
But it was more than just fans of the Cubs and Cardinals watching closely during the late summer in 1998. ESPN would run regular McGwire and Sosa updates, occasionally breaking into their coverage when one of them came up to bat. We were all glued to our televisions as the home run counts went up, 55, 56, 57 and then 58. Which one would break the record, and would they be able to keep it through the end of the season.
To make this moment perfect, the record was broken in St. Louis, against the Cubs with Sammy Sosa playing in right field. Sammy Sosa applauded McGwire, and Big Mac returned the gesture towards Sosa. And then the sequence of images we will all remember: Dave McKay pointing at first base, McGwire hugging Scott Servais of the Cubs before touching home plate, McGwire hoisting his son high into the air and giving him a kiss and then Big Mac jumping into the stands to spend a moment with the Maris family. If you have somehow forgotten all of this, you can relive this moment by watching this video.
Tell me that you didn’t get goosebumps while watching that video. While watching the video, it struck me how hard Mark McGwire ran to first base on that historic home run. If there was ever one time to stand and admire, it would have been that home run, but McGwire knew that his team was down 2-0 at that point, and he would have plenty of time to admire it later. It was not a sure thing, and if it didn’t leave the park, McGwire wanted to be standing safely on second base.
The iconic moment did not end there. The two would battle for the remainder of the season, with Sosa pulling ahead of McGwire for a few games. More important though, was the attention St. Louis received during this great season. The additional revenue from attendance, both at home and away, gave the Cardinals money to invest in free agents and extending the contracts of their core players. That allowed Walt Jocketty to retool the team into a perennial contender, and the impact of that can be still seen on the current roster.
4. October 1995 – Bill DeWitt, Jr. Buys the Cardinals
With six trips into post-season over the last decade, three trips to the World Series and two titles, it is easy to forget what the Cardinals were like in mid 1990s. Whitey Herzog had been a magician with the payroll that he had been given from the Brewery in the 1980s, but things were much different since the passing of August Busch, Jr. Good players were traded, or allowed to leave in free agency, instead of being extended and helping the team win. Jack Clark, John Tudor, Gregg Jefferies are just a few examples. Ozzie Smith’s popularity was probably the only thing that kept him in a Cardinals uniform during this period.
That all ended following the 1995 season, when a new ownership group, headed by Bill DeWitt, Jr., bought the franchise from the Brewery. Although a resident of Cincinnati, DeWitt understood the unique relationship between baseball and the city of St. Louis. His father, Bill DeWitt, Sr,. had been long associated with both teams in St. Louis, first with the Cardinals, then moving over to the Browns as an executive, eventually owning the team for a short while.
The first move the new ownership team made was as significant as any trade in Cardinals history, and that took place on October 23. The Cardinals signed former Oakland Athletics manager, Tony La Russa, to be the new manager of the Cardinals. La Russa was considered one of the best managers in either leagues. La Russa followed in turn by bringing over some of his coaches from Oakland: Dave Duncan, Joe Pettini, Dave McKay. Then came some of his former players from Oakland: Todd Stottlmyre, Rick Honeycutt, Mike Gallego, Dennis Eckersley. The retooling went swiftly, but not without incident.
One casualty was Ozzie Smith, and it would remain as something of a dark cloud hanging over the La Russa time in St. Louis. The fan favorite, now 41 years old, was replaced by a younger Royce Clayton, in spite of Smith playing better than Clayton. Ironically, it would be Ozzie Smith, not Royce Clayton, representing the Cardinals in the All Star Game, for the last time in his hall of fame career. Smith would announce his retirement before the end of the season. Interestingly, his number would be retired before the beginning of a game against the Cincinnati Reds. At least somebody understood how important Ozzie Smith was to the St. Louis area.
La Russa’s team won the division in his first season in St. Louis, coming to within a game of going to the World Series. October baseball had returned to St. Louis, and would regularly for the next 16 years.
3. October 27, 2011 – Game Six of the World Series
In a season full of iconic moments, the greatest of them occurred during Game Six of the 2011 World Series. The Cardinals had been counted out in August, when the Brewers ran away with the National League Central title. The Atlanta Braves would be crowned shortly after as the NL Wild Card team, but a late season collapse opened a door for the “Never Say Die” Cardinals. The NLDS was supposed to be a mere formality, not even a speed bump on the Philadelphia Phillies road to the World Series. Somebody forgot to tell David Freese, Lance Berkman, the bullpen, and especially Chris Carpenter, who threw a 3 hit shutout in the decisive Game Five.
Entering the World Series, the Cardinals were the underdog to the heavily favored Texas Rangers. The two teams played a most entertaining series, with the games going back and forth. There were close games, the first two decided by a single run. There were blowouts. There were pitching gems.
And then there was Game Six.
If you are looking for a well played game, look elsewhere – this was not one of those. But if you want entertainment, this one was off the charts. The Cardinals took an early lead, thanks to a 2 run homer off the bat of Lance Berkman. The Rangers would tie the game in second inning, before both pitchers, Colby Lewis for the Rangers and Jaime Garcia for the Cardinals, looked to be settling in.
Then came the Cardinals defensive mistakes. A harmless fly ball to left field turned into a base runner when Matt Holliday, who probably should not have been in the game, dropped the ball. Memories of the 2009 NLDS in Los Angeles spread across Cardinals Nation like a wildfire. A seeing eye single by Mike Napoli would give the Rangers the lead. Things turned worse moments later when Cardinals reliever, Fernando Salas, threw a Colby Lewis bunt into center field for the second error in the inning.
Miscues were not the sole property of the Cardinals as a Rangers error in the bottom of the third fourth inning allowed the Cardinals to tie the game.
Another Cardinals error, this time on a routine infield pop up to David Freese, gave the Rangers another chance, they they took the lead on a Michael Young double.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, a bases loaded walk would tie the game again, this time at 4 runs each. Back and forth the game went, just like the series itself.
Back to back home runs by Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz to start the seventh inning would give the Rangers the lead again. They would extend the lead to 7-4 later in the inning with a clutch single by Ian Kinsler. Leading 3 games to two in the World Series, it seemed to many as if the Rangers would win the World Series. Not to Cardinals fans – we had seen this oh so many times over the last three months. It isn’t over until the last out, or as would be in this case, last run is recorded.
The turning point in the game would occur with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning. Allen Craig, in for the injured Matt Holliday, would hit a solo home run off Derek Holland. That would bring the Cardinals to within two runs, which turned out to be significant in about 10 minutes.
Neftali Feliz took over for the Rangers in the ninth inning, to protect the now two run lead, and give them their first World Series in franchise history. 72 saves over the last two seasons, an ERA under 3, and already 2 saves in the 2011 World Series, the Cardinals really had their backs against the wall this time. Two things were in the Cardinals favor: they had been able to get to Feliz earlier, and this was not the first time they had been in a must win situation. Both of those would come into play as the Cardinals did the unthinkable.
With one out, Albert Pujols doubles. Lance Berkman walks, putting the tying run on base. Feliz totally overmatches Allen Craig, and he strikes out for the second out in the inning. David Freese steps to the plate and patiently waits for his pitch. Cardinals fans were standing, but many of them had their rally towels over their eyes, afraid to look, yet peeking through, afraid to miss the magic. That magical moment would occur on a 1-2 pitch, just as the Fox affiliate in Dallas/Ft. Worth sends out a text alert that the Rangers had Won the World Series.
In a moment that David Freese and Nelson Cruz will remember the rest of their lives, Freese hits a hard line drive to right field. Cruz did not get back in time, perhaps underestimating how hard it had been hit, and the ball sailed over his head and hit the outfield wall.
To quote Joe Buck,
“And now the Rangers are one strike away. Into right, well hit. Back at the wall, it’s off the wall. One run scores, Here comes Berkman. Freese has tied it, 7-7. Unbelievable.”
Yes, Joe, unbelievable. But the best was yet to come.
Josh Hamilton would put the Rangers on top again with a two run homer in the tenth inning. Once again, the Cardinals would come up to bat, having to score two runs to extend the game. And once again, they did that.
With Daniel Descalso and Jon Jay leading off the inning, both left handed hitters, Ron Washington went with his lefty reliever, Darren Oliver. Both Descalso and Jay single off Oliver, putting the tying runs on base. Edwin Jackson pinch hits for Jason Motte, and in an unusual move, even for Tony La Russa, Kyle Lohse pinch hits for the pinch hitter. Lohse bunts the ball over the head of a hard charging Adrian Beltre. Elvis Andrus makes a good play to come off third base his throw makes it is a close play at first. Lohse is out, but the tying runs are now in scoring position with one out.
Ryan Theriot grounds out, scoring Descalso. The score is now 9-8. Albert Pujols is intentionally walked, bringing Lance Berkman to the plate. Rangers reliever Scott Feldman works the count to 2-2. Once again, the Cardinals are down their last strike. And for the second time in an many innings, Cardinals fans are peek out from behind gloves, scarves and rally towels.
Once again, Joe Buck.
“The tying run is at second base. In the air to right center, this game is tied. Going to third is Pujols, and it’s 9-9.
They just won’t go away.”
With the Rangers outfielders at “no doubles” depth, Berkman pokes the ball over the infield and Jay scores easily from second.
After Jake Westbrook pitches a scoreless eleventh for the Cardinals, David Freese steps up to the plate to start the home half of the inning . Earlier in the game, the Fox Sports trivia question was about World Series Game Sixes that ended with a home run. It was as if they knew what was coming.
For one last time, Joe Buck
“Freese hits it in the air to center. We will see you tomorrow night”
Both Joe Buck and Tim McCarver had the wisdom to stay quiet and let the drama of the moment play out with nothing but the crowd noise.
Perhaps the most entertaining call of this play comes from the BBC.
Cardinals fans will forever remember the seeing giant scoreboard, with it’s bright red background, proclaiming “See you tomorrow night!”.
2. July 6, 1961: Johnny Keane takes over
After a successful run in the 1940s, hard times had come to the Cardinals as a series of shady financial deals by the owner sent the team to the cellar of the National League. The franchise was rescued in 1953 when August “Gussie” Busch, Jr. bought the team. Busch wanted a winning team as a way to market Anheuser Busch products to a national audience, and he started making the changes necessary to accomplish that goal.
It was slow going at first, but under new General Manager, Bing Devine, the talent level of the team improved. Players like Bob Gibson, Ray Washburn, Ray Sadecki and Tim McCarver were scouted and developed. Where the the talent was missing in the farm system, trades for players such as Bill White, Julian Javier and Curt Flood were made. The Cardinals were becoming a very good team, yet winning seemed to allude them.
Solly Hemus, the last player-manager for the Cardinals, had taken over in 1959. Hemus had a fiery personality, and seemed a good fit for a team that was in rebuilding mode. Unfortunately, his tough approach did not seem to work with all of the players, especially some of the young African-American players. Bob Gibson spent as much time in the bullpen as he did a starter and Curt Flood was a platoon outfielder, playing behind Carl Warwick. Nobody was clear of their role, and a mistake could land you on the bench, or worse, back in the minor leagues.
In late June, 1961, the Cardinals went into a prolonged slump, losing 10 of their last 15 games, falling 14 1/2 behind the Cincinnati Reds. That was enough for Gussie and Bing Devine, and they made a change in the dugout, making long time minor league manager and coach, Johnny Keane the new Cardinals skipper.
The first thing that Keane did was to establish roles for some of his players. He would turn center field duties over to Curt Flood, and he responded quickly, hitting .337 for the remainder of the season. Flood would turn into one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball as well as a dependable .300 hitter at the top of the batting order. Bob Gibson would be his next project and the hard throwing right hander became one of the best right handed pitchers in baseball history. Stan Musial was taken off the bench and put back in the outfield where he could finish out his Hall of Fame career on a high note.
Keane could be just as hard as Hemus when he needed to be. Perhaps the best example of that came in a game against the Cincinnati Reds on June 5, 1962. Trailing 4-1, Johnny Keane brought young lefty, Ray Sadecki, into the game to hold the score. Sadecki had been a top prospect, shooting through the Cardinals farm system and in the rotation at age 19. Inconsistency, a trait that would haunt Sadecki for most of his career, put him in the bullpen in 1962 with the hopes that he would work things out and return to the rotation.
No matter how bad you could imagine an inning could go, it was nothing like what happened to the young lefty. A leadoff home run by the opposing pitcher, a single, two errors by Sadecki brought Frank Robinson up to the plate. A three run homer by the future Hall of Famer gave the Reds a 9-1 lead, and Sadecki a trip to the showers. As a result, Sadecki missed the celebration when Stan Musial hit a walk-off home run in the eleventh inning.
That was just the beginning for Keane and Sadecki. Keane called him into his office the next day and fined him for his performance, questioning his effort. Sadecki objected to that characterization, and the two got into a shouting match that eventually led to Sadecki asking to be traded. Thinking he was suspended, he did not show up the following day, which led to him actually getting suspended. After more inconsistent performances, Sadecki ended up back in the minors where he obliterated the AAA hitters.
During the off season, Bing Devine and Ray Sadecki worked things out and the young lefty returned to the team, and took back his position in the rotation. Keane and Sadecki maintained something of a cool relationship throughout the remainder of their time together. Keane never warmed to Sadecki, constantly poking him, but Sadecki had the last laugh when he won 20 games and became a big part of the Cardinals amazing 1964 season. When it came to Game One of the World Series, it was Sadecki on the mound for the opener, and he was the winner.
Another element that Keane brought to the Cardinals was speed. One player he had his eyes on was a young but inconsistent outfielder in Chicago named Lou Brock. He realized what a player like Brock could bring to a team like the Cardinals. Keane got his wish in June 1964, when the Cardinals sent fan favorite, Ernie Broglio, to Chicago for the relatively unknown Brock. As he had done with Curt Flood, Keane put Brock out in left field and near the top of the batting order and it didn’t matter how many times he struck out or how many errors he made in the outfield. He was the every day left fielder. And he transformed the Cardinals into a team that would go to the World Series three times in the decade, winning twice. Whitey Herzog would use a similar approach, taking his team to three more World Series two decades later.
1. July 15, 1967 – Bob Gibson breaks his leg
The Cardinals had overcome adversity just a month earlier when Ray Washburn had broken his hand while pitching a gem in Los Angeles. While missing nearly a month, a young hard thrower named Jim Cosman had filled in admirably, but wildness had started becoming a problem for the young right hander. In Wasburn’s absence, the Cardinals had built up a 4 game lead over the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds. Just as Washburn was activated from the disabled list, tragedy again struck the Cardinals, and this time it could mean the end of their pennant hopes.
It happened fourth inning of a home game on July 15. Leading off for the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates was Roberto Clemente. He hit a hard line drive up the middle that hit Bob Gibson in the right leg, just above his ankle. You could hear the sound of the ball hitting his leg clearly over the radio, and the hushed voices of Harry Caray and Jack Buck added to the drama of the moment.
Eventually, Gibson got up and indicated he would stay in the game, unaware that his leg was broken. He walked Willie Stargell and then got Bill Mazeroski to fly out to center field. On a 3-2 pitch to Donn Clendenon, Gibson reached back for a little something extra. His leg gave out and he was down again, writhing in pain. This time he would not get up.
The news for Gibson and the Cardinals was not good. Their star right-hander would miss the next two months, most of that time being spent in a cast. Not only was his timetable for returning questionable, not many players had returned from such a serious injury – not just in 2 months, but ever. And certainly not to a 32 year old starting pitcher.
If ever there was a time for a team to give up, the afternoon of July 15 was it. But this group of plucky Cardinals was not about to let that happen. Whether it was the vivacious Orlando Cepeda yelling “Viva el Birdos”, or the unhittable slider being thrown by Dick Hughes, the team rallied without their ace and extended their lead to 12 games before Gibson returned in September. The hero was a young right-hander named Nelson Briles, who filled in for the injured Gibson. He would win 10 games in a row, including a nifty complete game against the Red Sox in Game Three of the World Series. The forgotten hero was rookie Dick Hughes, who really took over as the ace of a very young pitching staff, and was just brilliant for the final three months of the season.
This iconic moment does not end with the game against Pirates, the miraculous season of Dick Hughes, the emergence of Nelson Briles, the Cardinals winning the NL Pennant or even Bob Gibson’s total domination of the Red Sox in the World Series.
It carried on through the next season where Bob Gibson totally dominated opposing hitters, as if he had something to prove. Perhaps he did as he was unable to carry the Cardinals to the NL Pennant as he did in 1964. Instead, he rewrote the history book with one of the greatest pitching seasons in baseball history: 22-9, a 1.12 ERA, 13 shutouts, 28 complete games, and NL MVP and the first of his two Cy Young Awards. The scariest thing about Bob Gibson was that he even pitched better than that when he returned from the disabled list in 1967.
The 1967 and 1968 seasons were the most exciting in my lifetime. The thing that I remember most from that period was how a team did not let something like losing their best pitcher get in the way of winning a World Series title. I guess the same thing can be said about the 2011 Cardinals.
As with any top 5 list, some great moments had be left off. Those would include
Ken Boyer’s grand slam in the 1964 World Series
Bob Gibson pitching on one day rest to win the 1964 NL Pennant
Lou Brock breaking the single season and career stolen base records
Bob Gibson’s no hitter
Bob Gibson’s 3000th strikeout
Bob Forsch’s two no-hitters
Bruce Sutter striking out Gorman Thomas to end Game Seven of the 1982 World Series
Ozzie Smith’s “Go crazy folks” home run in the 1985 NLCS
Jack Clark’s “Adios, Goodbye and maybe that’s a winner” home run in the 1885 NLCS
Terry Pendleton’s home run to center field at Shea Stadium
Bob Gibson vs Denny McLain in Game One of the 1968 World Series
Glen Brummer stealing home
Mark Whitten’s 4 home run game in Cincinnati
Albert Pujols home run off Brad Lidge in the 2005 NLCS
Carlos Beltran, caught looking to end the 2006 NLCS
The errors by the Detroit pitchers in the 2006 World Series
Vince Coleman and Willie McGee stealing 4 bases on one pitch
Rules are rules, so I will not include any of these (see what I did there). Do you agree or disagree with any of my top 5 ? Feel free to tell me some of yours in the comments.
This entry was posted in United Cardinals Bloggers and tagged 1964, 20 game winners, 2011, baseball, bloggers, Bob Gibson, cardinals, David Freese, Dick Hughes, gibson, Johnny Keane, Lance Berkman, Mark McGwire, Nelson Briles, NLCS, no hitter, philadelphia, phillies, project, Ray Sadecki, redbirds, roberto clemente, st. louis, St. Louis Cardinals, stlcards, texas rangers, Tony La Russa, ucb, united, World Series. Bookmark the permalink.
6 Responses to Top 5 Iconic Moments in Cardinals History
StLouis says:
You have a great St. Louis Cardinals site.. I am working on a St. Louis tourism and business site and would be honored to share your post in a sports catagory section. Please let me know if that is ok with you.
– Michael Kern stlouis.org llc
Thanks, Michael. Yes, you can use the post if that will help. You should also check out the United Cardinal Bloggers http://www.unitedcardinalbloggers.com/ – there is a group of very active and talented writers that also be helpful.
M.Oates (that's all) (@oates03) says:
Bob, I miss these articles. I think this one was just the right length and at times, made me feel like I was there.
Thank you and looking forward to the season
Thanks, Matt. Much appreciated.
I’m with you on missing baseball, but it is just around the corner. It won’t be long now.
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Phnom Penh Post - Witnesses describe horrors of forced marriage at KRT
Witnesses describe horrors of forced marriage at KRT
Erin Handley | Publication date 24 August 2016 | 06:18 ICT
Civil party Sou Sotheavy testifies before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia yesterday during case 002/02 against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. ECCC
Erin Handley
In emotionally charged testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday, a witness revealed she was raped by her unit commander after refusing to consummate her forced marriage – a crime she had never disclosed before – while prominent transgender activist Sou Sotheavy testified through tears about being compelled to father a child.
The wrenching accounts came as the tribunal begins to examine the crime of forced marriage, the only charge stemming from the gender-based violence that occurred under the regime that the court is slated to try.
The first witness, a medic whose name remains confidential, continued her testimony from Monday, in which she said she was forced to marry a Khmer Rouge cadre despite already being married to a man who disappeared during the regime. After a mass ceremony, she was taken to a room where her new husband was waiting.
When she refused his advances, he left the room and informed his military commander, whom she identified as Comrade Pan. The witness confided she was summoned to Comrade Pan’s room, where he threatened her with a pistol and raped her.
“He said that if he raped me and I shouted, then I would be shot dead,” she said. “I had to bite my lip and shed my tears, but I didn’t dare to make any noise, because I was afraid I would be killed.”
“I never told such a story to anyone, but now it is time for me to speak it out,” she said.
The witness said one night she walked out of her house to relieve herself, and noticed militiamen standing close by. She believed they were sent to spy on the newlyweds.
“At night time, the guards monitored us and if we did not consummate our marriage, measures would be taken,” she said. Her cousin, she said, had refused a forced marriage and was taken away by the same Comrade Pan, raped by three soldiers and killed; she was later shown her slain cousin’s clothes.
The witness gave birth to a girl in late 1978, and when the Vietnamese invaded in early 1979, she and her husband fled in different directions. Three years after the fall of the regime, they reunited on the urging of her parents and other villagers.
“He had an ugly appearance with big eyes. I did not love him,” she said.
Defence lawyer Liv Sovanna asked the witness about her first marriage – arranged by her parents – and posed repeated and probing questions about the precise timing and nature of the victim’s sex life with her husband, prompting a reprimand from judge Claudia Fenz.
“There is a need for vigorous examination . . . [but] there is also a certain need for sensitivity,” she said.
The witness also demanded the accused tell her why her aunt – who she said had a close relationship with Khieu Samphan – had been taken to Tuol Sleng prison and killed during the regime.
Later in the day, in intimate testimony that drew tears from court attendees, Sou Sotheavy, who was born a biological male but identifies as a transgender woman, testified she was forced to marry in a collective ceremony of 107 couples.
Other transgender people she knew refused to marry and instead committed suicide by drinking poison. “I kept on refusing to get married, because I never loved women, I love only men. That is my nature since I was born,” she said.
But realising there was no alternative, Sotheavy, who had had her long hair slashed short by soldiers, devised a plot with a sympathetic woman in the village to ensure they would be matched.
Sotheavy slung a krama around her neck, while the other woman wrapped one around her head before they were lined up – men and women – in a room.
When their Khmer Rouge superiors switched off the lights and told each to find a partner by grabbing or touching them in the dark – “like a game of hide-and-seek” – Sotheavy was able to find the woman in the headscarf.
“We were forced, we were compelled to get married,” she said. “Angkar required us to get married to increase the population.”
At night, they saw “shadows” beneath their house: “We knew immediately they were spying on us”.
A relative gave Sotheavy wine and under the effects of the alcohol she was able to have sex with her wife, in a bid to save their lives.
Sotheavy did not know her wife was pregnant until she delivered a “beautiful” baby girl, though she and her wife were forced to live apart by the regime and were separated in 1979.
Despite searching for 40 years, she has never found her daughter. “It was tragic that we got separated from each other, it was painful for me,” she said.
“Although I did not love women, I still feel sympathy towards my child . . . I have always thought about them.”
Sotheavy’s testimony continues today.
Contact author: Erin Handley
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Late on Monday, Vietnamese state media announced that General Le Duc Anh, a Communist party hardliner and former president, had passed away aged 99 “following a
DC-Cam to train lecturers in course on KR genocide
‘No more Khmer Rouge leaders left to stand trial’
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Home » Edward Snowden » In a court filing, Edward Snowden says a report critical to an NSA lawsuit is authentic
In a court filing, Edward Snowden says a report critical to an NSA lawsuit is authentic
admin November 3, 2018 November 3, 2018 Comments Off on In a court filing, Edward Snowden says a report critical to an NSA lawsuit is authentic
An unexpected declaration by whistleblower Edward Snowden filed in court this week adds a new twist in a long-running lawsuit against the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
The case, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation a decade ago, seeks to challenge the government’s alleged illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans, who are largely covered under the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures.
It’s a big step forward for the case, which had stalled largely because the government refused to confirm that a leaked document was authentic or accurate.
News of the surveillance broke in 2006 when an AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the NSA was tapping into AT&T’s network backbone. He alleged that a secret, locked room — dubbed Room 641A — in an AT&T facility in San Francisco where he worked was one of many around the U.S. used by the government to monitor communications — domestic and overseas. President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans’ communications shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Much of the EFF’s complaint relied on Klein’s testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast scope of the U.S. government’s surveillance capabilities, which included participation from other phone giants — including Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent company).
Snowden’s signed declaration, filed on October 31, confirms that one of the documents he leaked, which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009, which exposed concerns about the legality of the Bush’s warrantless surveillance program — Stellar Wind — particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans.
The draft top-secret document was never published, and the NSA had refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of the 2009 inspector general report, ST-09-0002 — despite that it’s been public for many years.
Snowden, as one of the few former NSA staffers who can speak more freely than former government employees about the agency’s surveillance, confirmed that the document is “authentic.”
“I read its contents carefully during my employment,” he said in his declaration. “I have a specific and strong recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been conducting illegal surveillance.”
Snowden left his home in Hawaii for Hong Kong in 2013 when he gave tens of thousand of documents to reporters. His passport was cancelled as he travelled to Moscow to take another onward flight. He later claimed political asylum in Russia, where he currently lives with his partner.
U.S. prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage.
EFF executive director Cindy Cohn said that the NSA’s refusal to authenticate the leaked documents “is just another step in its practice of falling back on weak technicalities to prevent the public courts from ruling on whether our Constitution allows this kind of mass surveillance of hundreds of millions of nonsuspect people.”
The EFF said in another filing that the draft report “further confirms” the participation of phone companies in the government’s surveillance programs.
The case continues — though, a court hearing has not been set.
AT&T collaborates on NSA spying through a web of secretive buildings in the US
Edward Snowden, Electronic Frontier Foundation, espionage, Government, Mark Klein, mass surveillance, National Security Agency, surveillance
Amazon reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ to open HQ2 in Virginia
Facebook reorganizes Oculus for AR/VR’s long-haul
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About NQAF 2012
Garage All Stars – Part 1 2012 Qcc2Admin 2017-11-10T20:19:49+00:00
San Francisco–Bay Area performance artist, poet, dancer, actor and activist Dazié Rustin Grego returns to the stage to offer audiences I AM A MAN, an exploration of gender expectations and masculinity. This new original work is Grego’s protest response to the slaying of Jorge Steven Mercado, a Puerto Rican teenager whose killer solicited him for sex, believing him to be a female. When it was discovered that Mercado was, in fact male, he was murdered, decapitated, dismembered and burned. I AM A MAN takes a unique look at masculinity from a gay male perspective. “Historically, we have been conditioned to define gender and sexuality norms from the viewpoint of the heterosexual community,” Grego explains, “but maleness exists regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. I AM A MAN maintains a core identity based in manhood while bending the ideologies around what it actually means to be a man.”
BUY TICKETS! Brown Paper Tickets Link: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/231186
My Body Love Story (revised and expanded from 2010) chronicles one of the most important relationships that we have: the one with our own body. As a queer disabled femme, my narrative takes the audience through dance floors, shopping malls, and theaters to tell the story of my relationship with my body. Rather than tell an expected story of moving from bodily hatred to bodily acceptance, My Body Love Story talks about the self and the body as two separate entities trying to get along with one another, just like partners in any relationship. The show focuses as much on how to get others to see you as desirable as it does on gaining a sense of your own desirability. My Body Love Story deals with being stared at in public and on stage, chair dancing, commonalities between disabled and transgendered experiences, the power of rhinestones, stripteases, snappy comebacks and much more. Using dance, poetry, monologues, and humor My Body Love Story explores the one relationship that you can’t ever end.
Dominika Bednarska is a solo performer, poet, and academic who currently works at UC Berkeley. Her show My Body Love Story chronicles one of the most important relationships that we have: the one with our own body. You can find out more information about her upcoming performances and publications by becoming a fan on Facebook, going tohttp://dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com, or by joining her mailing list by emailing dominikaberkeley@gmail.com. Her show My Body Love Story will premier in revised and expanded form this June.
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John Garamendi & Jim Jordan
Compare the voting records of John Garamendi and Jim Jordan in 2017-18.
John Garamendi
Represented California's 3rd Congressional District. This is his 5th term in the House.
John Garamendi and Jim Jordan are from different parties and disagreed on 71 percent of votes in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
July 12, 2018 — Reclamation Title Transfer and Non-Federal Infrastructure Incentivization Act
March 15, 2018 — Regulation At Improvement Act of 2017
Feb. 6, 2018 — Further Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018
Sept. 26, 2018 — Recognizing that allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of the United States citizens
On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendments with an Amendment
Jan. 30, 2018 — Child Protection Improvements Act of 2017
On Ordering a Call of the House
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Jeremy Bridge-Cook
President & Chief Executive Officer at RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
Trying to get in touch with Jeremy Bridge-Cook? Subscribe today to access their professional contact information and receive a one time promotion of free Contact Data credits!
RelSci Relationships are individuals Jeremy Bridge-Cook likely has professional access to. A relationship does not necessarily indicate a personal connection.
Chief Financial Officer at RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
Executive Vice President Corporate Development at RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
Denis Ho
Chief Advisor at Relentless Pursuit Partners, Inc.
Ken Pritzker
Chief Operating Officer & Director at Steinberg Global Asset Management Ltd.
Kenneth P. H. Pritzker
Director at RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
Paul Lucas
Director at Ontario Genomics Institute (Private Equity)
Kelly Holman
Co-Founder at Genesys Capital Partners, Inc.
Amadeo Parissenti
Chief Scientific Officer at RNA Diagnostics, Inc.
Shelley Boyd
President & Chief Scientific Officer at Translatum Medicus, Inc.
Prabh Bob Singh
Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
OBIO Announces Launch of OBIO CAAP® for 2019
OBIO Opens 2019 Niagara Investment Summit, Connecting Canada's Most Promising Innovations with Leading Global Investors
OBIO Opens Canadian Health Investment Showcase in New York City, Connecting Canada's High Potential Health Science Companies with Premier US Investors
OBIO Launches Latest Report on the Future of Canada's Health Science Industry
Rna Diagnostics appoints new member to CAB
Paths to Jeremy Bridge-Cook
Ph.D. in Immunology
Established in 1827, the University of Toronto has one of the strongest research and teaching faculties in North America, presenting top students at all levels with an intellectual environment unmatched in depth and breadth on any other Canadian campus. With more than 82,000* students across three campuses (St. George, Mississauga and Scarborough) and over 500,000 alumni active in every region of the world, U of T's influence is felt in every area of human endeavour.
B.Sc. in Biology
McMaster University is a public research university located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on 121 hectares (300 acres) of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens. McMaster was controlled by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec until it became a privately chartered, publicly funded non-denominational institution in 1957. The university is co-educational, and has over 25,000 undergraduate and over 4,000 post-graduate students
President & Chief Executive Officer
Rna Diagnostics, Inc. operates as a cancer diagnostics company which builds a platform of prognostic biomarker tools to help improve the lives of patients undergoing chemotherapy. The firm develops prognostic biomarker tools to improve the lives of women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. It provides The RNA Disruption Assay (RDA), which provides physicians with an evaluation of how individual patients are responding to chemotherapy. The company was founded by Kenneth P. H. Pritzker in 2010 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
Senior Vice President, Research & Development
Luminex Molecular Diagnostics, Inc.
Luminex Molecular Diagnostics, Inc. develops DNA based diagnostics tests and software solutions, which include genetic tests for disorders, drug metabolism and infectious diseases. The firm's products include P450-2D6, P450-2C9, P450-2C19, AJ panel and CFTR. The company was founded in March 2007 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
Luminex Corp.
Luminex Corp. develops, manufactures and markets proprietary biological testing technologies and products with applications throughout the life sciences and diagnostics industries. The company was founded by Mark B. Chandler and Van S. Chandler in May 1995 and is headquartered in Austin, TX.
Ontario Bioscience Industry Organization
Jeremy Bridge-Cook is affiliated with RNA Diagnostics, Inc., Luminex Molecular Diagnostics, Inc., Luminex Corp., TM Bioscience Corp., Lumira Capital Investment Management, Inc., University Medical Discoveries, Inc., RNA Diagnostics, Inc., Ontario Bioscience Industry Organization
This web site is not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by Jeremy Bridge-Cook. The use of any trade name or trademark is for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the trademark holder. The Presence of Jeremy Bridge-Cook's profile does not indicate a business or promotional relationship of any kind between RelSci and Jeremy Bridge-Cook.
https://relationshipscience.com/person/jeremy-bridge-cook-3207013
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Irish Republican News · October 4, 2014
Bobby Sands’ deathbed featured in documentary
Unionists have reacted badly to news that the bed in which IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands died remains intact inside the former Long Kesh prison.
Veteran reporter Peter Taylor spoke about Sands’ death while sitting on the bed for his film ‘Who Won The War?’, which was screened last week.
Confirmation that the bed has not been scrapped angered unionists who fear that preservation of the site could see a section of the former jail become a “shrine” to the hunger strikers.
Unionist hardliner Jim Allister said: “This is a reminder of just what Sinn Fein/IRA had planned for the Maze.
“The fact that these relics of Sands have been preserved will galvanise unionists in their opposition to any so-called Peace Centre anywhere near the Maze.”
In the BBC documentary Taylor is filmed sitting on a bed inside a preserved part of the H-Blocks complex. He says: “I’m now sitting on the actual bed where the hunger-striker Bobby Sands died in May 1981, which I remember covering.”
Shaking his head, he adds: “I never thought that Bobby Sands would go through with it. It was no ordinary death and Sands was no ordinary prisoner, no ordinary man because he was an elected Member of Parliament.”
Taylor goes on to say that the sheer scale of Bobby Sands’ victory in the Fermanagh South Tyrone by-election stunned Margaret Thatcher’s government and gave the lie to the PM’s dismissal of IRA PoWs as ordinary criminals.
He also says that Sands’ death after 66 days on hunger strike indirectly helped the Republican Movement of that era frame the strategy of ‘the Armalite and the ballot box’ -- armed actions combined with electoral campaigns.
Peter Taylor said: “That bed was in the medical wing and was actually the bed Bobby Sands died on, I remember that some of the springs had been taken away, I think, as souvenirs, which was slightly bizarre.
“I hope it has been retained for historical purposes because when you see the bed on which Bobby Sands died it brings it back home and it becomes all too real.”
He added: “Sands did not die in vain. Loyalists would obviously take a different view, but part of his legacy is where Sinn Fein are today, although Sinn Fein and Bobby Sands, were he to be alive today, would regard it as unfinished business.”
“All the ghosts of the past were there, one of the biggest ghosts was Bobby Sands, brought to life when I sat on the bed.”
A watchtower, H-block cell and prison hospital where 10 republican hunger strikers starved to death remain at Long Kesh. Unionists have called for the entire prison to be razed to the ground, but others have campaigned for it to be declared a World Heritage Site, along the lines of Robben Island in South Africa.
Plans for a ‘Peace and Reconciliation Centre’ on the site were stalled last year when Peter Robinson withdrew his party’s support.
DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson refused to believe that the bed was the one in which Sands had died.
“Any time that I have been on the site and been at the former prison hospital and the cell where Bobby Sands was held, I certainly haven’t seen a bed,” he said.
He added: “I would be very surprised if that bed had been kept, the DUP have made clear that it would not be appropriate to display those kinds of things at Long Kesh because these are highly sensitive issues and we have to take account of the feelings of innocent victims.”
But Jim Allister said he had become aware that Sands’ bed had been preserved.
“It doesn’t take a genius to work out how the Maze could become a place of pilgrimage for terror tourists,” he said.
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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism
| Editors: Immanuel Ness, Zak Cope
Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanisms and Imperialism
Shawn Nichols
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_143-1
Transnational capitalist class Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Global capitalism Free trade agreements Imperialism
Neoliberalism; Trade; Imperialism; Transnational capitalist class (TCC)
The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism included in free trade agreements extends into domestic policy spaces and disciplines governments into maintaining the most favorable conditions for capitalist accumulation. Serving as a form of continuity between past imperial relations and present articulations of subjugation and control, ISDS is both linked to, and dependent upon, imperial domination in earlier epochs. The uneven development of capitalism that resulted from imperialism has provided the incentives for the geographic dispersal of both production processes and financial flows in the neoliberal era. ISDS thus serves to protect the processes associated with the transnationalization of capital through internalized, universalized interventions.
Bilateral and multilateral free-trade agreements have proliferated in recent decades, becoming increasingly qualitatively encompassing in terms of the issues over which they preside and challenging the sovereignty of governments at all levels. The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism included in such agreements, in particular, extends into domestic policy spaces and disciplines governments into maintaining the most favorable conditions for capitalist accumulation. Specifically, ISDS authorizes investors to bring disputes directly against governments for adopting new regulations with the potential to negatively impact future profitability or market share, including those designed to protect the environment and human health. Designating such measures as acts of indirect, or creeping, expropriation, investors are authorized to seek compensation for the deprivation of earnings that might have been realized in the absence of the measure. Circumventing national-based judicial system, disputes are arbitrated by private, ad hoc tribunals under the auspices of the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) or the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), drawing on principles of international commercial arbitration (see Van Harten 2005; Nichols 2018). In spite of significant public opposition around the world, efforts are currently underway to establish a permanent multilateral investment court, indicating that there is a sustained commitment to the maintenance, and even expansion, of the ISDS regime (European Commission 2015).
Included for the first time in a multilateral free-trade agreement in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and subsequently duplicated in numerous other bilateral and multilateral agreements, ISDS was rhetorically cloaked as an effort to protect against judicial impropriety. In reality, however, it has been advanced to universalize capitalist discipline on a global scale by locking in the most favorable conditions for capital wherever it might flow (Nichols 2016). ISDS is the culmination of a series of highly organized efforts by business lobby groups to redefine the boundaries of property rights by selectively advancing the most expansive definitions of property in the US juridical context, legal principles that remain unsettled in both domestic and international law (for a discussion of these efforts, see Nichols 2016). Indeed, the development of the regime has depended on both national and transnational fractions of capital, as well as other social groups, seeing their interests as “tied to the mast of a neoliberal market-based system of global economic governance” (Gill 1997: 21–22).
Crucially, ISDS serves as a form of continuity between past imperial relations and present articulations of subjugation and control. It is both linked to, and dependent upon, imperial domination in earlier epochs since the uneven development of capitalism that resulted has provided the incentives for the geographic dispersal of both production processes and financial flows in the current era. As noted by David Harvey, “new rounds of primitive accumulation attack and erode social relations of production achieved through preceding rounds” (Harvey 2006b: 437). The current accumulation strategies have driven the demand for the ISDS regime for its ability to lock in state commitments in the face of popular contestation. While linked to past forms of imperialism, however, the argument proposed here is that current processes of subordination associated with ISDS correspond to a qualitatively different world order, whereby a dominant transnational capitalist class (TCC) seeks to articulate its interests through both national and supranational apparatuses, namely, those related to universalizing the conditions for capitalist accumulation, globally.
Accumulation strategies linked to control over peripheral regions have been a consistent feature in the history of capitalist development. Indeed, the territorial expansion of political rule and, ultimately, the extension of capitalist relations to areas previously outside of the logic of the market have been essential to the system’s required growth and expansion. While many varieties of empire have existed historically (for a discussion, see Harvey 2006b: 436–445; Maier 2006), the territorial extension of the British Empire represented the “first empire to be driven by capitalist logic,” the accumulation strategy of which was to create value through competitive production and export capitalist relations to its colonial holdings (Wood 2003). In addition to territorially expanding its empire, however, Britain used its power to extend the conditions for capitalist accumulation through informal forms of control, including sponsoring unequal trade and investment treaties that would ultimately replace direct colonialism by the late twentieth century (Panitch and Gindin 2005: 105). The use of these practices to extend control over peripheral areas would find continuity in the economic strategies advanced by the United States when it took on the role of reconstructing the system of global capitalism in the post-World War II era that saw the end of direct colonial rule. The strategies advanced by the United States would evolve in the economic restructuring undertaken as the capitalist system was again threatened by crisis in the 1970s. Moreover, these developments would usher in a new epoch in the history of capitalist development that would require new forms of control that, while sharing certain features in common with imperial domination, respond to the imperatives of a different world order in which a transnational, rather than a nationally based, capitalist class is dominant.
Informal Empire Under Pax Americana
Emerging from World War II as the preeminent political power in the capitalist sphere, the United States began reconstructing a new world order. Among other things, this included leading the creation of a variety of supranational institutions for the purpose of establishing the conditions conducive to spreading and securing capitalist relations. Processes of informal imperialism were undertaken during this period, taking shape in the military, economic, and cultural dominance of the United States vis-à-vis the rest of the world. These processes differed in substantive ways from imperialisms of the past, however, in that the United States, rather than seeking to secure national control over other territories for the purpose of excluding capital from other states, instead forged a strategy to expand capitalist relations for the general benefit of global capitalism.
The post-World War II period of decolonization produced dozens of newly independent nations with formal sovereignty. The power relationships underpinning the imperial system, however, did not disappear with the formal end of colonialism. The economic development strategies advanced by leaders in the United States and other Western countries, in collaboration with elites in postcolonial states, locked these new states into a pattern of dependency, prioritizing large-scale infrastructure projects and Western technologies over local self-sufficiency and autonomy (McMichael 2008). The relationships forged during this period reflected a form of empire, characterized by Maier as a “particular form of state organization in which elites of differing ethnic or national units defer to and acquiesce in the political leadership of the dominant power” (Maier 2006: 33). Crucially, it involved institution building, the dissemination of cultural values, and was backed by the material political and economic power of the United States.
The most consequential institutional building during this period culminated in the 1944 establishment of the Bretton Woods system, which included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Providing the institutional foundation on which the economic development of postcolonial countries would be linked to the priorities of elites in the core capitalist countries, a primary goal of these efforts was to maintain access to resources and markets in the developing world. The overarching strategy guiding the institution building was to improve economic conditions to prevent the spread of communism and to stimulate the demand for goods and services originating in the First World. More specifically, the strategy involved supporting economic growth in postcolonial nations by providing loans and technical expertise to enable them to expand their primary exports and earn the foreign currency necessary for importing First World infrastructural technologies and commodities. Based on Keynesian macroeconomic principles that had become dominant following the Great Depression, the Bretton Woods Institutions moved funds to countries that needed purchasing power, thus “lubricating the world economy” (McMichael 2008: 59).
This model of development would begin to reverse the colonial division of labor created by the Europeans whereby colonies provided mostly primary goods to the metropole, with manufacturing moving to lower cost sites of production in the Global South. The urban bias of the project, which required importing highly subsidized food products from the First World to feed urban workers, destroyed agricultural self-sufficiency, as large agribusiness corporations drove farmers into bankruptcy. These processes would further tie the fate of newly sovereign postcolonial nations to that of the United States and former imperial powers, creating new economic dependencies. Crucially, these developments would also establish the foundation on which the next stage of (neoliberal) economic restructuring would build.
The development strategy led by the United States in this period corresponded to a world system and structure of accumulation characterized by a particular dominant mode of social relations of production, which placed historically specific requirements on the nation state (see Cox 1987: 397–398). Concretely, the liberal state of the previous epoch was transformed into a welfare state and called upon to resolve the contradictions that threatened the viability of capitalism by promoting nationally oriented economic growth through Keynesian economic principles, providing a basic social safety net for the working class and poor in order to quell social unrest. Internationally, the strategy involved incorporating newly sovereign states into a system that prioritized national development and, reflecting Keynesian ideals, stimulating demand for Western goods and services through policies designed to generate purchasing power in states and regions lacking it. Oftentimes, these policies sacrificed the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the “beneficiaries,” leading to contradictions and, ultimately, crisis, which would surface as the postwar economic boom began to come to an end.
As the postwar economic boom began to wind down in the late 1960s and early 1970s, crisis once again threatened the stability of the capitalist system, and the gains made by labor following the Great Depression were interpreted as barriers for accumulation (Harvey 2006a). At this point, the United States again led efforts to resolve the crisis and reconstitute the conditions for accumulation, this time through neoliberal restructuring. Specifically, the restructuring included dismantling the barriers to flows of both financial and productive capital. Following the removal of such barriers, capitalists positioned to take advantage of the cost savings associated with reconfiguring supply chains across multiple jurisdictions began engaging in wage, regulatory, and fiscal arbitrage, an opportunity that existed because of the uneven development of capitalism generated by the earlier period of imperialism and the associated processes of primitive accumulation. The jurisdictional exit option introduced by liberalization enhanced the structural power of mobile capital as governments considering adopting new regulations or taxes faced the threat of capital flight. Reinforcing the shifting power dynamics of the social forces, working-class solidarity was eroded, as the geographical dispersal of the production process fragmented the working class in national contexts and exacerbated cleavages between workers in different jurisdictions.
In addition to extending production processes across jurisdictions, the 1971 abandonment of the dollar-gold standard, established as part of the Bretton Woods system, and its replacement with a system of floating currencies, provided the impetus for the creation of a variety of new lucrative financial products. Initially designed to enable firms to hedge against the risk of currency fluctuations and lock in rates through the purchase of derivatives, a growing market for speculative financial products provided another outlet for accumulation. As global financial institutions imposed requirements on countries forcing them to remove capital controls, as well as other regulations designed to stabilize currency and financial markets, opportunities were introduced to speculate against fluctuations in the value of currencies and other commodities (Stiglitz 2002). These developments similarly reflect vestiges of imperialism, as the processes that emerged from decolonization and Western-led development created the conditions in which global financial institutions gained access to domestic policymaking in postcolonial countries, enabling dominance to be exercised while formal sovereignty was maintained.
The liberalization of finance also increased the structural power of capital, providing the backdrop against which large capitalist entities diversified their holdings. The integration of financial and industrial capital rendered largely obsolete the cleavages that historically existed between these two fractions of capital. The combination of the erosion of working-class solidarity and the increase in the structural power of transnational capital provided the conditions under which capitalist accumulation was reestablished, albeit in a qualitatively different world order than that which previously existed. Specifically, the shift from a capitalist system based on flows of capital and the trade of goods between discrete nation states to one characterized by a system of globalized financial flows and the transnationalization of production and supply chains redefined the relationship between capital and territoriality.
The transition to a new regime of accumulation, however, is dependent on the outcome of class struggle (Jessop 1990: 308–9). With the cleavages between traditional fractions of capital having become less salient given firms’ diversification of activities across both sectors and states, transnational class alliances were constructed, disrupting the existing national-based class structures (Robinson 2004: 49–54). Given that the capitalist state is tasked with reproducing the conditions of production (Robinson 2004: 87), these developments transformed the state to correspond to the imperatives of the dominant social forces. The state thus ceased to serve as a national container for mediating class compromise in the ways that it did in the previous epoch. Instead, it came to function to advance the interests of an increasingly dominant transnational capitalist class (TCC), namely, universalizing the most advantageous conditions for global circuits of capital. ISDS would become one significant component of this global strategy.
The Transnational Capitalist Class and ISDS: Continuity Between Imperial Past and Present
Vigorous debates are waged over both the composition and even the existence of the TCC (see Robinson 2004). It is proposed here that the TCC consists of a class-conscious group of transnational elites, including leaders of transnational firms, as well as sympathetic political actors, scholars, and media executives, who share an interest in global, rather than national, circuits of capital. Advancing its interests through a network of national and supranational institutions that function as a “collective authority for a global ruling class,” and institutionalize class relations between capital and labor, globally (Robinson 2004: 88; 2014), the TCC articulates power differently than the nationally rooted capitalist classes of earlier periods. Moreover, while imperialist states of the past exercised direct control over peripheral populations based on accumulation strategies corresponding to the interests of national-based capitalists locked into competition with rival capitalists in other jurisdictions, the leaders of capitalist states exercise new forms of political control that are driven by a logic that is not rooted in territorial-based competition. While the United States, for example, is heavily implicated in establishing the conditions for capitalist accumulation, globally, these processes should not simply be understood as a project driven by the state on behalf of capital rooted exclusively in its territory.
Indeed, the state is constituted by the existing social forces and mediates the interests and demands of the various groups, with policies reflecting the balance of power among them (Poulantzas 1976; Cox 1987; Jessop 1990). The neoliberal state thus reflects the increasing dominance of transnationally oriented capitalists relative to other social groups, including capitalists whose operations are limited to the domestic market. In this way, while the United States, having emerged politically dominant from the two World Wars, has served as the “point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups to resolve problems of global capitalism” (Robinson 2004: 138), this exercise of power neither relies directly on traditional forms of domination, nor does it imply that such efforts are driven by a competitive interest in maximizing the state’s power vis-à-vis other states.
Indeed, the logic of the accumulation strategy that has emerged is transnationally oriented and thus relies on the development of supranational institutions and practices to secure the conditions of its reproduction. With barriers to capital flows eroded, transnationally oriented capitalists sought to construct hegemony, as understood by Antonio Gramsci, during this period by articulating their specific interest as in the general interest (Gramsci 1971), namely, the notion that economic growth is sacrosanct and that foreign investment is necessary for achieving it. Moreover, as capitalism reached the limits of its geographical expansion, having been spread to nearly all corners of the globe, the maintenance of accumulation came to increasingly depend on subjecting spheres to the logic of the market that was not previously commodified in a process of intensive capitalist enlargement (Robinson 2004; Harvey 2006a; Panitch and Gindin 2005). From health care and education to the environment, living organisms, and even investment risk, the increasing commodification of social relations has, in a dialectical process, amounted to what David Harvey identified as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey 2006a). Specifically, as a new range of social and political goods are subjected to the market, groups lacking sufficient economic resources are dispossessed of their access to them. These processes have, unsurprisingly, generated popular opposition sufficient, in some cases, to force the reversal of such policies. It is in light of this reality that the demand for a supranational legal and regulatory structure to instill neoliberal discipline, globally, began to be articulated by the increasingly dominant TCC.
While these processes of intensive capitalist enlargement are not rooted in territory in the same way as those associated with extensive, or geographic, enlargement, there is indeed a nexus between the two sets of processes. Previously, capitalist states, driven by competition and compelled to promote their industrial growth, undertook expansive strategies to procure raw materials and secure markets for surplus capital. The associated processes of political control, subjugation, and extraction established a particular colonial division of labor that would eventually be restructured into a decentered system of domination universalized to secure the most beneficial conditions for accumulation in the epoch to follow. The intensive enlargement of capitalist relations has thus relied upon the uneven development generated by the imperial practices of outward expansion and control of earlier periods. In this way, rather the North-South divisions of the global class structure disappearing, they still function as sites of opportunity for capitalist accumulation, albeit through different, and decentered, modes of domination.
In much the same way that the era of formal colonialism produced elites in local contexts that benefited from their relationship, however, subordinate, to the imperial power, well-positioned transnational elites in the Global South share a common interest in global circuits of capital, along with other transnationally oriented elites in other jurisdictions. Thus, to the extent that the conditions generated through the uneven development of capitalism in their “home” jurisdiction provide a basis for accumulation, their allegiance is to the shared agenda in its promotion.
As Russell, Noronha, and D’Cruz note in their study of the emergence of a TCC in the information technology sector in India, a distinction should be made between the current era and that of previous forms of imperialism. Noting that Indian capital is developing “not so much in competition with other national capitals but in conjunction with their evolution” (Russell et al. 2016: 115), such a view is in contrast to the classical theories of imperialism advanced by Lenin and Hobson, which conceived of rival national capitals, as well those associated with world-systems analyses (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998). Instead, the conditions created by neoliberal restructuring should be understood as a historical rupture that witnessed the ascendance of the TCC, which emerged from historically specific processes of economic exploitation culminating in the transnationalization of production and finance (Cox 1987: 355).
It is in this context that ISDS should be understood. While the effects of imperialist practices of past eras are imprinted in the modes of domination articulated in the current epoch, the regime serves the historically specific disciplinary requirements advanced by the TCC, namely, those associated with the dominant social relations of production characterized by the decentering of production and finance. As one component in a diverse, decentered network of institutional apparatuses, ISDS thus represents the establishment of a supranational legal regime that both sanctions and articulates the social relations of production at the global level (Hall 1978; Nichols 2018: 246). In this way, it exists as a coercive form of political authority, the strategy of which is to manage and protect the processes associated with the transnationalization of capital through internalized, universalized interventions (Robinson 2004: 139; Panitch and Gindin 2005: 104). Functioning similarly to modes of discipline that established and protected the dominant social relations of production in earlier epochs, it serves to institutionalize neoliberal ideology, globally, and insulate such policies from social contestation and political reversal. In this way, ISDS should not be understood as an extension, or deepening, of empire but rather as a coercive disciplining mechanism for an “imperial machine defined by a whole series of new characteristics, such as the unbounded terrain of its activities” (Hardt and Negri 2000).
Expanding Property Rights Under ISDS: Accumulation by Dispossession
In the wake of hundreds of disputes brought under ISDS challenging environmental and other regulations (see Public Citizen 2018) since the adoption of NAFTA and other agreements that include such provisions, debates have been reinvigorated over the appropriate distribution of costs between the public and the private associated with governmental measures. Efforts to shift the costs away from private actors at significant expense to the public have taken shape in concerted political maneuvers to expand the boundaries of property rights beyond the standards previously established by US domestic courts, which have served as the juridical foundation for the arbitration of ISDS disputes at the international level (Nichols 2018). Conservative legal theories advanced, first, by Wesley Hohfeld (1919) at the early part of the twentieth century and later by Joseph Sax (1964, 1971), Frank Michelman (1967), and Richard Epstein (1985) have provided the conceptual framework used to justify the broadening of property rights and ultimately investor rights, under ISDS. Viewing the government as in competition with owners of private property over public use, these legal scholars sought to replace the patchwork of juridical tests with a single test that would standardize and marketize the private-public allocation of costs generated by regulatory measures (Coase 1960; Michelman 1967).
These ideas have been used to legitimize the notion that property need not be of a physical nature but rather should be conceptualized as a set of rights corresponding to an abstract form of economic value, represented as a bundle of sticks, the diminution of which amounts to an act of expropriation if a given act impacts the value beyond some theoretical threshold (Nichols 2018). Business groups advocating for ISDS have echoed these legal principles and selectively cited US domestic court rulings that reflect the most expansive conceptualization of property rights and, ultimately, expropriation. The jurisprudence remains far from settled, however, and protracted political struggles have been unfolding around the definition of property rights as it pertains to findings of expropriation under ISDS.
Lying at the heart of the ongoing struggles around property rights in the context of ISDS is the interpretation of a few key provisions. First, ISDS provisions, such as those that exist in the NAFTA, provide a highly ambiguous definition of the term investment, the defining of which is necessary for determining what exactly is being protected under the regime – and what is not. For example, Article 1139 of the NAFTA seems to conflate the term investment with property, thus providing an opening for arbitrators to find a violation of property rights in any case of state interference with the anticipated benefits associated with a broadly defined investment, including those of both a tangible and intangible nature. It must only be demonstrated that an investor has put assets at risk and that they are somehow bound up with the fortunes of another country for something to be categorized as a protected property right, or investment, under ISDS (Posner, Interview 2011). Included in this category would be anything from registering a patent to making a series of decisions with the expectation that a given set of risks would be rewarded, opening up the door to disputes beyond those associated with control over physical property to intangible, and even speculative, assets, such as portfolio investment, future earnings, and market share. Regulations are inherently adopted in response to new information or conditions and generally generate some cost to private property. For this reason, the authority to adopt such measures has historically been protected under the state’s police powers. Enclosing the regulatory environment and treating any interference with it as a violation of property rights that requires public money be used to compensate private investors thus represent the socialization of the normal business risks required of investing.
Second, the interpretation of the term expropriation itself lies at the center of the debate over ISDS. Article 1110 of the NAFTA states:
No party may directly or indirectly nationalize or expropriate an investment of an investor of another Part in its territory or take a measure tantamount to nationalization or expropriation of an investment (‘expropriation’) except: a) for a public purpose; b) on a non-discriminatory basis; c) in accordance with due process of law and Article 1105(1); and d) on payment of compensation in accordance with paragraphs 2 through 6. (North American Free Trade Agreement, Chapter 11, Article 1114)
The legal ambiguity of the term “expropriation” and “measures tantamount to nationalization or expropriation,” combined with the fact that they remain mostly undefined in the treaty text, means their definitions have been evolving “in the absence of a doctrinal basis” (Holbein and Ranieri 2008: 25). The stakes over the interpretation of this controversial legal concept are high, as the question of when a measure should be categorized as a non-compensable government regulation, protected under the state’s police powers, hinges on such a determination. In particular, the notion of an act being “tantamount to expropriation” remains one of the most controversial and ill-defined aspects of ISDS provisions, with debates unfolding over whether it implies a higher standard of treatment for investors that requires compensation for any act of the state that generates private costs beyond some point.
A third set of issues is related to the invocation of three related ISDS obligations alongside Article 1110 on expropriation, the combination of which has the effect of expanding investors’ rights. Under NAFTA, for example, Articles 1102, 1103, and 1105 on National Treatment, Most Favored Nation, and Minimum Standard of Treatment, respectively, were adopted to prevent discrimination based on nationality and to ensure that some ambiguously defined minimum standard of treatment be afforded to foreign investors (NAFTA 1993). Significant debate has unfolded, however, over the question of whether governments are required under customary international law to provide a standard of protection that is higher than that which is guaranteed to domestic-based companies and investors (OECD Working Papers on International Investment 2004). Adding to these debates, more recent ISDS provisions have included a “fair and equitable treatment” (FET) standard, which has been interpreted by some to require an even higher level of protection than that which exists under customary international law, as it authorizes disputes to be brought if investors find that their “legitimate expectations” have been violated with respect to the future use of their investment (Brown 2013). A frequent litigation strategy has emerged to use the FET standard in conjunction with the expropriation provisions in order to challenge what investors view as overly intrusive government acts. These provisions thus serve as a locus of struggle around the expansion of property rights and, ultimately, investors’ rights in host countries.
Finally, the circuitous logic of the ISDS provisions complicates the general exceptions included to ostensibly empower governments to regulate for the public good. For example, while NAFTA Article 1114(1) holds that provisions must not be construed in such a way that parties would be prevented from taking actions required to ensure investments are undertaken in an environmentally sensitive manner, it goes on to state that measures must otherwise be consistent with the chapter’s requirements (North American Free Trade Agreement, 32 I.L.M. 1993). The uncertainty over whether regulatory measures are protected under the state’s police powers means that any measure has the potential to trigger the compensation requirement if other provisions are violated, including those related to investors’ expectations, the degree of economic impact, and other such considerations.
Given the juridical ambiguity of ISDS requirements, the assessment of the appropriate balance between the private and public costs associated with regulatory measures has fallen to tribunal arbitrators, who are tasked with evaluating the merits of a given dispute in light of the evolving, and generally inconsistent, jurisprudence. Specifically, they are tasked with adjudicating the threshold between a legally permissible regulatory measure that merely represents a diminution of value and does not give rise to expropriation and an act that constitutes a property rights violation and, therefore, expropriation. In arbitrating such disputes, tribunals apply one of two legal litmus tests, or a combination of the two, to determine whether the state named in the dispute must provide compensation to the affected investors for the costs associated with the measure. One test focuses on the purpose of the law or regulatory measure, implicitly acknowledging the right of policymakers to regulate for the public good, as long as the measure is nondiscriminatory and not of a protectionist nature. A second test focuses exclusively on the economic effects of the measure on the dispute-bringing investor. To the extent that arbitrators strictly apply the second test, eschewing the first test’s evaluation of the measure’s purpose, the government named in the dispute will be required to compensate in nearly all cases if the investor is impacted beyond some theoretical threshold.
As Marx identified, property relations represent the legal expression of production relations (Marx 1894). Given that states use law to direct and sanction the relations of production and exploitation through the construction of rights around private property (Poulantzas 1978: 322, 324), juridical ideology lies at the heart of class struggle (Edelmann 1973: 22–23). The struggles around ISDS should thus be understood as class based, with the regime functioning to extend capitalist relations into new realms, subjecting social, environmental, and economic protections to the logic of the market, and dispossessing social groups of the ability to translate popular demands into public policy. Codifying and articulating the social relations of production at the supranational level, the regime thus locks in market discipline and establishes a “worldwide institutional grid that offers transnational capital multiple exit options within putatively suboptimal regulatory environments (Brenner et al. 2014: 129).
The pattern established by arbitrators in their choice of litmus tests is thus highly revealing for what it signals about the nature of the class struggle playing out around property rights in the context of the ISDS regime. An analysis of the NAFTA disputes arbitrated thus far (for a survey of disputes, see Nichols 2018) suggests that tribunal arbitrators have selectively drawn from a diverse range of opinions issued from US courts, overwhelmingly applying a litmus test that interprets expropriation as broadly as possible, thus eroding the distinction between non-compensable regulations and state acts defined as expropriation. Consequently, any governmental act adversely impacting private assets beyond some threshold is likely to be categorized as expropriation in the face of an ISDS dispute. Crucially, the evidence also suggests that, by conflating the terms property and investment, they are establishing new categories of intangible property that include highly speculative assets and market share.
These developments provide an example of the establishment of a “commodity fiction” (Polanyi 1957), a narrative that has been used to advance a myth of the existence of a new set of property rights where none formerly existed. By treating the maintenance of a business-friendly regulatory environment as a legal obligation, ISDS confirms marketization as the sole means for apportioning the costs generated by a given measure between the public and the private. Moreover, it establishes a new set of property rights where they had not previously existed, delinking political, social, and economic resources from their “real historical existence or processes of production” (May 2000: 22–23).
Conclusion: ISDS and Contemporary Global Capitalism
The direction in which ISDS jurisprudence has been developing has dramatic consequences for what it reveals about the dominant accumulation strategy in the neoliberal era of global capitalism and the form of domination that has emerged to secure the conditions for its reproduction. As Stuart Hall noted, the particular articulation of the social relations of production depends on the current stage of capitalist accumulation (Hall 1978: 186–194). ISDS was developed in a historically specific context characterized by the culmination of neoliberal restructuring that had been pursued in response to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s and had led to the rapid decentralization and, ultimately, transnationalization of production and finance. It is in this context that the regime came to sanction and articulate the social relations of production at the supranational level in order to secure the most beneficial conditions for capital wherever it may flow. Universalizing neoliberal policies and insulating them from popular debate and decision-making, ISDS serves as the “political-juridical counterpart to disciplinary neoliberalism” (Gill and Cutler 2014: 5). It does so, specifically, by intensifying the scope of market discipline, subjecting the costs associated with the regulatory environment to the market and socializing them to the public.
Given the relationship between the juridical-political and economic spheres, these developments have strong implications for what they signal about the relationship between the global and the national, particularly as it pertains to the commodification of social relations underpinning the expansion of capitalism (Gill 1998; Robinson 2004; Nichols 2018). Given the exhaustion of the geographic expansion of capitalism as an accumulation strategy following the incorporation of nearly every corner of the globe into the logic of capitalism, ISDS should be understood as a mechanism to secure and safeguard the conditions for intensive enlargement as the commodification of social life is deepened. Rather than intervene directly in formally sovereign jurisdictions as imperial powers did in the past, an increasingly dominant TCC has developed a coercive tool by way of ISDS that serves to universalize neoliberal ideology and redistribute power from other social groups, transnationally. As noted by Robinson, global capitalism “requires an apparatus of direct coercion to open up zones that may fall under renegade control, to impose order, and to repress rebellion when it threatens the stability of the system” (Robinson 2004: 137).
As barriers to the flow of capital were largely abolished in the latter part of the twentieth century, the uneven development of capitalism resulting from centuries of imperialism has provided the conditions under which new strategies of accumulation were developed. New dominant social modes of production emerged with the deterritorialization of production and finance, creating the impetus for alternative forms of domination and control that would universalize neoliberal discipline and secure the conditions for accumulation in the face of opposition that might emerge in response. ISDS has therefore provided one such tool, enabling coercion to be exercised by the TCC, while formal sovereignty is maintained, one of many such qualitative differences between the current epoch of global capitalism and earlier periods of imperialism.
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British Slavery and Australian Colonization
British Socialist Theories of Imperialism in the Interwar Period
Castro, Fidel (1926–2016)
China’s Global Rise and Neoimperialism: Attitudes and Actualities
Council on Foreign Relations and United States Imperialism
Culture and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century
Decolonization in South Asia
Ecological Unequal Exchange
European Periphery in an Age of Imperialism
French Indochinese War, 1945–1954
Genocide and Imperialism
Global Finance Capital and Third World Debt
Global Free Trade, Imperialism and International Trade Law
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Hezbollah, Communitarianism, and Anti-imperialism
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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
| Editors: Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Social Insurance and Public Policy
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2734
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Gruber J. (2018) Social Insurance and Public Policy. In: Macmillan Publishers Ltd (eds) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London
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The Korean War and the Need for Atonement
By Scott Strgacich
The Korean War of 1950 to 1953 was modern America’s first public opinion war. For the first time, Gallup, Incorporated conducted polling that actually fluctuated with the course of the conflict. Five years earlier, the initial loss of Pacific holdings to the Japanese, the ineffectiveness of the Allied strategic bombing campaign and the horrendous losses the Marines suffered on Iwo Jima could not move the opinion of an American public that remained staunchly in favor of beating the Japanese and Nazis. Korea, however, inaugurated a new kind of war – one in which its worth and efficacy would have to be regularly proven to the American people to justify its continued prosecution. One could say it heralded the beginning of modern American warfare.
Sandwiched between the righteousness of World War II and the divisiveness of Vietnam, the Korean War is known as the “forgotten war.” It lacked a Hitler to overthrow. The war had no Buffalo Springfield to provide it with a cool soundtrack. The Korean War was a grizzly, murderous affair that took 2.5 million lives – including those of 36,000 Americans – over three long, arduous years. How something of its scale and cost could be “forgotten” is at the heart of how the American polity processes war. Victory is a vindication to be set in stone for posterity. Defeat, however, does not comport with the American mythology and must be swept under the collective rug of memory and culture. Eventually, Americans learned, however imperfect, to come to terms with such a defeat in Vietnam. Korea has yet to receive its moment of atonement.
Last Wednesday, at a solemn ceremony at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Vice President Mike Pence received the remains of 55 Korean War dead repatriated from the North. His speech, replete with the obligatory patriotic bromides, acknowledged the Korean War’s unfortunate moniker: “Some have called the Korean War the forgotten war but today we prove these heroes were never forgotten. Today, our boys are coming home.”
As another 55 fallen Americans are laid to rest decades after their war was fought, they clearly have not been forgotten. But their war has. Its purpose has. Its implication has. As is so often the case with Americans’ heartfelt tributes to their fallen heroes, they mourn the dead without asking why they died in the first place. To do so is sacrilege, marring something pure in a warrior’s death. Politics has no place at Arlington National Cemetery. In American political culture, the virtue of the dead is inextricably bound up with the virtue of the wars that took them. To laud the warrior is to laud the war and vice versa. This is ever the story of all American wars, but Korea in particular.
But, as is said in the Gospel of John, “Ye worship ye know not what.”
The Korean War began with the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950. The US-led intervention on behalf of the Western-aligned Republic of Korea marked the first and only time the United Nations Security Council voted to go to war. The communist advance was swift. With UN forces relegated to a small pocket of territory around the southern port of Pusan, General Douglas MacArthur, hero of the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II, conducted a daring amphibious landing at Inchon that September. Seoul was rapidly liberated and the communist forces were ejected from the South. It was a decisive victory. If the war had ended there, Vice President Pence would likely have had no remains to welcome home last week.
For General MacArthur, the liberation of the South was insufficient. The North, too, must be purified of its Stalinist oppressors. Herein lies the birth of a psychological malady of warfare I like to term the “MacArthur Syndrome” – the impulse to carry a conflict beyond the point of strategic necessity thus dooming the endeavor itself. Having decisively fulfilled the UN mandate for intervention, MacArthur used all his energies to haul the war across the 38th Parallel to continue his crusade. In October, he succeeded.
His northward advance toward the Yalu River– an advance so fast American supply lines were stretched to their limits – provoked the ire of Maoist China, whose intervention in the middle of October pushed UN forces back to where they had begun and then some. Here is where the Korean War can truly be said to have begun.
The ensuing years of slaughter have, to this day, not been fully comprehended by an American public who collectively lack an understanding of the war as their diet of Korea-related information stems largely from popular caricatures of amenable South Korea’s totalitarian neighbor to the North. The reality, as always, bears with it uncomfortable complexity.
As Bruce Cumings stated in his breathtaking 2010 book on the war, “North Korean political practice is reprehensible, but we are not responsible for it.” American responsibility is more inextricably linked to South Korean conduct during the war, practicing a brutality of equal measure. Political killings and iron fist repression had a home in Seoul as well as Pyongyang. The strategically unnecessary two and a half additional years of toil on the Peninsula opened all Korean homes to the angel of death, North and South. The American air campaign, while the greatest tactical tool in its arsenal against the communist onslaught, dropped, often indiscriminately, 635,000 tons of bombs on Korean soil, more than all of the bombs dropped in the whole of the Pacific Theater during World War II. The Koreas shared in their mutual devastation at the hands of an increasingly Americanized conflict that was, is and always shall be innately Korean.
The very arrogance that took us across the 38th Parallel in 1950 allows us to laugh at the comical Kims. For this, Cumings goes on to chide us:
“It is our blindness, our hidden complex of unexamined assumptions, that constitutes the core of Kim-hating – what makes him simultaneously so laughable, so impudent, and so outrageous; we revile him, while he thumbs his nose at us and our values and gets away with it. We have proved over seven decades that we do not understand North Korea and that we cannot do anything about it, however much we would like to. We can do something about our prejudices.”
Written of the late father of North Korea’s current leader, the above passage still resonates truer than ever.
Earlier I called for an atonement. For what should we atone? A prolonged war, the hypocritical support of an oppressive regime in Seoul, the devastation of one people in two countries. This is all apparent. However, the question of how we should atone remains. If there is ever to be a general thawing of relations, histories and memories, Americans ought to first embrace the painful introspection that has accompanied other tragedies. Just as in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, we asked our sons and daughters to cross an ocean, to kill and to die as an American public turned en masse against a major US war for the first time since the darkest days of the Civil War. They could not comprehend why their countrymen were dying. This war, unlike that which confronted the Nazi scourge, was not worth the flag-draped caskets it produced by the many thousands.
As stated above, Gallup was busy at this time. According to a 2001 article, “polls in August [1950], and again in November, continued to show widespread support for U.S. participation in that war, with about two-thirds saying the United States should not pull out its troops, while only a quarter or less said it should… After large numbers of troops from Communist China entered the war in October 1950 to support the failing North Korean troops, Americans changed their minds. A poll in January 1951 showed that about two-thirds supported a U.S. withdrawal, while just a quarter wanted to stay.”
We fought it out over Vietnam. In many ways we still do. Vietnam has its wall which has evoked the tears of a generation that could not understand why it was slogging through rice paddies and jungles. Our fight over Afghanistan and Iraq goes on as the wars do. One day they too shall have a wall of their own. Korea is different.
We have not had our fight over the Korean War. Instead, it became the “forgotten war.” Did we win in Korea? Did we lose? Was it a stalemate? How do we taxonomize this species of tragedy? If the answer is not simple, if the conclusion is not decisive, America will choose to forget. It is time that we remembered.
The ghostly stainless steel statues that silently patrol the Korean War memorial in Washington, DC have a story to tell. They have questions that need to be answered. They need the Americans of today to care about those who died then, to see the 38th Parallel in every new military adventure that a president announces from the Oval Office. They deserve more than a feel-good eulogy from Mike Pence. They deserve a nation that cares enough to fight over what their deaths really meant.
Scott is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where he studied political science with an emphasis on international relations. He was the founder of the Berkeley chapter of the John Quincy Adams Society and received highest departmental honors for his thesis “Tehran’s Pragmatism: Iranian Strategic Culture After the Nuclear Deal.” He is interested in national security policy, arms control and Iranian affairs. He also has a weird thing for Egyptology.
Posted in Analysis, East Asia, History
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Actress and Singer Demi Lovato Celebrates Five Years of Sobriety
Actress and singer Demi Lovato sat down with Ellen DeGeneres last week, documenting a particularly memorable occasion in her recovery from addiction. She recently celebrated her 5-year anniversary of sobriety.
“It means so much to me because I feel like the day that I got sober was the day that I actually started living, and so I like to call myself five years old,” said Lovato on Ellen.
Lovato’s battle with addiction came to light in 2013, when she first spoke openly about her struggle in a series of interviews. In a candid exchange with Access Hollywood, she revealed the harrowing extent of her substance use, stating that, “with my drug use I could hide it to where I would sneak drugs. I couldn’t go without 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine and I would bring it on airplanes.”
After quickly rising to fame as a Disney Channel star, Lovato was exposed very early on to the pressures of fitting in with her peers. She has revealed her struggles with bulimia and self-harm, and has disclosed seeking treatment for those issues at the age of 18.
The now-24-year-old has entered her fifth year of recovery, taking to Instagram to share the news with fans. Posting a screenshot of her Twelve Steps Companion app, she wrote, “I’m so proud of myself but I couldn’t have done it without my higher power (God), my family, friends, and everyone else who supported me.”
So grateful. It’s been quite the journey. So many ups and downs. So many times I wanted to relapse but sat on my hands and begged God to relieve the obsession. I’m so proud of myself but I couldn’t have done it without my higher power (God), my family, friends, and everyone else who supported me. Feeling humbled and joyful today. Thank you guys for sticking by my side and believing in me. 🙏🏼
A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on Mar 15, 2017 at 3:36pm PDT
Since sharing her story with the media, Lovato has become an advocate for those who are struggling with substance use and mental health disorders. After receiving a bipolar diagnosis in treatment, she made every effort to remind her fans that they are not alone.
Today, at the height of her success, Lovato acknowledges that she is “humbled” by the path that she has walked. Lovato has made a regular practice of posting tributes to her sober birthdays, with her most recent one serving as another milestone of triumph.
“I’ve decided to be open about my story and share everything that I’ve been through because it helps others,” she concluded to DeGeneres in her interview.
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Where can you service?
Regional Conveyancing are licenced to carry out conveyancing services throughout the state of Victoria. That means we're not limited to just the Geelong region.
As most of our correspondence is carried out via phone or email, we can conveniently take care of your property transactions across the state.
What is conveyancing?
Conveyancing is the legal transfer of a property from one owner to another ie: between buyer and vendor.
The conveyancing process consists of 3 keys stages:
Contract exchange
Post settlement
What does a conveyancer do?
A conveyancer reviews, prepares and lodges documents for the title transfer between parties.
What is the Digital Duties form?
Individuals or their representatives are required to use the Digital Duties Form for all contracts or agreements for land transfer duty.
This online form enables faster processing and pre-population into Duties Online, allowing for electronic signing via email.
During the transaction, you will receive an email from the State Revenue Office (SRO) with a link in the email to log in to confirm your details. This must be completed as soon as possible, as under the electronic conveyancing guidelines, stamp duty calculations are to be completed at least 10 business days prior to settlement.
Further information in regards to the Digital Duties Online form, and the transition to electronic conveyancing can be found here.
What is a verification of identity?
The purpose of carrying out verification of identity is to reduce the risk of identity fraud and the registration of fraudulent land transactions.
Verification of identity of clients and mortgagors is considered to be part of the due diligence required of conveyancing professionals. With the introduction of electronic conveyancing, a Subscriber who is representing a client will sign registry instruments or other electronic documents on the client’s behalf.
In order for other participants in a conveyancing transaction to have confidence in the registry instruments or documents, it is vital that the client’s or mortgagor’s identity is verified.
Verification of identity is required where the client:
is an individual, the identity of that individual must be verified; or
is a company, the existence of the company must be confirmed and the identity of the person or persons signing for the company or witnessing the company seal must be verified; or
has appointed an individual as an attorney to sign for the client, the identity of the attorney must be verified; or
has appointed a company as an attorney to sign for the client, the existence of the company must be confirmed and the identity of the person or persons signing for
the company or witnessing the company seal must be verified.
What is settlement?
Settlement is the process where all the parties involved in the conveyancing process come together in an electronic workspace to complete the transaction.
The parties that usually attend a settlement are the purchaser's conveyancer, the purchaser's bank, the vendor's conveyancer/solicitor and the vendor's bank. Sometimes there are other parties at settlement who have an interest in the property.
Settlement is arranged to take place at a time suitable to all parties involved.
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Regional Conveyancing is a Licensed Conveyancer. We are experienced in both residential and commercial property transactions.
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A Bronx Tale’s Adam Kaplan on Not Being Italian & Giving ‘Hugs and Sass’
March 5th, 2018 | By Eric King
Fangirls and boys probably know Adam Kaplan from his stint in Newsies as the Jack Kelly understudy. Now, after leading the national tour of Kinky Boots as Charlie Price, he’s back on Broadway in A Bronx Tale at the Longacre Theatre. This origin-story musical, based on Chazz Palminteri's 1989 semi-autobiographical one-man play and subsequent film, follows Calogero, a youngster who is torn between a flashy mobster and his straitlaced father. “This is the first time I'm leading a Broadway show,” says Kaplan. “I still get the giggles and freak out about it every now and then.” Kaplan, a "Jewish boy from Connecticut," told Broadway.com what it’s like to play an Italian boy from the Bronx, and why it’s nerve-racking that the man he’s playing could very well be in the theater.
Typical Theater Kid
Kaplan describes his adolescent self as the “typical theater kid” who would dance and sing around the house. Growing up in Westport, Connecticut was geographically ideal for the aspiring actor, since he could easily hop the Metro North to go see Broadway shows. “I would come in with my friends in high school, and we would rush shows all the time,” he remembers. “Broadway was always on my radar, but it always kind of seemed like this far-off, very distant dream, even though we lived so close.”
Broadway Magic
Like so many young people, The Phantom of the Opera was the first Broadway show Kaplan saw. “It was magical to me,” Kaplan says. "That will always stay with me—that feeling of seeing a show for the first time." Kaplan says he makes sure to spend more time at the stage door with people who say A Bronx Tale is their first Broadway show. “That's a really special thing for me.” Kaplan's still a Broadway fan, even though he's also a star. “My current theater obsession is Once On This Island,” Kaplan says. “That show blew my mind," Kaplan says, heaping praise on the direction and performers. "Hailey Kilgore! She is a superstar!" Not to mention the musical’s livestock. “The goats! I hear the goats have their own Instagram.”
I'd Like to Buy a Vowel
Kaplan says his upbringing was certainly different from Calogero’s. “I saw the original Broadway cast of A Bronx Tale when they were first in previews, and now I find that I watch shows differently because you're always looking for the next gig,” he says. “I found myself just sitting back and enjoying the show as opposed to trying to figure out where it was that I fit in because I'm not Italian. I read all the bios in the Playbill, and it was "Brittany Conigatti and Bobby Conte." He references the joke Mary Delgado makes in Jersey Boys when Frankie “Vally” needs a more Italian last name (“Delgad-o, Castellucci-o, Vall-i, Pizz-a”). “You have a vowel at the end of your name. And I'm Kaplan.”
On Meeting Chazz Palminteri…Twice
After Kaplan’s audition for the role of Calogero, A Bronx Tale’s famous scribe Chazz Palminteri came out to meet him, shook his hand and complimented how prepared he was. "I think my heart was beating out of my chest," Kaplan says. "He was like, 'Have we met before?' And I said, 'Yes, but there's no way you would remember.'" Back when Kaplan was nine years old, he met the veteran stage-and-screen actor years before at a family friend’s party. “My brother and I used to watch [the movie version of] A Bronx Tale all the time when we were kids. He's this legend and this icon, but he's got heart.” Kaplan admits that playing a character based on the musical's creator adds only a little bit of stress. “[Co-director] Jerry Zaks and Chazz Palminteri and all of the creatives really didn't put on the pressure that they needed this to be an imitation of Chazz,” he says. “They wanted me.”
Hugs and Sass
As the main character and narrator of A Bronx Tale, Kaplan doesn’t get much interaction offstage with his cast. That’s why he makes the rounds to say hi to co-stars before each show. “Once the show starts, it's like a freight train. I don't stop,” he says. He was inspired after appearing alongside John Dossett in Newsies, who Kaplan says would always shake everyone’s hand and give out mints before the show. “We would call them 'Dossett Mints.'” What does Kaplan give out? “I'm giving people hugs—hugs and sass—instead of mints.”
On Bribing Audience Members
Around 40 of Kaplan's family members and friends packed into the Longacre Theatre to see his first performance as Calogero. He got great entrance applause that night, but the next night: crickets. “So, I'm just going to keep filling the house with family and friends,” he jokes. “I'm going to slip people in the audience some twenties and just be like, 'Hey, as soon as I come out, please clap. Please?'"
Tags: Fresh Face
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Lincoln Center Theater’s Falsettos Will Launch Tour in 2019
February 6th, 2018 | By Ryan Gilbert
Lincoln Center Theater's recent Broadway.com Audience Choice Award-winning production of William Finn and James Lapine's Falsettos will embark on a North American tour in winter 2019. As previously reported, the tour will play engagements during the 2018-19 touring season, including Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater and San Francisco's Golden Gate Theater, with additional cities to be announced in the coming weeks. Casting for the national tour will also be announced at a later date.
Falsettos revolves around the life of a charming, intelligent, neurotic gay man named Marvin, his wife, lover, about-to-be-Bar-Mitzvahed son, their psychiatrist, and the lesbians next door. It’s a hilarious and achingly poignant look at the infinite possibilities that make up a modern family…and a beautiful reminder that love can tell a million stories.
This production of Falsettos opened at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre on October 27, 2016, directed by Lapine. The show starred Christian Borle, Andrew Rannells, Stephanie J. Block and Brandon Uranowitz as Marvin, Whizzer, Trina and Mendel, respectively. The cast also featured Tracie Thoms as Dr. Charlotte, Betsy Wolfe as Cordelia and Anthony Rosenthal as Jason. The production closed on January 8, 2017, but two performances were filmed for a presentation on the PBS program Live from Lincoln Center series, which aired October 27. The production was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival.
This production of Falsettos marks a reunion for composer/lyricist William Finn and playwright/director James Lapine. In 1981, Finn and Lapine’s new one-act musical March of the Falsettos premiered at Playwrights Horizons, before enjoying a long off-Broadway run at what was then known as the Westside Arts Theatre. Fast forward to 1990, when a second new musical by Finn and Lapine, Falsettoland, a continuation of the story of Marvin and his extended family in the early days of the AIDS crisis, opened at Playwrights Horizons and repeated the success of its predecessor. In 1992, the two one-act musicals were combined into one and opened on Broadway as Falsettos, which ran for over a year at the John Golden Theatre and won Tony Awards for Finn’s score and Finn and Lapine’s book.
The touring production of Falsettos will once again be directed by Lapine, and will feature choreography by Spencer Liff, scenic design by David Rockwell, costume design by Jennifer Caprio, lighting design by Jeff Croiter and sound design by Dan Moses Schreier.
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Reuters/Jonathan Bachman
This good book could get pricier.
Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to a Bible shortage in the US
By Mary Hui June 19, 2019
Fear is rippling through the Christian bookseller industry in the US.
Publishers say that if Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs of 25% or “much higher” on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods kicks into effect—which he has threatened to do if Chinese president Xi Jinping refuses to meet at the G20 summit—Bibles will be made much more expensive in the US.
Printed materials are included in the extensive list of Chinese goods that would be hit with the latest duties. Particularly hard hit would be Bible producers, according to testimony submitted by HarperCollins Christian Publishing ahead of the seven-day public hearing on the tariffs that began on Monday (June 17).
“Due to the unique paper, printing, and binding needs of Bible production there are simply no U.S. vendors that could produce any significant portion of the volume needed to meet the demands of the U.S. market,” wrote Mark Schoenwald, president and CEO of the company. According to Schoenwald, HarperCollins Christian Publishing accounts for 38% of the US Bible market. No US vendor would be able to meet the demands of the US market, and a 25% tariff on religious materials “could result in a Bible shortage” that would “cause economic harm throughout the Christian Bookseller market.” Ministries, churches, and other religious organizations may also no longer be able to afford bibles.
The overwhelming majority of Bibles in the US are printed in China, according to Christianity Today. China also became the world’s largest Bible publisher in 2012, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Schoenwald elaborated further when he testified before officials at the U.S. International Trade Commission yesterday (June 18).
“We believe the administration was unaware of the potential negative impact these proposed tariffs would have on Bibles and that it never intended to impose ‘a Bible tax’ on consumers and religious organizations,” he said, according to Bloomberg (paywall).
Still, given that evangelical Christians have staunchly supported Trump, publishers like Stan Jantz of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association hope that the president will exempt Bibles from the tariffs, according to Bloomberg.
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Bi radical
Love, rage and pride
Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution
Why criticize?
The difference between monosexism and biphobia
Posted on February 8, 2013 by bidyke
X-posted from tumblr, because I think people might find this helpful.
Re: monosexism and biphobia. Do you use these words interchangeably? I notice more and more people are treating the two as synonymous and it doesn’t really sit right with me.
bisexualmind
Personally, I don’t.
But before I answer, I have to clarify something first, because a lot of people seem to think I invented the word “monosexism”: So, while this is incredibly flattering, the fact is I didn’t. This word has been in use in bisexual movements from the 1990s or even earlier. I’m willing to take credit for popularizing it on tumblr, though :p
Now to my answer:
I see biphobia as a particular aspect of monosexism, they are definitely not interchangeable. Monosexism, as I see it, refers to the structural privileging of monosexual identities and behaviours. So, monosexism refers, for example, to the belief that one can only be either straight or gay, that it is better to be monosexual than bisexual*, that only monosexual identities are “real”, that monosexual issues are the only ones deserving of attention, etc. Monosexism causes bisexual erasure (from media, literature, art, TV and film, etc.), it causes discrimination when it comes to activist priorities, budgeting, etc. It causes the social isolation that leads many bis* to have poor health and mental health, and prevents proper treatment and support that might help alleviate them. It keeps bi* people “low” on the “pecking order” and creates all sorts of oppression. I see monosexism as the main factor responsible for all the horrible statistics in the Bisexual Invisibility report, for example. So, basically, monosexism is the system, the base structure. It is everything which isn’t directly aimed at bi* people but nonetheless has the effect of eradicating our existence or legitimacy.
I also have to say that monosexism is a structure that first and foremost comes from heterosexism and the patriarchy – 99.99999999% of it comes from heterosexual culture. So for me, monosexism is a term that allows us to look at all the ways that the “broader” culture creates oppression against bisexuals*. In addition, it allows us to consider monosexism as a structure that affects everyone instead of just bi* people – for example, by limiting other people’s options.
Biphobia, on the other hand, is direct negative attitudes and treatment of bi* people. It’s one specific result of monosexism. So here we can think about the many negative attitudes and behaviours specifically aimed against bis*. For example, when people refuse to date bisexuals*, when bis* are represented in stereotypical ways in the media, when bi* women become the target of sexual violence (because they’re perceived as particularly sexy sexual objects), when bi* people are discriminated at their jobs because of their bisexuality (for example, because they’re perceived as unreliable, flaky, unable to handle responsibility or commit to their job), and, yes – when bi* people are treated badly by L, G, and T communities.
I think it’s important to make that distinction, because these are two completely different levels of oppression working against bisexuals* – and of course, I think that the room that biphobia occupies right now in bi* political dialogues is unproportionate, and that we need to pay lots more attention to structural, heterosexual, monosexism.
[For a teeny bit more on that, here’s the snippet from my book where I define the two terms]
This entry was posted in Bisexuality and tagged biphobia, bisexual erasure, bisexual politics, bisexuality, monosexism, radical bisexual politics by bidyke. Bookmark the permalink.
21 thoughts on “The difference between monosexism and biphobia”
Chris Pierce on February 9, 2013 at 10:47 am said:
How would you respond to the fact that I can interchange “racism” with your above statements about biphobia: “when people refuse to date a another race, when racial minorities are represented in stereotypical ways in the media… [and] discriminated at their jobs because of their race.”
The point is that our dialogue about these things no longer include dated terms like “sino-” or “negro-” phobia. We got to the point where people couldn’t lump themselves safely with true xenophobes (who hide from and avoid their trigger, instead of seeking it out to hurt it)- it’s simply racism. The same is true for words like “biphobia”, “transphobia”, and even “homophobia” – they are dated, PC buzzwords that only confuse the heart of the matter. People treat us wrongly because of their ideologies – that’s an “-ism”. Monosexism, Cissexism, Heterosexism, and even Homosexism .
My argument is simple linguistics. We aren’t using “-phobia” as it’s used in 99% of the rest of the language. There’s one perfectly good suffix (“-ism”) that really does mean what we need it to mean, nothing more, nothing less.
bidyke on February 10, 2013 at 10:30 am said:
You make some interesting arguments. While I feel uncomfortable with the expression “PC buzzwords”, I do agree that this is one of few areas where this distinction is made (another, for example, is the difference between sexism and misogyny). I also agree that that “-phobia” suffix is problematic – it not only suggests a personal, psychological (rather than political) problem, but it also increases the negative stigma against mental illnesses (see also: Bigotry is Not A Mental Illness).
But I find myself wondering – other than making linguistic “sense”, what would getting rid of one term do for us? How will it contribute to the dialogue about oppression of bisexuals*? What does it have to add or improve? It seems to me that, as is it right now, the distinction in fact doesn’t exist in most of bi* political dialogues – and adding it contributes to the complexity and depth of the discussion.
Chris Pierce on February 10, 2013 at 10:12 pm said:
I think adding complexity to an already complex discussion is generally unhelpful. Creating new connotations obfuscates the issues.
Getting rid of “-phobia” would help by further equating it with other “-isms” that a majority of our society already disapproves of. *no one* wants to be called, or have their actions called racist or sexist… But homophobic is kind of still ok for many people…
Argent on February 11, 2013 at 1:34 am said:
I agree with your original premise. I think it’s fair to say that the etymology of biphobia (or homophobia or transphobia) is kind of awkward — we could say the same things about the terms heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual, since those terms are based on a cissexist model of gender and sexuality. However, as a bi* person, I don’t see a lot of value in trying to change the stationery and I really cringe at subordinating issues that hurt real people (including me) to arguments about “politically correct” language.
I also think that biphobia is an apt term: A lot of the ways it plays out are directly based in fear and mistrust. Monosexism as a structural construct is a lot broader than that and can involve ignorance and force of habit as much as fear or hatred.
Chris Pierce on February 11, 2013 at 7:39 pm said:
But then we need to look at the motive of an act before gauging it as “monosexist” or “biphobic” does that really make practical sense? What do we call an action or statement about other races when they are grounded in ignorance and habit? We still call them racist. We’re making a special case for these types of discrimination, when they’re really the same thing.
bidyke on February 11, 2013 at 8:19 pm said:
Actually, that’s exactly where the difference comes in: if there’s a particular “act” involved, then we’re not talking about a structure, but an act. That’s exactly the distinction that I’m trying to make: the one between talking about individual people’s actions, and talking about culture and power structures.
Chris Pierce on February 13, 2013 at 2:13 am said:
but actions, cultures, and power structures are all described and understood by lay people to be able to be racIST, sexIST, elitIST… having two different words just muddles the issue when trying to talk to people in a proactive way. People can understand a term like monosexism or heterosexism very clearly in the useful ways we want them to, because they are already used to thinking about other “-isms”.
It’s like saying that someone’s negrophobic behaviors are grounded in their rascism. It’s a superficial layer of semantics. Why are some slurs “racist” and others “-phobic”? It’s the same mechanism underneath.
Again, I say the value is in simplicity, let the words mean the same thing. Simple concepts are easier to teach people than complex ones. We already have people tripping over the myriad of variations on bi* – we are making our job harder by making things more difficult to understand.
Another major negative effect of biphobia is the reaction of medical people. I can only think of maybe one or two occasions I’ve outed myself to a doctor or other provider where I didn’t immediately regret it. Typical reactions: disapproving scowls, uncomfortable questions about safe sex, and the suggestion that I should have an HIV test — regardless of what I might have come in for. The most “benign” reaction was giving me a bunch of extra free condoms, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing if not for the implied judgment. How much of that is specifically biphobic as opposed to homophobic I don’t know; I might have gotten at least some of the same reaction if I had said I was gay. Either way, it made me wish I’d just said it was none of their business.
I hear you. This is definitely why (as found in studies), bis* are less likely to come out to their care providers than gays or lesbians…
Most if the gay people I know (so a very small anecdotal sample) either seek out gay physicians, or have a regular physician they’ve been with for years.
Keep in mind that being able to do either of those things is a luxury and a privilege. A lot of us don’t have health insurance, and if we do, many plans don’t give you a lot of options for shopping around for different physicians.
I’m acutely aware of that :) it wasn’t meant as something one should try to model, just an observation of how people in sexual minorities have coped.
Tony Brumfield on February 13, 2013 at 2:56 am said:
from the perspective of a bisexual Chicano in Southern California: I think it is important to have two words, one for individual actions, and one for systemic oppression. In anti-racism work, we (the facilitators) distinguish between “racial prejudice and discrimination” and “racism”. We, the facilitators, say that racial prejudice and discrimination can be expressed by both white people and people of color, but that racism is a feature of the entire society. Racism is systemic. The facilitators emphasize that while individual people of color may be prejudiced (a belief) and discriminate (an action) against individual white people, they do not have the systemic power to impose that prejudice against all white people. White people in the United States DO have the systemic power to impose their will on all people of color in the United States. I would prefer that the word racism and racist be reserved for public policy, organizational practice, and social norms, not individual beliefs and actions. In the case of bisexuality, lesbian and gay people may be biphobic but they don’t have the systemic power to impose their biphobia on all bisexual people. Only hetero people have the systemic power to impose monosexism on all bisexual people.
Yes! Thank you, that was very helpful!
I think the argument could be made that lesbians and gays DO have systemic power to discriminate (LGBT funding is one example), but i see your point. In that spirit I would prefer we use something like “sexual prejudice” though, as while it may often come from fear, the motives are also often based on ignorance instead (sometimes both, but not always). “-phobia” is simply inaccurate, misleading, and discourages people from recognizing it as prejudice.
Torie on February 15, 2013 at 3:31 am said:
It seems to me that the distinction between biphobia and monosexism is almost analogous to the distinction between sexism and patriarchy, where one is an attitude or act and the other is the framework from which the act stems.
Yes, but not exactly – a bit like the difference between patriarchy and misogyny :) Sexism is a system too, after all.
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Hailey on April 8, 2013 at 11:49 am said:
Hi! I really liked your text, and I could relate it to the “conundrum” with cissexism/transphobia (at least here in my country) where activists are somewhat split sometimes, but I see the two things as different matters, like in this case with monosexism/biphobia. But I have a silly question, what the * in bi stands for? I looked up in your blog and google it but I didnt find the meaning. I suppose its to make it an umbrella term? Thanks!
bidyke on April 9, 2013 at 7:40 am said:
Yes indeed, I meant this umbrella, and this too :)
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Aitken, Sheridan ... and Hugh Orde
When it was becoming clear that Ian Blair's tenure as Met Commissioner had about the same prospects as Gaddafi, Britain's top cops, amongst them Hugh Orde, must have contemplated their chance at the post. Orde already had a black mark. earned from a squalid sex scandal in Northern Ireland, and he must have been concerned to ensure no more dirty secrets were exposed in the media. So when the Sunday World published allegations in 2007 that Orde had used PSNI funds to fly his son to New York, he followed the long tradition established by those such as Jonathan Aitken and Tommy Sheridan in not only denying it but using m'learned friends to bully the paper into submission. The Belfast Telegraph reported in October 2009 that Orde had won the largest libel payout ever recorded in Northern Ireland in an out-of-court settlement.
Except, erm, it was true. Private Eye's online edition reports that a FOI request to the PSNI has confirmed that Orde's son did enjoy free flights at public expense. Sadly, because the libel case was settled out of court, without Orde putting his lies on record under oath, it seems he will escape the prison sentence earned by Aitken and Sheridan for much the same thing. The Sunday World, however, wants its money back - so expect a further high-profile civil case that will bring Orde's dirty washing out in public.
How fortunate that Orde's position as head of the shadowy and secret ACPO is immune from FOI requests; we have absolutely no right to know just how much taxpayer's money this man has squandered and is squandering flying himself and his family around the globe. He may be teflon-coated, but that's no reason he shouldn't now be stripped of his knighthood - readers who agree may like to write to Sir Gus O'Donnell, Chair of the Forfeiture Committee, Cabinet Office, 70 Whitehall, SW1A 2AS.
Labels: hugh orde
1688 Not 1968
All revolutions are not the same. Our revolution of 1688 bears no relation to 1789; 1848 no link to 1968. English revolutions are curious things, and generally corrective in restoring our old rights and privileges rather than overthrowing the existing order. Thus 1688 looked back to Magna Carta, and the Chartist movement sought to bring the laws of the Realm back in line with the intentions of the Act of 1689. As Burke wrote:
...that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords and Commons.—That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are the points to be proved.
Thus it is only a threat to the absolute sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament, a threat so grievous that it imperils the rights secured from Magna Carta to Universal Suffrage, that even justifies thoughts that otherwise would be seditious. And as a reminder that we still haven't quite achieved the goals of 1848, when the Charter called for:
A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
The secret ballot. - To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
No property qualification for members of Parliament - thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the Country.
Equal Constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.
Annual parliaments, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since though a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelve-month; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.
It's extraordinary that Labour should still be fighting against number 5, fighting to preserve the corruption and anti-democratic distortion of Rotten Seats some 210 years after the British people judged them foul.
Labels: revolution
How to reverse falling Party membership
The Committee on Standards in Public Life is coming to the end of its evidence phase in the current inquiry into party political funding. It is due to report later this Spring. Many of those giving evidence have remarked on the bleeding to death of the three old parties, which enjoyed memberships of millions in the 1950s but can't even claim a combined membership of 1% of the electorate today. The reasons for falling memberships are complex, and involve many factors, but amongst those factors I had never included that identified by Professor Wyn Jones at the Cardiff session in January. "The Conservative organisation in Wales were Conservative Clubs (sic) which had their roots in the Sunday Closing Act 1881 and the fact that you could have a drink on a Sunday in a Conservative Club" revealed Prof Jones, and clearly we can see a link here between more liberal licensing laws and falling Party memberships across the UK.
Back in Ipswich, it was the compulsory afternoon pub shut-down from 2.30 - 5.00 pm that gave the Conservative Club its best trade, that and the full-size billiards table (yes, billiards - like snooker but with three balls only). It must have been the same the country-over. And suddenly the way in which MPs can reverse falling Party memberships without staining themselves with the odium tax funding is clear; we must restore the old restrictive licensing practices, the afternoon shut-down and the 11.00 pm curfew, and watch the Party clubs revitalise. Of course, an amendment to the Health Act that allowed smoking in clubs whilst keeping the pub ban would give them no excuse for Party memberships not to reach 10% of the electorate by the end of the decade. Simples.
Labels: party funding, political funding
Will Israel act like Mubarak, or like Gadaffi?
An excellent piece by MJ Rosenberg on Al-Jazeera analyses why the territories occupied by Israel will take their turn in the Arab Revolt. Now I always have to insert a caveat here; I defend absolutely and without reservation Israel's right to enjoy peace and security within her pre-1967 borders, but her attempt to hold onto East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank has always seemed suicidal to me, as well as indefensible.
The question as to how Israel will relinquish the occupied territories and withdraw back into legal Israel is one that will dominate the media in days and weeks to come; will they be like Mubarak, bow to the inevitable and go with grace? Or will they, like Gadaffi, release the powers of Hell on the unarmed Palestinians?
Labels: israel, palestine
Labour's unforgivable betrayal
So now we know. Shortly after taking office in 1997, Labour opened Britain's doors to all comers - resulting in some 3,200,000 immigrants flooding into the country, against the will of the people. 80% are non EU, and round here most are Africans - without skills or resources, filling the maternity wards, crowding the buses, suffocating public services. Some 20,000 Africans, mostly Nigerians, have moved to this London borough in Labour's period of misrule. Elsewhere they packed our towns and cities with Somalis, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis.
Don't blame the immigrants - they're the innocents in all this. Their behaviour in coming here was rational, and you and I would do the same if our positions were reversed. It's not the fault of the immigrants. No, it is Labour who have unforgivably betrayed the people of this country, Labour whose crooked, corrupt and cynical disregard of democratic legitimacy has changed the face of our nation for ever, without our consent. It's Labour who must be made to pay for this treachery - we must not cease our work until this vile and malignant Party has been wiped from the face of British politics.
Labels: corruption, failure, labour
The revolt of youth
Take a look at the median ages of the populations of the Mahgreb and Arab nations now in turmoil; most are in the 20s. The median, for any non-statistically minded readers, is the most common value; on a chart of a bell-curve or 'normal' distribution, it's the value of the top of the bell. This is a generation that has grown up with Nilesat and Arabsat, direct-to-home broadcasting, the satellite tuner being as familiar to them as couscous. They have also gone straight from passing news and comment gathered over glasses of tea to extensive mobile phone networks, without the intervening copper cages of the West. And the internet, designed to defeat the 'taking out' of its routing nodes, means they can communicate without borders and largely without restriction. These savvy, urban young people are also more highly educated than their agrarian fathers and grandfathers. And they have expectations.
What they have in common in their demands is not ideological; this isn't a war of competing ideas. What they want is a bigger say in their nation's conduct, an end to nepotism and corruption and a fairer go at prosperity. Much like our own young people, really. They want the rewards of a globalisation process that depends on the expansion of a global middle-class for economic growth; jobs and salaries, secure homes and consumer goods. The great sadness, and the great threat, is that they've probably missed the boat.
The twenty-first century will be utterly different from the post-war bureaucratic age we've known in the West; what it will bring we simply don't know - there are just too many variables, one can't model chaos. We can be sure that we can't stand immune from the tectonic shifts now in motion, and with no assurance that the tensions now manifest in the Mahgreb won't play themselves out here in the UK. All of which makes it even more urgent that we deal once and for all with the corruption of the political class, the denial of popular democracy by a repressive European Union and its domestic dags, and the growth of a fair and equitable society free of Socialist inequalities, distortions and jobbery.
Labels: the war of the ages, youth
King of Tonga in Town?
We of the Yeoman class have never wasted too much time on the Court & Social pages, but I make an exception today with the news that the King of Tonga may attend the royal wedding in a couple of months. I'd be quite happy to greet this large and distinguished gentleman, whose warriors are serving alongside ours in Afghanistan, and whose people, when not enjoying fighting, like nothing more than a hog roast and a game of rugby. It was his grandmother, the massive Queen Salote, who attended the coronation in 1953; when the question arose as to the identity of the diminutive man sharing the Queen's umbrella in the pouring rain, Noel Coward is reported to have replied "Her lunch". Luckily for the Taliban, most Tongans have given up eating 'long pig' these days.
Long live His Majesty, and may he be very welcome in London.
Labels: tonga
Blair's Arab Spring
With credit to David Low
Labels: Blair, gaddafi
▼ 20/2/11 - 27/2/11 (8)
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2018 Season Stats (.pdf)
2018 Game Notes / Depth Charts
High School Coaches Ticket Request
Post Game Quotes: Georgia Tech vs. Miami
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery
Georgia Tech Head Coach Chan Gailey
On Tashard Choice…
“I didn’t know he had that many carries at the end of the ball game. I was shocked, but I knew he carried it a lot and I knew that he wanted it. We tried to take him out a couple of times, but he went right back in. When they called those timeouts, he wanted to go back in and take it.”
On the offensive line…
“I can’t give enough credit to John Bond [offensive coordinator], Curtis [Modkins, running backs coach], Joe D [D’Alessandris, offensive line coach] and all of that crew. Miami was stuffing us the first half, and they came in and adjusted and did a great job with an offensive line that was hurting. [Kevin] Tuminello was coming out from time to time; those guards were shuffling in and out… The only guy who played the whole time was [Andrew] Gardner. And Colin Peek had a gut check too… some big plays in the passing game, but some good blocking.”
On Taylor Bennett’s rushing TDs…
“Well, they ran so well in the first few drives that they set him up, and he was able to get on the corner with the football. We didn’t think Taylor would end up running it, but he did. It was designed to be a pass, but they all fell off and he ran it in.”
On the Orange Bowl…
“Its got some great memories for me, to say the least. But I have been in so many; it’s hard to say one has a more special place in your heart and mind than the others. I won’t miss it. We are going somewhere else; I can’t do anything about it so why waste brain cells missing it.”
Georgia Tech Players
Senior running back Tashard Choice
On the season…
“We weren’t really worried about the season. We knew we just had to come in and try to win this game.”
On coming back from injury…
“I got hurt in the Boston College game and you guys could obviously tell by the way I was running. But that’s what I can bring to the game, and it still hurt during the game. I just need to work on that and build up my confidence.”
On his team…
“Coach D [John D’Alessandris, offensive line] plays the guys that work hard on the team. They live for me. They die for me. They get no credit, but they sacrifice themselves so we can make the plays in the backfield. The offensive line gave me the chance to be one on one… gave me the chance to be seen so I was able to create big plays.”
On playing Miami…
“Miami is Miami. They always come out to play. They’re always ready to play. We always need to be ready to play Miami, no matter what team it is… whether they’re ranked No. 3 or not ranked at all. Miami will always be a good team.”
On playing in Miami…
“I love it. I love the fans – they boo me the whole game. It’s fun in an atmosphere like this, playing in Miami. You know you grew up watching the Hurricanes and their great defense. You just want to go out there and challenge them.”
Junior quarterback Taylor Bennett
On playing this game…
“When you come to the game you don’t think about anything else but the game. So today, yesterday, Thursday… all we think about is Miami. Right now I do think the season has turned around. In the second half of the season we’re 1-0, and you have to be 1-0 before you can be 2-0 or 3-0. So next weekend we’re going to have a good Homecoming game.”
On Miami…
“They have a great defense and they’re so fast and athletic. They run a 4,3,2 and they get after you. So you have to come out here and fight hard for four quarters and hope you have enough points at the end.”
Miami head coach Randy Shannon
“We came out with the keys to the game. We had to win the first quarter. We had to start fast. We went up in the first quarter, 7-0. We said we had to stay out of third and long and we did that. We said we had to get good field position from the kicking game, and we didn’t get good field position consistently throughout the game. I think those were the three keys to winning the game.”
“Just to let you guys know with this team and this football coaching staff, there is isn’t anyone as tough on these kids as myself and this coaching staff. We are going to run these guys tougher because we don’t accept losses – not as coaches, not as a staff, not as players. We believe that we can win games and we are going to continue to believe that we can win games. We are going to be hard on our players. We’re going to be hard on ourselves and I’m going to be hard on myself. I don’t take losses and I don’t think anybody can take losses.”
“I know there are going to be a lot of people beating us up, but you know what, that is their job. The fans have the right to beat you up because they’re fans. I’m not going to get mad at any fan that gets mad at me and this football team because we lose. They should. I get down on myself. The staff gets down on themselves. But you know what? We’ve got to come back tomorrow, look at film, evaluate and get ready for Florida State. We’re still going to have to do some things in the ACC to help us out. Florida State could also be our first ACC win on the road. We’ve got to get better because we’re not doing a very good job on the road as a football team.”
“We’ll get better. I believe that and I’m not just saying that to say it. I just can’t accept the things that we’re getting done right now.”
“When we have mistakes, I beat myself up because I want those guys to excel. I look around and I’m not making excuses, it’s just me. I look at Spencer Adkins on field in his first year playing, it’s Darryl Sharpton’s first time back and Tavares Gooden is playing a different position. I see Joe Joseph playing defensive tackle for the first time. I see Vegas Franklin playing defensive tackle. I see DeMarcus Van Dyke, a true freshman, playing. But to me, they’re football players. They should be here [hand raised high]. That’s me. I can’t look at the time they’ve been out and the time they’ve not been in. It’s the same thing with the offense. I can’t see that Orlando Franklin is a true freshman or [Jason] Fox is a true sophomore or the two tailbacks are a true sophomore and a true freshman. I can’t see that. Even Shawnbrey [McNeal] is a true freshman. The only thing I see are football players that are good. I can’t see it when everybody says ‘hey, when you play a bunch of young guys, you’re going to have mistakes and you’re going to do some things.’ I can’t see that because I’m a different type of person.”
Miami Players
Senior quarterback Kyle Wright
“We are tired of losing. As a team we are disappointed and frustrated but you have to get yourself back up. We have to find a way to win. Our coaches and players will not accept losing.”
“The effort was not an issue. Coach said that it would come down to execution and that didn’t happen today. We started quick and finished strong, but unfortunately it didn’t result in a win.”
Junior defensive end Eric Moncur
“It is a tough loss, but we can’t afford to sit around. We have to play better and get ready for Florida State. I hate losing… everyone on the team hates losing.”
Senior offensive lineman John Rochford
On rebounding from the loss…
“We have to change our attitude. We have to step up. Instead of finger-pointing, everyone has to take a look at what they are doing as individuals and figure out how to step up.”
On Georgia Tech’s defensive adjustments…
“They made a few adjustments, but I don’t think it was anything we weren’t ready for. We stuck to our game plan. It worked for a while, but we just have to come through at the end.”
Senior offensive lineman Derrick Morse
On the team effort…
“Effort isn’t the problem – we’ve got everyone playing hard. We just aren’t executing. The plays were there. Our coaches did a great job preparing us for this game – we had a great game plan. We just didn’t execute and that was the difference.”
July 16, 2019 GT’s Lee Nominated for 2019 Good Works Team
Senior lineman honored for dedication to community service
GT’s Lee Nominated for 2019 Good Works Team
July 16, 2019 Golden Ticket Sweepstakes
Stinger Mobile Pass holder Jeffrey H. is the fourth of five Golden Ticket Sweepstakes winners
Golden Ticket Sweepstakes
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Statement on Monetary Policy – February 2012 Box B: Fiscal Consolidation and Economic Growth in the Advanced Economies
In SMP February 2012
Box A: China's Residential Property Market
Box B: Fiscal Consolidation and Economic Growth in the Advanced Economies
Box C: Imports and Investment
Box D: Covered Bond Issuance by Australian Banks
Over the next few years, governments in most advanced economies are planning to undertake substantial fiscal consolidation to help put public finances on a sounder footing. This box outlines fiscal positions and consolidation plans in the euro area, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada and discusses the implications of these plans for economic growth both within these economies and for the world as a whole. The focus is on the challenges of the next few years, rather than the significant longer-term issues resulting from the ageing population in the advanced world over coming decades.
Current Fiscal Positions and Consolidation Plans
Over the three decades leading up to the 2008–09 global slowdown, governments in most major advanced economies spent more than they collected in revenues. This was reflected in a marked increase in the ratio of debt to GDP in many countries (Graph B1).
The fiscal positions of most advanced economies then deteriorated substantially during the global downturn in 2008 and 2009, reflecting declines in the level of GDP, the budgetary impact of the automatic stabilisers, fiscal stimulus measures and government support for banking systems. Spain had a particularly large change in its fiscal position (moving from a budget surplus of 2 per cent of GDP in 2007 to a deficit of 11 per cent in 2009), while the budget deficit in the United States increased by 10 percentage points of GDP and in the United Kingdom by around 8 percentage points of GDP (Graph B2). The budget deterioration in the other large euro area economies was smaller, at around 4 percentage points of GDP. Although budget deficits have generally narrowed since 2009, they remain large in many economies and debt-to-GDP ratios have continued to increase (Graph B3).
Table B1 provides estimates of the size of the fiscal consolidation expected to occur in the major advanced economies in 2012 and 2013. These figures are largely based on published International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates and contain some judgement on the likelihood that legislated and announced fiscal plans will be implemented. Most notably, in the case of the United States current federal legislation implies a fiscal consolidation in the next couple of years equivalent to 5 percentage points of GDP; the IMF assumes that 3 percentage points of fiscal consolidation will actually occur, across all levels of government.
Changes in overall government budget balances can arise from discretionary policy actions, ‘automatic’ fiscal responses to the economic cycle, and changes in interest payments. The change from discretionary actions (which are reflected in forecast changes in the cyclically adjusted primary balance) provides a widely used measure of fiscal consolidation. On this basis, the size of the fiscal consolidation over the next two years is estimated at around 2½ to 4 per cent of GDP in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain. Estimates of fiscal consolidation in Germany, France and Canada are about half this size, while the consolidation in Japan is expected to be small, with government expenditure to remain elevated by repairs to buildings and infrastructure due to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In aggregate, across all advanced economies, the fiscal consolidation is expected to be roughly equal in each of 2012 and 2013, with a larger euro area consolidation in 2012 broadly offset by a fiscal expansion in Japan.
While these fiscal consolidations are large, there are earlier cases of similar actions for many of these economies. However, what is particularly unusual about the current episode is the degree of synchronisation of the consolidations, with all of the eight largest advanced economies (the G7 economies plus Spain) reducing their cyclically adjusted primary deficits between 2010 and 2013. Data limitations make it difficult to be definitive, but in aggregate this appears to be the largest fiscal consolidation in at least 30 years, and possibly the largest since World War II. In addition, these fiscal consolidations are occurring when the degree of excess capacity in these economies (as measured by their aggregate output gap) is large.
The programs of fiscal consolidation generally consist of both revenue- and expenditure-side measures, though there is marked variation in the balance of these measures across countries. In the United Kingdom and Spain, consolidation is expected to occur mostly through reduced expenditures, whereas in Italy increases in revenues are expected to be more important. Increasing interest payments (relative to GDP) are expected to make the deficit reduction process more difficult in most of these economies, while the effect of the economic cycle is expected to differ across countries. Economic conditions are projected to contribute to an improvement in the fiscal position of many English-speaking countries (through a narrowing of the cyclical primary deficit), while the projections are for deteriorations in Europe and elsewhere. This in part explains why the change in the cyclically adjusted primary balance is much larger than the change in the overall deficit for Italy and Spain.
The Implications of Fiscal Consolidation for Growth
The empirical evidence on whether fiscal consolidation reduces output growth in the short term is mixed. Researchers have pointed to a few cases – such as Denmark (1982–86), Ireland (1987–90), Finland (1992–98) and Sweden (1993–98) – where fiscal consolidations have been associated with strong growth. In addition, there are also some cross-country studies of many episodes of large reductions in deficits that suggest fiscal adjustments are frequently associated with stronger-than-average GDP growth.[1]
Critics of the ‘expansionary consolidations’ view, however, have pointed to some specific factors applying in the case studies that are most often cited. These cases were all small economies, and the episodes were typically ones where the country benefited from a large depreciation and solid economic growth in their major trading partners. In addition, a recent comprehensive cross-country study by the IMF presents evidence that consolidations are usually associated with below-average growth.[2] In particular, the IMF study shows that consolidations equivalent to 1 per cent of GDP are associated with cumulative GDP growth being 0.6 percentage points below average after two years.
One caveat regarding this recent empirical work is that it does not control well for the initial (generally unfavourable) conditions for growth facing countries that underwent large fiscal consolidations. Hence the existing empirical work needs to be interpreted with caution when considering whether fiscal consolidations are followed by less adverse growth outcomes than would have happened in the absence of the consolidation. The answer to this question most likely depends on the specific circumstances of each case.
In the current conjuncture, there are a number of elements that increase the probability that the large fiscal consolidations now in prospect could be significantly contractionary, at least in the short term, for activity in those economies. In particular, with most of the affected countries at, or near, the zero lower bound for policy interest rates, there is limited scope for the impact of fiscal consolidation to be offset by further conventional monetary stimulus. This is particularly the case for individual economies within the euro area, given the constraint of a single monetary policy for the region. There is also limited scope for currency depreciation to offset the effects of the planned fiscal consolidation on overall activity. Countries in the euro area by definition cannot depreciate in nominal terms against each other, and, given the combined size of all the advanced economies where medium-term consolidation is required, there is fairly limited scope for depreciations to boost growth.
If the currently planned fiscal consolidation does prove to be significantly contractionary for the affected economies, this will imply renewed pressure on government revenues and fiscal positions in these economies, a concern recently noted by the IMF and others. This suggests that fiscal consolidation in these countries will have to be carefully managed and highlights the desirability of policy measures to improve confidence, increase medium-term growth prospects and bring down bond yields, so as to offset the contractionary effects of the consolidation that is being undertaken.
See, for example, Alesina A and S Ardagna (1998), ‘Tales of Fiscal Adjustments’, Economic Policy, 13(27), pp 478–545. [1]
Guajardo J, D Leigh and A Pescatori (2011), ‘Expansionary Austerity: New International Evidence’, IMF Working Paper WP/11/158. [2]
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Posts Tagged The Ghostlight Project
Peace, Love and Understanding
On February 14, 2017 / News
After the performance of Flower Drum Song at Park Square Theatre on Thursday, February 16, 10 pm, there will be a Q&A about The Ghostlight Project, an ongoing commitment by theatre institutions and artists throughout the nation to work for social justice and equity.
Artists are bright lights in our communities
(artwork by Rachel Awes – www.rachelawes.com)
Photo by T. T. Cheng
Randy Reyes, the Artistic Director of Mu Performing Arts, is part of the national steering committee of the project, which declares our theatres as “brave spaces where all are welcome to be who they are and engage in debate and dissent–and leave inspired to take action.” In January, Park Square Theatre hosted one of several local gatherings to launch this nationwide initiative, making a strong pledge to be a light of diversity, inclusion and equity. As a symbol of welcome, ghostlights in Park Square’s outer vestibule and in the Boss lobby were turned on and will remain on.
The ritual of illuminating a theatre through the night with a ghostlight has a long tradition. As the single light in an otherwise darkened space, it serves as a source of safety. As a national, collective action, the Ghostlight Project aims to, in Reyes’ words, “create light for those who need it most and pledge ourselves to work that honors all and celebrates the unconquerable human spirit.”
The Ghostlight Project Post-Show Q&A — Thursday, February 16, 10 pm
Park Square Theatre’s Proscenium Stage
ALL ARE WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE
A Hope for Peace
On January 28, 2017 / News
The set of Migra, created by 7/8th graders at my daughter’s school
Yesterday afternoon, I was a proud parent at Mixed Blood Theater, watching the play Migra, written by the 7/8th grade students of my daughter’s school. In the program, the Notes from Artistic Director (the English Language Arts instructor) explained:
This play marks the end of a semester of exploration for the students. We began the semester asking the question, “Who walked this land before me?….We followed that question with, “If my people weren’t Native American, when, how, and why did they arrive here?” Rather than a genealogical study, the exploration looked to literature, art, film, and nonfiction from the countries of students’ ancestral origins and reflected informally in journals and conversations as well as formally in essays. Students considered the past and the present and contemplated the impact of immigration and ancestry on their present day realities. Some students had not thought much about their ancestors, others had vast knowledge, and some had no choice but to constantly be considering their ancestry. While presidential race debates discussed current issues including immigration viewpoints, and our own city experienced the tragic loss of Philando Castille, these topics made their way into the students’ writing, and ultimately into Migra….The views expressed in the play are not intended to represent the ideals of the school as a whole, or for that matter be directive, but they are, like all good theatre, an attempt to encourage the viewer: to question, to discuss, and to feel joy, disgust, fear, and passion. We hope that you take away the beauty of the adolescent mind–and the power of talking about all things sour and sweet, just as these brave individuals show us is possible.
Then in the evening, I attended the second of a three-series talk on the African-American experience by Macalester Professor Duchess Harris, co-author of two books for 6th to 12th graders, Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA (Hidden Heroes) and Black Lives Matter (Special Reports). These have been in-depth talks followed by audience Q&A, finally shedding light on hidden American history and its overlooked impact on America’s past and present. Notable about these events, which are open and free to the public at Roseville Public Library (final talk is on Thursday, February 2, at 7 pm), is that the room is packed with people hungry for a broadened perspective and an honest start of a dialogue about their and our narratives as Americans.
Hidden Human Computers: Duchess Harris on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/195655453
Recently Park Square Theatre drew a crowd to the commemoration of The Ghostlight Project. This is an effort by theatres throughout the country to, according to Randy Reyes, Mu Performing Arts Director as well as a national steering committee member of the project, declare our theatres as “brave spaces where all are welcome to be who they are and engage in debate and dissent–and leave inspired to take action….Together, we will create light for those who need it most and pledge ourselves to work that honors all and celebrates the unconquerable human spirit.”
Attendees at The Ghostlight Project commemoration event posted their pledges
Soon Park Square Theatre will also participate in the Coffee Sleeves Conversation Project with Coffee House Press, an internationally renowned independent publishing company and arts nonprofit in Minneapolis. Through its Books in Action programming, they have designed a unique way to create community discussions on race and the arts at local coffee shops and our theatre.
And as a parent, I am also proud of the fact that Park Square Theatre has a robust Education Program that opens the door to meaningful dialogue amongst our young people, many of whom are first-time theatre attendees. For instance, our on-line study guide for Flower Drum Song, currently on our Proscenium Stage until February 19, offers activities and resources for classrooms to consider “Stereotypes: Real, Perceived, or Debunked?,” “Charting the Immigrant Experience” and much more. For A Raisin in the Sun, which will return by popular demand next season, they did not shirk from topics of redlining and white privilege. Park Square’s study guides are, as our website describes, mindfully “created for teachers by teachers to introduce students to the world of the play” and, by extension, share and broaden their view of the world around them.
Educators volunteered their time during the summer to create the study guide for Flower Drum Song
Today we see arts funding once again coming under attack. But I wonder, as I go to a variety of venues and events featuring writers, actors, dancers, visual arts, students, etc.–often trying to be as financially and publicly accessible as possible for its creators and audiences, do people overall actually support this push? Do they truly not believe in the value of the arts in society? Or, this time, are they grateful for the arts but being fed, once again, the message that adequate arts funding is superfluous to the well-being of our communities? Is it a message that comes from the expansive Heart, or from some place much smaller?
a hope for peace by artist Bob Schmitt of Laughing Waters Studio, who’d created a logo for Theatre Mu, before it became Mu Performing Arts
(Photo by Bob Schmitt)
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Category: 14 things never to say to a gay man
14 Gay Negative Statements; Honoring Stonewall in London
14 Gay Negative Statements
This article claims there are 14 things you should never say to a gay man. Of course it’s a tongue-in-cheek piece and none of it’s written in stone, however, I noticed a few things I’ve posted about over the years myself and it’s interesting in a general sense to see I wasn’t the only one thinking this way. I thought this line was interesting: “the factory of Sex in the City tokenism.” I’ve used the old TV show Sex in the City so many times as a point of reference I have too many posts up to link to one thing in particular.
In any event, I agree with some of the statements, I’m not so sure about others. The gay community is very diverse. Just last night Tony and I were watching the TV show House Hunters where a gay couple was looking for a property in NJ within commuting distance to Manhattan. They looked at one place in Jersey City in Trump Tower and one of them actually said he would like to live there because he could tell all his friends he lives in Trump Tower…as if that’s the most important thing in the house hunting process for him. We switched channels after that comment. It was too Sex in the City for us. We’re more interested in space, views, future property values, and the pragmatic issues that accompany becoming a home owner, not whether or not we can brag about living in Trump Tower. And, last I heard, Donald Trump wasn’t supporting gay people.
3. “I’m like a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body.”
I know you’re trying to connect with me, but what does that even mean? Does that make me a straight woman trapped inside a gay man’s body? Trust me, there’s a lot more to being gay than enjoying nice clothes and hooking up with dudes.
4. “How do you know you’re gay if you’ve never been with a woman?”
Did you need to experiment with women to know you were straight? What about porcupines? How do you know you wouldn’t enjoy sex with a porcupine if you don’t at least try it?
These are just two of the 14 I thought were interesting, and two I’ve personally heard many times myself. The rest are just as informative and entertaining. There are gay men who love Sex in the City. I don’t understand why. But they do. It’s all about diversity.
Side note: This one below is for Joan and Melissa Rivers They had a wedding shower (or bachelorette party thing) episode on their reality show last year where the token gay guy went along as one of the girls. Of course I’m sure he’s being paid well, and some gay guys will do anything for a buck. But seriously. It’s time to knock it off.
7. “Come to girl’s night!”
If I’m invited then it’s not girl’s night. Stop calling it that! I’m not a girl!
Honoring Stonewall in London
This is the kind of thing I love to see. When the LGBT community comes together on a global level the way they are doing in London at the 2014 Pride event.
Pride in London 2014 will pay tribute to the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, a turning point for the LGBTI liberation movement.
RT @DevonESawa: https://t.co/xtJcugd7uG 24 minutes ago
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23Sep(Sat)
Sierra Summer of Love
Take a 50 year step back in time when Quarry Park in Rocklin hosts an evening of tribute to the famed 1967 music movement dubbed “The Summer of Love”. Celebrating a time of peace, love, fashion, art, and new musical sounds, The San Francisco Summer of Love was one of the largest, most artistically influential movements ever to emerge from the West coast. The Sierra Summer of Love Festival will carry on the spirit of the legendary fest by featuring the celebrated stage show “San Francisco’s Summer of Love Revue.” The Revue is not just a cover band playing the music of the 60’s, but eight individual, fully costumed performances including; “Spirit Wind” as Santana, “Whole Lotta Led” as Led Zeppelin, “Experience Jimi!” as Jimi Hendrix, “Monday Monday” as The Mamas & the Papas, “Pearl Essence” as Janis Joplin,” Cosmo’s Factory” as Creedence Clearwater Revival and a spectacular liquid light show by “Grusome”.
Rocklin Quarry Park
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Baler Hall of Fame inductees to be honored
Tickets on sale now for banquet
The 14th annual Baler Education Foundation Fame Fest will take place from 11am to 3pm March 17 at San Juan Oaks Golf Club.
The 2018 inductee class to be honored at the luncheon buffet are: Therese Anne Burke, Michael Sullens, Bill Johnson, Kip Allen Ward, Jennifer Logue, Becky Doty and the San Benito High School football team from 1956-57.
Tickets are $55 for adults, which includes 20 raffle tickets, and $30 for students/children. They can be purchased at the San Benito High Student Payment Center, located at 1220 Monterey Street or by calling (831) 637-5831 xt. 140.
The Baler Education Foundation’s mission is to provide resources to support and enhance educational programs at SBHS by providing funds in the form of annual mini-grants for individual teachers or departments.
The foundation raises money by selling Baler Bricks with a vision to sell 1,000 Baler Bricks for $1,000 each that would establish an endowment fund of $1 million. This would allow the foundation to provide $50,000 in mini-grants every year in perpetuity, according to members. The Baler Bricks are displayed in the foyer of the main building.
Each March the annual Baler Hall of Fame Fest inducts individuals into The Baler Hall of Fame based on community nominations. This luncheon is both celebration and fundraiser. Individuals are inducted by the decade of either their graduation class year or year of service or impact to our community. The luncheon includes a silent auction and a chance to win raffle prizes donated by the community.
SBHS students visit college campuses
Forty-five San Benito High School sophomores and juniors recently went with district staff members on a four-day, three-night trip to Southern California, where they visited eight colleges as part of the annual SoCal College Tour during the recent mid-winter break.
This year, the group visited the campuses of Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, CSU Channel Island, Pepperdine, UCLA, Long Beach State, San Diego State and UC San Diego.
“Each day, we visited one college in the morning and another in the afternoon,” said SBHS math teacher Ben Pang, who chaperoned for the fourth time. “Everything went really smooth due to the students being so respectful on the tours, bus rides and hotels. I got to know a lot of students and learn about them as well.”
Congressional Art Competition accepting entries
Congressman Jimmy Panetta announced the 2018 Congressional Art Competition for high school students throughout California’s 20th Congressional District.
The U.S. House of Representatives sponsors this competition each spring to recognize and honor talented young artists from each congressional district across the country.
The winning entry will be displayed in the corridors of our nation’s Capitol in Washington, D.C. for one year. The winner and a family member will also be invited to attend a special ceremony with other young artists from around the country in Washington, D.C. at the end of June.
Each school can submit up to five pieces of original student artwork. Students are allowed to submit various styles and types of art, ranging from paintings and drawings to photography and mixed media pieces. The winner will be determined using criteria based on originality, skill of execution, excellence in use of materials, and conceptual strength of the project.
All submissions are due by April 25. For full competition guidelines, visit panetta.house.gov/services/art-competition, or contact Bertha Munoz, Congressional Aide, at (831) 424-2229 or [email protected]
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The Joy Formidable
April 15, 2014 Best Of, Recs!!!, Arctic Monkeys, Best of 2013, Cults, Deafheaven, Flaming Lips, Foals, Franz Ferdinand, Kanye West, Low, My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Parquet Courts, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Run the Jewels, Savages, Sigur Rós, The Besnard Lakes, The Joy Formidable, The Men, The National, The Thermals, Vampire Weekend, Volcano Choir, Wavves, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Yucksymeo Leave a comment
Today is April 15, and while the rest of the nation celebrates Tax Day, we here at Rust Is Just Right choose this occasion to release our Best Albums of the Year list. To be technical, this is our first such list since the site was launched only a few months ago, but this is a practice that I’ve personally done for a few years now. There are a few of reasons for this: 1) It allows some of the albums that are released at the end of the calendar year to get some recognition, since they usually get swallowed up in the attention of the flurry of year-end lists; 2) I get the chance to analyze other lists to pick up on albums that somehow escaped my attention during the course of the year; and 3) It provides a handy consumer guide for people to focus where to spend their tax refund.
The process that is used to determine this list is highly rigorous and hardly scientific. That said, it is in the process of being patented and trademarked, so I can say that it’s not simply a look at my iTunes playcount for the year. Actually, that is what it is exactly, but I’ll choose to believe in your good faith that you won’t steal The Process. On to the list!
Note: Though the list is a Top 10, there are more albums than slots, because I don’t like breaking ties for the same play count. If you’re really intent on focusing on only 10, I guess take the 10 highest performing albums from the list, but you really shouldn’t limit yourself like that if you can help it.
10). (6 plays) The Flaming Lips – The Terror; !!! – Thr!!!er; Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mosquito.
We already have a surprise courtesy of The Process, as I didn’t think that Mosquito would perform so well. The first single “Sacrilege” had me really excited for the album, but there was no other song that really matched its heights. It was a bit of a letdown after the great It’s Blitz!, so my response to it may be harsher than it should be. The Terror on the other hand was a new high point for The Flaming Lips; with the band involved in so many projects and gimmicks, there were legitimate fears that the creative well may have been running a bit dry, but the Lips responded with an album that showed that even after 30 years the band still has new directions to explore. Long known for their happy outlook on life, the band channeled inner turmoil (Steve Drozd’s relapse, Wayne Coyne’s separation from his partner) and created a dark, disturbing album that often plays like an hour-long version of the horrifying “Frankie Teardrop”, incorporating new elements like krautrock influences and drum machines. The only reason it’s not higher on the list is you really need to prepare yourself to handle the despair that is prevalent throughout the album (though there are moments of pure beauty). With Th!!!er, !!! may have won Album Name of the Year, but they also back it up with some of the best songs of their career. I’m a sucker for their dance-punk style, and I highly recommend seeing these guys live. It’s fun to see a bunch of people who normally don’t dance groove to songs like “One Girl/One Boy”.
9). (7 plays) Foals – Holy Fire; The Joy Formidable – Wolf’s Law; Low – The Invisible Way; Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks; Parquet Courts – Light Up Gold; Pearl Jam – Lightning Bolt; Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels.
Normally, I would say that Pearl Jam exists outside the scope of “lists”, but one cannot argue with The Process. I haven’t delved deep into my love of the band since starting this site, so for those of you unfamiliar with my passion for the band, I’ll try to sum it up like this: I’ve been to hundreds of shows over the years, and when people ask me for my all-time greatest concerts, I tell them there’s a Pearl Jam list and a non-Pearl Jam list.
As for the others, I’ll offer a few quick thoughts. Foals have been underrated for a while now, and by my calculations “My Number” should have been as big a summer hit as “Get Lucky”. The Joy Formidable put on one of the best shows I saw last year, and I’m a big fan of how the sweetness of the vocals contrast with the heaviness of the music, but all done in a very melodic way. There wasn’t a big hit like “Whirring” on this album, but “This Ladder Is Ours” should have been. Nine Inch Nails returned with a very good comeback album–I loved the incorporation of more minimalist ideas, which made it an exceedingly interesting dance record. And it’s amazing that Low once again produced an amazing album, and I hardly saw any mention of it on the year-end lists. Invisible Way saw the band returning to the more delicate sounds pre-Drums and Guns, but it was definitely not a simple rehash.
Light Up Gold is a perfect example of reason number two up above, as I heard nothing about this album before I saw it on a few year-end lists. This catchy and too-smart-for-probably-its-own-good soon became a go-to in my car stereo. You have to love a band that makes the point that “Socrates died in the fucking gutter.”
As for Run The Jewels, I’ll say this: it’s hard to believe that one of the best albums of the year was given away for free earlier this year. And it received a small fraction of the attention of Magna Carta Holy Grail.
8). (8 plays) Franz Ferdinand – Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action; Kanye West – Yeezus; The Thermals – Desperate Ground.
I was glad to see Franz Ferdinand return from hiatus alive and kicking. After some experimentation with Tonight, the band decided to go back to their old sound and play to their own strengths–a lot of good, hook-filled rock songs (for the record, I was a fan of Tonight, but hey, I understand the calculus). The Thermals made a similar return to their roots: after the reflective Personal Life, the band decided to keep the songs short and the tempos fast, with the furious Desperate Ground.
I’m sure Yeezus was the most analyzed album of the year, so my opinion shouldn’t add much to the conversation. I think Lou Reed did an excellent job in explaining its genius, so you should probably take his word for it. I will say that one of the things I enjoy most about Kanye records is that it always seems like we’re listening in on a therapy session, because he seems free to let his thoughts roam unfiltered. I also love a person that embraces the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane; who else would follow a great line “close your eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures” with “one good girl is worth a thousand bitches”? The man knows exactly what he’s doing: “After all these long-ass verses, I’m tired, you’re tired. Jesus wept.“
7). (9 plays) The Men – New Moon; Sigur Rós – Kveikur; Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the City; Volcano Choir – Repave; Yuck – Glow & Behold.
We had an extensive piece already on Yuck, so we won’t rehash it here. Volcano Choir is proof that Justin Vernon knows what he’s doing and that he doesn’t need the “Bon Iver” name to make great music. The Men will continue to put great, solid rock albums from now until eternity it seems like; throwing in some classic rock and Americana touches like they did on New Moon just helps expand their sound.
Vampire Weekend got a lot of credit for their show of maturity on their third album, and a lot of it is deserved–Modern Vampires is an excellent rumination on love and faith. That said, it wasn’t as great a leap as some critics made it out to be; I thought that Contra showed that the band was creative enough to find a way to connect their niche sound with other genres and still remain true to their identity. So while this is a very good album, it’s not quite the “Album of the Year”.
I’m much more surprised about the latest album from Sigur Rós. I found Valtari to be a real low point, an album that often struggled to find any semblance of creativity or inspiration, and it just seemed like an ambient mess. So when the band released Kveikur so quickly after Valtari, I was pretty skeptical. But holy shit, this sounds like a band reborn. It’s a much more aggressive album, an adjective that is rarely associated with the band, and bears some (dare I say?) metal influences.
6). (10 plays) Cults – Static; Savages – Silence Yourself.
We had an extensive piece already on Cults, so we won’t rehash it here. Savages end up with the highest-ranked debut on this chart, as I found their revival of post-punk thrilling, a brilliant mix of Joy Division and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
5). (11 plays) Arctic Monkeys – AM; The Besnard Lakes – Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO.
The instant I heard “Do I Wanna Know?”, I knew I would love this album; I just didn’t know that it would turn out to revive their career here in the States. It’s a huge improvement over the good-but-unmemorable Suck It And See and the completely forgettable Humbug, and it wins my coveted award of “Night Driver of the Year”.
I’ve been a longtime fan of The Besnard Lakes, a band far more deserving of some of the plaudits that another Canadian band whose absence you may notice from this list. If there were actual justice in this world, they’d be headlining arenas, but I’m glad I get to see them perform spellbinding sets in tiny venues like the Doug Fir. I initially was not impressed with the new album, mainly because I had been hoping that they could use some of the huge hooks from Roaring Night and hopefully catapult into the mainstream; but once I accepted the album for what it was, I was able to appreciate the subtle melodies and beautiful atmosphere.
4). (12 plays) Deafheaven – Sunbather; My Bloody Valentine – m b v.
My Bloody Valentine shocked the world when they announced that they were immediately releasing their long-awaited follow-up to Loveless. Servers were in a constant state of crashing as music buffs around the world rushed to download the album, but eventually we all got our copy. Was it worth the over two-decade wait? If you based it on trash like “Nothing Is”, then you would say no, but then you hear the gorgeous “Only Tomorrow” with its monumental guitar solo, and all is forgiven, because you are reminded that while there are thousands of bands that were inspired by them, there is truly only one My Bloody Valentine.
Sunbather might be the most surprising album on my list, because while there is a lot of heavy metal that I do enjoy, it’s usually not of the black metal variety. However, Deafheaven uses the banshee wail-type vocals to their advantage, as they blend in with the walls of guitar. If I had my preference, it wouldn’t be the style I choose, if only because it becomes hard to distinguish what are actually some pretty decent lyrics (an exchange like “‘I’m dying.’ ‘Is it blissful?’ ‘It’s like a dream.’ ‘I want to dream.'” read great on the page, but impossible to pick out when sung). That said, the actual music is pretty goddamn brilliant. I’m going to explore them in a future Feats of Strength, but I’ll say that the last half of “The Pecan Tree” was probably the best music I heard all year, but to understand its full brilliance you need to hear the 55 minutes of brutality that came before it.
3. (16 plays) Wavves – Afraid of Heights.
Wavves received the best press and sales of their career with King of the Beach, and to follow it up they release an album filled with cynicism and paranoia and plain old depression. But they made it fun as hell. I have to give a lot of respect who released a single that got actual radio airplay whose chorus is “Holding a gun to my head, so send me an angel; or bury me deeply instead, with demons to lean on”. And they played it on Letterman.
2. (17 plays) Queens of the Stone Age – ...Like Clockwork.
This one of the best albums of QOTSA’s career, and that’s saying something since they’ve released several classic albums already. It’s a brilliant mix of their desert rock with gothic horror. It’s hard for me to think of much more to say than that, because I’m still bitter thinking how not one person on the AV Club staff gave this album a single vote.
1. (20 plays) The National – Trouble Will Find Me.
In the end, the list was topped off by what I would have predicted at the beginning of the year, but when I first listened to Trouble Will Find Me this was not a foregone conclusion. But like other albums from The National before it, what initially sounded like a shapeless bore gradually revealed its subtle strength and beauty. Melodies become more apparent, and dynamics become more evident; often it’s not drastic loud-soft contrast, but a gradual intensity that builds throughout in a song. Each listen brings about a new favorite; first it was “Sea of Love”, then it was “Pink Rabbits” followed by “Don’t Swallow the Cap”. Lately, it’s been “Graceless”, a powerful look at attempts to shake the melancholy stemming from a past relationship, filled with great lines like “God loves everybody–don’t remind me” and “all of my thoughts of you: bullets through rotten fruit.” After a few listens, you notice things like the shift halfway between “graceless” and “grace” that occurs in the lyrics, and the gradual buildup of intensity in Matt Berninger’s voice as he powers through the song. It’s perfect that an album that rewards multiple listens takes the top spot.
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Home > Law > Law School Journals > Law Review > Vol. 28 > Iss. 4 (1994)
Volume 28, Issue 4 (1994)
Prefatory Matter
University of Richmond Law Review
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Antitrust and Trade Regulation
Michael F. Urbanski and Francis H. Casola
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: An Overview of Automobile Liability Insurance in Virginia
Eileen N. Wagner, Jason W. Konvicka, and Deborah M.B. McConnell
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Business and Corporate Law
Thomas E. Repke
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Charitable Immunity: What Price Hath Charity?
Barbara Ann Williams
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Civil Practice and Procedure
Donald P. Boyle Jr.
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Domestic Relations
Ronald S. Evans and Deanna D. Cook
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Employment Law
Paul G. Beers
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Environmental Law
Brian L. Buniva and James R. Kibler Jr.
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Legal Issues Involving Children
Robert E. Shepherd Jr.
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Property Law
Charles H. Rothenberg, Gina M. Burgin, and L. Charles Long Jr.
Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Wills, Trusts, and Estates
J. Rodney Johnson
Allen Chair Symposium
University of Richmond Law Review (Main Site)
All Issues Vol. 46, Iss. 3 Vol. 46, Iss. 2 Vol. 46, Iss. 1 Vol. 45, Iss. 4 Vol. 45, Iss. 3 Vol. 45, Iss. 2 Vol. 45, Iss. 1 Vol. 44, Iss. 4 Vol. 44, Iss. 3 Vol. 44, Iss. 2 Vol. 44, Iss. 1 Vol. 43, Iss. 4 Vol. 43, Iss. 3 Vol. 43, Iss. 2 Vol. 43, Iss. 1 Vol. 42, Iss. 5 Vol. 42, Iss. 4 Vol. 42, Iss. 3 Vol. 42, Iss. 2 Vol. 42, Iss. 1 Vol. 41, Iss. 4 Vol. 41, Iss. 3 Vol. 41, Iss. 2 Vol. 41, Iss. 1 Vol. 40, Iss. 4 Vol. 40, Iss. 3 Vol. 40, Iss. 2 Vol. 40, Iss. 1 Vol. 39, Iss. 4 Vol. 39, Iss. 3 Vol. 39, Iss. 2 Vol. 39, Iss. 1 Vol. 38, Iss. 4 Vol. 38, Iss. 3 Vol. 38, Iss. 2 Vol. 38, Iss. 1 Vol. 37, Iss. 4 Vol. 37, Iss. 3 Vol. 37, Iss. 2 Vol. 37, Iss. 1 Vol. 36, Iss. 2 Vol. 36, Iss. 1 Vol. 35, Iss. 4 Vol. 35, Iss. 3 Vol. 35, Iss. 2 Vol. 35, Iss. 1 Vol. 34, Iss. 4 Vol. 34, Iss. 3 Vol. 34, Iss. 2 Vol. 34, Iss. 1 Vol. 33, Iss. 4 Vol. 33, Iss. 3 Vol. 33, Iss. 2 Vol. 33, Iss. 1 Vol. 32, Iss. 5 Vol. 32, Iss. 4 Vol. 32, Iss. 3 Vol. 32, Iss. 2 Vol. 32, Iss. 1 Vol. 31, Iss. 5 Vol. 31, Iss. 4 Vol. 31, Iss. 3 Vol. 31, Iss. 2 Vol. 31, Iss. 1 Vol. 30, Iss. 5 Vol. 30, Iss. 4 Vol. 30, Iss. 3 Vol. 30, Iss. 2 Vol. 30, Iss. 1 Vol. 29, Iss. 5 Vol. 29, Iss. 4 Vol. 29, Iss. 3 Vol. 29, Iss. 2 Vol. 29, Iss. 1 Vol. 28, Iss. 5 Vol. 28, Iss. 4 Vol. 28, Iss. 3 Vol. 28, Iss. 2 Vol. 28, Iss. 1 Vol. 27, Iss. 5 Vol. 27, Iss. 4 Vol. 27, Iss. 3 Vol. 27, Iss. 2 Vol. 27, Iss. 1 Vol. 26, Iss. 4 Vol. 26, Iss. 3 Vol. 26, Iss. 2 Vol. 26, Iss. 1 Vol. 25, Iss. 4 Vol. 25, Iss. 3 Vol. 25, Iss. 2 Vol. 25, Iss. 1 Vol. 24, Iss. 4 Vol. 24, Iss. 3 Vol. 24, Iss. 2 Vol. 24, Iss. 1 Vol. 23, Iss. 4 Vol. 23, Iss. 3 Vol. 23, Iss. 2 Vol. 23, Iss. 1 Vol. 22, Iss. 4 Vol. 22, Iss. 3 Vol. 22, Iss. 2 Vol. 22, Iss. 1 Vol. 21, Iss. 4 Vol. 21, Iss. 3 Vol. 21, Iss. 2 Vol. 21, Iss. 1 Vol. 20, Iss. 4 Vol. 20, Iss. 3 Vol. 20, Iss. 2 Vol. 20, Iss. 1 Vol. 19, Iss. 4 Vol. 19, Iss. 3 Vol. 19, Iss. 2 Vol. 19, Iss. 1 Vol. 18, Iss. 4 Vol. 18, Iss. 3 Vol. 18, Iss. 2 Vol. 18, Iss. 1 Vol. 17, Iss. 4 Vol. 17, Iss. 3 Vol. 17, Iss. 2 Vol. 17, Iss. 1 Vol. 16, Iss. 4 Vol. 16, Iss. 3 Vol. 16, Iss. 2 Vol. 16, Iss. 1 Vol. 15, Iss. 4 Vol. 15, Iss. 3 Vol. 15, Iss. 2 Vol. 15, Iss. 1 Vol. 14, Iss. 4 Vol. 14, Iss. 3 Vol. 14, Iss. 2 Vol. 14, Iss. 1 Vol. 13, Iss. 4 Vol. 13, Iss. 3 Vol. 13, Iss. 2 Vol. 13, Iss. 1 Vol. 12, Iss. 4 Vol. 12, Iss. 3 Vol. 12, Iss. 2 Vol. 12, Iss. 1 Vol. 11, Iss. 4 Vol. 11, Iss. 3 Vol. 11, Iss. 2 Vol. 11, Iss. 1 Vol. 10, Iss. 3 Vol. 10, Iss. 2 Vol. 10, Iss. 1 Vol. 9, Iss. 3 Vol. 9, Iss. 2 Vol. 9, Iss. 1 Vol. 8, Iss. 3 Vol. 8, Iss. 2 Vol. 8, Iss. 1 Vol. 7, Iss. 3 Vol. 7, Iss. 2 Vol. 7, Iss. 1 Vol. 6, Iss. 2 Vol. 6, Iss. 1 Vol. 5, Iss. 2 Vol. 5, Iss. 1 Vol. 4, Iss. 2 Vol. 4, Iss. 1 Vol. 3, Iss. 2 Vol. 3, Iss. 1 Vol. 2, Iss. 5 Vol. 2, Iss. 4 Vol. 2, Iss. 3 Vol. 2, Iss. 2 Vol. 2, Iss. 1 Vol. 1, Iss. 5 Vol. 1, Iss. 4 Vol. 1, Iss. 3 Vol. 1, Iss. 2 Vol. 1, Iss. 1
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« Stargate Atlantis' Jewel Staite Battles Syfy's Mothman | Main | Babylon 5's Bruce Boxleitner Stars In New Syfy Channel Movie »
24's Annie Wersching - Journey's End
24's Annie Wersching as FBI Agent Renee Walker. Photo by Kelsey McNeal and copyright of Fox.
Annie Wersching discovered her passion for performing when she made her stage debut in a fourth grade production of Cats. The performance led to her joining the St. Louis Celtic Step Dancers, a competitive Irish dance troupe in Wersching's hometown. She went on to tour and compete with the group for over 14 years, cultivating her skills for live performance.
The actress attended Millikin University, where she earned a B.A. in musical theater. As a student, Wersching toured with the stage productions of Anything Goes and A Christmas Carol. In 2001, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Shortly thereafter, she appeared in the revival of Do I Hear a Waltz? at the Pasadena Playhouse. Her television credits include Star Trek: Enterprise, Journeyman, General Hospital, Boston Legal, Cold Case, Supernatural and Frasier.
For the past two years, Wersching has played FBI Agent Renee Walker opposite Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer in the hit Fox Television series 24. In the eighth season episode 8:00 a.m. - 9 :00 p.m. (broadcast April 12th), Renee is shot several times by a sniper after she and Jack make love. Our hero rushes her to a hospital, but, sadly, despite efforts by doctors, Renee is pronounced dead shortly after their arrival.
A few days following her character's tragic demise, actress Annie Wersching chatted with myself and other journalists via a conference call about her 24 experience. The following is an edited version of our Q & A. Enjoy!
What are you going to remember from your time working on 24?
ANNIE WERSCHING - Wow, so much. I would say the biggest thing is the cast and crew, and the friends that I've made. However, I was absolutely a huge fan of the show before I joined it, so just being a part of such an iconic series and getting to play a role as amazing as Renee Walker. I really loved this part, and in your career you hope that you have greater things in your future, but it's hard for me not to, at this time, think of it as sort of a role of a lifetime because she was so dynamic. I'll probably miss her the most.
Why do you think people have continued to tune in and watch 24?
AW - Well, definitely in the beginning, it was such a groundbreaking show and there was nothing else like it on television. It's really like a little feature film every week with the ticking clock and the real-time aspect. There's such an intensity to the show, that at the end of the episode it just leaves you wanting more, which is how I think every television show should be.
What do you think of the fact that Renee was sometimes referred to as "Jacqueline Bauer" (referring to Kiefer Sutherland's character of Jack Bauer)?
AW - Obviously that's quite an honor to share that title. I got that a lot last year when she first came on the scene. It wasn't something we thought about or said when we were filming Season Seven, so it was interesting to hear that it was the fans' reaction. Again, he's [Jack Bauer] a tragic hero and, obviously, that sort of ended up happening to her.
Sorry to see you won't be on the show anymore. I'm wondering, were you happy with the way that Renee's death was presented and her story line concluded?
AW - Simply because I love the character so much, you always think of other ways that things could have happened. I kind of wish that the Jack/Renee love story-making would have maybe had its own episode to resonate and then maybe she got shot because that was a pretty huge deal. There's a little part of me that was bummed that both those things happened in the same episode because that's really kind of getting overshadowed by the fact that she died. That was a big moment for the show, the first time that Jack has ever done that. It's interesting, too, that Renee went out like that as opposed to maybe out in the field and in an heroic, saving-the-day kind of way. So I think it's interesting that they switched it up a little bit as opposed to what you may have thought would have happened to her.
What sort of reaction do you expect from what's happened to Renee?
AW - I've actually been very overwhelmed by the reaction. I knew that there were a lot of people out there that really loved Renee and the Jack/Renee dynamic, but I've had thousands of messages, either on Twitter, Facebook or different fan sites, where people are just genuinely so sad. However, it's kind of what fuels Jack Bauer in the remainder of the season, and I think audiences will end up being pleased that they get to see him being the most intense as Jack Bauer can be.
Given the realtime format of the show, how carefully did you guys plan how many minutes Jack and Renee would spend in bed together. After all, you don't want to go to commercial and then come back and, "we're done!"
AW - That was a huge consideration, and especially because he's Jack Bauer. There can't be like an eight-minute adventure, but we went through many different ways that it was going to be. We weren't even sure if we'd be able to actually get them to the place where they were actually making love because of the show's realtime aspect. But they [the producers/writers] finally figured out a way to do it, and it was interesting because they knew that she was going to get shot right afterwards, so Jack couldn't be naked when he was carrying her to the hospital. So there had to be a way for him to put some clothes on, but yet make it look like they were still going to go back and have more fun.
During your final episode, were there any moments that were particularly hard for you to get through knowing it was your last time, so to speak?
AW - Yes. Since I knew it was coming, I knew that I was pretty prepared for all this. However, we shot the lovemaking and the death together over a couple of days, and Kiefer and I were so nervous about the love scene that it sort of helped tame down the "Oh, Renee is getting shot," part. The whole thing was bittersweet. It was bittersweet to be able to shoot scenes with Kiefer where Jack and Renee finally get close and then straight into covered in blood.
Obviously both Kiefer and you knew that it was your last scene together; what was it like during the filming [of the death scene] between the two of you?
AW - It's funny because once I saw it air the other night, it seemed to all happen much quicker than it did in my mind, and we spent something like two 12-14 hour days in a row together of shooting scenes of basically Jack trying to save Renee. It was very intense and very big episode for Jack; I mean, the look on his face when they come out and tell him that it didn't work was just heartbreaking. We spent quite a bit of time on it, and it was very sad. I felt bad that he had to carry me so much.
How did you originally become involved in 24 and what were some of the acting challenges you found first stepping into role of Renee?
AW - I was cast in a Fox and 20th Century Fox TV pilot that [24 executive producer] Jon Cassar and [24 co-creator/executive producer] Joel Surnow did in the Spring of 2007. That pilot didn't get picked up, so when they were casting for Renee Walker, they were actually having a very difficult time insofar as trying to figure out how old they wanted her to be, how tough, how cold, etc. So they brought me in for it, and the role that I played in that pilot was very different from Renee, so I think they thought, "Oh, we liked working with her [in the pilot]; she's not really right for this, but we'll just bring her in anyway." That was a very proud moment for me in my audition life just because I feel like I really went in and sort of changed their minds about their preconceptions when it came to the type of actress I was and something I was right for. And the challenges in playing her were pretty much that because most of my stuff was with Kiefer, you really had to show up on your game. You could never be slacking in any sense, so it really challenged me and made me such a better actor and person. It was just an amazing experience.
Which version of Renee was more challenging for you to play, or more rewarding, or maybe both - the by-the-book Renee that we met in the beginning, or the more unhinged version that we saw at the end of last season and then again this season?
AW - Wow, that's a good question. The by-the-book Renee, that was in the very beginning, so sort of finding her was an interesting challenge, and figuring out that first little relationship between Jack and Renee when they first met was a challenge, too. That's what was so great about this character - I got to play so many different sides of her. Last year was challenging in that I was in every episode, and there was such a great arc that was written for the whole season, so I really wanted to give it [the character] little nuances and make the arc interesting. This season, I got to do more intense things when I was on, but it was more little bursts. I wouldn't be around for a couple of episodes, and then I'd be there in a really intense way for four or five episodes. So both versions were challenging and so wonderful.
What do you feel really kind of helped crystallize Renee as a character, either from an acting standpoint or a character standpoint?
AW - Obviously, just the relationship that was sort of able to develop between Jack and Renee in that first day of only knowing each other for 24 hours was a huge thing. Then there was the scene with Jack, Larry Moss [Jeffrey Nordling]and Renee in front of the Capitol that was shot in Washington, D.C. where the three of them are basically having a conversation and battling the whole moral dilemma of what's right and what's wrong and everything. For whatever reason, that was sort of her breaking point where she didn't want to, but kind of chose to do what Jack was suggesting. I think that was a big defining moment for her.
I was wondering if they [the show's producers/writers] ever talked about Larry Moss as a love interest for Renee last season, and if so, when did that change in favor of Jack?
AW - There was always sort of this lingering question as to what exactly was Renee's and Larry's history. They never addressed it specifically in the show, but for us, Jeffrey and I kind f decided that maybe they had dated for a second and then realized that, no, we have to be professional. Larry was still sort of always pining for Renee, though, and longing for her. However, there was no real discussion as to if Larry and Renee were going to get together last season. It was more a lingering history that they wanted you to sort of sense between those two.
Quickly going back to Renee's death scene - how long did you have to hold your breath at the very end while Kiefer did the long look at you at the end, and how challenging was that?
AW - That was actually very hard. It was probably just 20 or 30 seconds, and even though my eyes were closed, I could sense what he was doing, and you kind of want to watch. I thought, "Oh, there's amazing things happening that I can't see right now, and I can't breathe." It was easier and less challenging holding my breath when my character was buried alive [last season].
You've said elsewhere that it saddens you that there won't be a future for Renee in any sense in the 24 universe, whether the show is on the air or not. Had her future been different, what would you foresee for Renee?
AW - If it had taken off right from being in Jack's apartment, I think it would have been very interesting to sort of see the two of them try to make it in the world, maybe going back to California, but sort of always being called back into the line of doing the right thing to help save people. It would have been just fun to see them out saving the day together and running around in different situations and countries and places, always having close calls but getting to sort of save the day together would have been pretty fantastic.
As noted above, photo by Kelsey McNeal and copyright of Fox, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
Posted at 03:00 AM in 24, Crime Drama, Entertainment, Fox TV, Jack Bauer, Jeffrey Nordling, Joel Surnow, Jon Cassar, Kiefer Sutherland Annie Wersching, Renee Palmer, TV, Uncategorized | Permalink
Tags: 24, Crime Drama, Entertainment, Fox TV, Jack Bauer, Jeffrey Nordling, Joel Surnow, Jon Cassar, Kiefer Sutherland Annie Wersching, Renee Palmer, TV
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Battlestar Pegasus
La-La Land Records To Release Battlestar Galactica: The Plan/Razor
Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama) stepped behind the cameras to direct Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Photo by Justin Stephens and copyright of the Syfy Channel.
NBC Universal and La-La Land Records revisit the acclaimed TV series Battlestar Galactica with the release of the soundtrack for the two extended TV events, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan and Battlestar Galactica: Razor on February 23rd, 2010. Both The Plan and Razor feature music by series composer Bear McCreary. La-La Land Records is releasing The Plan/Razor soundtracks through a license agreement with NBC Universal Television, DVD, Music and Consumer Products Group.
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan/Razor composer McCreary's Galactica score has been described as "sharp and sensitive" (The Wall Street Journal), "a key element in establishing the show's dark, complex tone" (The Hollywood Reporter) and "rich, raw, oddly stirring...kick-ass and powerful as hell," (E! Online). It "fits the action so perfectly, it's almost devastating: a Sci-Fi score like no other" (NPR). McCreary has performed sold-out shows with the Battlestar Galactica orchestra during Comic-Con in San Diego, and in Los Angeles at the Grand Performances series and at The Roxy.
McCreary currently scores the new FOX series Human Target, NBC's Trauma and two series for The Syfy Channel - Eureka and the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica, both of which are produced by Universal Cable Productions. McCreary's credits include the Capcom video game Dark Void and the feature films Wrong Turn 2 and the Rest Stop films. McCreary was among a handful of select protegés of late film music legend Elmer Bernstein and is a classically trained composer with degrees in Composition and Recording Arts from the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music.
"After finishing my four season journey scoring Battlestar Galactica and releasing four remarkable albums with La-La Land Records, I am thrilled to be able to return to this musical universe," said McCreary. "These two scores make any fan's album collection complete."
Edward James Olmos (Admiral William "Husker" Adama) directed Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, which was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2009, and aired on Syfy in January 2010. The Cylons began as humanity's robot servants. They rebelled and evolved and now they look like us. Their plan is simple: destroy the race that enslaved them. But when their devastating attack leaves human survivors, the Cylons have to improvise. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan tells the story of two powerful Cylon leaders,working separately, and their determination to finish the task.
Battlestar Galactica: Razor also tells the story of what happens on the eve of a devastating Cylon attack, this time from the perspective of Officer Kendra Shaw - who reports for duty on the Battlestar Pegasus. When mankind's future is forever changed on that fateful day, Kenda is reshaped into a "razor," a tool of war, under the ruthless guidance of her commander, Admiral Helena Cain. Battlestar Galactica: Razor tells the untold story of Pegasus and provides chilling clues to the fate of humanity as the final chapters of the Battlestar Galactica story unfold. Battlestar Galactica: Razor originally aired on Syfy in November 2007, and was released a week later on DVD and Blu-Ray.
"When I compiled the Season 4 soundtrack, it became clear that there was not enough room on even a two-disc set to accommodate cues from Razor and The Plan," said McCreary. "Combining them on one album made perfect sense, because both narratives flashback to the same time period within the larger BSG story and offer different perspectives on the same events. The scores to Razor and The Plan are two sides of the same musical coin." Also available from La-La Land Records are McCreary's soundtracks for Battlestar Galactica seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4, Caprica, Eureka, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Wrong Turn 2 and the Rest Stop films.
As noted above, photo by Justin Stephens and copyright of the Syfy Channel, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
Posted at 03:00 AM in Admiral Helena Cain, Admiral William Adama, Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica: Razor, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, Battlestar Pegasus, Bear McCreary, BSG, Caprica, Cylons, Dark Void, Edward James Olmos, Elmer Bernstein, Eureka, Human Target, La-La Land Records, NBC Universal Television, Officer Kendra Shaw, The Syfy Channel, Trauma, Uncategorized, Wrong Turn 2 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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On-site SEO for international brands, do’s and don’ts
October 19, 2018 seofornown4eva 38 Views 0 Comments
International brands have their work cut out for them. Building a consistent brand experience across multiple continents and to audiences that speak different languages is no easy task, and the process of translating individual pages from one language to another is time consuming and resource intensive.
Unfortunately, much of this work can go to waste if the right steps aren’t taken to help search engines understand how your site has been internationalized.
To help you prevent this, we’ve collected a list of “Do’s and Don’ts” to help guide your internationalization efforts and ensure that your pages get properly indexed by search engines.
Do conduct language specific keyword research
The direct translation of a keyword will not necessarily be what users are searching for in that language. Rather than simply taking the translation at face value, you will have more success if you take a look at your options in the Google Keyword Planner to see if there are other phrasings or synonyms that are a better fit.
Remember to update your location and language settings within the planner, listed just above the “keyword ideas” field:
Don’t index automatic translation
Automatic translation can be better than nothing as far as user experience goes in some circumstances, but users should be warned that the translation may not be reliable, and pages that have been automatically translated should be blocked from search engines in robots.txt. Automatic translations will typically look like spam to algorithms like Panda and could hurt the overall authority of your site.
Do use different URLs for different languages
In order to ensure that Google indexes alternate language versions of each page, you need to ensure that these pages are located at different URLs.
Avoid using browser settings and cookies to change the content listed at the URL to a different language. Doing so creates confusion about what content is located at that URL.
Since Google’s crawlers are typically located in the United States, they will typically only be able to access the US version of the content, meaning that the alternate language content will not get indexed.
Again, Google needs a specific web address to identify a specific piece of content. While different language versions of a page may convey the same information, they do so for different audiences, meaning they serve different purposes, and Google needs to see them as separate entities in order to properly connect each audience to the proper page.
We highly recommend using a pre-built e-commerce platform like Shopify Plus or Polylang for WordPress in order to ensure that your method for generating international URLs is consistent and systematic.
Don’t canonicalize from one language to another
The canonical tag is meant to tell search engines that two or more different URLs represent the same page. This doesn’t always mean the content is identical, since it could represent page alternates where the content has been sorted differently, where the thematic visuals are different, and other minor changes.
Alternate language versions of a page, however, are not the same page. A user searching for the Dutch version of a page would be very disappointed if they landed on the English version of the page. For this reason, you should never canonicalize one language alternate to another, even though the content on each page conveys the same information.
Do use “hreflang” for internationalization
You may be wondering how to tell search engines that two pages represent alternate language versions of the same content if you can’t use canonicalization to do so. This is what “hreflang” is for which explicitly tells the search engines that two or more pages are alternates of one another.
There are three ways to implement “hreflang,” with HTML tags, with HTTP headers, and in your Sitemap.
1. HTML Tags
Implementing “hreflang” with HTML tags is done in the <head> section, with code similar to this:
<title>Title tag of the page</title>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/english-url” />
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/spanish-url” />
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”it”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/italian-url” />
Where hreflang=”en” tells search engines that the associated URL https://example.com/page1/english-url is the English alternate version of the page. URLs must be entirely complete, including http or https and the domain name, not just the path. The two letter string “en” is an ISO 639-1 code, which you can find a list of here. You can also set hreflang=”x-default” for a page where the language is unspecified.
Each alternate should list all of the other alternates, including itself, and the set of links should be the same on every page. Any two pages that don’t both use hreflang to reference each other will not be considered alternates. This is because it’s okay for alternates to be located on different domains, and sites you do not have ownership of shouldn’t be able to claim themselves an alternate of one of your pages.
In addition to a language code, you can add an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. For example, for the UK English version of a page, you would use “en-GB” in place of “en.” Google does advise having at least one version of the page without a country code. You can apply multiple country codes and a country-agnostic hreflang to the same URL.
2. HTTP header
As an alternative to HTML implementation, your server can send an HTTP Link Header. The syntax looks like this:
Link: <https://example.com/page1/english-url>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”en”,
<https://example.com/page1/spanish-url>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es”,
<https://example.com/page1/italian-url>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”it”
The rules regarding how to use them are otherwise the same.
3. Sitemap
Finally, you can use your XML sitemap to set alternatives for each URL. The syntax for that is as follows:
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/page1/english-url</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel=”alternate”
hreflang=”es”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/spanish-url”/>
hreflang=”it”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/italian-url”/>
hreflang=”en”
rel="external" target="_blank" href=”https://example.com/page1/english-url”/>
</url>
Note that the English version of the page is listed both within the <loc> tag and as an alternate.
Keep in mind that this is not complete. For it to be complete you will also need separate <url> sections for the Spanish and Italian pages, each of them listing all of the other alternates as well.
Don’t rely on the “lang” attribute or URL
Google explicitly does not use the lang attribute, the URL, or anything else in the code to determine the language of the page. The language is determined only by the language of the content itself.
Needless to say, this means that your page content should be in the correct language. But it also means:
The main content, navigation, and supplementary content should all be in the same language
Side by side translations should be avoided. Don’t display translations on the page, just make it easy for users to switch languages.
If your site offers any kind of automatic translation, make sure that this content is not indexable
Avoid mixing language use if at all possible, and if it is necessary, make sure that the primary language of the page dominates any others in substance
Do allow users to switch languages
For any international business, it’s a good idea to allow the users to switch languages, usually from the main navigation. For example, Amazon allows users to switch languages from the top right corner of the site:
Do not force the user to a specific language version of the page based on their location. Automatic redirection prevents both users and search engines from accessing the version of the site that they need to access. Google’s bots will never be able to crawl alternate language versions of a page if they are always redirected to the US version of the site based on their location.
Turning to Amazon for our example once again, we are not prevented from accessing amazon.co.jp, but we do have the option of switching to English:
Don’t create duplicate content across multiple languages
While you should not canonicalize alternate language versions of one page to another, if you use alternate URLs for pages meant for different locations but the language and content are identical, you should use the canonical tag. For example, if the American and British versions of a page are identical, one should consistently canonicalize to the other. Use hreflang as discussed above to list them as alternates with the same language but for different locations.
Use these guidelines to make sure users from all of your target audiences will be able to find your pages in the search results, no matter where they are located or what language they speak.
Original source: https://searchenginewatch.com/onsite-seo-international-brands-dos-donts
← A cheat sheet to Google algorithm updates from 2011 to 2018
Dragonfly: What we know about Google’s possible plans to re-enter China’s search market →
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If you're curious about adding BDSM to your relationship, but unsure of where to start, this starter kit is just what you need. It contains wrist and ankle cuffs, a padded leather blindfold, rope for tying one another up, a whip for light spanking, and a tickler for teasing. Just be sure to learn about some BDSM best practices, and then get ready to dip your toes into the world of kink.
Take fantasy masturbation to new levels of pleasure with one of our high-quality female sex dolls. These are inflatable or non-inflatable realistic love dolls made with high-quality, body-safe materials. Each one has a single-, double- or triple-entry design to simulate lifelike oral, anal or vaginal sex on demand. SexToy carries the super popular Pipedream Extreme Dollz in tons of positions with highly realistic Fanta Flesh openings for an amazingly arousing experience. Sex Toy Store
Sex shops have operated in Australia since the 1960s, first in the urban areas of Sydney, notably Kings Cross.[citation needed] The development of sex shops in the country was assisted by the legalisation of the import of pornographic magazines in 1971, the appearance of mass-produced battery-powered vibrators in the 1970s and the arrival of X-rated videos in the 1980s. The popularity of Internet pornography in the 2000s resulted in a drop in sex shop sales, some store closures and diversification into non sex-related adult goods.[2]
Added bonus: It can be controlled by an app on your phone. This makes it pretty ideal for long-distance relationships (talk about taking sexting to another level), but that doesn’t mean couples who get tons of face-to-face time can’t enjoy it, too. You and your partner can download the free We-Vibe Sync app and connect your toy to it by inputting the serial number. You can then invite each other to “connect” on the app and sync up. We’ll let you take it from there.
In this modern world, there is a tool available to assist with just about every task. You use a knife or a mandoline to slice up food. You use a rake or leaf blower to clean up the leaves in your yard. You use a screwdriver or a power drill to install a screw. Now imagine how ridiculous it would be to perform these tasks without any tools to help you. Why would anyone try to twist a screw into the wall with their fingers when they could use a drill? We like to apply that same logic to the bedroom. With all the tools available to improve your sexual experience, does it really make sense not to take advantage of them? Buttplug Vibrator
Some companies manufacture cloth sex dolls using the same technology that is used to create plush toys. With widespread cultural use of the internet amongst younger generations, numerous forums exist for amateurs who create their own sex dolls from fabric or other materials. There are even mailing lists for discussing techniques and experiences with MLDs (material love dolls)[citation needed].
Our wide selection of sex toys has something for everyone, whether you’re getting a toy for the first time or you’re an absolute pro. From a wide selection of vibrators and dildos to strokers and cock rings, our sex toys offer a large variation so that you can find the perfect toy for your needs. Perhaps you want to experiment with a dildo or butt plug, or you crave the pleasurable vibrations from a rabbit vibrator or a vibrating cock ring. Some of our toys are even remote-controlled to provide a totally “hands free” experience—you could even give the remote to your lover and see how much it turns the both of you on.
Are things getting a little stale in the bedroom? Jack and Jill can help! We’ve got sex swings, vibrators controlled by a mobile app, we-vibe, vibrating rings, fetish gear, sexy books, bondage toys, and more. Whatever mood you’re in, you can indulge together with many of our toys. You’ll have better sex, more pleasure, and reconnect with your relationship. Don’t forget to stock up on lubricant. Think of it has a pleasure enhancer, making sure everything moves smooth and easy. Anal Vibrators
In the early 1590s, the English playwright Thomas Nashe wrote a poem known as The Choice of Valentines, Nashe's Dildo or The Merrie Ballad of Nashe his Dildo. This was not printed at the time, due to its obscenity[20] but it was still widely circulated and made Nashe's name notorious.[13] The poem describes a visit to a brothel by a man called "Tomalin"; he is searching for his sweetheart, Francis, who has become a prostitute. The only way he can see her is to hire her. However, she resorts to using a glass dildo as he finds himself unable to perform sexually to her satisfaction.[21] Gspot Vibrater
Ever been watching a movie with your partner when a particularly great sex scene comes on? It's safe to say the two of you might get distracted. Watching porn with a partner can turn it into one of the most versatile "toys" at your disposal — communicating about the things you both enjoy in a video can inspire fantasies and lead to new explorations, says relationship expert Barbara Greenberg, PhD. Get started with some of our suggestions here.
"The Afterglow is a solid candle made from natural, good-for-the-skin ingredients (including jojoba, shea butter, vitamin E and aloe) that melt into a luxurious, smoky, sweet-smelling massage oil for partners to use while indulging in major manual fun. Housed in an elegant ceramic container, with a pinched corner to facilitate pouring, this massage oil is the perfect complement to massage, sensual or not." --
Are things getting a little stale in the bedroom? Jack and Jill can help! We’ve got sex swings, vibrators controlled by a mobile app, we-vibe, vibrating rings, fetish gear, sexy books, bondage toys, and more. Whatever mood you’re in, you can indulge together with many of our toys. You’ll have better sex, more pleasure, and reconnect with your relationship. Don’t forget to stock up on lubricant. Think of it has a pleasure enhancer, making sure everything moves smooth and easy. Sex Toy Kits
As of 2008, it was valued at US$15 billion worldwide, with a growth rate of 30%.[29] 70% of sex toys are manufactured in China.[29][30][31] Sex toys are sold in various types of local and online sex shops,[32] at conventions associated with the adult industry,[33][34] and at parties. However, some items, such as "hand held massagers", are sold in mainstream retail outlets such as drugstores.[33]
Perhaps you're currently single, or you and your lover are a part for different circumstances--either way, having one of these inflatable sex toys in your life can help ease some of the tension you've been feeling in your sex life. A blow up doll can be the perfect companion when you’re looking to switch up your masturbation routine, live out a sexual fantasy about a favorite celebrity or porn star, or roleplay some erotic exploration with a partner. Spencer's has the best realistic sex dolls for those who want to become seriously intimate, or more humorous inflatables that will make you the life of the bachelor party.
Our selection of sex toys for men is as diverse as the one for women. Cock rings, sex dolls, penis pumps, and prostate stimulators are among the most popular toys in our store. Masturbators and fleshlights are also great sexual aids for men. These toys come in a variety of shapes — anuses, vaginas, or mouths. Each toy has its own grip and feel, leading to a unique experience.
Our wide selection of sex toys has something for everyone, whether you’re getting a toy for the first time or you’re an absolute pro. From a wide selection of vibrators and dildos to strokers and cock rings, our sex toys offer a large variation so that you can find the perfect toy for your needs. Perhaps you want to experiment with a dildo or butt plug, or you crave the pleasurable vibrations from a rabbit vibrator or a vibrating cock ring. Some of our toys are even remote-controlled to provide a totally “hands free” experience—you could even give the remote to your lover and see how much it turns the both of you on. Sexytoy
This article will cover the various types of dildos available today, including material types and what to know when shopping around. It will also cover other things you need to know for your purchase. Of course, the article will end with me offering a list of dildos which I've used and loved to make your life a bit easier for your dildo search. Let’s get going!
Jump up ^ "News & Commentary". Valley Advocate. Easthampton, Massachusetts: Accessed via NewsBank. 4 November 2010. The Hitachi Magic Wand, with a reputation for releasing even the most stubborn orgasm, brings a powerful buzz to all the right places (instead of uncomfortably rattling the handle). Separately sold removable silicone tops add extra texture or penetration options Cheap Adult Toy
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The UN (United Nations) is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights.
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Office for Outer Space Affairs
Executive Office of the Secretary-General
Office for Disarmament Affairs
Social Policy and Development
Development Policy Analysis
Public Administration and Development Management
ECOSOC Support and Co-ordination
Department of General Assembly and Conference Management
Department of Political Affairs
Department of Public Information
Economic Commission for Africa
Economic Commission for Europe
Sustainable Transport Division
ESCAP Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology (APCTT)
ESCAP Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development
ESCAP Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Sustainable Agriculture (CAPSA)
ESCAP Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization
ESCAP Environment and Development Division (EDD)
ESCAP ICT and Disaster Risk reduction Division (IDD)
ESCAP Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division (MPFD)
ESCAP Office of Executive Secretary (OES)
ESCAP Pacific Office (EPO)
ESCAP Social Development Division (SDD)
ESCAP Statistics Division (SD)
ESCAP Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP)
ESCAP Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia (SRO-ENEA)
ESCAP Subregional Office for North and Central Asia (SRO-NCA)
ESCAP Subregional Office for South and South-West Asia (SRO-SSWA)
ESCAP Trade, Investment and Innovation Division (TIID)
ESCAP Transport Division (TD)
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Office of Internal Oversight Services
Office of Legal Affairs
Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea
Department of Peacekeeping Operations
UN Works
Commission on International Trade Law
Office of Sport for Development and Peace
Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States
Non-Governmental Liaison Service
International Law Commission
Military Staff Committee
Office of the Special Adviser on Africa
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
Group of Experts on Geographical Names
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
Department of Field Support
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict
United Nations Library at Geneva
Dag Hammarskjöld Library
Department of Global Communications
PrepCom for the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) bansnuclear explosions by everyone, everywhere: on the Earth's surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground.
United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee
Guided by Security Council resolutions 1373 (2001) and 1624 (2005), the CTC works to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to prevent terrorist acts both within their borders and across regions. It was established in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Achieving food security for all is at the heart of FAOs efforts - to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. FAOs mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy.
Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department
Economic and Social Development Deprtment
Fisheries and Aquaculture Department
Forestry Department
Natural Resources Management and Environment Department
Technical Cooperation Department
Office of Knowledge Exchange, Research and Extension
Publishing Policy and Support Branch
Sales and Marketing Group
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is the worlds center of cooperation in the nuclear field. It was set up as the worlds ATOMS FOR PEACE organization in 1957 within the United Nations family. The Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.
Constantly seeking to foster and support the sustainable growth of air transport, the International Civil Aviation Organization serves as the global forum for its 191 Member States.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN).
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. The Conference was organized in response to the food crises of the early 1970s that primarily affected the Sahelian countries of Africa. The conference resolved that "an International Fund for Agricultural Development should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production in the developing countries". One of the most important insights emerging from the conference was that the causes of food insecurity and famine were not so much failures in food production, but structural problems relating to poverty and to the fact that the majority of the developing world's poor populations were concentrated in rural areas.
The ILO is the international organization responsible for drawing up and overseeing international labour standards. It is the only 'tripartite' United Nations agency that brings together representatives of governments, employers and workers to jointly shape policies and programmes promoting Decent Work for all. This unique arrangement gives the ILO an edge in incorporating 'real world' knowledge about employment and work.
The purposes of the Organization, as summarized by Article 1(a) of the Convention, are "to provide machinery for cooperation among Governments in the field of governmental regulation and practices relating to technical matters of all kinds affecting shipping engaged in international trade; to encourage and facilitate the general adoption of the highest practicable standards in matters concerning maritime safety, efficiency of navigation and prevention and control of marine pollution from ships".
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is an independent, quasi-judicial expert body established by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 by merging two bodies: the Permanent Central Narcotics Board, created by the 1925 International Opium Convention; and the Drug Supervisory Body, created by the 1931 Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs.
IOM is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society. As the leading international organization for migration, IOM acts with its partners in the international community to assist in meeting the growing operational challenges of migration management, advance understanding of migration issues, encourage social and economic development through migration, and uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. The UN General Assembly endorsed the action by WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC.
Inter-Parliamentary Union
The IPU is the international organization of Parliaments (Article 1 of the Statutes of the Inter-Parliamentary Union). It was established in 1889. The Union is the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue and works for peace and co-operation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy.
International Trade Centre
The ITCs mission is to enable small business export success in developing and transition-economy countries, by providing, with partners, sustainable and inclusive development solutions to the private sector, trade support institutions and policymakers.
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea is an independent judicial body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to adjudicate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the Convention. The Tribunal is composed of 21 independent members, elected from among persons enjoying the highest reputation for fairness and integrity and of recognized competence in the field of the law of the sea.
ITU was founded in Paris in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union. It took its present name in 1932, and in 1947 became a specialized agency of the United Nations. Although its first area of expertise was the telegraph, the work of ITU now covers the whole ICT sector, from digital broadcasting to the Internet, and from mobile technologies to 3D TV.
MICT's mandate is to carry out a number of essential functions of the ICTR and the ICTY after the completion of their respective mandates.
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
The OPCW is a fully-independent international organisation. The international community is using the Chemical Weapons Convention to eliminate the possibility of developing, producing, using, stockpiling or transferring these dreadful weapons forever.
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.
UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide.
International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
Development Fund for Women
United Nations Association/USA
The UNA-USA (United Nations Association of the United States of America) is a membership program of the UN Foundation. It is dedicated to building understanding of and support for the ideals and work of the UN among the American people. Its education, membership and advocacy programs emphasize the importance of cooperation among nations and the need for American leadership at the UN.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, or UNAIDS, is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV epidemic. The mission of UNAIDS is to lead, strengthen and support an expanded response to HIV and AIDS that includes preventing transmission of HIV, providing care and support to those already living with the virus, reducing the vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV and alleviating the impact of the epidemic. UNAIDS seeks to prevent the HIV/AIDS epidemic from becoming a severe pandemic.
United Nations Commission on Human Security
United Nations Commission on Human Security was established to promote public understanding, engagement and support of human security and its underlying imperatives; to develop the concept of human security as an operational tool for policy formulation and implementation; and to propose a concrete program of action to address critical and pervasive threats to human security.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Established in 1964, UNCTAD promotes the development-friendly integration of developing countries into the world economy. UNCTAD has progressively evolved into an authoritative knowledge-based institution whose work aims to help shape current policy debates and thinking on development, with a particular focus on ensuring that domestic policies and international action are mutually supportive in bringing about sustainable development.
United Nations Democracy Fund
UNDEF was established by the UN Secretary-General in 2005 as a United Nations General Trust Fund to support democratization efforts around the world. UNDEF supports projects that strengthen the voice of civil society, promote human rights, and encourage the participation of all groups in democratic processes. The large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations -- both in the transition and consolidation phases of democratization. In this way, UNDEF plays a novel and unique role in complementing the UN's traditional work -- the work with Governments -- to strengthen democratic governance around the world.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) is the United Nations global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 177 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges.
UN Millennium Project
Evaluation Office
United Nations Capital Development Fund
Special Unit for South-South Cooperation
Human Development Report Office
Bureau for Development Policy
Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery
United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office
Office of Audit and Investigations
Ethics Office
United Nations Development Fund for Women
United Nations Evaluation Group
The United Nations Evaluation Group is a professional network that brings together the units responsible for evaluation in the UN system including the specialized agencies, funds, programmes and affiliated organisations.
UNEP, established in 1972, is the voice for the environment within the United Nations system. UNEP acts as a catalyst, advocate, educator and facilitator to promote the wise use and sustainable development of the global environment. To accomplish this, UNEP works with a wide range of partners, including United Nations entities, international organizations, national governments, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and civil society.
Division of Early Warning and Assessment
Division Of Environmental Policy Implementation
Division of Technology, Industry and Economics
Division of Regional Cooperation
Division of Environmental Law & Conventions
Global Environment Facility Coordination
Secretariat of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel
Division of Communications and Public Information
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice
Working Group on the Review of Implementation
Intergovernmental Committee for the Nagoya Protocol
Working Group on Article 8(j)
Working Group on Protected Areas
Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
Ozone Secretariat
Multilateral Fund Secretariat for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol
Secretariat to the Convention of Migratory Species of Wild Animals
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent
Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol
Regional Seas Conventions
Site of the Division of Environmental Conventions (DEC)
Disasters and Conflicts
Ecosystem Management
UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’S mission and activities.
Sector for External Relations and Public Information
Division of Public Information
UNESCO Education Programme
UNESCO Natural Sciences Programme
UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Programme
UNESCO Culture Programme
UNESCO Communications and Information Programme
United Nations Fund for International Partnerships
The United Nations Office for Partnerships serves as a gateway for partnership opportunities with the United Nations family. It promotes new collaborations and alliances in furtherance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and provides support to new initiatives of the Secretary-General. UNOP provides Partnership Advisory Services and Outreach to a variety of entities, as well as managing the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP), established by the Secretary-General in March 1998 to serve as the interface in the partnership between the UN system and the UN Foundation, and the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), established by the Secretary-General in July 2005 to support democratization throughout the world.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
Information and External Relations Division
United Nations Global Compact
The UN Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. By doing so, business, as a primary driver of globalization, can help ensure that markets, commerce, technology and finance advance in ways that benefit economies and societies everywhere.
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre has as its prime objectives to improve international understanding of the issues relating to children’s rights, to promote economic policies that advance the cause of children, and to help facilitate full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child universally.
United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute
UNICRI is a United Nations entity mandated to assist intergovernmental, governmental and non-governmental organizations in formulating and implementing improved policies in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.
The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research is a voluntarily funded autonomous institute within the United Nations. An impartial actor, the Institute generates ideas and promotes action on disarmament and security. Based in Geneva, UNIDIR is centrally positioned to assist the international community in developing the practical, innovative thinking needed to find solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow.
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Its mandate is to promote and accelerate sustainable industrial development in developing countries and economies in transition, and work towards improving living conditions in the worlds poorest countries by drawing on its combined global resources and expertise.
Industrial Development Board
Programme Development and Technical Cooperation Division
Strategic Research, Quality Assurance and Advocacy Division
Programme Support and General Management Division
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. It also has a mandate to help stateless people.
Division of Financial and Administrative Management
Division of Information Systems and Telecommunications
Budapest Global Service Centre
Division of Human Resources Management
Division of Emergency Security and Supply
Division of Programme Support and Management
Division of International Protection
UNICEF (United Nations Childrens Fund) is the driving force that helps build a world where the rights of every child are realized. We have the global authority to influence decision-makers, and the variety of partners at grassroots level to turn the most innovative ideas into reality.
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Headquarters
Division of Policy and Strategy
Division of Communication
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
UNISDR is the secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. It was created in December 1999 and is part of the UN Secretariat with the purpose of ensuring the implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is making concrete contributions to developing the capacities of tens of thousands of people around the world. Since its inception in 1965, UNITAR has built sustainable partnerships acquiring unique expertise and accumulating experience and knowledge to fulfil its mandate. These accomplishments have enabled UNITAR to respond to the growing demand from UN Member States for training for capacity development in the fields of Environment; Peace, Security and Diplomacy; and Governance.
UNODC is a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime. Established in 1997 through a merger between the United Nations Drug Control Programme and the Centre for International Crime Prevention, UNODC operates in all regions of
United Nations Drug Control Programme
United Nations Office for Project Services
UNOPS mission is to expand the capacity of the UN system and its partners to implement peacebuilding, humanitarian and development operations that matter for people in need.
United Nations Peacebuilding Commission
The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) is an intergovernmental advisory body that supports peace efforts in countries emerging from conflict, and is a key addition to the capacity of the International Community in the broad peace agenda.
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
The UNRISD mission is to generate knowledge and articulate policy alternatives on contemporary development issues, thereby contributing to the broader goals of the UN system of reducing poverty and inequality, advancing well-being and rights, and creating more democratic and just societies.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) provides assistance, protection and advocacy for some 5 million registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territory, pending a solution to their plight.
UNSCEAR
UNSCEAR'S mandate is to assess and report levels and effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. Governments and organizations throughout the world rely on the Committee's estimates as the scientific basis for evaluating radiation risk and for establishing protective measures.
United Nations System Staff College
Based in Torino, Italy, the UN System Staff College (UNSSC) has been running courses and delivering learning initiatives to United Nations personnel for more than a decade, reaching on average 7,000 beneficiaries across the globe each year. Through its programmes and services, the UNSSC can assist UN organizations and their staff to develop the skills and competencies needed to meet the global challenges faced by the UN.
United Nations University
UNU (United Nations University) is the academic arm of the United Nations system, which implements research and educational programmes in the area of sustainable development, with the particular aim of assisting developing countries.
United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace
United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies
The United Nations Volunteers programme is the UN organization that contributes to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide.
United Nations World Tourism Organization
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.
Established in 1874, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), with its headquarters in the Swiss capital Berne, is the second oldest international organization worldwide. With its 192 member countries, the UPU is the primary forum for cooperation between postal sector players. It helps to ensure a truly universal network of up-to-date products and services.
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. The bank's stated mission is to achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity. Its five organizations are the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
International Development Association
WFP is the food aid arm of the United Nations system. Food aid is one of the many instruments that can help to promote food security, which is defined as access of all people at all times to the food needed for an active and healthy life. ¹ The policies governing the use of World Food Programme food aid must be oriented towards the objective of eradicating hunger and poverty. The ultimate objective of food aid should be the elimination of the need for food aid.
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is the United Nations agency dedicated to the use of intellectual property (patents, copyright, trademarks, designs, etc.) as a means of stimulating innovation and creativity.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is the UN system's authoritative voice on the state and behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources.
الترويج لعمل الأمم المتحدة ومعرفتها من خلال تسويق المنشورات والبيانات والسلع التسويقية وبيعها وتوزيعها
سياسة الترجيع
عائدات المبيعات
قم بجولة في الأمم المتحدة
قم بزيارة محل بيع الكتب
حقوق النشر والطبع
بيان الخصوصيات
تحذير من عمليات إحتيال
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What’s Happening?!
Posted on 01/28/2019 01/28/2019 by gldnfortress
Go Dukes!!!! JMU women’s basketball crushed it this past weekend.
This past weekend JMU women’s basketball climbed their way to the top not once, but twice.The lady dukes won 65-48 against William & Mary on Friday. On Sunday, the women continued to crush it and they won 82-30 against Elon. The JMU women’s team has officially won 9 of their last 10 games! Go Dukes!
Unfortunately, the JMU men’s basketball team did not get so lucky this weekend when they lost against Northeastern on Saturday.
JMU student was arrested over the weekend
A senior male JMU student was arrested for assault and received eight charges this past weekend. The male was allegedly attacking people and destroying cars in the parking lot of the McDonalds located on Port Republic Road. It is currently unclear if the male was on drugs under the influence when the arrest took place.
The government has REOPENED… temporarily.
Friday night, Trump signed a bill to reopen the government, but with a deadline. He is requiring a “fair deal” from Congress by February 15, 2019 before taking matters into his own hands.
Here are the options he’s given:
By Feb. 15, Congress will have granted him the funds for a “wall” at the nation’s southwestern border.
By Feb. 15, Congress will continue to deny his request and he will either 1) close the government again or 2) use his executive power to fund the wall.
What that really means is that one of three things will happen by that day and, in all cases, Trump will get his wall.
Trump has shifted his original request for a physical border to a more technologically-based concept. In his most recent verbal proposal, he believes that sensors and patrols will be effective in accomplishing his goals.
Still, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has emphasized that any compromise on border security will not come from concurrence to fund the wall.
This shutdown ending means that federal employees reported to work today. And though many furloughed workers will be compensated for their five-week employment crisis, those considered “contractors” will not.
Way to go, Mr. President…changing lives, for the absolute worse, one day at a time.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/politics/trump-shutdown-deal.html
Red for Ed March
Organized by Virginia Educators United, the Red for Ed march happened today!
As thousands of people marched to the Capitol, teachers, students, and concerned civilians demanded more funding for the one of the most important things in the world — education.
This has raised much-needed awareness to the education crisis in America and, specifically, in Virginia. Research statistics show that Virginia is below the national average for the, already low, teacher pay wages. This undermines the importance of the profession and makes it harder to recruit quality teachers who are underpaid for their labor.
Yes, Gov. Northam has recognized this issue and proposed a pay increase, but let’s be real… teachers will never be valued the way they should. The future of so many is in the palm of their hands and our system treats them as if they’re disposable.
Link: https://www.wavy.com/news/education/virginia-teachers-advocates-march-in-richmond-for-more-school-funding/1733388178
Jail Doctor Allegations Dismissed
On Wednesday, a judge dismissed the charges against a doctor at Rockingham County Jail for inadequate care of an inmate. Nexus Services filed the the lawsuit in March of 2017 for malpractice concerning the administering of insulin to a diabetic patient.
Though this wasn’t the ideal outcome for the patient, family, or anyone affected by this issue, there is definitely something to be said about healthcare and incarceration in America. For lack of better, or more powerful, words, both systems are extremely fucked. And so are we if we don’t change them.
Link: http://www.dnronline.com/news/harrisonburg/jail-doc-cleared-lawsuit-alleged-inadequate-care/article_3141766c-19eb-57d1-ac53-afdfa8391968.html
Louisiana man accused of killing five, including parents and significant other
On Saturday morning, a man-hunt began for a suspect accused of killing five people in Louisiana. Of the victims were his mother, his father, his alleged girlfriend, her father, and her brother.
Once the suspect’s identity was revealed by his father in a death testimonial, the suspect’s grandmother alerted authorities that her grandson would probably travel to her home next and she was correct. Police detained 21-year old, Dakota Theriot, at her home in Richmond County, Virginia yesterday.
The motive is still unknown.
Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/louisiana-man-accused-killing-five-including-his-parents-arrested-virginia-n963271
Bombs exploded in Cathedral in the Philippines
A bomb exploded in a roman catholic Cathedral in the Philippines over the weekend. The first explosion killed 15 innocent church-goers. Moments later, the Philippine army rushed in to help. Sadly, a second bomb went off and killed five army men. Killing a total of 20 people and injuring at least 111 people. Muslim militants were believed to be active prior to the bombings, therefor, the government of the Philippines sets blame on Muslim terrorists.
Crime in Zimbabwe
The government in Zimbabwe is so broke that the president has decided to raise fuel prices 150%. The people of Zimbabwe were so angry, they decided to take to the streets and riots began occurring. Police and the country’s military took the cities of Zimbabwe by storm and have been beating and imprisoning local residents. Over 650 residents have either been taken into custody or have been beaten. Now, the people of Zimbabwe live in fear and heartache.
At last! Some good in the world!
A couple from Ohio has adopted 9 special needs children. After a recent snow storm, the father of 9 decided to build a snow fort that all of his kids could play in. This included his child who is handicapped. The father made a snow fort that was wheelchair accessible so that all 9 of his children could play together.
Boy gives shoes and socks to homeless child
A 9-year-old boy was roaming the streets of Malaysia holding his father’s hand. When the little boy saw another little homeless boy who was wearing no shoes, he immediately rushed over to him. The 9-year-old took his shoes and socks off and began putting them on the homeless boy. There is still good in the world!
That’s all… for now!
@gldnfortress & @digdontcare
PC: fists in the air via Flickr.com
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Transportation | Show-Me Daily
Face-Palm: Loop Trolley Over-Budget, Likely Delayed, Again
By Graham Renz on Aug 03, 2017
David Wilson / Creative Commons 2.0
Face-palming is defined as:
Bringing the palm of one's hand to one's face, as an expression of disbelief, shame, or exasperation.
It’s what I did when I read that the Delmar Loop Trolley, supposed Millennial-magnet and urban-revitalizer extraordinaire, is yet again over-budget and likely delayed. Joe Edwards, who’s leading the trolley effort, says he needs an additional half-million to cover signage and vehicle restoration costs, and to ensure the system can operate over “reasonable hours.” In other words, the Loop Trolley needs another bailout to help pay its regular bills—not to cover unexpected costs.
This request is not fake news, and unfortunately it shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Trolley has an expensive and protracted history. Sometimes past performance really is the best indicator of future results.
First, in 2014, bids for building the vintage streetcar line came in $11 million over-budget. A second round of bids came in $3 million lower, but that still put the project—originally estimated to cost $43 million—nearly 20% over-budget. County taxpayers coughed up the extra cash to bail the trolley out, after they were told cost-overruns would be paid by a special taxing district, the loop trolley transportation development district, which levies an extra sales tax for the project.
And then there were the delays.
Before construction even began, the Federal Transit Administration, which pledged to pay for most of the trolley’s capital costs, threatened to withdraw its financial support because of a lack of engineering and design progress. Then the University City council had to extend the terms of a special building permit six months so construction would be legal when it actually began. At that time, the line was slated to open in late 2016.
But then the public was told the line would open in spring of 2017. It didn’t. Trolley proponents later said the opening date would be sometime in summer of 2017. It wasn’t. Then they said the opening date would be in August. It no longer is. And then they said it would be sometime later in the fall of 2017. I wouldn’t be surprised if the trolley actually starts moving people sometime closer to 2018.
The Loop Trolley is a textbook example of government mismanagement. Proponents over-promised and under-delivered, and ultimately, taxpayers are on the hook. Unfortunately, the trolley’s foundering was entirely predictable. Projects like it are consistently over budget and often delayed for years. Perhaps policymakers will take this as a learning opportunity. It looks like the federal government may be doing just that.
The St. Louis Business Journal reports that:
Edwards also said he has been told by Federal Transit Administration Regional Administrator Mokhtee Ahmad that if the trolley is not completed in the immediate future and does not operate successfully for the first three years, future federal funds for other St. Louis-area projects could go to other cities. [emphasis mine]
Is the federal government really so displeased with the Loop Trolley that it is questioning whether regional leaders can competently manage infrastructure projects? On top of taxpayers not being able to ride the trolley they were promised, will they miss out on other, more meaningful projects?
Loop Trolley
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Mitt Romney Speaks At Duke: ‘If I Had A Mulligan’
A Conversation with Mitt Romney
April 10, 2015 | By Alex Pfadt
Mitt Romney recently spoke at Duke University in a talk sponsored by the Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture hosted by the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. Romney was most recently the Republican candidate for president of the United States. Before that, he served as governor of Massachusetts and president/CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Romney has had a distinguished career in business as well.
The evening began on an unusual note. Romney has agreed to fight former heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield in May in Salt Lake City. It’s for charity, but still. Real gloves and real fists.
Moderator Peter Feaver, professor of poitical science and public policy, then asked Romney about the 2012 presidential campaign.
“If you get a chance to run for president, do it. It’s a great experience; you’ll love it,” Romney joked. Romney said he learned a lot about the country during the election; before each campaign event he met privately with four or five couples.
“I came away having more confidence in America, and more optimism about our future,” he said.
Romney even brought along a surprise guest: Jenny Craig. (Yes, that Jenny Craig.)
Feaver then asked Romney an interesting question: “If you could do a mulligan, if you could have a do-over and re-run the campaign” what would you do differently? Here’s what he said:
Most of the conversation was about foreign policy. Feaver brought up the 2012 raid on the American Diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Feaver noted that campaign politics erupted in response to the event.
“That’s one that still echoes today,” Romney said. “Secretary Clinton is still being asked questions about that.”
“What happened … in the interplay of that event and the campaign dynamics?” asked Feaver.
“Benghazi was an enormous issue, particularly among conservative voters,” Romney said. “And when I would speak with Republican crowds, Benghazi was extraordinarily important to them. There was a feeling that somehow Secretary Clinton had not just made a mistake, but maybe there was something more sinister than that. I didn’t happen to agree that there had been a sinister purpose on her part. But of course she acknowledged that she was the person in charge, and she didn’t get the job done and she made a terrible mistake.”
The conversation roamed around the world, touching on Russia, Iraq, Iran and a number of other countries.
Romney was quite critical of President Obama during the foreign policy portion of the discussion. The News & Observer reported this:
Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney voiced strong criticism of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy record on Wednesday during an appearance at Duke University.
Romney took questions from a professor and students during an event at the Fuqua School of Business. He said he disagrees with how Obama has handled Russia, Syria and the Iran nuclear negotiations.
“I think the president’s foreign policy has been disastrous for America and for the world,” Romney said.
Moderator Feaver asked Romney what Obama’s greatest foreign policy success has been, other than the death of Osama bin Laden. After saying (amidst laughter), “You’re going to have to give me some examples,” Romney did come up with something:
For the 2016 campaign, Romney said Hillary Clinton is the obvious Democratic candidate, as she had been in 2008, when Obama “caught lightning in a jar” and won the nomination. The Republican field “has lots of good people, maybe as many as 15.”
Feaver also asked “Is there a Republican candidate you would not support?”
About Us, Amb Phillips Lecture, Spring 2015 Fuqua, Phillips Lecture, Romney
“Combating Threats at Home and Abroad:” Conversation with the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson on the 15-Year Anniversary of 9/11
April 11 – A Conversation with the Chief of Staff of the Army
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28 October 2016 / SF News / Jack Morse
Facebook Allows Advertisers To Exclude Users Based On Their Race
When we learned earlier this year that Facebook allows advertisers to target users based on their race, it appeared to simply be just another attempt by the social media giant to allow for ads targeted with the most granular of parameters. However, a new report from ProPublica reveals another — possibly illegal — side to that story. In addition to, say, allowing a company to request that their ad be shown to a specific group of people, Facebook permits advertisers to select what "ethnic affinity" they would like to exclude. Some of those options include "African American," "Asian American," and "Hispanic."
“This is horrifying," civil rights lawyer John Relman told ProPublica. "This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 states that it is illegal to "make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.”
A theoretical ad for housing on Facebook that excluded any of the above groups might run afoul of the law.
Facebook, for its part, denies that it's doing anything wrong and says that it doesn't even know the race of its users. The company doesn't directly ask users that information, and Facebook's privacy and public policy manager, Steve Satterfield, claimed that “Ethnic Affinity,” as Facebook calls it, is something other than a user's race — although that it is included in the “Demographics” category of the ad tool seems to suggest otherwise. And anyway, Satterfield told ProPublica, the company would pull any ads that were in violation of the law.
“We take a strong stand against advertisers misusing our platform: Our policies prohibit using our targeting options to discriminate, and they require compliance with the law,” he said. “We take prompt enforcement action when we determine that ads violate our policies."
However, as a test, ProPublica purchased a housing ad that excluded various minority groups. It was approved by Facebook within 15 minutes. When asked about that ad, a Facebook spokesperson reportedly declined to comment.
Previously: Facebook Knows Your Race, Sends You Targeted Ads
Humpday Headlines: Major BART Delays Lead To Crowded East Bay Platforms
FiveThirtyEight Burrito Bracket Judge Claims El Castillito Should Have Won (But He Messed It Up)
The year was 2014, and FiveThirtyEight's Burrito Bracket had elevated data journalism to new heights. Just kidding, that was a waste of time and money, as the winner, La Taqueria, was a pretty
Lawsuit Naming The French Laundry And Thomas Keller Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Employee
In a lawsuit filed in Napa County on September 26 against The French Laundry, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, Thomas Keller, and his New York Restaurant Per Se, a woman named Vanessa Scott-Allen
Jack Morse
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‘One country, two systems’ is key to a prosperous future for Hong Kong, former Beijing official Xu Ze says
Tony Cheung
A former Beijing official declared on Wednesday that Hong Kong will have “bigger developments” and become more prosperous if it holds fast to Beijing’s “one country, two systems” governing principle and use its strength to serve the nation’s needs.
The Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies’ president Xu Ze, formerly a deputy director of Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, also said the one country, two systems principle has worked well with China’s reform and opening up since the late 1970s.
Under the principle, Hong Kong was guaranteed a high degree of autonomy after it was handed over from British to Chinese rule in 1997. It states that the city’s “capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years”.
Speaking at a forum on regional integration and the financial industry in Hong Kong, Xu noted that even before the principle was officially laid down in the Chinese constitution in 1982, China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping had told Hong Kong governor Murray MacLehose in 1979 that Hong Kong would continue to be a capitalist city after the handover.
Hong Kong and Shanghai leaders pledge to deepen cities’ ties and drive China growth amid US trade war
“Shortly after [the meeting], the central government set up four special economic zones [in the mainland to seek cooperation with] Hong Kong and Macau, and to attract foreign capital,” Xu recalled, in a reference to the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen and Shantou.
“As Deng once emphasised, ‘it was in China’s interest to maintain Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability … We did not raise the point about 50 years [of unchanged capitalistic systems] arbitrarily or sentimentally. We considered the reality faced by China, as well as its developmental needs’,” Xu cited.
The former official said as of last year, Hong Kong was still the main source of the mainland’s direct external investment, while the mainland is Hong Kong’s biggest trade partner. This showed that one country, two systems and China’s reform and opening up have contributed to each other, as well as the mainland and Hong Kong’s economic growth.
He believed that Beijing’s Greater Bay Area plan, which was “personally planned by President Xi Jinping” to turn Hong Kong, Macau and their nine mainland neighbours into an innovation and financial hub to rival Silicon Valley, will tell a similar story.
“As long as we hold fast to one country, two systems … [take into account] the nation’s needs and Hong Kong’s strengths, and proactively take part in the building of the Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong will surely have greater developments, and become more prosperous,” Xu said.
“Hong Kong people will also … join their counterparts in the motherland in bearing the historic responsibility in the nation’s rejuvenation and sharing the glory of the motherland’s prosperity.”
In his speech, Xu also praised Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor for “leading the city in grasping opportunities” offered by the Greater Bay Area plan.
“Integration with national development has gradually become the mainstream consensus of Hong Kong,” he noted.
This article ‘One country, two systems’ is key to a prosperous future for Hong Kong, former Beijing official Xu Ze says first appeared on South China Morning Post
PM says open to talks with Beijing over RM1b seizure from Chinese firm
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Wow, so much is happening this month, I don't have time to start working on Halloween. I am SO SCREWED!
I'm not joking. I've found so much genre goodness happening in the next couple of weeks that I haven't had the time to work on October proper. I feel like I'm in a Zack Snyder zombie movie. No matter how fast I am, things just keep piling up....
And the events seem to be coming at me
EVEN FASTER
than these undead runners
So, I'm releasing this update a bit sooner than I want to, but I need to let you know about Weird Wednesday and all the other events happening before the weekend. Keep checking the Horror Calendar for more updates over the weekend, and I hope to have a Halloween page or two up by Labor Day.
Oh, and if you are hosting, or know of, a genre related event happening in the Pacific Northwest, please email me at shadowoverportland@live.com. Listing on this site is FREE! No fees, no expected comp tickets, just a chance to get your event out to my readers. And my readership in October can get very impressive.
Until I can get the updates completed, check out all the ghoulish events taking place through Labor Day weekend under The Shadow Over Portland!
Submissions are being accepted for the PDXtreme Fest, 3 days of horror, crime, gore and more at the the Academy Theater (7818 SE Stark) in Portland, OR, December 2 through 4 this year. You can find more details on how to enter your film at the Facebook Event Page.
Mental Trap Escape Room Game invites you, and four to ten members, to escape a locked room in one hour. And yes, it is timed. Created by the devious minds behind 13th Door Haunted House, Glowing Greens Miniature Golf and Haunted Productions, this offers you the challenge to find the clues keeping you locked in the room and escape within an hour. But, as the website suggests, it's not as easy as it sounds. Located at 3855 SW Murray Blvd in Portland, OR, you can challenge your wits (and those of your team mates) to solve the puzzle before time expires. I don't know what happens if you don't succeed, but that's part of the fun. For more details, visit the link.
Bleedingham, a Northwest Horror Short Film Festival, is now excepting submissions. The chosen films will screen at the Pickford Film Cinema (1318 Bay St) in Bellingham, WA later this year. More details can be found at the official website.
You can still have your Lovecraftian film considered for the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon, which happens October 7 to 9 at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR). For more details, visit the Official Website.
Oh, and you can still register for the Lovecraft Under the Gun: A 72 Hour Film Project. Filming must take place between September 2 and 5 (keep in mind, that's Labor Day weekend). The idea is to make a Lovecraftian film in just 72 hours, and have it judge by the folks attending the festival. Yeah, you need to make it Lovecraftian (it's in the rules, and you know the HPLFF audience will know if you pulled it off or not) and there are prop and line requirements that will be reveled upon registration, which is IN PERSON at Sam's Hollywood Billiards (1945 NE 41st Ave in Portland, OR). All completed films and paperwork must be turned in between 7 and 9 pm on Monday, September 5. There is a $20 entry fee for each team. For more details, visit the HPLFF Portland, OR website link.
Oh, and I'll be a guest at this year's event! Please be sure to say hello if you happen to attend a panel I'm on, or just see me walking about. You won't miss me, as I'll be the big guy in the Lovecraft tee shirt and black Stumptown Kilt!
Submissions are still open for the Eat Your Heart Out Horror Film Festival (formerly Northwest Horrorfest), a festival that runs every two years in downtown Seattle, WA. You have until August 31 to submit a film under the Late Deadline rules, but if you want to wait until the last minute, the Extended Deadline is December 31. The festival has a few rules concerning submissions, so be sure to check the link for all the details, and to submit your film.
No word on a venue for the 2017 festival as of yet, though it will take place on Valentines Day weekend, so keep checking back here for updates!
The Haunted Nightmare 2016 Fall Campout for volunteers happens on September 10 at Haunted Nightmare (6601 24th St SW in Mountlake Terrace, WA). Orientation starts at 3 pm, but bring a tent, as well as a potluck item, and plan to spend the night, as the after hour festivities include horror movies and other spooky fun! For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The Hunted Nightmare opens to the public on October 7.
The 48 Hour Film Horror Project in Seattle, WA, has issued a challenge to local filmmakers. Create a horror film in just 48 hours and, should you win, your flick will be screened at Filmapalooza 2017! Early Bird Registration ends on Monday, September 12 (the fee is $150 USD), but you can wait until Friday, October 7 for Regular Registration ($175 USD). More more details, and to register your team, visit the Official Website.
If you're interested in joining the Zombie Fest Northwest Makeup Team, block out your calendar for Saturday, September 17 and contact Darla at info@skinperfectinseattle.com. You can help create zombies for this all-ages, family friendly event designed to raise awareness concerning disaster preparedness, and help raise money for the Highland Food Bank, the Des Moines Food Bank, Highline Schools Foundation Excel Grant Program and the Friends of Normandy Park Foundation. Visit the Facebook Event Page for more details.
The Spirit of Halloweentown returns to the the city of St. Helens in Oregon for a month full of amazing events. From the St. Helens Halloween Parade today at 4:30 pm, to haunted tours, pumpkin carving contests, a Howl-oween 5K dog walk, and more, this should be on every Northwest Halloween fan's calendar! You'll find plenty of events happening in the area through Halloween Night, so check out the Official Website link for all the events and details. And, should you want to be a part of the Halloween Parade, the photo above gives you most of the details.
Fabio Frizzi, composer for some of Lucio Fulci's horror classics such as Zombie, The Beyond and Gates of Hell, is coming to The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) at 8 pm on Monday, October 3, to perform tracks from these classic films LIVE with a seven piece orchestra! Frizzi 2 Fulci starts at 8 pm, with general admission only $25. But, for $50, you can be part of a meet and greet event at 6 pm. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit The Hollywood Theatre official website. This event WILL sell out, so buy your tickets as soon as possible!
Weird Wednesday at The Joy Cinema and Pub (11959 SW Pacific Highway in Tigard, OR) screens Santo in the Wax Museum (Santo en el museo de cera) tonight at 9:15 pm. No, it's not a Luchador remake of House of Wax (at least according to IMDb, but wouldn't that be AWESOME!), but instead, it's the masked Mexican wrestler discovering a series of kidnappings are linked to a mad doctor using the victims to create an army of monsters. And, of course, Santo wrestles the snot out of them and saves the day. Really, is that a spoiler? Nope. As always, admission is free (though you must be 21 or older to attend), so be sure to loosen up your pursestrings and spend some money at the concession stand. Seriously, if you bring outside stuff into a free movie, I hope El Santo jumps off the screen and lands an elbow into your face. Karma, folks. For more details, visit The Joy Cinema website.
Pemco Outdoor Movies at Magnuson Park (7400 Sand Point Way NE in Seattle, WA) presents a screening of the Pacific Northwest favorite, The Goonies, presented by Seattle Children's. Admission is $5 per person at the door, with kids 5 and under admitted into the event for free. Festivities start at 6:30 pm with entertainment and food carts, the movie starts at dusk. For more details, visit the event's official website or the Facebook Event Page (where any cancellation information will be posted). Remember, Seattle parks are smoke-free.
The PDX Drive-In Movie Spectacular returns this year to The Portland Expo Center (2060 N. Marine Dr. in Portland, OR) with a screening tonight of Alfred Hitchcock's classic, Psycho! The giant screen on the center's 53 acre campus is intended to replicate the bygone era of the classic drive-in theater. Only now, in place of the speaker boxes, sound will be accessible via your car's radio, thanks to a special FM frequency.
But if you don't have a car, NO WORRIES! Outdoor speakers are set up for bicyclists and pedestrians, so no one will miss out. The show starts with music from Big Yellow Taxi, an Americana band from Oregon City (visit their Facebook Page for more details), followed by the feature after the sun has set. Tickets are $13 for a carload or groups of three to six individuals, or 5$ for individuals walking or biking to the screening. For more details, and a list of the other non-genre offerings (screenings start on August 24), visit the Official Website.
Sorry, folks, but I didn't see this one coming. Had I known, it would have been on the calendar sooner. The Joy Cinema and Pub's (11959 SW Pacific Highway in Tigard, OR) final screening of John Carpenter's The Thing is tonight at 9 pm. Visit The Joy Cinema website for more details.
Central Cinema (1411 21 Ave in Seattle, WA) is screening Jim Henson's dark classic, The Dark Crystal, through Tuesday, August 30. For more details and showtimes, visit the theater's official website.
Another Jim Henson dark fairy tale, Labyrinth, plays tonight at Occidental Park (117 S Washington St in Seattle, WA) as part of the Movies in the Park series. The movie starts at dusk and admission is free. If you want more details, you'll be facing an internet labyrinth from websites like the Occidental Park Calendar, the Official Seattle Parks and Rec website or the Occidental Park Facebook Page.
The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) and the Columbia River Theatre Organ Society presents the first of the Fall Science Fiction Silent Movie Series. Opening the series is a double feature, Georges Melies A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) from 1902, considered the first Sci Fi film ever made. It's followed by the Willis O'Brien stop motion classic, The Lost World (1925), which involves an expedition to a land where dinosaurs still live. And if fantastic flights of fancy aren't enough to entice you, Dean Lemire will provide live organ accompaniment on the Beverly Ruth Nelson memorial organ! The show starts at 2 pm and tickets are just $12, For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit The Hollywood Theatre website.
It's only 66 days until Halloween and The Jack London Bar (529 SW 4th Ave in Portland, OR) is kicking off the celebration tonight at 9 pm. Oubiette and Dementia presents a party feature dark dancing with undead DJ Apocalypse and DJ NoN, hosted by Screamvina. You'll also find some spooky fun hosted by the Unchained Girls and a costume contest. No cover charge, though you must be 21 or older to attend. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Considered the start of the Psycho-biddy subgenre, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane screens tonight, in GLORIOUS 35mm, at the Whitsell Auditorium (1219 SW Park Ave) in Portland, OR. Oh, you know you don't want to miss the rage between personal and profession rivals Joan Crawford and Bette Davis channeled into a shocking (for the time) movie directed by Robert Aldrich. Toss in a boiled bird and it's ON! The show starts at 7 pm, and you'll find more details, and advance ticket sales, at the official website.
Director and illustrator Mark Andres calls his version of Dracula: A Modern Silent Film a "kinographic novel," a hybrid of silent cinema and a graphic novel. Winner of the best animated film award at the Independent Filmmakers Showcase in Los Angeles this May, this version of the timeless classic screens at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) tonight at 7 pm. Both director Andres and composer Rachel Knight will be attending the screening. Tickets are $9. and you'll find more details, as well as a link for advance ticket sales, at The Hollywood Theatre website.
Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers has it's Premiere Party tonight in theaters around the nation. Fathom Events will screen the film in theaters nationwide tonight only. And the event will feature exclusive content with director Smith. The showtime is 7 pm and you can find out more details about a screening in your area, and purchase advance tickets, at the Fathom website.
Thursday, September 1
Fathom Events is bringing the premiere of Rob Zombie's 31 to theaters around the nation tonight at 7 pm. The screening includes the world premiere of the Gore Whore and Get Your Boots On music videos, a Q and A with writer/director Zombie and a "special look behind the scenes." In case you haven't heard, the movie is about a group of people who are captured on Halloween night and forced to fight for their lives in a game pitting them against homicidal clowns. To locate a theater near you screening the film, and to purchase advance tickets, visit the Fathom Events website.
Okay, I just read the synopsis for Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers, and wow, it sounds WEIRD! Two 15-year-old yoga fanatics (Lily Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith) must join forces with a legendary man-hunter (played by Johnny Depp, and yes, quite related to one of the leads) to defeat an ancient evil arising from beneath Canada's crust and threatening their invitation of a Grade 12 party. According to the synopsis, yoga poses will be involved, as well as a slew of guest actors. The film opens tonight at The Kiggins Theatre (1011 Main St) in Vancouver, WA. No word on showtimes yet, so check back closer to the opening date, or keep an eye on the theater's official website.
I remember, when I was young (no wisecracks about my age or you can just get off my lawn! Hehe), The Wizard of Oz was a scary film. Sure, I saw it on broadcast TV with commercial breaks, and the film has many lighter moments, but Margaret Hamilton is TERRIFYING! And her flying monkeys are pretty nasty as well. So, if you want to relive your childhood, or introduce your youngsters to scary movies, head to Overlook Park (599 N Fremont St in Portland, OR) for a screening courtesy of Movies in the Park. Festivities start at 6:30 pm with the band Echoes of Yasgurs, FREE POPCORN and admission is free as well! The film starts around dusk. Remember to bring some warm clothes, as nights in the Northwest can get chilly. And be sure to follow the park rules: No alcohol at this event, all dogs MUST be leashed and NO smoking or other tobacco products (I'm going to assume that includes vaping, but you can call and find out). For more details, visit the Portland Parks official website. Also, please be aware that the event can be cancelled if the weather doesn't cooperate (but I'd say the chances of a rainout this early in September are slim).
Should you attend any of these events, please let the organizers know you read about it at The Shadow Over Portland!
Wow, so much is happening this month, I don't have...
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The Halloween storm has come to The Shadow Over Portland!
I can not believe that it's not even September and I'm behind on posting all the Halloween events coming to the Pacific Northwest. I'm not joking, I've had to pick a few big events to add to the site before holding off on the rest until next week! So much is coming to tickle the fancy of Horror/Sci Fi/Fantasy fans in the coming months that I'll be spending the weekend at the office, adding more spooktacular events and probably finding even more to put on the site!!
I expect a repeat of last year,
endlessly adding more and more to the site.
But the stuff you'll find on the Horror/Sci Fi/Fantasy Calendar so far will make you giddy for the MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR! Here in Portland, OR, the Mission Theater is starting things early, with a screening of John Carpenter's The Thing during the last days of September, followed by a GREAT selection of films based on the work of Steven King, before ending the month of October with screenings of They Live and Shaun of the Dead! Up in Tacoma, WA, the Friday Night Frights screening of Friday the 13th Part III in 3D has moved to Friday, October 13, to make way for the 4K restoration of Dario Argento's Suspiria! And the NW Film Center in Portland, OR, is spending Halloween weekend showing the modern classic Near Dark in GLORIOUS 35mm, followed by the equally classic 1942 Cat People!
If you're still looking to work at a haunted attraction in your area, I'll be adding a few more to the Open Audition Page this weekend, so be sure to check back!
As for the events in this edition of the Weekly Update, well, I've got details on this week's Weird Wednesday presentation at The Joy Cinema and Pub in Tigard, OR, a few final films in local parks, and lots of other great movies coming to theaters in the Pacific Northwest.
Halloween is coming, folks, so get your day planner ready and keep checking back for more great events coming to The Shadow Over Portland!!
Remember, if you're hosting a Horror/Sci Fi/Fantasy event in October, or any other time of the year, email me the details at shadowoverportland@live.com and I'll include it on the site. Post is easy, as I do all the work, and FREE!
And if you attend any of the events listed here, please help spread the word and let the organizers know you read about it at The Shadow Over Portland!
Fabio Frizzi returns to The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) with a new "composer's cut" of his score to Lucio Fulci's classic, The Beyond, tonight at 6 and 8 pm. Frizzi and his ensemble will perform live during the film, preserving the dialogue from the original uncut masterpiece. Tickets are now on sale at The Hollywood Theatre website.
The latest Celluloid Spotlight series at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) is Kubrick on Film, which kicks off on Friday, September 8, at 7 pm with a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey in GLORIOUS 70mm! An addition screening takes place at 2 pm on Sunday, September 10. Tickets are on sale now! For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit The Hollywood Theatre website.
The NW Film Center (screenings take place in the Portland Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave in Portland, OR) has added two additional screenings of the 35mm, uncut version of Suspiria. The new showtimes are at 9:15 pm on Friday, December 1, and 7 pm on Sunday, December 3. Additional tickets for the Saturday, December 2 screening have also been released. The initial ticket release sold out in two days, so BUY YOUR TICKETS ASAP! For more details and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the NW Film Center website.
UPDATE: The showing on Saturday, December 2, is sold out once again.
Wyrd War presents the digitally restored official theatrical re-release of Rawhead Rex at 9:30 pm on Saturday, September 23, at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR). This film, based on a Clive Barker story, has been hard to see, so don't miss the opportunity to watch it on the big screen. Advance tickets are now on sale at The Hollywood Theatre website.
Edgar Wright concluded his "Cornetto Trilogy" with the sci fi/kung fu comedy The World's End, which screens at the Laurelhurst Theater and Pub (2735 East Burnside St in Portland, OR) through Thursday, August 24. It's also heavily influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which played last week) and has plenty of Easter eggs for viewers to find. Additionally, Get Out and Alien: Covenant have been carried over through Thursday, August 24. Head to the Laurelhurst Theater website for more details and showtimes.
The classic fairy tale movie The Princess Bride plays through August 24 at The Academy Theater (7818 SE Stark St in Portland, OR). For showtimes and other details, visit The Academy Theater website.
Portland Movies in the Park presents the original Ghostbusters tonight at Khunamokwst Park (NE 52nd and Alberta St in Portland, OR) at dusk. The music of Son de Cuba opens the event at 6:30 pm. The parks are tobacco free zones and dogs must be on a leash. For more details on this event, and other Movies in the Park, visit the City of Portland website. Remember, the event can be cancelled due to rain.
OMSI, The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (1945 SE Water Ave in Portland, OR) hosts Reel Science: Indiana Jones at The Empirical Theater at 6:30 pm. The event starts with a lecture from Meg Roland, PhD, Associate Professor of English and Department Chair, English at Marylhurst University, entitled The Search for the Holy Grail. At 7:30 pm, sit back and watch Dr. Jones on his quest to reach the fabled grail in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Weird Wednesday is bringing a film that should be a classic, Caltiki- The Immortal Monster, to The Joy Cinema and Pub (11959 SW Pacific Highway in Tigard, OR) at 9:15 pm. So, you might be wondering why I'm calling a should-be-classic horror film. Well, first off, the film contains some early directorial work by Mario Bava (how much and what sections were directed by Bava and not Riccardo Freda is debated to this day). Second, the monster is AMAZING, the best use of tripe outside the kitchen! And finally, the film contains some quite gory sequences for a 50s film. Add it all together and you don't want to miss this one! Admission is FREE, but you must be 21 or older to attend. And be sure to stop at the concession stand before the film and do your part to help keep Wednesdays WEIRD by purchasing some tasty treats and beverages. For more details, visit The Joy Cinema website.
Seattle Outdoor Movies presents The Princess Bride today at Magnuson Park (NE 65th at Sand Point Way NE in Seattle, WA). The event starts at 6:30 pm with entertainment, trivia, furry critters, vendors and more, with the movie starting at dusk. Admission is $5, children 5 and under are free. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Queer Horror, featuring Portland's premier drag clown Carla Rossi and the film Death Becomes Her, in GLORIOUS 35mm at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) has sold out.
Spend an evening with the creatures of the night at the Greenlake Bat Watching, tonight near the Bathhouse Theater on the northwest side of Green Lake (address listed is 7312 W Green Lake Dr N in Seattle, WA). The event runs from 7 to 10 pm, so dress appropriately. The viewing will take place rain or (moon)shine. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Projekt Records presents a screening of Bubba Ho-Tep, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis, at The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) tonight at 9:30 pm. Directed by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm), the film finds Elvis and JFK alive and in a Texas nursing home, fighting an Egyptian mummy. Campbell's performance should have earned him an Oscar nomination, but I guess the academy don't like low budget indie horror. Who know. At tonight's screening, the first 50 people in the door will receive a gift bag, and all attendees will get a free raffle ticket. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
UPDATE: Advance tickets are now on sale at The Hollywood Theatre website.
Jim Henson's dark fairy tale movie The Dark Crystal plays through August 31 at The Academy Theater (7818 SE Stark St in Portland, OR). Showtimes have yet to be announced, so check back here, or at The Academy Theater website, later.
The 1973 sci fi thriller Westworld, the inspiration for the HBO series, screens this week at the Laurelhurst Theater and Pub (2735 East Burnside St in Portland, OR) through Thursday, August 31. The film stars Richard Benjamin, James Brolin and Yul Brynner as the robotic gunslinger in black. Head to the Laurelhurst Theater website for more details and showtimes when they become available.
The Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway in Vancouver, BC) will pay tribute to the late George Romero with a screening of his classic, Night of the Living Dead, tonight at 11:30 pm. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The Dragonfly Cinema (822 Bay St in Port Orchard, WA) will also screen Night of the Living Dead in tribute to the late George Romero today through Tuesday, August 29. Showtimes will be posted the week of August 21. Check the Facebook Event Page for showtimes.
Scary Movies and Beer returns to the Haunted Basement of the Capital Taproom (150 High St SE in Salem, OR) tonight at 7:30 pm. Admission is free, but I suspect you need to be 21 or older to attend. For more details, including a future announcement of the movies to be shown, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The Horror Aisle Presents: Frightmare on Main St. Showing of Evil Dead II tonight at The Kiggins Theatre (1011 Main St in Vancouver, WA) at 9 pm. The Horror Aisle will break down the film after the screening, and the event includes games, prizes and more! For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The 3rd Annual JAWS Pool Float, hosted by the Idaho Horror Film Festival, takes place at 8 pm tonight at Boise Racquet and Swim Club (1116 North Cole Rd in Boise, ID). Each ticket gets you a pool noodle, or you can avoid the water and purchase VIP table seating. The evening starts with trivia and giveaways, followed by the film at dusk. Beer, wine and food will be available for purchase. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Portland Movies in the Park presents local stop-motion studio Liaka's latest film, Kubo and the Two Strings tonight at April Hill Park (SW 58th and Miles St in Portland, OR) at dusk. The music of Rogue Bluegrass Band starts the event at 6:30 pm. The parks are tobacco free zones and dogs must be on a leash. For more details on this event, and other Movies in the Park, visit the City of Portland website. Remember, the event can be cancelled due to rain.
Fathom Events brings Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky back to theaters nationwide. Tonight's GKIDS presentation, part of the Studio Ghibli Fest 2017, is presented dubbed in English at 12:55 pm PST. Visit the Fathom Events website for more details, and to locate a theater screening the film in your area.
Winter is coming to the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway in Vancouver, BC) with a big screen viewing of the final two episodes of this season of Game of Thrones tonight starting at 9:30 pm. The event is open to those 19 or older, and you will need to bring ID for admission and bar service. Admission is FREE, but first come, first served, so get there early. Or you can by a GOT pass to give you a premium place in line (but you MUST arrive ON TIME; your space might go to someone else if you're late!). For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The Zymoglyphic Museum (6225 SE Alder St in Portland, OR) is open to the public today from 11 am to 4 pm. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Fathom Events brings Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky back to theaters nationwide. Tonight's GKIDS presentation, part of the Studio Ghibli Fest 2017, is presented in the original Japanese with English subtitles at 7 pm PST. Visit the Fathom Events website for more details, and to locate a theater screening the film in your area.
Explore the History and Use of the Ouija Board with Montana Jordan tonight at McMenamins Mission Theater (1624 NW Glisan St in Portland, OR). This ParanormalPub event is free and minors are welcome with a parent or guardian. Doors open at 6 pm, the event starts at 7 pm. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Repressed Cinema is bringing Audrey Jr. to The Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, OR) with a screening of Roger Corman's 1960 classic The Little Shop of Horrors in GLORIOUS 16mm! You'll also get to see a selection of 16mm trailers before the film, and find a selection of underground comics for sale in the lobby. Showtime is 7:30 pm. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit The Hollywood Theatre website.
Spend An Evening with Sean Astin tonight at Urban Grace, The Downtown Church (902 Market St in Tacoma, WA) at 8 pm. Austin will discuss and take audience questions about his Hollywood career (The Goonies, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Strain) and his passion and advocacy for various causes. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Northwest Spay and Neuter Center. For more details and advance ticket information, visit the Eventbrite link or the Facebook Event Page.
Portland Movies in the Park presents Rogue One: A Star Wars Story tonight at Mt Scott Park (SE 74th and Reedway St in Portland, OR) at dusk. The music of Rogue Bluegrass Band starts the event at 6:30 pm. The parks are tobacco free zones and dogs must be on a leash. For more details on this event, and other Movies in the Park, visit the City of Portland website. Remember, the event can be cancelled due to rain.
A fun and sexy homage to your favorite princesses, villains and enchanted animals, the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway in Vancouver, BC) presents the Dysfunctional Disney Cabaret. The show features burlesque, circus acts, singing, drag and comedy designed to turn the Magic Kingdom topsy-turvy! You must be 18 or older to attend. For more details, including a list of performers and advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
Red Castle Games (6406 SE Foster Rd in Portland, OR) hosts NERD CAMP Night Out: Amazons Unite tonight from 6 to 11:59 pm. This women only event features a comedy show, speed friending, tabletop gaming and roundtable discussions. Beer, wine and cider will be sold, but the pizza is FREE! So is admission, but you are asked to donate some feminine hygiene products to SnowCap Community Charities. For more details, visit the Facebook Event Page.
While the film does have a ghost, testifying at a trail concerning his death through a medium, the Japanese classic Rashomon is more a tale of how a person's self interest colors their telling of an event. Akira Kurosawa crafts a wonderfully puzzle of a story, which changes as each person relates their version of a murder. You can check it out at the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway in Vancouver, BC) at 7:15 pm tonight. For more details, check out the Facebook Event Page.
The dark high school comedy Heathers, starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, plays tonight at the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway in Vancouver, BC) at 9:30 pm. For more details, and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
By Crom, celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Conan the Barbarian at McMenamins Mission Theater (1624 NW Glisan St in Portland, OR). The film plays through Sunday, September 10 (which will be a Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday screening). For all the details, including showtimes and a link to advance ticket sales, visit the Facebook Event Page.
The Halloween storm has come to The Shadow Over Po...
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Category Archives: Sukhoi
USS KITTY HAWK (CV 63), At Sea (November 9, 2005) Aviation Ordnanceman prepare to load a CATM-88 Harm missile onboard the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). While at sea, Kitty Hawk and Carrier Strike Group 5 will be participating in an annual exercise with the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. Currently underway in the western Pacific Ocean, Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group demonstrates power projection and sea control as the Navy's only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group, operating from Yokosuka, Japan. U.S. Navy photo by Photographers Mate 3rd Class (AW) Jonathan Chandler.
After writing few posts discussing the technological influence on defence stratagies of different nation, this time I thought to go slightly technical. A reader may use this information as an extension of my discussion on Electronic Warfare – Electronic Warfare Operations Warfare has always been conducted by adversaries who have been at great pains to understand their enemy’s strengths and weaknesses in order to minimise the risk to their own forces and territory. The detection and interception of messages and the efforts to deceive the enemy have long been the task of the ‘secret service. As methods of communication developed, so too did methods of interception become more effective. Radar has developed from a mere detection mechanism to a means of surveillance and guidance. This post is focuses on gathering information on immediate threats which is performed by Electronic Support Measures (ECM)
MH-53 Pave Low helicopters prepare to take off for their final combat mission on Sept. 27, 2008, in Iraq. The MH-53, the largest and most technologically advanced helicopter in the Air Force with a record dating back to the Vietnam War, was retired from the Air Force inventory on Sept. 30, 2008
Electronic Warfare (EW) planning requires a broad understanding of enemy and friendly capabilities, tactics, and objectives. Employment of EW assets must be closely integrated into, and supportive of, the commander’s overall planning effort. This planning requires a multidisciplined approach with expertise from operations (ground, airborne, space), intelligence, logistics, weather, and information. Application of this sort of EW planning and employment was seen in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. three US Air Force MH-53J PAVE LOW helicopters (shown above) led nine US Army AH-64 Apache helicopters across the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border to attack two Iraqi early warning radar sites. Taking down these two sites opened the door for attacks across Iraq by F-117s, other coalition aircraft and Tomahawk missiles (shown below).
Block IV Cutaway - Raytheon
After the F-117s and cruise missiles came conventional aircraft. From 0355L to 0420L (H+55 to H+1:20) large numbers of USAF, USN, USMC, RSAF, and RAF aircraft smashed Iraqi air defenses and fields from H-3, an airfield located in western Iraq, to Ahmed Al Jaber, an airfield in occupied Kuwait. Two packages of aircraft, one a USN package from the Red Sea carriers and the other a USAF package from the south pointed directly at Baghdad. These “gorilla” packages were intended to seem threatening enough to force the Iraqis to hurl their air resources in defense. Air Force ground-launched BQM-34 and Navy tactical air-launched decoys (TALD) mimicked the radar return of conventional aircraft to further arouse Iraqi radar operators, many already confused by the absence of central control from Kari. Finally, radar-jamming aircraft radiated blanketing electronic emissions that drove the Iraqi radar operators to go to full power in an attempt to break through the interference. Then, the two incoming coalition flights revealed their true nature and pounced in a shrewd and devastating ruse.
The newest upgrade is a joint venture by the Italian Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense: the AGM-88E Advanced Anti Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM), produced by Alliant Techsystems.
What was unique here that, instead of bomb-carrying fighter-bombers, they were radar-killing electronic warriors carrying AGM-88 high-speed antiradiation missiles (HARMS) designed to home in on SAM and AAA radar (shown above). The AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) is a tactical, air-to-surface missile designed to home in on electronic transmissions coming from surface-to-air radar systems. Originally developed by Texas Instruments (TI) as a replacement for the AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard ARM system. Production was later taken over by Raytheon Corporation (RAYCO) when they purchased TI’s defense business. The AGM-88 can detect, attack and destroy a radar antenna or transmitter with minimal aircrew input. The proportional guidance system that homes in on enemy radar emissions has a fixed antenna and seeker head in the missile’s nose. A smokeless, solid-propellant, dual-thrust rocket motor propels the missile at speeds over Mach 2. HARM, a Navy-led program, was initially integrated onto the A-6E, A-7 and F/A-18 and later onto the EA-6B. USAF F-4G Wild Weasels alone expended dozens of HARMS in twenty minutes, while USN/USMC F/A-18s fired one hundred for the night. HARMS filled the air over Baghdad, the site of over one-half of Iraq’s SAM and AAA batteries. Foolishly, the Iraqis did not turn off their radars, even when the HARMS fireballed in their midst; as one USAF flight leader averred, ‘the emitters came on and stayed on for the entire flight of the missiles.’ This deadly surprise not only destroyed many Iraqi radars, it also terrified their operators. For the rest of the war, they showed great reluctance to use radar and often chose to launch their SAMs with optical or even no guidance.
High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) – A Little Overview
The initial HARM attack and the F-117 bombings of the Kari system left Iraq’s integrated air defense system shattered, opening up the country so completely that, within days, coalition air-to-air tankers regularly operated in Iraqi airspace. Other non-stealthy aircraft pummeled Iraqi airfields. An anti-radiation missile (ARM) is a missile which is designed to detect and home in on an enemy radio emission source. Typically these are designed for use against an enemy radar, although jammers and even radios used for communication can also be targeted in this manner. This sort of weapons are key to EW inventory. The word “Radiation” here refers to Electromegnetic radiation, not nuclear. The missile is the direct descendant of the Shrike and Standard ARM missiles used in Vietnam. Most ARM designs to date have been intended for use against ground-based radars. Commonly carried by specialist aircraft in the SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) role (known to the USAF as “Wild Weasels”), the primary purpose of this type of missile is to degrade enemy air defenses in the first period of a conflict in order to increase the chances of survival for the following waves of strike aircraft. They can also be used to quickly shut down unexpected SAM sites during a raid. Aircraft which fly with strike aircraft to protect them from enemy air defences often also carry cluster bombs and are known as a SEAD escort. The cluster bombs can be used to ensure that after the ARM disables the SAM system’s radar, the command post, missile launchers, and other components or equipment are also destroyed to guarantee the SAM site stays down.
The R-27 is manufactured in infrared-homing (R-27T), semi-active-radar-homing (R-27R), and active-radar-homing (R-27AE) versions, in both Russia and the Ukraine. The R-27 missile is carried by the Mikoyan MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27 fighters, and some of the later-model MiG-23MLD fighters have also been adapted to carry it.
The above account of the First Night of Operation Desert Storm was taken from the Decisive Force: Strategic Bombing in the Gulf War by Richard G. Davis. More recently, air-to-air ARM designs have begun to appear, notably the Russian Vympel R-27P. Such missiles have several advantages over other missile guidance techniques; they do not trigger radar warning receivers (conferring a measure of surprise), and they can have a longer range (since battery life of the seeker head is the limiting factor on the range of most active radar homing systems).
Electronic Support Measures
Technically ESM consists of a collection of senstive antennas designed to detect signals in different frequency bands. Often these antennas are grouped at aircraft’s wing tip pod, which allows a wide angle view without causing too much obstruction as well as to enable a fix on the signal source to obtain an accurate Dircection of Arrival (DoA) of the signal. An effective ESM system rapidly identifies the signal band and location, and determines the signal characteristics. A signal analyser then examines the signal characteristics to identify the type of transmitter and the level of threat posed. Even the most cursory of analysis can establish whether the emitter is associated with surveillance, target tracking or target engagement. This analysis can compare the signal with known emitter characteristics obtained from an intelligence database or threat library and known signal types confirmed and new emissions identified and categorised. Every signal identification is logged with date, time and intercept coordinates, along with the known or suspected platform type, and the results are stored.
Signals received by the electronic support measures system may in some cases be analysed instantaneously to produce an identity for the transmitter of each signal received. Pulse width, Pulse amplitude and carrier frequency are few important parameters. The nature of the pulse shape is used to determine the particular type of transmitter. The scan rate and the pattern of the scan also provide invaluable information about the mode of the transmitter. It is possible to detect the antennas changing from scanning mode to lock-on to tracking and hence determine the threat that the transmitting station poses. As well as providing threat information, ESM is used by maritime and battlefield surveillance aircraft as a passive or listening sensor which adds important information to other sensors.
The salient signal characteristics or discriminators identified during the ESM collection and identification process includes: Signal Frequency (this is to detect the radar type), Blip/Scan ratio (to get the estimate for scan rate, sector scan width and radar bandwidth), Scan Rate, Scan Pattern (Search, track, track-while-scan (TWS) and ground-mapping (GM) modes will exhibit particular characteristics), Signal Modulation (Pulse, pulse compression, pulsed Doppler (PD), a continuous wave (CW) and other more sophisticated forms of modulation are indicative of the emitter mode(s) of operation and likely threat level) and finally Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF).
Technical details as well as the schemetic of the ESM system can found in any dedicated military systems book, however, those who are Interested to explore more, I will strongly recommend Military Avionics Systems by Ion Mior and Allen Seabridge.
The combination of analysis of all these modes of operation and when they are employed either singly or in combination is vital to establishing the likely capabilities and intentions of a threat platform, especially when used in combination with other intelligence information. Electronic Support Measures may be employed at a strategic intelligence-gathering level using an AWACS (airborne early warning and command system) or MPA aircraft to build the overall intelligence picture and electronic order of battle (EOB). Alternatively, such information may be gathered and utilised at a tactical level using radar warning receivers (RWR), whereby information is gathered and used at the strike platform level to enable strike aircraft to avoid the most heavily defended enemy complexes during the mission.
As I mentioned earlier, this (ESM) is one element of Electronic Warfare. This is because the nature of EW warfare and devices used. The operating frequency ranges for radars are usually very broad, and no single system can cover the whole range for transmission or reception. Hence, most communications and radar systems are designed for use in specific bands. These bands are usually designated by international convention. The main role of electronic warfare is to search these radio-frequency bands in order to gather information that can be used by intelligence analysts or by front-line operators. The information gained may be put to immediate effect to gain a tactical advantage on the battlefield; it may be used to picture the strategic scenario in peace time, in transition to war, or during a conflict. It may also be used to devise countermeasures to avoid a direct threat or to deny communications to an enemy. It must also be observed that such tactics are deployed by all sides in a conflict – in other words, the listeners are themselves being listened to.
Filed under AAR Corporation, AARGM, Afghanistan, AGm-113 Hellfire, AGM-154 JSOW, Agusta Westland, Air Defence, Anti-Radiation Missiles, ASN Technology, ASN-229A UAV, Asymmetric Weapons, AWACS, Black Hawk, BQm-34, CIA, Cold War, Direct Energy Warfare, Direct Energy Weapons, Electromagnectic Pulses, Electromagnetic Spectrum, F-117, F/A-18, HARM, Lockheed Martin, Lockheed martin F-16, MH-53, MH-53 Pave, NATO, Navy tactical air-launched decoys, Northrop-Grumman, Operation Desert Storm, People Liberation Army, R-27, RAF Nimrod, RSAF, S-400 missiles, Sea King, SEAD, Sukhoi, Sukhoi PAK-FA, Sukhoi Su-33, surface-to-air missile, TALD, Tommahawk missiles, U.S Marines, US Department of Defense, US Navy, USMC, USS Kitty Hawk, Vietnam War, Wild Weasels
Tagged as AG-88, Anti Radiation Missiles, AWACS, BAe Systems, CH-52, F-117, F/A-18, HARM, NATO, Nimrod, radar warning receivers, RAf, Tommahawk missiles, Wild Weasels
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Deceased = Rascon, Michael
Rascon, Michael
Birth: Thursday, May 22, 1930
Residence: Huntingtown, Maryland
Death: Friday, March 08, 2019 at the age of 88
Michael Rascon, 88, of Huntingtown, Maryland died on Friday, March 8th, 2019, surrounded by members of the family. He was born on May 22, 1930 and raised ranching in Deming, New Mexico until joining the U.S. Navy to serve in communications intelligence in North Africa during the Korean War, returning to Washington, D.C. to marry Barbara Ann Lee of Monmouth, Illinois in 1952. Initially residing in Las Cruces, NM while working at White Sands Proving Ground, they returned to D.C. where he graduated from American University in international affairs. He spent his career working in public utilities with many governmental agencies before retiring from the Department of Labor.
He was preceded in death by his eldest son, Michael Christopher. Surviving are children Julie Ann Lowe (Brooke Lowe), Jeffrey Lee Rascon, and David Gregory Rascon (Richard Schoenwiesner), as well as grandchildren Zack (Natalia) and Austin (Melissa) Lowe. He was also preceded in death by his brother Greg, and is survived by two sisters, Helen Pacheco and Marian Dyer, both of New Mexico, as well as numerous nephews and nieces.
Michael was a member of St. John Vianney Catholic Church, raised his children with faith, and a love of reading, nature, and the great American Southwest. Visitation will be held at 10 am Saturday, March 16th at McGuire & Davies Funeral Home, with burial held afterward at St. Mary's Cemetery, Monmouth. Contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society. Arrangements by Rausch Funeral Home.
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Southwold Museum & Historical Society
June 2, 2018 southwoldmuseumLeave a comment
The winner of the draw held at the Lions Fete on Monday May 28th 2018 is Mr. N. Wood.
The correct answer was ‘part of the structure of a Zeppelin.’
National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage
March 13, 2018 southwoldmuseumLeave a comment
‘Votes for Women’ was opposed by a strange alliance of reactionary men and women, who believed in different roles for the two sexes – and implicitly for the subordination of women by men. The badge displayed below was worn by a woman member of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, which was founded in December 1910 as an amalgamation of two previously separate organisations, for men and women. Its first president was of course a man, Lord Cromer, though its executive committee consisted of seven men and seven women. It published the Anti-Suffrage Review (produced originally by the Women’s League) and produced emotive posters to emphasize that ‘a mother’s place is in the home’.
There was a branch of the League in Southwold, but little is known of its activities – it was evidently much less well supported than the local branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, with its membership of nearly 100.
Town Farm. Town farm used to be on the site where the hospital is now. We think this was taken in about 1865.
Image July 31, 2017 southwoldmuseum1 Comment
Map of Southwold ?
July 6, 2017 southwoldmuseumLeave a comment
We have a copy of this print in the Museum.
This map is on display in the Museum.
Sources claim that a whole series of coastal maps were ordered by Queen Elizabeth I to clarify what defences were in place in the event of a Spanish invasion. The map below is supposed to be the map for Southwold.
As you can see there is a fort and defensive wall. We wonder how accurate it was!
Lions Fete
June 13, 2017 southwoldmuseumLeave a comment
This last Bank Holiday Monday , The Museum had a stall at the Lions fete .
We had lots of visitors and many people went on to visit the Museum after.
Hopefully, we will repeat this in the future.
Are you doing any research?
May 15, 2017 southwoldmuseumLeave a comment
We have hundreds of books, photos and documents in our archive collection, which
are available for people to use in their research, just contact the museum to plan your visit.
Since we have opened on April 1st, we have had 726 visitors, 626 adults and 100 children.
106 were local, 316 were on holiday and 304 were day visitors.
A really good start to the season.
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Parents drop discrimination lawsuit with student newspaper connection
July 14, 2011 September 5, 2018 Emily Gerston
The parents of a former middle school student have dropped a discrimination lawsuit that was based in part on the family’s objections to a student newspaper column.
Caroline Lineen, attorney for Mahopac Central School District, said that the plaintiffs, the parents of then-middle school student “H.B.”, suddenly chose to withdraw the complaint without explanation. Lineen declined to comment further on any other aspect of the case.
Giulia Frasca, attorney for the plaintiffs, was unable to respond to requests for comment by press time pending permission from her client.
The complaint alleged that students and teachers at Mahopac Central School District engaged in “anti-Semitism and racial, religious and gender discrimination, by both verbal and physical threats and abuse,” with the “knowledge and tacit approval” of school principals and the school board for several years. Included in the complaint was a newspaper article published in the high school newspaper that H.B.’s parents found objectionable and claim should have been censored under the authority granted to schools by the Supreme Court in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. In the column, a student referenced one college’s large Jewish population as a factor in deciding against that college.
The school district argued in a Feb. 7 brief that despite any anti-Semitic behavior by students at the school, the district was not complicit with such behavior and that its responses to H.B. and her parents’ complaints were reasonable. They also claimed that the case could not continue as a class action suit on behalf of the school’s Jewish students because the plaintiffs did not “identify any such students with similar claims.”
Lineen said that no settlement was reached when the case was dropped. The parties agreed not to seek any court costs stemming from the lawsuit.
Tagged cyberbullying
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Basketball Scholarships: As one of the most popular college sports in America, the opportunities to earn a scholarship for basketball are nearly endless at all levels of the collegiate game. In 2017-2018 alone, there were 2,023 schools that sponsored the sport at the collegiate level, ranging from Division I to local 2-year institutions. There are over 60,000 athletes competing currently, with an average of 16 players on a team.While there are many athletes and teams, the level of competition is continually raised each year with new recruiting classes possessing stronger skills and traits than the previous ones. Typically, prospective college athletes played on an AAU* or other travel/club squad in addition to their high school teams.
Basketball Season and More Info:
The basketball season in the United States at the collegiate level runs from November to early April of the next year. The beginning of the season starts with kick-off mini-tournaments (usually for the best squads of NCAA D-I), followed by interconference play, the conference tournaments and finally, the national tournaments. Most famously, the best performing regular season and conference tournament winning teams of NCAA D-I compete in the famous March Madness tournaments. While this tournament is the most well known, all levels of the collegiate game have their own editions of a national basketball tournament.
Athletes we've worked with:
Barbara Araoz Matteo Polimeno Arianna Tonti
Want to be the next Sportlinx360 star?
Register and create your profile here!
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Scores/Schedule
Current and former players enjoy another successful Steelers football camp in Mexico
Behind the Steel Curtain June 24, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC
As one of the league's most popular teams in America, it should come as no surprise to Pittsburgh Steelers fans to learn that this trend is also something of a global phenomenon when it comes to the NFL's international appeal. With fans clubs across Europe, Asia and South America, Steeler Nation is quite literally everywhere and barring the U.S, perhaps nowhere more so than just across the southern border. However, despite their overwhelming popularity in Mexico, the Steelers have never been selected to play in one of the regular season games held at the Azteca Stadium, only once ever having played in an exhibition there back in 2000. But for the generations of Mexican fans with Black and Gold
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SSRIs
Man surrenders to police in heist—(Deseret News)
To view original article click here.
SSRI Stories Note: Any criminal activity involved here could possibly be the result of withdrawal from the antidepressants. Withdrawal and its concomitant physical and psychiatric adverse reactions could have played a major role in this case.
deseretnews.com
By Pat Reavy, Deseret News
Published: Friday, March 13 2009 12:00 a.m. MDT
WEST VALLEY CITY A former U.S. Marine wanted by Sandy police in connection with a bank robbery surrendered to investigators Thursday, but not before first trying to give his side of the story.
In an exclusive interview with the Deseret News before turning himself in, Codie Carver denied he was the person who robbed Washington Mutual Bank, 7910 S. 1300 East, on Monday. He admitted, however, that he had knowledge of the robbery and that he received a share.
But in another twist, Carver said he was only trying to help others in more need than himself. All of the money he received from the robbery, he said, was given away to random homeless people in Las Vegas.
“It went to people that needed it more than corporate America,” he told the News. “Kind of like Robin Hood steal from the rich, give to the poor.”
Investigators agreed Carver was not the man caught on bank cameras dressed in black, wearing a baseball cap and bandana over his face, who entered the bank and demanded money. But he is accused of arranging for someone else to rob the bank for him, according to a federal indictment filed late Thursday, charging Carver with one count of bank robbery.
During his 20- to 30-minute discussion with the Deseret News, Carver expressed his anger with “the system” and talked about how no one would help him when he was recently robbed, but how when a bank was robbed, authorities were all over the case.
His bitterness was evident when Carver’s parents told him they needed to start driving to the Sandy Police Department to surrender at the designated time. “I hate the police. I hate the system. I hate them all,” he said several times, noting that law enforcers should have to drive to his house if they wanted him.
Carver, however, eventually arrived with his parents in Sandy, where he was taken into custody.
Carver served a year in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps. His duties included collecting the body bags of U.S, soldiers, some of them his friends, from the battlefield, according to his mother. By the time Carver was sent home, doctors had diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, she said.
Carver said he visited the Veterans Medical Center 10 to 15 times after he returned home and was eventually given antidepressant medication. But he said he stopped taking it because it didn’t make him feel right.
Carver believed his PTSD was made into a bigger deal by the media than what it should have been. But when asked if it played any role at all in what had happened the past few days, he said, “It could have had something to do with it. … I can’t say yes or no,” while adding, “I’m the most honest person you’ll ever meet.”
Again repeating how “the system” wasn’t working, Carver talked about his aunt who is taking care of his grandmother, but allegedly receiving very little federal assistance. Recently, Carver had $4,000 to $5,000 stolen from him, he said. The money was supposed to go to charities and nonprofit groups aimed at helping at-risk kids
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Preparing to move to a moderately peaceful, healthy and prosperous (xiaokang) society
2 August, 2017 22 November, 2018 by stalinsmoustache, posted in China, marxism
Word in the CPC for a while has been that preparations are under way for a major transition in China. Until now, China has been in the first or preliminary stage of socialism. But if you study Xi Jinping’s first volume of writings, The Governance of China, you will already find the terminology of ‘socialist modernisation [shehuizhuyi xiandaihu]’, and a ‘moderately well-off society [xiaokang shehui]’. Xiaokang is an old Confucian term that had made its way into Chinese Marxist terminology. It is not the Datong, the ‘Great Harmony’, but a more realistic situation in which the vast majority can feel secure (anquangan) about food, shelter, clothing and well-being.
When will this take place? The target is the period of the Two Centenaries. The first centenary is 100 years since the founding of the Communist Party of China, in 2021, and the second is the founding of the People’s Republic in 2049.
All this is now becoming even more explicit, in preparations for the 19th Congress of the CPC in November this year. These congresses take place every five years, so preparations are under way. Already we find a number of key statements.
First, Xi has declared that socialism with Chinese characteristics is entering a ‘new development stage‘, if not a ‘new historical starting point’. Thus far, Chinese socialism has enabled the transitions from ‘standing-up to becoming better-off to getting stronger’, but now ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics has expanded the pathway to modernization for developing countries, thus providing Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to problems facing mankind’.
So what does all this mean in concrete terms? To begin with, a xiaokang society has lifted as many people out of poverty as possible. In the last 40 years, 750 million people lifted out of poverty (one of the greatest human rights achievements of all time), with more than 55 million since 2012. And Xi has made the continuance of this program a cornerstone of his presidency. A shade over 43 million remain in poverty in rural areas, with about 12 million a year making it out of poverty.
It also includes continual overhauling of the medical system, education, fostering supply-side structural reform, reducing overcapacity, dealing with the income gap, and – crucially – clean governance.
If these aims are indeed achieved between 2021 and 2049, then the xiaokang society will indeed have been attained.
Tagged second stage of socialism, Xi Jinping, xiaokang society
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15 thoughts on “Preparing to move to a moderately peaceful, healthy and prosperous (xiaokang) society”
8 August, 2017 at 10:11 am
Remember when I showed you that article about the Creationist who argued that Capitalism, or specifically it’s ‘ruthless extremes,’ were inspired by Darwin and the theory of evolution, and you said it was one of the weirdest things you’ve ever seen?
Well, I found this. Enjoy
https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsaucers.html
stalinsmoustache says:
9 August, 2017 at 6:11 am
Gotta love this. Are we ready for a dialectical materialist approach to UFOs?
Hedlund says:
Any insight into China’s decision to support the latest round of sanctions against the DPRK, including the full ban of coal and iron exports? It seems like it flies in the face of anti-imperialist solidarity, and I am given to understand such is rather important at this stage of history.
I must admit I do not understand this move (by both China and Russia), except the reality that the DPRK will have nuclear ICBMs in the near future (and someone must certainly be helping), so the sanctions are of little effect. Further, given the decline in US clout, sanctions become a form of self-harm – look at the China-Russia relations, if not the EU drifting away from the USA.
This article might also be worth reading to gain a sense of Chinese approaches to the DPRK
Here it is: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1060343.shtml
Pingback: Warming up for the second stage of socialism | STALIN'S MOUSTACHE
Pingback: More on China’s poverty relief program | STALIN'S MOUSTACHE
So the next stage of socialism for china is just “…continual overhauling of the medical system, education, fostering supply-side structural reform, reducing overcapacity, dealing with the income gap, and – crucially – clean governance.” What happened to the straight forward goal of abolishing privation? Is that not what Stalin meant by second stage of socialism?
I suggest you look at my various posts on the poverty alleviation campaign. The lifting of 750-850 million (depending on estimates – the World Bank uses the higher figure) out of poverty during the Marxism program of the Reform and Opening Up has been described as one of the greatest human rights achievements in human history.
12 September, 2018 at 11:55 am
Not here to minimize the amazing feats performed over the last several decades, only seeking answers to my question about secondary stage. Former Premier Wen Jiabo said in 2007 that China will remain in the primary stage for another hundred years. What is secondary stage? I can’t really find any writing on this when I search (including Stalin’s writing from the late ’30s which you mentioned in the article). Do you know if it does or does not imply the elimination of privation?
20 September, 2018 at 6:37 am
When I was exploring material for my article on Xi Jinping’s first volume of ‘The Governance of China’ I spoke often with CPC members, who mentioned to me that the word about was a shift to a new stage. What we have now, after the 19th congress is an interesting situation: on the one hand, we have a clearly articulated ‘new stage’ of socialism with Chinese characteristics; on the other hand, Xi Jinping made it perfectly clear that China would be in the primary stage of socialism for a very long time. Add to this the ‘xiaokang society’ by 2020 and a ‘strong modern socialist country’ by 2050. The keys include the elimination of poverty, reducing gap between rich and poor, environment and clean governance. I would add the maturation of a socialist market economy.
As for Stalin, the key material is in the important Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (Delivered March 10, 1939), pages 411-26 in volume 14 of Works.
further understanding socialism with chinese characteristics, are you familiar with chenshan tian’s “chinese dialectics: from yijing to mao”? if so, would you recommend?
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Tag: Hong Kong
8 July, 2019 8 July, 2019 by stalinsmoustache, posted in China, socialism in power
Following my earlier post about ‘Colonial Policy By Other Means‘ (in relation to Hong Kong and Taiwan), I have been enjoying reading the replies by the Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, in response to one or two ignorant politicians in the UK, who have been cheering on the violence in Hong Kong.
In reply to someone called Jeremy Hunt (seems to be important over there):
It seems that he [Jeremy Hunt] is still immersed in the faded glory of colonialism. He is obsessed with condescendingly criticizing other countries. He keeps lying without remorse. Here I will say a few more words.
First, after Hong Kong’s return to China, British rights and obligations as outlined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration were completed. On July 1, 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong. The Chinese Government started exercising jurisdiction over Hong Kong in accordance with the Constitution and the Basic Law of Hong Kong SAR.
The UK has no sovereignty or rights to rule and supervise Hong Kong after the handover. There is no room for Britain to claim any so-called responsibility over Hong Kong whatsover. Claiming itself the guardian of Hong Kong is nothing more than self-entertaining.
Second, Mr Hunt says that the UK negotiated freedoms for Hong Kong. How brazen is that! Was there any democracy when the British governors were in Hong Kong? People in Hong Kong didn’t even have the right to take to the streets then. It is only after the return that Hong Kong residents started enjoying unprecedented democratic rights and freedoms. The Chinese Government strictly follows the Constitution and the Basic Law. It earnestly implements the one country, two systems” policy. It ensures that the people of Hong Kong govern Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy.
Third, the violent storming of the Legislative Council on July 1 is a grave illegal activity. It tramples on the rule of law and undermines social order. In total disregard of facts, Mr. Hunt called the SAR government’s response “repression”. That is entirely misleading. I want to ask Mr. Hunt, if it were the British Parliament that had been stormed and vandalized, what would the British government do? Will it sit by idly and let the protesters have their way? If this is the democracy he believes in, should the police guarding the Parliament withdraw to allow in protesters across the street? Will he call the British police’s handling of the August 2011 riot in London “repression”?
I shall stress that Hong Kong is China’s special administrative region. Its affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. They brook no interference from any country, organization or individual in any form. We hope that the UK side, especially Mr. Hunt, will cease to overreach and interfere. Such attempts are doomed to fail.
And in reply to last colonial governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, who claims that as a former colony, the UK has a ‘right’ to interfere:
As the last governor of Hong Kong, his body is in the 21st century, but his head remains in the old colonial days. This bill won’t make it easier for Hong Kong to extradite people to the mainland. There are many safeguards. You know, first of all, there are 37 clauses as safeguards in this Bill. That means, no people would be extradited to mainland because of their religious or political beliefs. And the crime has to be punishable in both places. That means, to make an extreme case, if murder was not regarded as a crime in Hong Kong, then people who committed murder would not be extradited to the mainland.
As for the bill of extradition itself, what was its origin?
The whole thing was started by Hong Kong SAR government. Just as the Chief Executive said, she received no instruction from Beijing. She received no order from Beijing. It is completely the initiative launched by Hong Kong SAR government, to make Hong Kong system more perfect, to improve the legal system.
You mentioned “One China, Two Systems” for 50 years. We are fully committed to this promise. There is no question about that. So you can see that from day one till now, the central government has not interfered at all. Every step of the way, we let the Hong Kong SAR government handle this. Instead, it is the British government that was trying to interfere, voicing support for the demonstrators … they tried to obstruct the legal process. To answer your question in a simple way, have full confidence in Hong Kong SAR government. And it shows that they are capable of handling the situation.
Tagged Hong Kong, Liu Xiaoming, neo-colonial interference10 Comments
Celebrating Hong Kong’s Return: Xi Jinping’s Speech
2 July, 2017 22 November, 2018 by stalinsmoustache, posted in China, marxism
Big celebrations this weekend in Hong Kong, with the 20-year anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China. For some strange reason, corporate media is not making much of the important speech by Xi Jinping, who today is wrapping up a three day visit. The full speech can be found here, but I would like to highlight a few features.
First, the story of Hong Kong is very much part of the story of modern China, moving from the humiliation at the hands of European colonialism to the overcoming of humiliation under the leadership of the CPC. As Xi puts it:
The destiny of Hong Kong has always been intricately bound with that of the motherland. After modern times, with a weak China under corrupt and incompetent feudal rule, the Chinese nation was plunged into deep suffering. In the early 1840s, Britain sent an expeditionary force of a mere 10,000 troops to invade China and got its way in forcing the Qing government, which had an 800,000-strong army, to pay reparations and cede the island of Hong Kong to it. After the Opium War, China was repeatedly defeated by countries which were far smaller in size and population. Kowloon and “New Territories” were forcibly taken away. That page of Chinese history was one of humiliation and sorrow. It was not until the Communist Party of China led the Chinese people to victory in a dauntless and tenacious struggle for national independence and liberation and founded New China that the Chinese people truly stood up and blazed a bright path of socialism with distinctive Chinese features. Thanks to close to four decades of dedicated efforts since the launch of the reform and opening-up policy in the late 1970s, we have entered a new era in the development of the Chinese nation.
Further, the role of Deng Xiaoping is crucial, not merely with the reform and opening up (gaige kaifang) from 1978, with its emphasis on the central Marxist feature of unleashing the forces of production under socialism, but also the policy of ‘one country, two systems’.
It was against the historical backdrop of reform and opening-up that Mr. Deng Xiaoping put forward the great vision of “One Country, Two Systems”, which guided China’s diplomatic negotiations with the United Kingdom that led to the successful resolution of the Hong Kong question, an issue that was left over from the past. Twenty years ago today, Hong Kong returned to the embrace of the motherland. This ended past humiliation and marked a major step forward toward the complete reunification of China. Hong Kong’s return to the motherland has gone down as a monumental achievement in the history of the Chinese nation. Hong Kong has since then embarked on a journey of unity and common development with the motherland.
In case you wanted to know about the exact status of Hong Kong in relation to the rest of China, Xi lays it out very clearly:
As a special administrative region directly under the Central Government, Hong Kong has been re-integrated into China’s national governance system since the very day of its return. The Central Government exercises jurisdiction over Hong Hong in accordance with China’s Constitution and the Basic Law of the HKSAR, and corresponding systems and institutions have been set up for the special administrative region. Hong Kong’s ties with the mainland have grown increasingly close, so have its interactions and cooperation with the mainland.
In short, one country, two systems, means that Hong Kong can remain capitalist while the rest of China is socialist. This is also a model for global cooperation.
But they say of Xi Jinping that he is ’round on the outside and square on the inside’ In other words, he is very gentle and understanding in dealing with people, but very tough inside. For example:
To uphold and implement the principle of “One Country, Two Systems” meets the interests of the Hong Kong people, responds to the needs of maintaining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, serves the fundamental interests of the nation, and meets the shared aspiration of all Chinese. That is why I have made it clear that the Central Government will unswervingly implement the policy of “One Country, Two Systems” and make sure that it is fully applied in Hong Kong without being bent or distorted.
Indeed, as is common in the tradition of leaders of socialist states, a speech also engages in criticism and self-criticism. Of course, there are problems that need to be addressed, such as distorted images among some of Chinese history and culture, public consensus of key political and legal issues, the challenges as Hong Kong loses its economic edge, the pressure on housing and opportunities for young people, and so on.
Let me emphasise these points:
First, in line with the nationalities policy from the 1990s, China’s sovereignty is not negotiable:
“One Country” is like the roots of a tree. For a tree to grow tall and luxuriant, its roots must run deep and strong. The concept of “One Country, Two Systems” was advanced, first and foremost, to realize and uphold national unity. That is why in the negotiations with the United Kingdom, we made it categorically clear that sovereignty is not for negotiation. Now that Hong Kong has returned to China, it is all the more important for us to firmly uphold China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.
Dialectically, this enables the diversity of the ‘two systems’, as embodied in the Constitution:
We must both adhere to the “One Country” principle and respect the differences of the “Two Systems”, both uphold the power of the Central Government and ensure a high degree of autonomy in the HKSAR, both give play to the role of the mainland as a staunch supporter of Hong Kong and enhance Hong Kong’s own competitiveness.
Another aspect of Chinese (and indeed socialist) culture is the simultaneous desire for peace and harmony, as well as the constant process of criticism. At times, this relationship can suffer by focusing on one or the other side too much:
So it comes as no surprise that there are different views and even major differences on some specific issues. However, making everything political or deliberately creating differences and provoking confrontation will not resolve the problems. On the contrary, it can only severely hinder Hong Kong’s economic and social development.
In other words:
Any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the Central Government and the authority of the Basic Law of the HKSAR or use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line, and is absolutely impermissible.
As Mao would put it, contradictions are to be expected, but antagonistic contradictions are not acceptable. Or as Xi puts it, invoking a traditional concept: ‘Harmony brings good fortune, while discord leads to misfortune’.
Xi wraps up his speech by invoking key features of CPC policy:
China is now in a decisive phase to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. People of all ethnic groups across the country are engaged in a joint endeavor to realize the Two Centenary Goals and fulfill the Chinese Dream of national renewal. Ensuring the continued success of the practice of “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong is part and parcel of the Chinese Dream.
All the key ideas are here (which I have written about extensively elsewhere). The ‘moderately prosperous society’ (xiaokang shehui) isa key element of Chinese socialism, drawing on a Confucian term, xiaokang. This is expressed in Xi’s signature ‘Chinese Dream’, which has the concrete elements of the two centenary goals. The first is the centenary of the CPC in 2021 and the second is the centenary of the People’s Republic in 2049. During this period the moderately prosperous society through ‘socialist modernisation’. How? Through lifting the remaining people, mostly in western China, out of poverty (700 million have so far been lifted out of poverty since 1978), through gradually bringing about a socialist welfare state (an original invention of socialism), through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank, and – with specific reference to Hong Kong – the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
So what is Hong Kong to do in light of this? Xi quotes a local saying:
After leaving Suzhou, a traveler will find it hard to get a ride on a boat, meaning an opportunity missed is an opportunity lost.
Tagged Hong Kong, Xi Jinping3 Comments
United States interference in Hong Kong
12 October, 2014 15 January, 2019 by stalinsmoustache, posted in China
The ‘hybrid Color Revolution-Arab Spring’ template has been at work in Hong Kong. No surprises there. Tiananmen Square, Serbia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Egypt, and so on – they have seen variations on the template, in which Washington outsources its interference and attempted ‘regime change’ to NGOs or innocuously sounding regime agencies, like the National Endowment for Democracy (which is really an arm of the CIA).
But before looking at the situation in Hong Kong further, let us go back to Domenco Losurdo’s point concerning the devious nature of of the end of British colonial occupation of Hong Kong in 1999:
Secessionist tendencies of every kind are once again lying in wait, regularly fed by the ex-colonial powers. When it wrested Hong Kong from China, Great Britain certainly did not conceive of self-determination, and it did not remember it [or bourgeois democracy for that matter] even during the long years during which it exercised its dominion. But, suddenly, on the eve of Hong Kong’s return to China, to the motherland, the governor sent by London, Chris Patten, a conservative, had a species of illumination and improvised conversion: he appealed to the inhabitants of Hong Kong to claim their right to “self-determination” against the motherland, thus remaining within the orbit of the British Empire (‘Lenin and Herrenvolk Democracy,’ p. 249).
Back to more recent events in Hong Kong, especially in relation to externally fostered protests. As the People’s Daily astutely points out:
According to media reports, Louisa Greve, a director of the National Endowment for Democracy of the US (NED), was already meeting with the key people from “Occupy Central” several months ago, to talk about the movement. Louisa Greve is the vice-president of NED who is responsible for its Asia, Middle East and North Africa programs. For many years, her name has frequently appeared on reports about “Tibetan independence”, “eastern Turkistan”, “democracy movement” and other forces destabilizing Chinese affairs and interfering with the Chinese government. She also hosted or participated in conferences about the “Arab spring” and the “Color Revolutions” of other regions.
It is hardly likely that the US will admit to manipulating the “Occupy Central” movement, just as it will not admit to manipulating other anti-China forces … The US purports to be promoting the “universal values” of “democracy”, “freedom” and “human rights”, but in reality the US is simply defending its own strategic interests and undermining governments it considers to be “insubordinate”. In US logic, a”democratic” country is one that conducts its affairs in line with American interests.
The results of America’s “Color Revolutions” have hardly been a success. The “Arab spring” turned to be an “Arab winter” and Ukraine’s “street politics” have resulted in secession and conflict. There is little evidence of any real democracy in these countries, but the US turns a blind eye.
I must admit, I am in agreement with that. And just to make matters clear:
The US may enjoy the sweet taste of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs, but on the issue of Hong Kong it stands little chance of overcoming the determination of the Chinese government to maintain stability and prosperity.
Tagged colour revolution template, Hong Kong3 Comments
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With 45,000 Units Shipped, Valkee’s Light-Emitting ‘Medical iPod’ Gets A Sleeker Look
Natasha Lomas @riptari / 6 years
After closing a $9.7 million round this summer, Finnish startup Valkee — which makes a light-emitting pair of earbuds designed to counteract seasonal affective disorder (SAD) — has put some of that cash towards a product refresh. The second generation of its product, Valkee 2, has been given a sleeker look and a variety of user-friendly tweaks.
The makers of the device, which Valkee’s co-founder Juuso Nissillä describes as a “medical iPod”, claim to draw on scientific research that suggests bright light stimulates brain activity to counteract SAD. The LED earbuds are designed to leverage that effect by allowing users to give themselves a daily dose of light directly into their ear canals — where the photosensitive areas of the human brain can be exposed to it.
The main change with Valkee 2 is remodelled LED earbuds, aiming for a more ergonomic, in-ear fit. There’s also a new smaller, all-aluminium casing (that looks very 2nd generation iPod nano-ish) from which the micro USB headphone cord can now be detached so that multiple users (i.e. who each have their own LEDSet) can share a single Valkee 2.
The product’s interface has also been updated to add on-device control — rather than having to change settings via Valkee’s website or a PC. Other tweaks include a longer headphone cord and internal memory in the earbuds so that settings can be retained when the headset is unplugged from the control unit.
Valkee launched its first commercial prototype in Finland in winter 2010, using off-the-shelf products. A global version, made from proprietary plastic parts, followed in winter 2011. That version retailed for €185. The startup said today it has shipped 45,000 of its bright light headsets to more than 20 countries around the world over the past three years. Satisfaction rates are apparently very high: 87% of users would recommend the product to others, it claims.
The Valkee 2 is available for pre-order — costing €199, in a choice of either black or silver — from the company’s website. It’s due to ship next month.
Update: Valkee has provided TechCrunch with the following statement in response to criticism that its product does not work as claimed:
We have come across at Valkee this same weblink to a site that publishes anonymous and misleading information about Valkee. I can only second-guess the motives of the author. Similar false accusations have come up every now and then.
To keep the record straight: Valkee has been tested clinically for both treatment efficacy and user safety according to the requirements of the EU Medical Device Directive (93/42/EEC) and is consequently an approved European medical device in Class 2a for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, Winter blues) and its many symptoms, and is CE-marked for that. Many other additional health benefits of bright light are being studied currently, by Valkee and by others, including health technology majors. All clinical studies of Valkee since mid-2012 have been double-blind, placebo controlled, even if not all have been published to protect new IPR, nor is there any requirement to publish all.
A required 3rd party clinical evaluation with full access to all research in connection with Valkee 2 product program reaffirmed that the product is clinically sound, and that the marketing claim of treating SAD is well founded.
We will not start correcting every single false accusation of anonymous sources such as the website in question, but instead focus on continued work in bright light research, and on serving our satisfied customers to the best we can.
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Handling Conflicts When Should the Board Intervene?
Condo, co-op and HOA communities are made up of people – and people aren’t perfect. Within a community association, squabbles are inevitably going to break out between unit owners. Oftentimes these problems will be resolved relatively easily, and the owners will reach some sort of reasonable consensus with no lasting animosity or tension between them. Other times, however, the fights will escalate, roping in other owners – and potentially the board.
There are clearly liability issues at play when a board is forced to make a decision in favor of one unit owner or another, and it goes without saying that any conflict that gets physical is a matter for the local authorities. But some conflicts fall into a gray area, and can present a challenge for a board that wishes to do the right thing, yet fears escalating the tension or doing something that infringes on an owner’s rights. It can be a tough needle to thread, but there’s help available.
Starting with the most serious type of conflict first: if residents get into a physical altercation at an association property, the police should be called.
“Breach of the peace is first and foremost a criminal matter to be handled by police,” advises Mark R. Rosenbaum, a principal at the law firm of Fischel Kahn in Chicago. “One of the parties, or an onlooker should make that call. Even if the participants don’t strike each other, but are screaming at one another, that can also warrant calling the police. If the police are called, there could be a number of outcomes: they may just talk to the participants – or only one of the participants. Someone may or may not get arrested. There should still be a police report made by the officers. But anyone other than the parties involved may have trouble getting a copy of that report.”
Philip Brigmond, District Manager at Resource Property Management in Seminole, Florida, adds that “the goal of the board should be to make sure that all residents know they are not the law, nor is it on them to enforce the law, or the rights inherently provided thereby. Anytime we receive a call from an owner with a complaint, we advise them to call the authorities – i.e., the police. It’s very simple. Civil matters are enforced by civil servants. Board matters are enforced by board servants – volunteers. Obviously, someone threatening to cause bodily harm or personal property damage to another is not board business. Someone blocking another’s parking space, on the other hand, would be enforceable at board level, unless it escalates to property damage.”
“The board must act to protect or restore safety and resident health and welfare, but there’s clear case law stating that absent these factors, a shareholder or unit owner may not compel the board to enforce its own rules, including proprietary lease, bylaws and house rules,” notes Steve Troup, a partner with law firm Tarter Krinsky & Dogin LLP in New York City. Should an incident materially interfere with health or safety, or with a shareholder of unit owner’s legitimate rights – “e.g., if a lawful professional’s business invitees are scared away” – then yes, a board should get involved. And this goes, again, for anything involving fisticuffs.
Lesser Spats
The waters get murkier when no outright physical aggression is involved. At this point, the board needs to be more cautious about its responses to conflict.
“While I do think that the board has some obligation in ensuring that there is peace in the community, there are boundaries that should not be crossed,” says John Kadim, a portfolio manager for property management company Thayer & Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Working to address community apathy and involvement are more proactive things that can be done to help keep peace, but resident-to-resident conflicts are tricky areas that should be regulated very carefully.
“All residents should be acting courteously and reasonably in a common living environment,” he continues. “This is more of a ‘common sense’ practice that I would consider a standard expectation. These behavioral expectations are often a matter of perspective; one resident may feel as if they are compliant, while the majority of residents may disagree. I typically try to follow the general guidelines for maintenance in the condominium bylaws for helping to determine if the board should get involved. The maintenance standards generally state that if a resident’s unit has a unit-specific maintenance issue, they are responsible for addressing it. If that issue affects other residents’ safety, units, common areas, the property’s marketability or insurability, then the board has the authority to step in.
“In resident-to-resident conflict,” says Kadim, “I try to apply the same principles to determine if the board would have the authority to intervene. If the dispute or issue is solely between those two residents, then I advise them to address it between themselves. If it appears that things may affect other areas, I would review the issue with the board to determine if it would like to take action as an aid to diffuse or address the conflict before a larger issue arises.”
As Rosenbaum notes, the board has an “affirmative duty to enforce their documents, and to make sure that owners and occupants are not violating those documents. But board members and management cannot be everywhere in the building at once. They only know what they themselves see, and what is reported to them.”
As such, adds Rosenbaum, when evaluating a conflict, the first question the association should ponder is “Has anyone complained to the board or the managing agent? Things happen in an association all the time that do not get reported. And unless an owner or occupant – or one of the participants – lodges a formal complaint with the board, then the board may have limited responsibility. Rumor of a ‘fight’ may get to the board, but it will be just that: rumor and hearsay. Many – if not most – associations have rules that say that the board will only address an alleged violation of the association’s documents, if a written complaint is filed with the board (or management). Unless someone is willing to come forward and report what they saw and/or heard, the board probably does not have responsibility to affirmatively investigate the rumors.”
“Getting involved can be dangerous, as you can never be entirely sure that you’re on the right side of a discussion,” warns Brigmond. “The most ‘commitment’ that I would advise for a board to make would be to acknowledge that the association’s attorney will address their concerns on behalf of the board, providing that it is not a civil issue.”
Push Come Shove
Of course, in some communities, there may be repeat offenders who frequently cause both minor and not-so-minor problems. In these cases, eventually the onus will be on the board to do something about these characters.
“Most condo declarations contain what I call the ‘nuclear option,’” says Rosenbaum. “If an owner is repeatedly fined for serious violations of the association’s documents, one of the remedies available to an association is to go to court to get an order mandating the forced sale of that owner’s unit. This is a last-resort remedy against an owner who seems unable to live in a community setting – as opposed to a detached single-family home.
“But any of the steps that an association takes could result in that association getting sued,” Rosenbaum continues. “The courthouse is open to everyone. That said, as long as the association has followed its own rules in addressing the issues, and those rules are consistent with the law governing enforcement of its documents, then the association should be able to successfully defend its actions.”
“Remember the old saw: ‘no good deed goes unpunished,’” warns Troup. “As long as the board acts in accordance with the business judgment rule – i.e., no discriminatory decisions or enforcement of rules; no board member acts according to their own self-interest” – then there is no potential negligence for staying out of a fight.
Kadim agrees. “Intervening in resident conflict is absolutely an area wherein a board would take on additional risk just by involving itself,” he says. “Once involved, the board is essentially acting as an unofficial third-party mediator between residents. It’s very important that the involvement of the board remains as factual and unbiased as possible. If the issue is over something such as one resident parking too close to another’s space, simply by being the third party to reiterate the rules and regulations of the property’s parking policy and to remind the residents that they should be as courteous as possible to one another would be safer, as there are no sides being taken. If the residents are looking for action, things become tricky. Even if the association had the ability to reassign one resident to separate the conflicting parties, this could spark a new conflict down the road.”
As passive as this may sound, the best bet in most conflicts is to consult any and all relevant professionals. It actually seems prudent for a board to outsource some responsibility; after all, that’s why they retain management, attorneys, insurance, etc., in the first place. Do not leap before looking!
Handling Litigation
When Lawsuits Strike Close to Home
Six Big Things Attorneys Wish Boards Knew
How Do You Measure Up?
Avoiding Litigation
The Power of Alternative Dispute Resolution
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President Trump Made 3 Big Promises on Health Care. The Budget Office Just Undercut All of Them
President Donald Trump attends a meeting on healthcare in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on March 13, 2017 in Washington, DC. Pool—Getty Images
Pool—Getty Images
By Alana Abramson
The Congressional Budget Office on Monday released its financial assessment of the American Health Care Act, Congressional Republican’s alternative for Obamacare, estimating that it would increase the number of uninsured to 24 million by 2026 and reduce the federal deficit by $337 million.
But the estimate also means that, if the bill becomes policy and the CBO’s conjectures are accurate, President Trump, who has voiced his support for it, will be breaking several promises he made to the American people about health care.
Here’s what he’s promised — and how the CBO says the new plan will not deliver on them.
1. “I am going to take care of everybody.”
Trump told the Washington Post in an interview shortly before his inauguration that he was aiming to replace President Obama’s Affordable Care Act with a plan that would try and provide universal insurance, although he did not give specific details. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us,” Trump told the Post. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.”
Over a year earlier, in September 2015, he had told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes, “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”
The Congressional Budget Office begs to differ. By 2018, the CBO estimates that 14 million additional people would be uninsured, a number that would rise to 21 million in 2020 and 24 million in 2026.
“In 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law,” the CBO wrote in its assessment.
2. “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”
In September 2015, Trump lamented about the increase in premiums under Obamacare in an interview on 60 Minutes, using them as a reason to justify repealing the law. “Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 45, 50, 55 percent,” he told Scott Pelley.
Appearing on the show again after he was elected, in November of 2016, he said his version of health care would not only be superior to Obamacare in substance, but in cost. “It’ll be great health care for much less money. So it’ll be better health care, much better, for less money. Not a bad combination.”
But, according to the CBO, average premiums would initially increase by 15 to 20% in 2018 and 2019 under the American Health Care Act. The costs would start to recede in 2020, and would ultimately decrease 10% by 2026, but the CBO estimates that they would continue to rise for the elderly and decrease for the young, because insurers would be allowed to charge the former up to 5 times as much as they can under Obamacare.
Overall, the CBO says, higher premiums would also be a reason some people decline insurance entirely.
3. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”
Trump prided himself as an unconventional candidate for the Republican Party, a term that extended to his policy proposals. On May 7, 2015, before he even officially announced his candidacy, he tweeted, “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.”
But under the American Health Care plan, federal spending for Medicaid would be reduced by $880 million. A huge reason the number of uninsured would climb is because of the cuts to Medicaid.
As the CBO explains: “The reductions in insurance coverage between 2018 and 2026 would stem in large part from changes in Medicaid enrollment—because some states would discontinue their expansion of eligibility, some states that would have expanded eligibility in the future would choose not to do so, and per-enrollee spending in the program would be capped.”
Although the CBO estimates that Medicare spending would increase under the American Health Care Act, the AARP has written a letter to Congress arguing that the bill would “weaken Medicare’s fiscal sustainability.”
Write to Alana Abramson at Alana.Abramson@time.com.
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Goké, Body Snatcher From Hell
As a longtime fan of weird cinema, I often enjoy watching movies that prompt just about everyone I know to look at me with a pained expression and ask, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Goké, Body Snatcher From Hell (Shochiku, 1966) is one such movie. From the late 1960s through the mid 1980s, I subscribed to Greg Shoemaker's classic fanzine, The Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, and sometime in the very early 70s, an issue had made mention of this movie. The article offered precious little information — just enough to almost cruelly tantalize this young fan of all forms of Japanese fantasy cinema. A few years later, in 1977, I saw in the local newspaper that a movie called Body Snatcher From Hell was coming to one of our then-ubiquitous drive-in theaters on a double bill with The Bloody Pit of Horror, and from the photo and copy on the ad mat, I was reasonably certain the former must actually be Goké. Clearly, this was an event not to miss, so when the roadshow arrived, I hied my ass out to the drive-in, picked up a delicious barbecue sandwich from the concession stand, and set about watching this long-anticipated movie.
It messed with my head, it did. More than anything, it struck me as kin to the lurid Italian horror movies of Mario Bava, which I later learned actually had inspired Goké's director, Hajime Sato. Like many of the movies that influenced it, Goké's cinematography is stylized, bright, and vivid, with color palettes limited mostly to primary and secondary colors. The storyline is bleaker than bleak, the special effects range from absolutely convincing to stunningly cheesy, and the characters rate as among the most despicable examples of humanity ever to be crowded together in a confined space. The musical score by Shunsuke Kikuchi (Terror Beneath the Sea, Gamera vs. Guiron, Gamera vs. Jiger, Gamera vs. Zigra, Kamen Rider, Mazinger, Dragonball Z, et. al.) ranges from eerie and ethereal to brassy and overwrought, weighted toward the latter. And, of course, for the domestic version, the dubbing — done by the Hong Kong studio that provided the dubbing for countless international films in the 60s and 70s — varies between adequate, merely lame, and atrocious.
A few years ago, I picked up Goké on DVD, on a double-feature with Toho's The Human Vapor (which may merit a little review of its own). Watching the movie again after so many years, I found it just as lurid, obnoxious, hokey, disturbing, and fascinating as I remembered. I re-watched it recently, and, yet again, it was like a train wreck from which one can't avert one's eyes. Familiarity with it fails to diminish its impact.
The film opens with an airliner en route from Tokyo to Osaka flying through a bizarre, brilliant orange sky, upon which the pilot (Hiroyuki Nishimoto) and co-pilot, Sugisaka (Teruo Yoshida), remark in wonder. Next thing you know, numerous birds begin smacking into the windows in gory explosions. A radio message alerts the crew there may be a bomb on board the plane. Then, without warning, one of the passengers (Hideo Kô), who has apparently already assassinated the British ambassador to Japan, attempts to hijack the plane to Okinawa. But then a gigantic, brilliant UFO appears in the sky and buzzes the plane, causing it to crash-land amid a strange, desolate landscape. Only Sugisaka, stewardess Kazumi Asakura (Tomomi Satô), and a few passengers, including the hijacker, survive the disaster. The hijacker takes Kazumi hostage and attempts to escape, only to encounter the UFO nearby — which mesmerizes him and draws him inside. Here, a mysterious force causes his forehead to split open, and a blob-like organism, one of an alien race called the Gokemidoro, wriggles into his skull, transforming him into a wild, bloodthirsty vampire.
Kazumi manages to escape and return to the plane. However, the surviving passengers — rather than come together to combat their common enemy — expend all their energy fussing, fighting, arguing, gnashing their teeth, and bemoaning their oh-so-undeserved fates. One of them actually does turn out to have a bomb, though he brushes it off as just a joke because he was looking to "have some fun." There's scarcely a sympathetic character in the bunch, so when our hijacker-turned-space-vampire begins to prey upon them, one can't help but be a little glad that with each victim, that's one less loudmouth to suffer. However, finally presented with an opportunity to take on the transformed hijacker, Sugisaka douses him with jet fuel and sets him on fire. As his body burns, the Goké alien gooshes out from the wound in his forehead and enters the head of another passenger (Masaya Takahashi), a professor who had previously professed an absolute lack of faith in human goodness — justifiably so, if one were to judge by the quality of the characters traveling on this flight.
As the survivors' numbers dwindle, Sugisaka and Kazumi attempt to flee but are pursued by the transformed professor Sagai. However, the professor is swept away by a sudden landslide, allowing his would-be victims to escape. He makes his way back to the spaceship, where the alien blob exits his head, leaving his body a ruined pile of ash.
Sugisaka and Kazumi soon discover they have been trapped, not on some desert island, but in Japan proper, for they come upon a highway. But it is a dead highway, all the cars stopped and occupied by corpses. The voice of the Gokemidoro reveals to the last two survivors that the invasion of Earth has begun and that no human being will be spared. Sugisaka and Kazumi are left to wander toward their final doom, as from their orbit many miles above the earth, a fleet of alien spaceships begins to descend.
Goké, as you may have inferred from the above, tells a story that is about as grim and hopeless as a story gets, made all the bleaker by the emotionally and psychologically stunted characters. Even for the two reasonably likable protagonists, there is no relief other than death to be found at the end. This quality of human emptiness overshadows all else — the cartoon colors, the goofy dialogue, the ridiculously overdone plot elements, the cheesy special effects. Goké is not so much a movie that's so bad it's good; it's a good movie gone to hell in a hand basket, regurgitated, and splattered all over your shoes. To be sure, it's an obscure classic of weird cinema, and if you're an aficionado, you'll probably love it. I wouldn't recommend showing it to your "normal' neighbors, however, for I can fairly confidently state that they will not.
Labels: Goke, Japanese horror, movies
Definitely sounds like my kind of movie.
Night of the Damned Big Burning Heat
Valentine's Day Eclection
Crying Tiger (Seua Rong Hai)
Trail Treasures
Caching Historic Bethabara Park
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Stephen Carson
Associate Director, Membership Management, Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab, MIT
Board Service
Resume Print Version (PDF)
The Kind of Boy I Was
When you are a small boy like I was, you wonder as you look in the mirror at your skinny arms and the jack-o-lantern head too big for your shoulders what kind of man you will grow up to be; and when you are a bit older, between being a boy and a man, you are given glimpses, moments to show you what you might become. Like when I was seventeen and my father took me fishing on Lake Erie, where his father took him when he was a kid, and I got sick from the waves and never caught a fish and spent the whole time bent over the railing puking while the white-haired guy that owned the boat joked that at least I could chum the water.
When I was a boy and I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I never could quite see all of me because the mirror was in three pieces, hinged vertical slabs for the medicine cabinet doors, and I could never get all of my body reflected in one of them, even as skinny as I was. But if I opened the two outside ones up so they reflected back at each other, I could put my head between them and see dozens of reflections, reflections inside of reflections, a honeycomb of different angles of me, angles I never saw myself from so that I looked like a stranger.
When I was seventeen and my father asked me to go to Lake Erie with him, I was in my second year of college and I’d just gotten a D in Calculus, the second time I took the class. The first time, I dropped it because I knew I was going to fail. When you are in an Electrical Engineering program and you get a D in Calculus, they won’t let you take Physics, even thought I knew I could pass that, and when they wouldn’t let me take Physics I walked out of the program and ended up in General Studies. I didn’t mind so much because there were a lot of classes I’d been wanting to take that engineering students weren’t allowed to, but after I’d switched it took me a long time to tell my parents, because they were paying for me to go to school and I knew they’d be let down. When I finally did tell them, they didn’t say much of anything at all, Mom just asked if I was all right with it and Dad barely even looked up from the book he was reading.
The next day, Dad called me downstairs and I thought he was going to say something about the General Studies thing, but all he asked was did I want to go fishing with him. It was May when he asked me, the first really hot humid night that year, and he was sitting in his underwear at the kitchen table reading–a big hardcover book, Clavell or Mitchner or somebody–with a gin-and-tonic and a slice of watermelon that he ate with a fork and knife like a sirloin. It was the first night that spring he had the kitchen door open, and he called me downstairs like it just occurred to him in the middle of reading, and I leaned up against the heavy butcher’s block that stood in the middle of our kitchen and felt the smooth wood under my palms and the breeze coming through the screen and waited for what he had to say.
He was always calling us like that, from wherever he was, and you’d hear his voice while you were watching TV or screwing around in the family room. He’d yell out “Dwarf!”, which is what he called all of us, and you’d look at whoever was in the room with you and hope they’d lose their nerve first and go do whatever he wanted. Or worse, you’d hear your name and you knew he wanted something to do with you and no-one else. That’s what happened that night. I was up in my room and I heard him yell “Steve,” and I got that feeling like I’d done something wrong, which I always had and it was just the matter of what he’d found out about. So I came downstairs and leaned against the chopping block and looked at him sitting there with his belly hanging over the elastic band of his underwear, the shock of purple scar slicing across one side from where they’d given him a new kidney seven years before.
Like always, he read for a minute–even thought he was the one who called me–and I stood there smelling the new summer air and the watermelon and wondering what trouble I was in because he’d called me out by name. Even when I was older, like I was then, it made me feel like a little kid to stand there and wait while he finished up what he was doing, like I was small and not so important that I couldn’t wait there for a few seconds while he finished the page. When he finished it, and I’d been standing there thinking about the D in Calculus and General Studies, he tucked his thumb into the book and closed it and said to me, “I’m going up to Lake Erie next weekend with one of the docs. You want to go?”
I said yes, because that’s what you say when you are seventeen and your Dad asks you if you want to do something like go fishing, which is not like him asking you to clean the garage or sweep the leaves off the back porch, something you never really say yes to but do anyway, thinking of the day not too far off when you will move out of that house and not ever do again. I said yes because I knew that fishing was something that fathers and sons did together, even if we moved to West Virginia when I was five, and the only fish there were catfish in the river or stocked trout in the streams, and my father wouldn’t fish because it was nothing like Lake Erie where he caught perch as fast as he could drop his line. I said yes because I didn’t know that I was going to get sick on the boat and hang over the edge with the rail pressing into my gut and the white-haired guy chuckling.
I don’t think I’d been fishing with him more than six or seven times before that, and never to Lake Erie. One time he took us to this place called Sigi’s Five Lakes, which was these farm ponds, little thing like you see in the corners of fields or the bottoms of gullies with little earthen dams, and they were each stocked with something different–trout, bass, catfish. All these old stooped-looking guys in folding lawn chairs sat with poles in their laps and lines sagging into the soupy water. Dad let the three of us each catch a fish and he threw them back, even though you were allowed to keep four, and then we left even though we hadn’t been there more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Dad didn’t fish at all.
There was one pond with carp in it, big fat things that floated just below the surface, near the edge, and an old man would drop his line out in front of one and it would flick its tail just once to get going and glide over and take the bait into its mouth slowly, like it knew what was coming next. When the old man had set the hook and brought it up and out of the water, you could see the ragged flapping skin around the mouth and you knew that the fish had been caught more than a few times before, and maybe even on that same day by that same old man.
I did move out of the house not too long after the trip to Lake Erie, maybe a year and a half later. I was nineteen and I moved into a two room place with an old Philco refrigerator that looked like a midget’s coffin stood on end, and a Prosperity brand stove that I always thought was ironic given my budget at the time. The place shared a bathroom with the next apartment, where two guys lived, and I never cleaned it and they never cleaned it and mildew grew in the shower and on the walls and spread over the ceiling. But I kept my two rooms clean and I did the dishes and I took out the garbage even though I swore I’d never do those things when I moved away. I repainted and put up blinds and cleaned the windows, and when my mother came across town she told me how worried she’d been and the apartment was small, sure, but I’d done a good job with it and she wasn’t going to worry so much for me anymore.
I was still skinny then and in the big mirror in that filthy bathroom, I could see my body just fine–halfway to being a man, tall and elbows and shoulders–and I found some old weights in the basement of that place, by the washing machine that didn’t work, plastic and cement weights that some student had left there the year before. I dragged them up to my two rooms and I started lifting them. I lifted them because I saw that if I didn’t, I would grow up reedy and weak, and that was not the kind of man I wanted to become. I lifted them all through that fall and into the next spring, until the muscles on my arms grew strong and round, and ’till you couldn’t see the ribs as they came together at my sternum. In the florescent light of the moldy bathroom I shared with the guys next door, I could see the difference, but even after that when I went home to visit and I stood in the bathroom and looked at myself in the thin slices of mirror, I still couldn’t see that much had changed.
My father was different then, though, after I had moved out. He put on more weight, and his knees got worse so that he walked with a cane. He’d had Lupus years before and it had gone into remission, but before it did it took his kidneys and started working at his knees, and even though the new kidney took well, the medicine made him puffy and made him put on weight, and the weight ground down on his knees until he almost couldn’t walk. I was ten when he first got sick and before that he was tall and thin like my older brother is now, and he was in the Air Force. He used to come home in his flight suit and helmet, with the oxygen mask strapped across his face and the hose dangling like the trunk of some monstrous elephant man, and he’d chase us around the house until we hid from him under the butcher’s block.
Dad had bought that butcher’s block for Mom on their first anniversary, when they were living in New Mexico, and he was still flying. My older brother was three months old then, and I wouldn’t be born for another year. Mom loves that butcher’s block, and it’s still in the middle of their kitchen, but she’s told me more than once that those early years of their marriage were the toughest. She tells me about a father I never knew, who went out a lot with the other flyers and left her at home, who wrote checks without even thinking about how much money they had in the accounts.
The father I knew handled all the bills, wrote out checks and tracked investments for hours each week at the huge oak roll-top that took up one wall of the living room. If you wanted cash to go out with on the week-ends, you went to Mom and she snuck you what she could, but if you needed something big like tuition or help with your car insurance, you had to go talk to Dad when he was at the desk. He would swivel around in his chair, with the wall of oak and papers behind him, and look at you over his reading glasses as you explained to him what you needed.
That week-end, we’d gone up to Lake Erie with a friend of his from the hospital where he worked whose name was LaGrange, and LaGrange had brought his son, too. We went up in my dad’s car, a big blue Delta 88, and LaGrange sat up front and LaGrange’s son and I sat in the back, and the two of us listened to the two of them talk about the Hospital and about people I didn’t know. Every once in a while LaGrange’s son would say something to show that he did know who they were talking about. He was taller than me with hair short like he cut it every other week, and he had a smile that you knew he had practiced. He was in Law School. After they’d finished up talking about the hospital, LaGrange asked me what I did, and I said that I was in school. He asked what I was studying, and LaGrange’s son looked at me for my answer, and I looked back at them, the father and the son, and I said, “Engineering. Electrical engineering.” I watched my father as I said it, but he didn’t flinch one bit as he steered the car north.
You could never tell what he was going to yell at you for and what he was going to ignore, and sometimes the yelling would be bad and sometimes the silence would be worse. One night when I was sixteen and had just begun to drive, I got drunk. It was my girlfriend’s birthday and we got someone to buy us some vodka, and we went out to the old abandoned farm her parents owned outside of town and built a bonfire. We drank and listened to top-forty tunes on a cheap radio and drank some more, and by midnight–when I was supposed to pick up my older brother at his girlfriend’s place–I could hardly walk. I did what I could to sober up, and at three in the morning, I climbed behind the wheel of the old VW van we had, and I still remember the drive back. I must have gone off the road at least a couple of times, but I made it to get my brother, and when I did, I parked the van in the dead center of the street and climbed out just in time to see the Delta 88 pull up right behind me. Dad didn’t say anything to me then, and he didn’t say anything to me the next morning, and I kept waiting for him to say something, and in the end he never did.
When we got to the hotel and LaGrange and his son had gone to their room and we had gone to ours, I kept thinking that he would say something about my lie and the D in Calculus, but he just stacked the luggage in the corner and told me to come back outside with him. He told me to get some beers out of the cooler in the car, and he and I and LaGrange and his son sat in scallop-backed metal chairs in the ragged lawn of the motel, drinking beers in the cool evening air. The motel had been built in the forties and it was painted pastel green. The old state route that ran by it had been replaced by a the Turnpike years ago, and the cars that passed as we sat and talked were moving slow, and you knew they were all locals and in no hurry to get where they were going.
And while we talked I decided that I liked LaGrange, even if he was a doc and his son was a bit of a prick, and that made him the first doctor I’d met from the Hospital that I did like. He had a salt-and-pepper beard that he pulled at as he told us about borrowing a friend’s truck to move two of his sows (because he worked his farm along with being a doc, two jobs I never thought one man could do at the same time). The truck wasn’t registered and a cop who was chasing a speeder saw the expired tag as he passed, and he motioned for LaGrange to pull over; and as LaGrange waited for the cop to come back, one of the sows broke loose and ran out onto the highway. And as he told us about chasing the sow and explaining things to the cop, the tugging at his beard set off a chain reaction in his face, drawing his mouth into a smile and pulling his eyes into half-moons above his round cheeks.
Later that night, after we’d finished up the beer and gone back to the motel room, Dad was lying on the bed with his book open beside him and I was watching TV–something with roman soldiers in it, maybe Masada–and he said to me that LaGrange had cancer. He would do that sometimes, just say things to you from out of the blue, nothing leading up to it–he just said it. My younger brother told me once that he and Dad had been driving somewhere, going to the store or something, and out of nowhere Dad said, “I wish your grandfather had lived longer, because I never saw what it was like to grow old.” And my brother asked me, now what do you say to that? It was like that when he told me about LaGrange and I didn’t know what to say either, but I turned the volume down and waited to see if he’d say more, and he did. It was colon cancer, he told me, and LaGrange had ten feet of his bowels gone and a colostomy bag, and it kept coming back and they kept taking more of his bowels and it had been going on for six years now.
When I was ten and my father first got sick, my brothers and I went to Ohio to live with Mom’s sister, and we slept on cots in her basement, which had been turned into a family room but still had a cement floor and cinderblock walls and no windows. We were there for three months and we went to school in Ohio, and saw Mom each night at ten right before we went to bed, when she got back from the hospital fifty miles away in Columbus. We didn’t see Dad for almost a month. That was in the seventies, when transplants weren’t so common as they are now, and after he went in the doctors told him and Mom that he would probably die. He might live a year, maybe two. If he’s lucky, they said, he could make it five. Mom told me later that they’d talked it over and they thought we should know too, so she sat my brothers and me down on one of the cots, and I remember I was sitting in the middle, because for some reason, whenever we had to do anything together, we did it by age. So there I was, a ten-year old boy sitting between his two brothers, and my mother said to me–said to us–your father’s very sick and he might die soon.
Seven years later, when my father took me fishing, he’d gone from a skinny guy with a big nose and a long-legged, ambling walk to an overweight man with bad knees and a scar across his belly. But by that time the docs were saying there was no reason why he couldn’t go another seven years. In that hotel room, after he told me about LaGrange, he told me to turn off the TV and the lights and I got into the other bed, but I had too much beer that night and I couldn’t get to sleep and I listened to his breathing and thought about what he said. I remember thinking on that night in the motel room when he slept in the bed next to mine that it was probably the first time since I was a baby that he and I slept in the same room, and I laid in the dark and listened to traffic going by on the state route outside and thought about what that might mean, but I can’t remember if I came up with anything before I fell asleep.
I was like that as a kid, always up nights thinking in my bed in the dark, sometimes for hours, and sometimes I would hear Dad get up and walk down the hall past my door, go downstairs in the middle of the night and turn the TV on. Some nights he would watch TV for two or three hours, just flipping channels, never really settling on anything. On those nights I would have to wait the whole time until he turned off the TV and came back upstairs and went down the hall into his room, and only then could I go to sleep. He started doing that after he’d gotten sick and after he’d gotten better, and we’d come back from Ohio.
After he got sick, other things were different too. There were more chores to be done, and they were listed for us on the wall on a sheet of yellow legal paper, our names and the days of the week and the chores we had to do. And when you had done the dishes or whatever you had to do, Dad would come downstairs–this was before his knees got so bad–and if there was something wrong, like you’d left noodles in the sink or a piece of dog food under the table after you swept, he would start yelling, Goddammit, we do this every time. Can’t you get it right?
One night, I guess I must have been fifteen or so, I had forgotten to take the trash out and I heard him yelling my name in the kitchen, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that I was in for it. When I came into the kitchen, he had turned the garbage can upside down and was spreading the garbage all over the kitchen, screaming for me to clean it up and after that to scrub the kitchen floor, and maybe that way I’d remember to take the trash out and I wouldn’t be such a fuck-up. I stood there and watched the stained bits of paper towel and the coffee grounds and the watermelon rinds spin across the floor. When I was younger, and things like this would happen, I used to get upset and cry, and the crying would just make Dad more angry, and he’d yell more, and I remember that time I just decided not to get upset. I remember I felt like a stone just standing there, nothing going on inside me while he yelled and kicked the trash around, and finally he stopped, and he looked at me and pointed at the floor and said, “Clean this mess up,” and then he went upstairs. And after that I knew he could yell at me all he wanted and it didn’t matter any more, because I knew I could take it.
But he never yelled at me once on that fishing trip, not about my D in Calculus or about my lie to LaGrange’s son (I decided later that I had lied to LaGrange’s son and not to LaGrange, because I didn’t really care if LaGrange knew I was in General Studies or not), and he didn’t yell at me that next morning when I was tired from staying up all night and my head hurt a little from the beer and when he told me to get up, I pulled the covers over my head and tried to go back to sleep. At home, if he was getting ready for work and he had to take you to school that morning, he would come into your room and flip on the light and if you weren’t up by the time he came back, he would pull the covers off of you so that you lay there shivering under the overhead light. But that morning in the motel room, he didn’t even turn on a light, he just pulled the curtains open so the early dawn came in and he got dressed and then shook me by the ankle and told me softly it was time to get up. He went to the motel office to get coffee and I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom and scrubbed the pasty film off of my teeth.
Dad’s bathroom kit was on the sink, and I dug through it looking for aspirin. I found a bottle of Tylenol buried in with the rest of the pill bottles, and I washed down two of the tablets. Dad always had tons of pills with him wherever he went, medications from the transplant–Imuran, Prednisone, and others that the doctors were constantly changing–and he took some every six hours. Mom told us all the time that the drugs made him gain weight, and made him irritable, that it wasn’t our fault he yelled so much.
When I came out of the motel room, Dad was standing there talking to LaGrange, and he’d brought a cup of coffee for me in case I wanted it. I didn’t drink coffee then, not much anyway, but the two of them were drinking it, and I just knew that LaGrange’s son would show up with a cup of coffee in his hands, so I picked up the drink and started on it. After LaGrange’s son showed up and they finished their coffee, and I’d finished maybe half of mine, we climbed into the car and drove a mile to a little diner that opened up at five so the fishermen could eat before they went out. After the beer the night before and the half-cup of coffee, I wanted something on my stomach, and so I ordered eggs and hash browns and sausage and pancakes, and I remember how the waitress smiled at me when she set my order down.
My grandfather died of MS when I was three, and I don’t know much about him, but most of what I do know comes from my father’s stories, and most of the stories are about fishing. He’d tell me about fishing on Lake Erie for perch, and he’d tell me about summer trips to Canada to fish for pike. Dad had Grandpa’s tackle box in the garage, a rusty red steel thing with old wooden lures, red and white and gone moldy, with the bite marks still showing in them; and Grandpa’s rods and reels were there too, old-fashioned closed-face reels and rods made of square metal stock. The story I heard most often as a boy was about how, when my grandfather was very sick and it was clear that he would die soon, he wanted to go fishing one last time, and so my mom and dad dressed him up and took him out on his boat, and even though he could hardly cast and reeling wore him out, my grandfather fished for the entire day.
And sometimes, after Dad had also gotten sick and when he’d had too much to drink, I would hear how my grandfather died three weeks later, struggling to breathe. He was forty-eight when he died and the MS had paralyzed him so that he couldn’t walk and he had pneumonia. He’d laid there in the hospital bed, breathing sudden, ratcheting breaths that made his whole body heave and lifted his head up off the pillow. In the end there was blood in his lungs, along with pus and phlegm, and he drowned in it. And after my father told us this, he would be silent for a while but I knew he was thinking about the pills he had to take and the purple scar across his stomach and the things the doctors had told him.
But that morning when we left the diner, my father wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t telling stories, not about fishing and not about his father’s death–he was driving and looking out over the steel-and-white water of Lake Erie and the gray sky, and maybe he was thinking would the weather hold, and maybe he was thinking how the boat’s engine would rumble as it pulled us through the waves, and I was sure he was thinking of the weight of the fish when it was on the line and he’d let it play just enough and then with a strong backward tug, he set the hook. And for the first time that trip I wasn’t thinking about the D in Calculus, and General Studies and whether Dad was going to say something about it. I was thinking that this is how fishing trips were supposed to be, real fishing trips, not like Sigi’s Five Lakes and not like the catfish my brothers and I would catch in the river. And when we got to the marina, and the white-haired guy was starting up the boat, and we were loading our gear aboard, I didn’t even mind LaGrange’s son so much.
But when the boat hit the open water, and the white-haired guy opened up the throttle, I saw in an instant what was going to happen. I always got sick in cars and I tried not to eat too much before I rode in them, and I should have thought of that when I was drinking coffee and eating breakfast, and I should have thought of it the night before when I was drinking too much beer. I could see myself leaning over the rail and getting sick, and when it all happened the way I knew it would, and the white-haired guy was laughing and Dad was patting me on the back, and LaGrange’s son was just about to hook the first fish of the day, I saw that this was the way I would be: a man who couldn’t catch a fish and got seasick and embarrassed his own father.
The thing about it, I’ve found out now that I’m older and I’ve moved away from that town and grown up a bit, is that you never really get to see what kind of man you are becoming, because every time you see what you might be, it changes who you are, and it’s like those mirrors in the bathroom at home, you keep seeing yourself from different angles ’till nothing looks familiar. It doesn’t stop me though, when I go home for holidays, from standing in the bathroom–which they’ve remodeled three times but still has that same mirror that’s impossible to see yourself in–and looking for the man that I’ve become.
I can see some of it. I can see a man who’s grown up not reedy and weak, and not thick with muscle either, a man who’s grown up to do things like take out the garbage and clean the house, and lift his old plastic weights. I can see a man who still worries about that Calculus grade, and whether he might have done better. And I can see a man who can’t tell the difference between anger and illness, or which is a symptom of which, and so is afraid of both.
But what I see mostly when I look into those three slabs of mirror, and catch what I can looking back, is that skinny kid with the too-big head turning himself into a stone while his father tossed garbage across the kitchen and yelled at him. I can see from that moment on it never really mattered if my father yelled at me or not, and one was not truly worse than the other, because after that moment, I was already yelling at myself, and I would do it about the D in Calculus, and I would do it about telling a lie to LaGrange’s son, and I would do it about getting sick and not catching fish. And when my father called me downstairs to tell me something, and I was standing there waiting for him to finish what he was reading, I think now he did it because that was who he was and he was methodical, and if he started a page, he would finish it. And I was standing there, not waiting to be yelled at, but already yelling at myself for whatever it was I had done, or whatever I might do, because that’s the kind of boy I was.
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3D Systems on National Geographic!
Last week, National Geographic Channel re-aired the show "How Hard Can It Be" hosted by Eric Gocke & Vin Marshall (frequent contributor to Popular Science). The show documented the challenges, trials, and, most importantly, successes of friends attacking serious engineering problems with only the tools and materials available to the average Joe. Over the course of three episodes the HHCIB Team launched a rocket up 50,000ft, sent parts of an ROV to the bottom of the ocean, and flew a house with only helium balloons, setting a world record in the process. These feats could not have been accomplished without help from experts including the 3D Systems Alibre team who provided 3D modeling software and know-how to engineer real-world success. For more show videos and information please visit: http://bit.ly/KPq2AY and http://www.alibre.com/.
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Can the President Rewrite Federal Law?
Here we go again. Is the Constitution merely a guideline to be consulted by those it purports to regulate, or is it really the supreme law of the land? If it is just a guideline, then it is meaningless, as it only will be followed by those in government when it is not an obstacle to their purposes. If it is the supreme law of the land, what do we do when one branch of government seizes power from another and the branch that had its power stolen does nothing about it?
Late last week, President Obama, fresh from a series of revelations that he kills whomever he pleases in foreign lands, that the U.S. military is actually fighting undeclared wars in Somalia and Yemen, and that the CIA is using cyber warfare -- computers -- to destabilize innocents in Iran, announced that he has rewritten a small portion of federal immigration law so as to accommodate the needs of young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and remained here. By establishing new rules governing deportation, rules that Congress declined to enact, the president has usurped the power to write federal law from Congress and commandeered it for himself.
Immigrants should not be used as political pawns by the government. When government does that, it violates the natural law. Our rights come from our humanity, and our humanity comes from God. Our rights are natural and integral to us, and they do not vary by virtue of, and cannot be conditioned upon, the place where our mothers were physically located at the time of our births. Federal law violates the natural law when it interferes with whom you invite to your home or employ in your business or to whom you rent your property or with whom you walk the public sidewalks.
When the government restricts freedom of association based on an immutable characteristic of birth -- like race, gender or the place of birth -- it is engaging in the same type of decision-making that brought us slavery, Jim Crow and other invidious government discrimination. Regrettably, the feds think they can limit human freedom by quota and by geography. And they have done this for base political reasons.
Along comes the president, and he has decided that he can fix some of our immigration woes by rewriting the laws to his liking. Never mind that the Constitution provides that his job is "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and that "all legislative power" in the federal government has been granted to Congress. He has chosen to bypass Congress and disregard the Constitution. Can he do this?
There is a valid and constitutional argument to be made that the president may refrain from defending and enforcing laws that he believes are palpably and demonstrably unconstitutional. These arguments go back to Thomas Jefferson, who refused to defend or enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts because, by punishing speech, they directly contradicted the First Amendment. Jefferson argued that when a law contradicts the Constitution, the law must give way because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and all other laws are inferior and must conform to it. This argument is itself now universally accepted jurisprudence -- except by President Obama, who recently and inexplicably questioned the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Health Care Act on the basis that it is unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, there is no intellectually honest argument to be made that the president can pick and choose which laws to enforce based on his personal preferences. And it is a profound violation of the Constitution for the president to engage in rewriting the laws. That's what he has done here. He has rewritten federal law.
Only Congress can lay down specifics such as in order to avoid deportation and qualify for a two-year work visa, one must have entered the U.S. prior to age 16 and possess a valid American high school diploma or be a military veteran, as the president now requires. By altering the law in this manner -- by constructing the requirements the government will impose -- the president has violated his oath to enforce the laws as they are written. His second responsibility in the Constitution (the first is to defend the Constitution) is to enforce federal laws as Congress has written them -- hence the employment of the word "faithfully" in the Constitution -- not as he wishes them to be.
Congress should have enacted years ago what the president is now doing on his own, because it is unjust to punish children for the behavior of their parents, and it is unjust to restrict freedom based on the place of birth. But this can be remedied only by Congress. If the president can rewrite federal laws that he doesn't like, there is no limit to his power. Then, he will not be a president. He will be a king.
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Emirates unveils Arsenal branded A380
Posted on March 22, 2019 by Travel PR News Editor
Gunners travel on new Arsenal branded A380 for mid-season training camp
DUBAI, UAE, 2019-Mar-22 — /Travel PR News/ — Arsenal Football Club today (21 March 2019) boarded a newly branded Emirates A380 with a livery featuring a montage of Arsenal first team players. The club is making their way to Dubai for a friendly match with Al Nasr Sports Club as well as the official inauguration of Al Maktoum Stadium, taking place on 26 March. During their stay in Dubai, the Arsenal players will also take part in warm weather training sessions, to prepare for final weeks of their football season. This is the first time in Emirates’ history that the whole Arsenal squad visits their Dubai home, and the airline will be supporting the visit by connecting fans in the UAE with one of the greatest football clubs in the world.
The bespoke decal showcases the Arsenal Crest and features Lucas Torreira, Mesut Ozil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alexandre Lacazette. The decal covers a sizable area of 383sqm around the aircraft, with the images of the players identifiable from both the ground and in the air. Watch the bespoke player decal come to life here.
Arsenal fans as well as plane spotters can catch the A380 under tail number, A6-EEB, as it travels around the world with scheduled services planned to Paris, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Bangkok and Hong Kong.
Emirates Airline, whose partnership with Arsenal is one of the most recognisable and longstanding in the world of sport, last year announced a new sponsorship deal, granting the airline a five year extension to their shirt partnership with the Club until the end of the 2023-2024 season. The sponsorship was the largest ever signed by a club and one of the biggest ever agreed in football. The Emirates and Arsenal partnership is also the longest running relationship in the Premier League, with the total duration of Emirates’ shirt branding spanning 18 years. Arsenal’s home also continues to be known as Emirates Stadium until 2028.
Emirates’ sponsorship and support of global football clubs and popular football events have enabled the airline to bring major clubs to the UAE to compete in unique tournaments, connecting them to their fans, as well as capitalising on opportunities that will link local clubs with international football teams through focused collaboration.
The airline’s efforts also support its vision to provide UAE football a platform to thrive at the international level, as well as further supporting the Dubai’s status as a world-class sports hub and a centre for professional sporting events.
About Emirates
Our Media centre contains all of our business updates, including the latest press releases and articles and our contact details.
The Emirates story started in 1985 when we launched operations with just two aircraft. Today, we fly the world’s biggest fleets of Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s, offering our customers the comforts of the latest and most efficient wide-body aircraft in the skies.
We inspire travellers around the world with our growing network of destinations, industry leading inflight entertainment, regionally inspired cuisine and world-class service. Find out more.
Rula Tadros
Emirates Public Relations
rula.tadros@emirates.com
Source: Emirates
This entry was posted in Airlines, Business, Sports, Travel, Travel Management, Travel Services, Travelers and tagged A380, airlines, Arsenal, Emirates, football. Bookmark the permalink.
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The Statue of Liberty in Popular Culture
Tracy Morris, Leaf Group
The Statue of Liberty is one of the most enduring symbols of the United States. (Photo: statue of liberty image by Brett Bouwer from Fotolia.com )
What the Statue of Liberty Symbolizes
A Description of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty Elllis Island
Facts About the Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States throughout the world. Because of this, it has been used in a number of movies, referenced in songs and used on political posters as well as tourist kitsch, from t-shirts to snow globes.
France gifted the statue, entitled “Liberty Enlightening the World,” to the United States in the late 19th century to commemorate the centennial of the signing of the declaration of independence, and to commemorate the friendship between the two countries established during the Revolutionary War. By the time the statue arrived in the United States, it had already achieved national fame thanks to Joseph Pulitzer, owner and editor of the "New York World." Pulitzer used his newspaper to raise funds nationally for the statue’s pedestal. Through Pulitzer’s campaign, the idea that the Statue of Liberty was a gift to all Americans, not just the citizens of New York City, became an accepted fact.
The United States erected the statue in New York Harbor at the same point in history that the country experienced an upswing in immigration. Often, as new immigrants arrived in New York harbor, the statue was the first sight to greet them. This, combined with the words of the poem “The New Colossus” inscribed at the base of the statue that reads, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door,” helped to cement the idea of the statue as a symbol for America in the minds of many new Americans.
Over the years, filmmakers have used the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty to depict destruction of America on a small scale. The statue, buried in sand up to her eyes, is the most remembered scene in the move "The Planet of the Apes" for many viewers. The statue has also been destroyed in numerous postapocalyptic films, including "Independence Day," "Cloverfield" and "The Day After Tomorrow." In "Cloverfield," a gigantic beast hurls the head of Lady Liberty down a Manhattan street.
The Statue of Liberty’s link to the United States has made it a prominent political symbol. In 1989, protesters in Tiananmen Square constructed a papier-mache figure of a woman holding aloft a torch. The Chinese Goddess of Democracy resembled the Statue of Liberty. The statue has also been used in songs, both in support of America, as in the song “The Angry American,” By Toby Keith, and in protest to American policies, as on the album cover for the Dead Kennedys album "Bedtime for Democracy."
The Statue of Liberty has also become a mascot for New York sports teams, including the women’s basketball team the New York Liberty, as well as the New York Rangers hockey team. Both New York and New Jersey have featured the Statue of Liberty on their license plates.
NPS.gov: Statue of Liberty
NY Magazine: Statue of Liberty
LibertyStatePark.org: Joseph Pulitzer
Statue of Liberty Facts
LibertyStatePark.com: Emma Lazarus’ Famous Poem
Tracy Morris has been a freelance writer since 2000. She has published novels and numerous online articles. Her work has appeared in national magazines and newspapers including "Ferrets," "CatFancy," "Lexington Herald Leader" and "The Tulsa World." She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Arkansas.
statue of liberty image by Brett Bouwer from Fotolia.com
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Morris, Tracy. "The Statue of Liberty in Popular Culture." Travel Tips - USA Today, https://traveltips.usatoday.com/statue-liberty-popular-culture-3615.html. Accessed 17 July 2019.
Morris, Tracy. (n.d.). The Statue of Liberty in Popular Culture. Travel Tips - USA Today. Retrieved from https://traveltips.usatoday.com/statue-liberty-popular-culture-3615.html
Morris, Tracy. "The Statue of Liberty in Popular Culture" accessed July 17, 2019. https://traveltips.usatoday.com/statue-liberty-popular-culture-3615.html
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Hotel / Casino New York-New York in Las Vegas.
The Statue of Liberty in New York City is a symbol of both the U.S. and the ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity.[304]
Statue Of Liberty (More Formally, Liberty Enlightening The World, And More Colloquially, Lady Liberty) Is A Structure Located On Liberty Island In New York Harbor, Presented To The United States On The Centennial Of The Signing Of The American Declaration Of Independence As A Gift From France. It Was Designed By Frédéric Bartholdi And Gets Its ...
What Kind of Money Does Italy Use?
Things to See Around the Theatre District in NYC
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DOCTOR WHO, TELEVISION
DOCTOR WHO 8×10: "IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT"
One of the reasons I love Doctor Who—and love writing about Doctor Who—is that the show is such a fascinatingly difficult high-wire act. Other fantasy shows—and yes, I believe Doctor Who is fantasy, much more than it's science-fiction—have their own internal logics that stay relatively consistent. (The rules of the universe in Game of Thrones, for example—with its magics and dragons—are not the rules of our world, but they're consistent, and we can know what to expect from week to week.)
But each episode of Doctor Who is really its own genre, with its own tone and approach, and with self-contained rules and parameters that may not apply to any other episode. One week we may be in a cartoon, slapstick world like "Robot of Sherwood," and the next week we find ourselves in the solemn, evocative dream-logic of "Listen." (In this respect Doctor Who is almost an anthology series, having more in common with shows like The Twilight Zone than more consistent fantasy series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural.)
That flexibility pays off incredible dividends, but it's also challenging and risky. Every episode has to establish not just new settings, situations, and characters, but also new rules. It has to essentially teach us, each week, how to watch it, convincing us to accept the premise of the show anew.
And—in a 42-minute story—it has to do this very quickly. I've often thought I'd like, someday, to write a piece looking at just the pre-credit sequences of each episode: they have to very efficiently set the tone, and let us know what kind of show we should expect that week, and instruct us in how seriously we should take it.
"In the Forest of the Night" is a good example of what I mean: the opening scenes—filmed with a gauzy beauty by director Sheree Folkson—show us a little girl in a red hood running through the woods, and we know instantly that we are in a fairy tale. But what sort of fairy tale? The 2011 Christmas special, "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe," was a fairy tale, but a particular, Christmassy sort of one: we knew from its madcap, deeply silly start that we weren't meant to take it very seriously, and that we should adjust our Willing-Suspension-of-Disbelief dials accordingly.
But "Forest" isn't that kind of fairy tale. It's more serious, attempting to play with some of the deeper, more archetypal elements of these childhood stories. It wants us to take the story more seriously, while still being willing to accept fairy tale logic.
That's a very tricky line to walk. Stephen Moffat loves to straddle that line himself, and usually does it fairly well. (For example, the Season Five two-parter "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone"—which also consciously played with the Red-Riding-Hood-in-the-woods imagery—mostly worked as a Doctor Who fairy tale. Its pseudo-science edged even closer than usual to pure magic—"An image of an angel becomes an angel?"—but the overall tone of the story made us accept explanations we almost certainly would reject in another kind of story. It felt right, somehow, because we'd successfully been transported to a fictional paradigm where those things could happen.
But it's always a difficult, complicated bit of television witchcraft: to mix text and tone and theme and aesthetics, in just the right balance, to achieve acceptable magic. And I'm thinking about all of this now because, for me, "In the Forest of the Night"—written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce—doesn't quite get it right.
"Be less scared. Be more trusting." — Maebh Arden
Throughout the episode, we're asked to see with a child's eyes. Maebh Arden (Abigail Eames), the little girl lost in the woods, isn't surprised to see a forest in the middle of London, and she isn't shocked to see a police box standing in the middle of the forest, and she isn't impressed that the box is bigger on the inside than the outside. "I just thought it was supposed to be bigger on the inside," she says, when the Doctor wonders at her lack of wonder. Later, another child, Ruby (Harley Bird) has a similarly casual reaction to the TARDIS. "There's wasn't a forest, and then there was a forest," she says. "Nothing surprises us anymore." Children just accept that there are things they don't understand and can't explain, the episode reminds us. ("Everyone seems to know everything about everything, apart from me," Maebh says.)
And, on the surface, this is a fair argument for how we should watch Doctor Who—which is, after all, a children's show. Why are we willing to accept one preposterous thing (such as a man who flies through space and time in a police box) while rejecting other preposterous things (like, for example, a golden arrow that makes a spaceship go faster)? And you'll see this argument, frequently, used by defenders of one episode or another to counter criticisms of the show. ("Why are you questioning the logic? It's Doctor Who!")
But here's the problem: I hate that argument, because of our old friend internal logic. Stuff doesn't have to be possible, but it has to be probable, within the established rules of the fiction. So says, at least, the man who more or less wrote those rules: “With respect to the requirements of art," says Aristotle in the Poetics, "a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible." (From this, I think we can all agree that Aristotle would think that time-traveling aliens are perfectly fine, but that the arrow thing was just goddamned dumb.)
"In the Forest of the Night" just asks me to accept too many things that are both impossible and improbable, even for Doctor Who.
I don't, for example, object to Maebh being psychic, precognitive, and extra-sensory; I do object to her magical powers coming about just because "people who have lost someone, they're always listening, they're always looking, they're always hoping, so they notice more." (Really? Must be a lot of psychic, precognitive, extra-sensory people on the planet, all of them batting little fireflies away from their faces.)
I don't object to the idea that humanity could completely forget the Great Global Tree Invasion of 2014. (Well, I do, actually: Moffat usually needs a smile-shaped rip in the fabric of time and space to erase big dumb events like this.) But I take serious issue with the explanation that we'll forget it just because that's what humans do. ("If you remembered how things felt, you'd have stopped having wars, and stopped having babies," the Doctor says. Well, yes, but see, we still remember all those wars and babies happened, even if we didn't learn anything from them…)
And the trees have done this before, every time there was a natural disaster? (That must be why all those dinosaurs are still alive and well.) Meanwhile, the combined scientific community of the Earth can't notice a massive solar flare heading our way? (Weird, because even the little ones fuck up my cell-phone service.) But they can assemble a plan to denude all the trees within a couple of hours. (Very efficient: but you know that defoliant shit is carcinogenic, right?) But they won't, because an anonymous little girl hacked into all the cell phones—good thing the solar flares didn't fuck 'em up after all!—and told everyone the trees were nice. (I'd like to think that, if there were ever a giant asteroid or something heading our way, NASA wouldn't tell Bruce Willis and his drill-team to stand down on the word of a weird, highly medicated third-grader.)
Oh look, I'm getting snarky. (Sorry. I really didn't mean to: I just kept moving forward, and, lo and behold, there snarkiness was.)
So let's back off of the snark: yes, all of this nonsense bothers me, especially delivered without even the usual feint at a pseudo-scientific explanation. (One of my pet peeves, as both a fan and critic of this show, is a writer who comes in thinking his script doesn't have to be logical, because, you know, it's Doctor Who.)
But the larger problem has to do with that alchemical mixture of tone and theme and aesthetics and plot and performance that I mentioned before. It is just possible that some version of this story might have worked if a few more elements were working together, but this story that wants to operate on fairy-tale logic never quite feels like a fairy tale. Folkson's direction is lovely, and she does what she can to achieve a fairy-tale feel, but too much elsewhere is working against it: the presence of the other children (who actually ask good, science-based questions); the extraneous conflict/romantic-subplot between Clara and Danny; the lame set decoration, which never for a moment convinces us that it is anything more than a plastic traffic light stuck randomly in a forest. (Did the forest grow up between the buildings and cars and people of a major metropolis, or did it disintegrate them?)
All of this sounds like nit-picking—and it is—but it all combines to undermine the delicate illusion that would be necessary to sustain this tale. We just don't believe any of it enough to justify the willing suspension of disbelief we would need to make.
And Cottrell-Boyce's screenplay seems to want to play with fairy tales without wanting to think about fairy tales too deeply. Fairy tales are quests, fairy tales are transformative, fairy tales are about facing archetypal fears and overcoming them. "In the Forest of the Night," on the other hand, is rather shapeless, not particularly scary, strangely impersonal, and thematically shallow. (The sudden appearance of Maebh's missing sister at the end is an afterthought to give the story a phony sense of fairy-tale structure, but it isn't earned, and it isn't enough.) The forest is a powerful and profound mythopoetic image, and it's a crying shame Cottrell-Boyce didn't find anything more interesting to do with it here. The trappings of a fairy tale alone are not sufficient: fairy tales should resonate on a deeper level than logic—especially if you're asking us to disregard logic—and this one never does.
(Even the takeaways don't make sense: we fear the trees because…we subconsciously remember all those times the trees saved our asses? And if there was supposed to be an ecological message, it's a terrible one: yes, by all means, lets teach the children that trees are here to serve us, and it doesn't matter what we do to them: more magical trees will appear whenever we need them to save the planet. Hooray!)
Sorry: I stepped in snark again. (That keeps happening: there seems to be snark everywhere I step.) So let's just say that none of this worked for me, and move onto the few things that did make sense in the episode.
"This is my world too. I walk your earth, I breathe your air." — The Doctor
Usually, the challenge with stand-alone, non-Moffat-scripted stories is to fit them into the overall season arc. (As I wrote in my review, I thought "Mummy on the Orient Express" suffered from this awkward requirement.) "In the Forest of the Night," however, is the rare episode that actually works better as a piece of the arc than it does as a stand-alone story.
Apropos of its Blake-inspired title, "In the Forest of the Night" sets up some fearful symmetry: it's practically a mirror-image of "Kill the Moon." In both stories, the Doctor and Clara and one of her students encounter a threat that really isn't a threat at all, but a natural phenomenon that will work itself out without their interference. In both stories, a global appeal is sent out across the globe, appealing to humanity's best, most optimistic instincts. In both stories, the Doctor is largely ineffectual, even powerless, and gets into his TARDIS to escape the impending disaster.
These similarities can't be coincidence, and in fact "Forest" even calls back to Clara's climactic speech to the Doctor in "Moon." "You walk our earth, you breathe our air," she accused him in the earlier story, when he tried to say the fate of the Earth was not his problem. Now, he echoes those words back to her, when she tries to tell him to leave the Earth to its fate.
Though "Flatline" was, for me, a far more satisfying Graduation Day episode for Clara, "Forest" ties a nice bow on this aspect of her sometimes troubling character arc this season. In Season Seven, Clara began as the person who saved the Doctor—and was eventually revealed to be the person who saved all the Doctors—but in Season Eight she became less powerful and more problematic, culminating in her fury in "Moon" when the Doctor refused to save her and made her save herself (and everyone else). "Flatline" saw her step confidently into the Doctor's role, and now she becomes once again the person that can save him. "This time, the human race is saving you," she says. "Make it worthwhile."
And Clara repeats again the lesson she has—for better or worse—learned from the Doctor this season. "If you can't save them all, save who you can," she says. "Not everybody has to die." This is one of the key themes of this season, and ties in with the very essence of the Twelfth Doctor. ("It's like I'm trying to tell myself something," the Doctor said, when he wondered why he chose the face he now wears. That face, of course, is the face of the man whose family he saved—after Donna begged him to "just save someone"—in "The Fires of Pompeii.") I'm not sure yet where Moffat is headed with this theme, but I'm absolutely certain it's going to be important as we go into the finale.
So Clara has become more like the Doctor—Danny keeps challenging her on her willingness to neglect her responsibilities to the children in order to solve the mystery—but she draws the line at becoming the Doctor. "I don't want to be the last of my kind," she says. The troubling aspect of the Twelfth Doctor's "save who you can" philosophy is his sometimes callous lack of concern for the people he can't save: he has occasionally been a little too nonchalant about letting some people die in order to save the rest. The Doctor's actions in the Time War were the ultimate expression of that philosophy, but Clara, ultimately, is unwilling to surrender that much of her—for lack of a better word—"humanity." Even when it looks like the entire Earth will be destroyed, she recognizes that saving a few children would be doing them no favors, and she realizes it would be impossible for her to just jump in the TARDIS herself and move on to the next adventure. Rose or Amy Pond might have done so, but—when push comes to shove—Clara chooses to remain human, and hitches her fate not to the Doctor but to the people of Earth.
Additional Thoughts and Favorite Bits
"I don't want to see more things, I want to see the things that are in front of me more clearly," Danny says. "There are wonders here, Clara Oswald." With the shape of Clara's character arc, and the dynamic being established between her and Danny, I am now officially upgrading the idea I had last week from a Crazy Theory to a Serious Prediction: Clara will leave the TARDIS at Christmas, and there will be a spin-off show set at the Coal Hill School, aimed at younger children (a la The Sarah Jane Adventures). Clara and Danny will be the stars, leading an adorable group of funny students, and together they will all face a constant influx of family-friendly alien threats drawn by Artron energy…or a rift…or a Hellmouth…or something. You heard it hear first.
I'm not sure who has the bigger gripe: parents whose children will now refuse to take their medication because the Doctor told them not to, or animal-rights advocates who have been trying for years to counter the misguided notion, largely born from fairy tales, that wolves are a threat to humans.
A minor theme worth noting: the Doctor twice refers to catastrophe as a good thing. "That's how this planet grows: a series of catastrophes," he says, and later he refers to catastrophe as "the metabolism of the universe." This echoes nicely with Danny's comment at the end of "Kill the Moon" that wisdom is always the result of someone having "a really bad day," the point from "Listen" that "fear is a superpower," and the general arc of Clara being tempered and made stronger through this difficult season.
Let us all remember the wise words of the Doctor this episode: There are very good, solid, scientific reasons for being really quite frightened just now; there is no such thing as an arboreal coincidence; and life is always too short for Les Misérables.
Are we really at the two-part season finale next week? In many ways it feels like this season has just gotten underway…
Next: "Dark Water" and "Death in Heaven"
DOCTOR WHO 11×03: “ROSA”
DOCTOR WHO 11×02: “THE GHOST MONUMENT”
DOCTOR WHO 11×01: ‘THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH”
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Jim Olson: Building, Nature, Art
Founding partner of Seattle's Olson Kundig Architects, Jim Olson has spent nearly fifty years seamlessly blending straight lines with natural surroundings. Jim Olson: Building, Nature, Art examines his work with a particular focus on buildings meant to hold artworks. Whether they be private residences for collectors or high-end resorts, all of them share the same effortless merging of modern aesthetic and timeless serenity and are presented here via 400 photographs, architectural plans, and sketches, alongside text from Olson himself.
Buy from Amazon / $50
My Ramones
Featuring rare photographs from the collection of their longtime manager Danny Fields, My Ramones is a rare glimpse into the lives of one of the greatest rock bands ever. The hardcover book has more than 200 photos, taken between 1975 and 1977 — a time period that saw the band touring and recording their first album. The book also includes Field's commentary along with recollections from REM frontman Michael Stipe and David Johansen of the New York Dolls.
More than 6 billion Hot Wheels cars have been produced since the first prototype rolled out 50 years ago. This hardcover tribute spans 300 pages with 200 illustrations of the number one selling toy in the world, a collectible for all ages. The book features a forward by racing legend Mario Andretti and dives into the die-cast toy car's history to shine a spotlight on collectors, production techniques, and their race to adopt current technology through digital gaming and AI software.
Buy From Assouline / $50
Japan: The Cookbook
A native Californian, author Nancy Singleton Hachisu has lived in Japan for the past three decades. Her love for the country's cuisine and attention to detail permeates Japan: The Cookbook. Housed within the bamboo-inspired cover are over 400 recipes covering everything from soups to stir-fry, organized by course and accompanied by notes that explain not just how to use the ingredients but their cultural importance, as well.
Unbeaten
Rocky Marciano was one of the best boxers of all-time and the only heavyweight to retire undefeated in 1956 with a mark of 49-0. Unbeaten: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Rocky Marciano is the story of this complex boxer told by Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Stanton. The book follows Marciano's life and the culture that surrounded the sport during the 1940's and 50's, including the dark side and mafia influences that pushed Rocky to his retirement while still in his prime.
Ferrari, Art Edition
Produced in close collaboration with the storied carmaker, Ferrari is an unparalleled look at its story. Weighing in at over 500 pages, it tells of Ferrari's racing victories, champions, and legacy, via exclusive content pulled from Maranello's archives as well as from private collections around the world. Also included is a never-before-seen appendix gathering all of Ferrari's victories since 1947. Numbered 1-250 and signed by Sergio Marchionne, John Elkann, and Piero Ferrari, the Art Edition arrives wrapped in a red leather cover, inside a Marc Newson-designed aluminum display case with a chrome bookstand; a Collector's Edition is also available which drops the Marchionne and Elkann signatures and the stand, as well as $24,000 off the price.
Buy from Taschen / $30,000
Session Cocktails
Long days in the hot summer sun call for something a little lighter than a martini or old fashioned. Session Cocktails is dedicated to drinks that are able to be enjoyed several at a time. More than 60 recipes are featured, including low-alcohol versions of some classics, alongside tips on building out a low-ABV (alcohol by volume) bar and a brief history of less-stout drinks.
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TRANSPORTATION Guest
How autonomous vehicles will redefine land valuation
Olivier Grinda, Home61@oliviergrinda November 3, 2018 2:33 PM
Above: Robot Shuttle, a driverless bus, developed by Japan's internet commerce and mobile games provider DeNA Co., drives past rice stalks during an experimental trial with a self-driving bus in a community in Nishikata town, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan.
Image Credit: Issei Kato / Reuters
You’ve probably seen the headlines about self-driving cars and crashes. However, the truth is that they are safer than human drivers. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, human error is to blame for more than 94 percent of accidents.
Despite any fears we may have about autonomous vehicles, we are quickly becoming a society where they will be a regular feature on our roadways. The potential impacts of autonomous vehicles to land use planning and real estate are enormous.
The first significant moves we will see to accommodate autonomous vehicles are changes to infrastructure and state and county regulations. Things we take for granted, such as stop lights and construction signs with scrolling words, may not yet be recognizable to vehicle sensors in all conditions such as the intense sun or dense fog.
It’s possible commuter lanes will be converted to autonomous vehicle lanes — or that autonomous vehicles will be contained in another type of virtual perimeter to ensure human drivers don’t mix with the driverless cars.
We’ll also have to rethink the gas tax used to help pay for infrastructure. Since autonomous vehicles will likely be electric or some form of hybrid, they will consume less gas and therefore pay less gas tax. However, since the vehicles will still be using roadways — perhaps at a higher rate than those with drivers — we will need a new system to pay for critical infrastructure replacement and upgrades.
More meaningful land use
For those living in areas with severe housing shortages, the potential for more meaningful land use that could come from the introduction of the autonomous car could play a huge role in shaping housing markets. The theory is that vehicles will initially be unaffordable to most households and will be used primarily in a rideshare fashion. With fewer people owning cars and fewer cars on the road, it’s possible that gas stations, parking garages, auto dealerships and parking lots could be reimagined into housing or green spaces.
This change could have a significant impact on residential real estate, as space for garages will no longer be needed to house a fleet of family vehicles. Existing garages could be converted to storage, room additions, or accessory dwellings, resulting in more livable space.
Reduced construction costs
The cost of moving materials dramatically impacts construction costs. Behind each delivery of material, supplies, and equipment is a team that must be scheduled, dispatched, and monitored. The introduction of autonomous vehicles will likely produce back-end changes to transportation that will automate scheduling and eliminate staff changes and driving breaks.
Additionally, with fewer vehicles on the road, developers can push for greater deregulation of required parking spots for multifamily buildings. Not only do these requirements push developers to construct densely packed tower-style buildings, but they can also cause severe delays or derail a project altogether. The construction of required parking can be anywhere from $25,000 – $50,000 per spot, easily pushing rents up an additional $300 per month. Reducing the need for parking will decrease costs to developers and tenants.
What does this mean for the future of real estate?
Although it is too early to know the ultimate impact on real estate values, an easy projection is that, with fewer cars on the road, the spaces they used to occupy will be changed, literally paving the way for more housing. The rise of autonomous vehicle technology could also mean that location — the primary underpinning of real estate value — will unravel.
For example, those working in large cities have had to choose between paying a premium for a home closer to work or slogging through a daily commute for a more affordable place to live. However, with access to autonomous transportation, people may no longer care about a long commute if they can do something more meaningful with their time, such as check emails, prepare for presentations, or catch up on reading. The ability to live where you want could cause values in central cities to dip as demand for homes close to public transportation or job centers no longer command a premium.
It will be some time before we see the complete absence of human drivers — but the impacts of driverless technology are certain to shake up real estate as we know it.
Olivier Grinda is CEO and cofounder of real estate company Home61.
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William David Wagstaff
Aviation journalist William David Wagstaff, 49, died of complications from surgery on February 8 2004. From 1988 to 2003 he was a full-time editor at Aviation International News and its subsidiary, HAI Convention News. He was a regular at Heli-Expo press conferences, where his peers could always count on him to place the spin and hype in a more reality-based context. Bill is best remembered for articles ranging from pilot medical issues to aerial firefighting. One of his cherished memories was a cross-country trip he took in a Sikorsky helicopter for an assignment. His knowledge of the helicopter industry and its rich history was encyclopedic. He wrote AIN’s monthly column on rotorcraft and kept tabs on what meant most to people who operate helicopters day-to-day. His writing was engaging and fresh and his “leads” were always memorable. According to his friends at work, his office walls were a museum of movie memorabilia and esoteric posters, including a World War II propaganda piece showing sailors tugging on anchor lines and urging us to “Grow Hemp for the War.” To borrow one of Bill’s own phrases, “He was one of the good ones.”
AHS Update: Vertiflite Spring 2004
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Native Mobile Apps vs Hybrid Mobile Apps
Tara Calihman December 03, 2014
“Please deliver a plain vanilla hybrid app to me so you can save company resources” said no customer, ever.
Advantages of Hybrid
A “hybrid” app is generally defined as an app that is cross-platform in some way, or is based on a combination of native code and web technology. In many cases, a hybrid mobile app is just a shell, or web view, wrapped around web-style code like javascript and HTML. The advantage of a hybrid app is that you can leverage existing code and port it to the mobile platform, whether that be iOS or Android.
Another advantage of hybrid apps is that a company with limited resources, say a bevy of web developers but no mobile developers, can (in theory) bring a mobile app to market more quickly. Rather than get up to speed on iOS and Android native development tools, you can jump right in without knowing too much about each platform.
The lure of “write once, run anywhere” is a strong message that resonates with managers and bean counters everywhere!
(Did you notice customers were excluded from that group of fans?)
Disadvantages of Hybrid
The disadvantage of a hybrid app is that you are restricted to a “least common denominator” approach. Features that only exist on one platform are either left out entirely from the cross-platform framework, or require a fair amount of native “glue code” to implement. At best, the latest bells and whistles offered by Apple and Google won’t find their way into the hybrid framework for several months. Thus, when resources are limited, the latest platform features usually fall by the wayside. The result is a generic app that doesn’t look or feel quite right on any mobile platform, and certainly doesn’t offer advanced platform-specific features.
Customers appreciate performance, and the best way to fully maximize what your mobile device and operating system can do is to tap into native system calls. Each cross-platform framework layer is increasing overhead and reducing performance. When that layer involves something like JavaScript, an interpreted language not known for being speedy in the first place, you drag down your mobile device even more.
Don’t Choose the Dark Side!
The choice between developing a native mobile app and a hybrid app comes down to whether you want to be customer-focused, or company-focused. It’s that simple. Sure, resources may be limited and you have to do what you have to do, but in the long run, there is no better customer experience than a fully native mobile app with all the latest features available for your platform of choice.
What did VictorOps do? When the company was founded, we knew that mobile apps would be key to our success so we chose native app development, of course. We looked for a sharp iPhone developer and a sharp Android developer, and set out to create the very best app we could for each platform. We like to think that each one looks and feels like a native app, without any compromises. This strategy allows us to bring new features to market right away when Apple and Google release new features for the platform.
As an example, iOS 8 was a major new operating system release with over 4000 new developer API calls to sink our teeth into. As soon as iOS 8 was released to the public, our iPhone app sported two features that were not possible before: the ability to Ack and Resolve an incident directly from the push notification (without launching the app or even unlocking the Lock Screen), and a Today Screen widget so you can see, at a glance, when you are on-call next. These types of features may take months to find their way into various cross-platform frameworks, and if they do, will require platform-specific coding which reduces the cross-platform time-saving, code-sharing advantages.
Note: just a couple months since the release of iOS 8, over 90% of our active customers are using iOS 8. Do you think they want to wait for iOS 8 features to be released?!?
Companies that choose the hybrid approach often find that the expected time savings is not as great as hoped for. You still have to get up to speed on the cross-platform framework and the required glue code for each platform, and you almost always end up with significant amounts of custom code to deal with the “quirks” on each platform or to attempt to extend the capability of the framework. If a bug is discovered in the framework, well now you have to wait for it to be fixed by the third party developer or open source community – once you spend the time to figure out it’s not “your” bug. And what if that third party tool is discontinued?!? Don’t even think about that!
With fully native apps, you have no restrictions except the brilliance of your engineers and the mobile device platform itself. You can take advantage of new APIs and features immediately. The bugs you find are your own, and the schedule to fix bugs and add features is in your control.
Let’s face it: customers don’t care if your app shares code with a platform they don’t even use. Customers don’t care if you saved many man-hours in developing your app. Customers don’t care if you saved development dollars. Customers care about quality and performance. Customers want the latest and greatest platform features that will increase their productivity. Customers want fully native apps!
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eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no. 4 eTwinning Visibility Newsletter no. 4 - Page 118
Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2014 Newsletter -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It all started like an EFL class project, and the teachers had already created the project outline with the aims, the objectives, the work process and the activity pages in the TwinSpace: “Our Political Party”. What really triggered the project was a discussion on a cartoon in which a teacher asks a class what some of the timeless values worth dying for are, and a student says “Money”. The class was asked to create a mind-map in groups of four whether they agree, think of timeless values related to democracy and share it on the blackboard. Then, the students researched certain web sites on five written worldwide documents that refer to timeless values of democracy from the Greek antiquity to recent times, commented and decided on the most important core values of democracy. Each group presented its core values in a collaborative google doc based on a different document, i.e., Politics, by Aristotle, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence. A debate – a non-googlable question – was given to students to write about it as a class, corrected by the teacher and discussed in the group in order to agree on the two most important values, then shares in a forum. An evaluation sheet about what they had learnt and enjoyed most in each activity was filled in by the students. publishing it in the Municipality website and worldwide via eTwinning public site and blogger.com. Both teachers and students felt thrilled and proud of its successful outcome. To achieve such a goal was not enough to carry out just another project, and get it done. It took time, effort, and my own enthusiasm to involve students, parents for consent, teachers and head teacher for collaboration and communication with international partners. When my students lost interest, as young teenagers often do, I had to stimulate their imagination by going beyond what was obvious, by experimenting, and implementing new ideas and techniques. As an EFL teacher, the involvement in eTwinning has been a challenge for me that has opened up a new, fresh approach to a variety of subjects, such as that of environmental issues, art, politics and democracy through a new perspective. It has led me to a more creative and motivating teaching and learning, adding that sparkle of resourcefulness and imagination that often lacks in the ordinary classroom teaching. I feel that both my students and I myself have been inspired and inspiring in the end. Overall, the importance of such causes as democracy and citizen initiative can be carried through creatively via eTwinning project treks boosting personal and professional growth for both teachers and students who aspire towards a better world. Thus, each activity was based on six steps: a stimulus for discussion, mind-mapping, research, presentation, debate-forum and evaluation. The uploading was taken over by 11 out of the 22 students and was carried out at the school lab equipped with 11 PCs. Every activity page in the TwinSpace was mainly made with a wiki, with title and steps, a web content with a Padlet for presentations or/and mind-mapping, a forum for the debate questions and a blog, for comments and fun. It had more or less a similar pattern to facilitate interaction and collaboration. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the link to our TwinSpace: http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p93826. The project was presented in the school community and disseminated in the local community by 118
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Padmavat
VoW Book Awards / Books / Rupa Publications / Padmavat
Nominated | Book Awards 2019 | English Non-Fiction
Author: Purshottam Agrawal; Illustrated and Introduced by Devdutt Pattnaik
Award Category: English Non-Fiction
More than five hundred years after the Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote his epic poem Padmavat, the story of Padmavati, princess of Simhal and her lover and husband, Ratansen, the king of Chittor, continues to capture the imagination of readers everywhere. In Padmavat, we meet Padmavati’s friend, philosopher and guide—Hiraman—a parrot, as well as Nagmati—Ratansen’s first wife and the brave Rajput warriors, Gora and Badal.
This tale of two women and their husband who are tormented by Alauddin Khalji is a lyrical retelling of the story of Rajasthani bards, using idioms and metaphors from both the world of Islam and the Hindu Puranas. With Purushottam Agrawal’s deeply insightful commentary and Devdutt Pattanaik’s incredible illustrations, Jayasi’s epic love story is brought to life like never before and finally seen and appreciated for what it is a remarkable ode to love, beauty and truth.
Purushottam Agrawal is a New Delhi based writer and literary historian. He works on Bhakti, spirituality without religion and India’s organic early modernity which, he argues, was halted in its tracks by colonization. His work draws upon sources in Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Urdu, Braj and Awadhi.
His book on Kabir, Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Unka Samay (2009) is considered a contemporary classic and won the first Rajkamal Kriti Samman.
He is a well-known public intellectual, lending his voice to newspaper and television debates. He is a contributing editor at The Quint.
Devdutt Pattanaik writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. He has written over 700 articles in newspapers and thirty books, which include the bestselling Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to Management and My Gita. His shows on television include Business Sutra and Devlok with Devdutt Pattanaik. He lives in Mumbai.
Review Padmavat. Cancel reply
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HEART: WILSON SISTERS READY TO REUNITE
posted by @lisaontheradio - Jul 26, 2018
Nancy Wilson says she and Ann are talking about putting Heart back together for a tour next summer.
“Ann’s been doing what she wanted to go out and get done for her own self [and] for a while I’ve been doing the same thing with my new band. So, it feels like the right time for us to really talk about doing something for the legacy and for the fans of the Heart band.”
The band split and the sisters had a falling out in 2016 after Ann's husband, Dean Wetter, assaulted Nancy's twin sons backstage at a Seattle-area Heart show. In April 2017, Wetter was sentenced to two years' unsupervised probation as part of a plea deal that included a number of other stipulations. The sisters stopped working together, with Ann doing her own tour and recording a new album, Immortal -- which will be out on September 14th -- and Nancy's been touring with her new band, Roadcase Royale.
Ann is on this summer's Stars Align tour with Jeff Beck and Paul Rodgers. Their next show is Saturday in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights, Missouri. Nancy and Roadcase Royale head back out on August 12th in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
Source: Premiere photo credit - iHM archive
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BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE (ADRIANOPLE BATTLEFIELD)
December 7, 2015 By Howard Kramer Leave a Comment
Edirne, Turkey (378 AD)
The Battle of Adrianople was one of the decisive engagements that ultimately led to the downfall of the heartlands of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately for the Romans, it was a totally avoidable and unneccesary battle brought on by hubris, and the humiliating defeat only encouraged the Germanic tribes to further encroach on Roman territory. The Battle of Adrianople is also famous for the introduction of heavier cavalry, foreshadowing both the end of the legion as the central military unit and the beginning of cavalry-dominated warfare that would later come to dominate the Middle Ages.
In the second half of the 4th century AD, the arrival of the Huns in Central Europe drove many German tribes towards the Roman frontier. In most cases this resulted in fighting between the Germans and Romans. However, in a few cases, the invasions were little more than largely peaceful migrations. Such was the case of the Goths, who crossed the Danube River in 376 AD.
At first the displaced Goths did not seek to fight with the Romans, but instead offered peace and alliance in exchange for land on which they could settle. A bargain was struck, and the Goths were allowed to enter Roman territory. However, once across the Danube the Goths were badly mistreated and driven to the brink of starvation and death by ruthless Roman commanders who treated them as near-slaves.
In short order a revolt broke out, and fighting erupted along the Danube frontier. For the most part the Germans took the worst of it. In August of 378 a Goth army was in the vicinity of Adrianople, a little to close to the capital of Byzantium. The Roman Emperor Valens led the home army northwest to crush the main body of the rebellion. With superior numbers, arms and training, he expected an easy victory.
What the Romans had failed to take into account was the development of improved stirrups, which made the Goth cavalry much more effective in combat. At the outset of the battle, the Roman cavalry was quickly routed. The Goths then surrounded the main body of Roman troops, who suffered as many as 70 percent casualties in the slaughter. This Goth victory, unexpected by both sides, exposed the Balkans to further German conquest. Historians generally mark this battle as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire in the west.
The Battlefield of Adrianople today is largely taken up farmland. It is unfortunately not well marked. Furthermore there is little in the way of monument or memorials to the battle, and the location where Valens was killed after the battle is not known with certainty.
The battlefield is located just outside of the modern-day city of Edirne, approximately 100 miles northwest of Istanbul. As of this writing no visitor information was available. Web: www.goturkey.com (official tourism website of Turkey).
Filed Under: Battlefield Tagged With: Turkey/Cyprus
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Vladimir Putin grants Russian citizenship to American MMA champion Jeffrey Monson
Latest, Sports, Russia
824 Views |
Jesse Dominick
Here’s the REAL purpose and mission of the Deep State
Originally appeared at RussiaFeed
Another American celebrity has joined the likes of actor Steven Seagal and basketball player Jamierra Faulkner in becoming a Russian citizen.
Jeffrey Monson, a legendary mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota, was granted Russian citizenship by decree of President Vladimir Putin yesterday, TASS reports.
The decree, published on the official legal information internet portal of the Russian Federation reads:
President Putin’s decree granting Russian citizenship to MMA fighter Jeffrey Monson
In accordance with point “a” of article 89 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, I decree:
To accept Jeffrey William Monson, born January 18, 1971 in the United States of America, as a citizen of the Russian Federation.
Monson’s love of Russia has long been public knowledge, and Putin’s decree marks the end of a long journey for the champion athlete. In a piece he authored in January 2016, he noted that he had already turned in his citizenship papers in Moscow a few weeks prior. He fought under the Russian flag for the first time just days later on December 25, 2015.
Monson is also known for his outspoken political positions, but he notes that it wasn’t politics that fueled his decision,
Rather, it was due to my solidarity with the Russian people, something I felt when I first visited Russia in 2011. I felt deep down right away that this is my home—the one place I feel at peace with myself and my surroundings. And it was as unexpected for me as it would be for nearly any American.
His first trip in 2011 was to fight Russian MMA champion Fedor Emelianenko. Monson lost the bout by unanimous decision, but that didn’t change his feelings about Russia and the Russian people.
In a December 2015 interview with RT, he stated plainly:
I’m Russian, I have the Russian soul, and for better or for worse, this is the place I should be…
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People say, “Why did you choose Russia?” and I say, “I think Russia chose me as much as I chose Russia”… I feel like this is home.
The MMA champion has traveled extensively in Russia, having visited about forty cities during more than twenty-five trips to the country.
And just as Monson says he gains a sense of belonging and warmth and friendship from the Russian people, he also does his part to give back. “Whenever I’m in Russia,” he says, “I try to spend time visiting orphanages and promoting youth sports. And I’m always surprised to see how obligated Russians feel to help those in need.”
Monson was also awarded the title of honorary citizen of Abkhazia in 2016, and last year he became the first American to receive a passport to the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic.
President Putin also granted Russian citizenship to professional US female basketball player Jamierra Faulkner earlier this year, and Hollywood actor Steven Seagal made headlines in November 2016 when he was granted citizenship. He also obtained Serbian citizenship in January of the same year.
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Penguin-spotting is on my "to do" list - Persephone Yavanna the Entwife
10:57 pm - Penguin-spotting is on my "to do" list
Bold where you've been, italicize where you WANT to go, and name one place you want to go that is NOT on the list.
1. Times Square, New York City, NY: 35 million visitors every year
2. National Mall & Memorial Parks, Washington, D.C. (Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the war memorials): About 25 million
3. Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Lake Buena Vista, Fla.: 16.6 million
4. Trafalgar Square, London, England: 15 million
5. Disneyland Park, Anaheim, Calif.: 14.7 million
6. Niagara Falls, Ontario and New York: 14 million
7. Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, Calif.: 13 million
8. Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan: 12.9 million
9. Notre Dame de Paris, Paris, France: 12 million
10. Disneyland Paris, Marne-La-Vallee, France: 10.6 million
11. The Great Wall of China, Badaling area, China: About 10 million
12. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Tennessee/North Carolina: 9.2 million
13. Universal Studios Japan, Osaka, Japan: 8.5 million
14. Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, Paris, France: 8 million
15. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France: 7.5 million
16. Everland (amusement park), Kyonggi-Do, South Korea: 7.5 million
17. The Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China: At least 7 million
18. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France: 6.7 million
19. Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando, Fla: 6 million
20. SeaWorld Florida, Orlando, Fla: 5,740,000
21. Pleasure Beach (amusement park), Blackpool, England: 5.7 million
22. Lotte World (amusement park), Seoul, South Korea: 5.5 million
23. Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, Japan: 5.4 million
24. Hong Kong Disneyland, China: 5.2 million
25. Centre Pompidouv, Paris, France: 5.1 million
26. Tate Modern, London, England: 4.9 million
27. British Museum, London, England: 4.8 million
28. Universal Studios Los Angeles, Calif.: 4.7 million
29. National Gallery, London, England: 4.6 million
30. Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY: 4.5 million
31. Grand Canyon, Ariz.: 4.4 million
32. Tivoli Gardens (amusement park), Copenhagen, Denmark: 4.4 million
33. Ocean Park (amusement park), Hong Kong, China: 4.38 million
34. Busch Gardens (amusement park), Tampa Bay, Fla.: 4.36 million
35. SeaWorld California, San Diego, Calif.: 4.26 million
36. Statue of Liberty, New York, NY: 4.24 million
37. The Vatican and its museums, Rome, Italy: 4.2 million
38. Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia: More than 4 million
39. The Coliseum, Rome, Italy: 4 million
40. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY: 4 million
41. Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Hollywood, Calif.: 4 million
42. Empire State Building, New York, NY: 4 million
43. Natural History Museum, London, England: 3.7 million
44. The London Eye, London, England: 3.5 million
45. Palace of Versailles, France: 3.45 million
46. Yosemite National Park, Calif.: 3.44 million
47. Pyramids of Giza, Egypt: 3 million
48. Pompeii, Italy: 2.5 million
49. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia: 2.5 million
50. Taj Mahal, Agra, India: 2.4 million
51. Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park: 2.6 million
52. Antarctica: 30,000
Since I live in NYC, I was able to tick off a fair number of places on the list. All I'd have to do to cross off an almost equal amount would be to visit the sights in London or Paris. I noticed that this list was rather skewed towards Europe in general and also towards amusement parks (15 of them!!!), which makes me wonder a bit about the person who started this meme. I also wonder why Yellowstone National Park wasn't included, but Yosemite was. I'd have added it, but the meme rule was to add a place you wanted to go to, but hadn't been to yet, and I've been to Yellowstone already.
I added Antarctica because I've always wanted to go there, and it would be cool to go to the least-visited continent. (Pun intended.) Plus, as you can see from the tourism figures, I wouldn't have to deal with crowds of other visitors. (Figures were gotten from Wikipedia and extrapolated a bit up, since the figure there was for summer-season only.)
One of my life-goals is to have visited every continent at least once. I've yet to go to Oz, but I expect to get there eventually. Africa as well, although perhaps I can count that continent already, since I've been to the Canary Islands, which is in Africa, off the coast, but is considered Spanish territory. I'd still like to do it properly, though, and also see more of Europe. Most of my travels to date have been in Asia and North America.
Current Music: "Deine Welt" by Zeraphine
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Tag Archive for: Irish medal
You are here: Home / Posts / Irish medal
Countess Markiewicz
April 4, 2011 /1 Comment/in Individuals from the Irish War of independence /by admin
Countess Markiewicz was born as Constance Gore-Booth in 1868 in London. Her father had an estate at Lissadell in the north of County Sligo, Ireland; the children grew up there and Constance and her sister Eva were childhood friends of WB Yeats whose artistic and political ideas were a strong influence on them. Constance went to study art at the Slade School of Art in London, she became politically active and joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
Countess Markiewicz, founder of Fianna eireann
She moved to Paris, marrying Count Kazimierz Dunin-Markiewicz, a Ukranian aristocrat. The couple settled in Dublin where Constance established herself as a landscape painter and helped found the United Artists Club. Socialising in artistic and literary circles, she met and became influenced by revolutionary patriots. In 1908 she joined Sinn Fein and the revolutionary women’s movement, Inghinidhe na hEireann; she also began to perform in plays at the Abbey Theatre.
In 1909, she founded Fianna-Eireann, an organisation that instructed boys in military tactics and the in the use of firearms. She joined James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, designing their uniform and composing their anthem. During the 1916 Rising, she was second in command to Michael Mallin in St. Stephen’s Green. Under sniper fire from the surrounding buildings, including the Shelbourne Hotel, they retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons. When the leaders of the Rising surrendered, she was arrested, incarcerated in Kilmainham Gaol, she was sentenced to death but the sentence was later commuted to a life sentence.
Under the general amnesty she was released in 1917 and in 1918 she ran in the general election becoming the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, however in line with Sinn Fein policy, she refused to take her seat. She later served as Minister for Labour in the Irish cabinet becoming the first female cabinet minister in Europe. She left government in 1922, opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty, fighting actively for the Republican cause during the Civil War. She again won election to government in the 1923 and 1927 general elections. She died in 1927 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin
Russell Shortt is a travel consultant with Exploring Ireland, the leading specialists in customised, private escorted tours, escorted coach tours and independent self drive tours of Ireland.
Article source: Russell Shortt, http://www.exploringireland.net
http://theirishwar.com/
http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png 0 0 admin http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png admin2011-04-04 20:15:372011-04-04 20:15:37Countess Markiewicz
Irish Medals For The 1916 Rising & Irish War of Independence
March 31, 2011 /1 Comment/in Irish Medals and Badges /by admin
STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER FOR DEFENCE
ADJOURNMENT DEBATE – SEANAD EIREANN
The need for the Minister for Defence, in view of the great success of the recent Easter 1916 commemorations, to clarify the current arrangements for the replacement of 1916 and War of Independence medals; and if he has any proposals to review these arrangements this year.
Senator Diarmuid Wilson
I am glad to have the opportunity to address this matter and I thank Senator Wilson for raising it.
It is not necessary for me to dwell on the importance of the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence to the nation. Together they led to the establishment of the State in which we live today and to the freedom we now enjoy. The importance of these events is also reflected in the fact that we have five military medals related to that period of our history.
For the information of Senators, I will give some brief background to each of the five medals.
The 1916 Medal was awarded to persons who participated in The Rising during the week commencing 23rd April 1916. Some 2,000 of these Medals were awarded.
The Service (1917-1921) Medal with Bar was awarded to persons who rendered active military service during the War of Independence. There were over 15,000 Medals awarded in this class.
The Service (1917-1921) Medal without Bar was awarded to persons whose service was not deemed active military service, but who were members of Oglaigh na hÉireann, (Irish Republican Army), Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan or the Irish Citizen Army continuously for the three months which ended with the Anglo-Irish Truce of the 11th July, 1921. Over 50,000 Medals were awarded in this class.
The 1916 Survivors Medal was created in 1966 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rising of Easter Week 1916. The medal was issued to those who had been awarded the 1916 Medal and who were still alive at the time.
And lastly, the Truce (1921) Commemoration Medal was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Truce that ended the War of Independence. The medal was issued to Veterans of the War of Independence who were alive on the 11th July 1971 and who had been duly awarded the Service (1917-1921) Medal, whether with or without Bar.
The Department receives requests from time to time for the replacement of lost, stolen or destroyed Medals awarded to Veterans of the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence.
It has been settled policy of the Department of Defence for many, many years that replacement medals were issued on a once only basis on receipt of a bona-fidé request from the Veteran to whom the original medals were awarded. This policy was adopted in the interests of preserving the intrinsic value of the medals and to strictly limit the number of medals issued in any particular case. Although almost all of the Veterans are now deceased, the rationale for restricting the issue of replacement medals is still valid.
Apart from the intrinsic value of the medals, their monetary value on the open market is also a factor. Some indication of their value can be gleaned from the recent sale by auction of a posthumously awarded 1916 Medal that achieved a price of €105,000 on 12 April, 2006. Other 1916 and War of Independence medals, sold at the same auction, fetched amounts ranging from €3,200 to €14,000.
While this has been the long-standing Departmental policy, I can totally understand the feelings of the family members of Veterans whose requests for replacement Medals are refused.
These families feel rightfully proud of their ancestors’ service and contribution to the birth of this State and would like some visible expression of it. With this in mind: some weeks ago I initiated an examination in my Department of the possibility of issuing some form of official certificate for such cases.
I would envisage that the certificates would confirm that one of the medals in question had been issued to the named Veteran. If more than one medal had originally been issued, a separate certificate could be provided for each medal.
Officials in my Department are currently examining a number of options, including possible designs and formats for these certificates. I am confident that this initiative will go some way to addressing this problem and I expect that the examination in my Department will be completed very shortly.
On a related note, I was very pleased to be able to announce recently a substantial increase in the War of Independence pensions. I felt that the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising was an appropriate time to show the country’s appreciation of the major part played by Veterans in the foundation of the State. The pensions are being increased by 50% retrospectively to the 1st April 2006. They were last increased in mid-2004 when a 50% increase was also applied.
I trust that I have clarified matters to the satisfaction of the House.
The above makes interesting reading , the figures are estimates and cannot be taken as exact, please see some photos below of the medals mentioned.
Black & Tan Medal without Comrac Bar
Blach & Tan Medal with Comrac Bar, also know as The Service Medal
IRA Truce Medal , 1921-1971
1916 Rising Survivors medal, The 1916 Survivors Medal was created in 1966 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rising of Easter Week 1916. The medal was issued to those who had been awarded the 1916 Medal and who were still alive at the time.
There are other badges and medals , official and unofficial that commemorate the Irish war of Independence , we will cover them in a later article.
http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png 0 0 admin http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png admin2011-03-31 14:14:502011-03-31 14:14:52Irish Medals For The 1916 Rising & Irish War of Independence
IRA Volunteer Captain Dan McNamara cork no.1 brigade . 1.st bat A coy
February 2, 2011 /4 Comments/in Information required on IRA Members /by admin
We have been contacted by Dan McNamara , grandson of IRA Volunteer Dan McNamara cork no.1 brigade . 9th bat A coy. Dan is looking for any information on his grandfather , if anybody has any relevant information please post a reply on this post section.
Dan has been good enough to send us pages from Dan McNamara ‘s Diary , it makes for highly interesting reading. Thanks Dan.
http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png 0 0 admin http://theirishwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/irish-war-logo1.png admin2011-02-02 15:15:372011-02-11 22:20:51IRA Volunteer Captain Dan McNamara cork no.1 brigade . 1.st bat A coy
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Gibson relocating headqu...
George Clinton adds additional final tour dates with Parliament Funkadelic
Buddy Iahn | May 1, 2019 | R&B/Funk/Soul
One Nation Under a Groove Tour has been extended due to fan demand
George Clinton adds 14 new dates to the highly anticipated One Nation Under a Groove Tour, in response to fan demand. Stops along the tour now include Pittsburg, PA, Atlanta, GA, Madison, WI and more.
Capping over 50 years of touring and recording, George Clinton is set to embark on his final tour with the legendary Parliament Funkadelic before he retires. Starting after Memorial Day weekend, the group will hit the road in North America with Galactic, Dumpstaphunk, and Fishbone, and Miss Velvet & The Blue Wolf. Tickets for the tour are now available to the general public.
Parliament Funkadelic has been a touring force for decades, and the current lineup including veterans Bennie Cowan (trumpet), Greg Thomas (sax), Lige Curry (bass), and Blackbird McKnight (guitar) have been with Clinton for 30 plus years. Parliament Funkadelic also now includes many younger generations of Clinton’s family who are set to move the legacy forward into the 21st century. This blended-family business has no plans of slowing down, even with their helmsman moving on. “It’s always been about the music and the band” says the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, “That’s the real P-Funk legacy. They’ll still be funkin’ long after I stop.”
The One Nation Under a Groove Tour is the latest blockbuster package tour created by Universal Attractions Agency, George and P-Funk’s booking agency. The tour was conceived around the anniversary of the iconic album and single of the same title. “We had been kicking this idea around for a long time” recalls Nick Szatmari, Clinton’s Agent at UAA. “It just felt organic and authentic, especially with the current social climate and the powers that be trying to divide everyone; it has always been a call for unity and togetherness through music. When George announced his retirement it just all clicked. It’s surreal how it all came together, and we are very fortunate to have the support of Galactic, Dumpstaphunk, Fishbone, and Miss Velvet & The Blue Wolf on this historic tour”.
UAA and it’s co-owners, Jeff Epstein and Jeff Allen, are gearing up to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the company’s founding in 1945 with One Nation Under a Groove as the flagship tour for this year among many shows they are rolling out for the 2019-2020 season “We are excited and honored to be sending one of the most iconic touring artists in history into his well deserved retirement with a bang, and quite a bang this will be. It is a fitting culmination of our years of work together” says Jeff Epstein.
One Nation Under a Groove Tour Dates:
Thu 5/30/19 Milwaukee, WI Miller High Life Theatre
Fri 5/31/19 Chicago, IL Aragon Ballroom
Sat 6/1/19 Cincinnati, OH Riverfront Live
Tue 6/4/19 New York, NY SummerStage, Central Park
Wed 6/5/19 Boston, MA Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion
Thu 6/6/19 Philadelphia, PA Franklin Music Hall
Fri 6/7/19 Pittsburgh, PA Rivers Casino
Tue 6/11/19 Lewiston, NY ArtPark
Thu 6/20/19 Sterling Heights, MI Freedom Hill
Fri 6/21/19 Madison, WI The Sylvee
Sat 6/22/19 Kansas City, MO Crossroads KC
Thu 7/25/19 Atlanta, GA Fox Theatre
Fri 7/26/19 Nashville, TN Municipal Auditorium
Sat 7/27/19 Greensboro, NC White Oak Amphitheatre
Fri 8/2/19 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theater
Sat 8/3/19 Saratoga, CA Mountain Winery
Sun 8/4/19 Lincoln, CA Thunder Valley Casino
Thu 8/8/19 Seattle, WA Showbox Sodo
Fri 8/9/19 Bend, OR Oregon Spirit Distillers
Sat 8/10/19 Portland, OR Oregon Zoo
Sun 8/11/19 Eugene, OR Cuthbert Amphitheater
Thu 8/15/19 Denver, CO Mission Ballroom
Sat 8/17/19 Phoenix, AZ Celebrity Theater
Sun 8/18/19 Las Vegas, NV Brooklyn Bowl
Thu 8/22/19 Cedar Park, TX HEB Center
Fri 8/23/19 San Antonio, TX Aztec Theater
Sat 8/24/19 Dallas, TX Bomb Factory
Sun 8/25/19 Houston, TX Revention
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‘Motown Complete No 1’s’ collection expanded for new anniversary edition
Aretha Franklin dies at 76
Jason Derulo, Charli XCX announce 2014 AMAs nominees on ‘GMA’
Gibson relocating headquarters to Downtown Nashville July 17, 2019
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The NFL continues to do everything wrong.
The NFL is again in the news…In the third quarter of last night’s 35-14 Green Bay Packers blowout, receiver Davante Adams caught a short pass on third-and-goal. He was being held up by a Bears defender well short of the goal line. The play, for all purposes, was over. Linebacker Danny Trevathan came in and drilled Adams in the head with an unnecessary, vicious helmet-to-helmet hit. Adams was taken away from Lambeau Field in an ambulance after he was taken off the field.
Adams gave a thumbs up signal as he left the field.
It appeared Trevathan initially celebrated the hit. He was called for an unnecessary roughness penalty following the play. Why wasn’t he ejected from the game?? This seems like an easy call. The officials in the game should be reprimanded for not ejecting Trevathan, while the NFL is at it. A message needs to be sent that headhunting and trying to injure fellow players isn’t OK with the league.
Football is violent. That won’t change. For better or worse it’s part of the game. But there should be at least some basic respect and decency for fellow competitors. There was none to be seen from Trevathan on what will end up (hopefully) as the dirtiest hit of this season. Trevathan apologized for the hit after the game and said he will reach out to Adams.
There are no excuses for the way Trevathan lowered his helmet and crushed Davante Adams's head. Even if Trevathan didn't intend to send Adams to the hospital, the league can't allow such brutal, needless plays to go unpunished. A 15 yard penalty isn’t the answer. Time to do the obvious right thing, time to institute the college rule of immediate ejection for targeting. A suspension is in order. This is a no brainer. Yet, the NFL has up to this point, does not see the obvious. Like so many other things.
Another day, another win. The Yankees are playing some pretty good baseball right now. They recorded a 6-1 win over the Rays on Wednesday night and have now won 18 of their last 24 games. The Yankees are a season high 20 games over .500 and their next win will be their 90th. Way better than anyone (including myself) predicted for this “re-building“ team.
The Red Sox won again, so their magic number to clinch the AL East is down to 2. The Yankees would likely need to win tonight, and sweep the 3 against the Blue Jays on top of getting a whole lot of help from those same Jays and Astros, in sweeping the Red Sox. The Yankees focus is now on the Wild Card game. While anything is possible and I’d love to see them automatically advance to the Division Series, I’m mentally preparing myself for Oct. 3 at the Stadium, with Luis Severino taking the mound against the Twins.
Clearly, making money is the point of any business venture including a baseball team. While it would be ideal to play a best of 3 series, Major league owners will never give up the income home games bring. To have a best of 3 Wild Card Series, the season would have to be shortened by a few games. (I would suggest 4 games, just 2 home games). Not going to happen! No one wants baseball mid November.
The current 1-game format boils the entire season down to which team has the better pitching ace. In 2014, despite having homefield advantage for the Wild Card game, the Pittsburg Pirates lost to the San Francisco Giants because they happened to have Madison Bumgarner who went on to have a historic postseason. Having Luis Severino pitch on Tuesday gives the Yankees a pretty good chance of repeating history. But a bad hop, or a missed strike three call could end an entire season in less than 3 hours.
Like it or not It’s going to be a one and done. Unlike 2015 against the Astros, I think the Yankees are clearly the better team here and should take down the Twins. But again, anything is possible.
Aaron Judge unleashed his 49th and 50th home runs, tying and then breaking Mark McGwire’s rookie record for home runs in the Yankees’ 11-3 wipeout of the Royals at Yankee Stadium. Both times he circled the bases with his head down. No bat flips. No wild choreographed celebrations. No embarrassing moves. Just class. Too bad a certain someone who plays in the Meadowlands didn’t take notice.
All this time after Carmelo Anthony forced his way to Madison Square Garden, he forces a trade to the Thunder, and finally gets to play for a real team again. He came to the Garden to get paid. He heads to the Thunder to win, something he could never do in New York.
So Odell Beckham once again shows off his immaturity. When Bob McAdoo was asked if he said anything to Beckham, his response was… “We keep our personal conversations personal,” when asked for his reaction to his antics, he said: “Next question.” Pretty much the same answer when asked why Erick Flowers is still starting at left tackle, and Paul Perkins is still his starting running back.
It looks like the Red Sox will hold off the Yankees for the title in the American League East. You can go back to that Sunday night at the Stadium when Rafael Devers took Aroldis Chapman out of Yankee Stadium in the top of the 9th.
The so called “Great” Giant defense was gashed for 193 rushing yards Sunday, but everyone is talking about Beckham. And that’s exactly what Odell wants.
The Reds, Mariners, Padres and Rockies all announced Thursday they plan to extend the protective netting at their ballparks for the start of the 2018 season, all spurred on by the terrible happenings at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Come on, Hal, it’s your turn to do the right thing.
Yesterday was an ugly day in the NFL. Stadiums across the US and outside of the US became the focus of an unprecedented show of defiance against President Donald Trump Sunday, as some NFL players locked arms or refused to stand for the national anthem, saying that they are protesting racial and social injustice.
While I’m a firm believer of Freedom of speech, you don’t make political or social statements while at work, (yesterday, players were working) and you don’t make those statements during the national anthem. You don’t disrespect our flag or those defending it. Yesterday the NFL took a gut punch.
Another cruel gut punch was delivered to the New York Giants and possibly their entire season not by the stunning 61-yard field goal that gave the Philadelphia Eagles the victory Sunday, but by the realization that they may have found their offense, even as their own lack of discipline might have already made it too late. They lost 27-24.
The Giants sputtered for 3 quarters, failing to score even a single point and then moved the ball better than they have this season only to be stopped by questionable officials' calls, third-down failures, dumb penalties, dropped passes, poor run defense and one terrible McAdoo play call at the goal line.
Even when the Giants began to score, they stumbled. Beckham's first touchdown, which pulled the Giants to 14-7, seemed to ignite the team. But then he crawled on the ground, and raised his leg as if he was a dog peeing on a hydrant. The result, was a unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Then there were cornerback Eli Apple’s two pass interference calls that cost the Giants 51 yards.
Brad Wing, normally one of the NFL’s most dependable punters, muffed a punt that traveled a grand total of 28 yards. One 19-yard Carson Wentz pass to Alshon Jeffrey and the longest field goal in Lincoln Financial Field history later, the Giants are 0-3.
In the history of the NFL only 3 teams have made the postseason when starting 0-3. This means the Giants would need to win at least 10 of their final 13 games if history holds true. There’s nothing to indicate they’re capable of such a feat. Not with Odell continuing to be Odell, McAdoo continuing to be McAdoo and the Giants collectively finding ways to lose.
twins or angels?
The Yankees are still in hot pursuit of the A.L. East crown, but the Red Sox’s extra-inning escapes against the Rays, Orioles and Blue Jays in recent weeks have kept the Yankees from catching up. They have gone 14-4 in their last 18 games and gained only 1.5 games on Boston. Unless the Red Sox go like 3-7, and the Yanks keep winning, they will host the American League Wild Card Game.
Therefore, it’s time to look at the two likely potential opponents for the Wild Card Game: the Los Angeles Angels and Minnesota Twins. The Yankees are 4-2 this season against the Twins and 2-4 against the Angels. While these are very different teams from past iterations of the Angels and Twins that the Yankees faced in the postseason, those records certainly mirror recent history between each franchise.
So which team is a better matchup for the Yankees in a one-game scenario? We’ve seen the case for why the Yankees would want to face the Twins this week. With Minnesota visiting the stadium, the Bombers were able to beat both of their top starters — Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios — while holding the Twins’ hot lineup at bay. Budding star Byron Buxton went 0 for 10 with a walk and was a non-factor in the series. Miguel Sano is still on the DL and he provides their biggest power source.
Perhaps the best reason to face the Twins is their bullpen. The Yankees got into the bullpen quickly against Berrios, who has significant home-road splits and therefore may not be the choice for the wild card game. Rookie Trevor Hildenberger has been their best reliever in recent weeks, but the rest of the bullpen is highly beatable. Matt Belisle is their closer and has converted just 7 of 12 save opportunities. The Yanks slapped them around in the just completed 3 game sweep.
Why would you want to face the Angels? Pitching, pitching, pitching. This team doesn’t have a clear starter for a one-game playoff, let alone a staff that you could see an easy path through nine innings. Three of their best starters — J.C. Ramirez, Matt Shoemaker and Alex Meyer — are out for the year. Their closer, Huston Street, threw four innings this year and is out for the season.
In the middle of the Angel lineup is Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. Pujols still bats in the middle of the lineup despite batting just .242 and is an enormous negative on the basepaths. Teams have begun using extreme shifts to limit him further. The more he bats in the middle of the order, the worse things go for the Angels. But, lets not forget Trout. He’s like having a right-handed hitting Mickey Mantle for a one-game playoff. The guy can dominate a game both at the plate and in the field. Scary.
My take? While Twins look to be a more complete roster, I’d rather not face Mike Trout and co. in a one-game playoff. It’s kind of irrational because one player can’t beat you unless you let him. And in a five- or seven-game series, I feel like the better overall roster is a bigger advantage. Yet in a one-game series, having the best player on either side could be magnified, particularly if that player can do what Trout does. The Bombers have the best lineup, the best starting pitcher — perhaps the top four starting pitchers — and the best bullpen of any wild-card contender. However, anything can happen in a one-game playoff.
Then there’s the outside chance that Boston stumbles in their last 10. Ready for a miracle?
What did we learn from the Giants’ 24-10 loss to the Lions on Monday night? Mostly that right now the Giants look like a bad football team. You can joke that perhaps the current Giants wanted to honor the 2007 championship team by matching their 0-2 start from that season, but nothing we saw Monday night was remotely funny. Actually, it was a disgrace.
It marks the first time in franchise history that the Giants have lost their first two games by 14 or more points. No team has won a Super Bowl after such a start, and only two of 32 to do that under the current playoff format (since 1990) even bounced back and made the playoffs.
There were many failures last night and last Sunday. The biggest failure is Eric Flowers and the offensive line. Yes, the Giants' offensive line has been bad as a whole, and yes, Flowers is not the only issue, but numero uno IS Flowers. McAdoo needs to act like a head coach and do the obvious and yank the 2015 ninth-overall pick before something disastrous happens, like quarterback Eli Manning not getting up from one of those hits he's miraculously always weathered. The Giants have made it clear there is no real "help" for Flowers in their dysfunctional offensive scheme via chipping backs or tight end assistance, so why keep pretending it's going to get better?
While most of the criticism was on the Giants' poor offensive line play, McAdoo was also critical of Eli after the game. Manning is standing behind a completely ineffectual offensive line and throwing to players that are dropping passes. At what point does the finger get pointed at the coach? Eli made a mistake, possibly one that came because he was worried about getting sacked for the nth time on a blitz he saw. He was trying to get his offense reset with the new audible and he ran out of time... terrible but somewhat understandable. The sideline could have called timeout, they didn’t. McAdoo has shown time after time that he has no clue how to manage a game, but he's gonna stand up there and rip his quarterback for botching the game and not being in tune with situational football?
Between their 0-2 record, Beckham's ankle injury, a clueless head coach and the team's lousy offensive line, it's hard to imagine how the 2017 season could've started worse for the Giants. Someone needs to buy McAdoo a mirror, then he and Reece can stand in front of it and see what we all see.
THAT GAME
Baltimore pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez, who came in with an 11.42 ERA against the Yankees in three appearances this season, somehow turned into Corey Kluber, racking up 10 strikeouts, making the chances of the Yankees catching the Red Sox slimmer and slimmer. The Bombers missed an opportunity to gain ground on the Red Sox, who lost to the Rays, and remained 3 games behind the division leaders
With just 13 games remaining, time is running out on the Yankees. And now they need to deal with the Twins. Like the Yankees, they are ahead of schedule in a rebuilding scenario, winning just enough with a bunch of young players to turn this season into a run at the postseason. You may not know many of the names, but they can put runs on the board. They scored 13 on Sunday against the Blue Jays, and they're leading the American League with over six runs per game since Aug. 1st - despite star slugger Miguel Sano being out the last three weeks with a leg injury.
The Yankees need to win this series, to maintain their lead in the Wild Card. The reward is hosting THAT game against, you guessed it, these same Twins who currently have a 2 game lead over the Angels who have a chance if the Yankees were to sweep.
While never admitting that the goal is setting up his pitching for THAT game, Joe Giardi will not let the Twins see Luis Severino. The Yankee ace's regular turn to pitch is Wednesday, the final game of this three-game series, but Joe is pushing Severino's next turn back to Friday in Toronto, as he continues to use a six-man rotation for a second straight turn. The primary motivation is making sure Severino is lined up to pitch in the THAT game against the Twins or even the Angels.
Is it impossible to catch the Sox? Of course not, but the reality is getting ready for Oct. 3 at home in a one-and-done situation against an opponent to be determined.
Aaron & Gary
While the chances of the Yankees catching the Red Sox are low with only 16 games left, the prize is big because should they win the top wild card spot and win that game, the reward would be the red hot Cleveland Indians. Winning the division gives them a series against the Astros and If I have a choice, I’m packing my bags for Texas instead of Ohio.
There’s nothing like facing Orioles pitching to keep those hopes alive. The Bombers hammered the Orioles on Thursday night, in the first game of their four-game series. The final score was 13-5, and it was only that close because some September call-up relievers made a mess of things late. Unfortunately, the Red Sox also won, but the Baby Bombers were on fire.
The Baby Bombers I’m talking about are Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. Judge and Sanchez went deep in consecutive at-bats in Thursday's win, and the back-to-back homers turned out to be milestone blasts, respectively, for the Yankees' homegrown young sluggers.
Judge clubbed three-run shots in the fourth and sixth innings for a career-high six RBI -- and an AL-best 43 homers for his rookie year -- with the latter eclipsing Curtis Granderson's mark for the most home runs at home by a Yankee (27) since the new Stadium opened in 2009. He now has 11 home runs, 24 RBI and a whopping 1.781 OPS in just 16 games against Baltimore this season, essentially comprising a quarter of his overall power production (43 homers, 96 RBI).
Sanchez hit his 31st of the season (85 rbi’s). That marks the most by a Yankee in one season for a player whose primary position is catcher, eclipsing the previous franchise mark shared by Yogi Berra (twice) and Jorge Posada.
Rediscovering his stroke after a prolonged second-half slump, Judge along with Sanchez give us hope that just maybe the Yankees can catch the Red Sox and send them to Texas. Too bad they don’t play the Orioles for the next 16 games.
The best possible beginning to the NFL season was the Patriots getting waxed by the Chiefs last Thursday night. Don’t you agree?
All of the problems from 2016, when the Giants offense averaged less than 20 points per game and failed to reach that mark in their last 6 contests, are still evident. Three points is an embarrassing output for any NFL team, let alone one that believes it is a Super Bowl contender.
Yankees win 3 in a row. Have to think Betances, Robertson and Green are all unavailable tonight. They're going to need Gray to go 7 and then I guess they'll turn it over to Kahnle and Chapman for the 8th & 9th. Of course, if the yanks want to win by 10, that'll be fine too.
The U.S. Open has to take a hard look at the way it schedules its night program by next year. Because the idea that three matches ending at 2 in the morning at this Open is good for business is dumber than a bag of rocks.
Eli Manning completed only four passes targeted more than 10 yards down the field on Sunday night. There were too many short throws on third down that had no hope of getting first downs, and a couple of missed opportunities due to off-target throws when the line did give him a chance. And then there was the forgotten Brandon Marshall.
Jacoby Ellsbury set the all-time MLB record last night… in drawing catcher’s interference. In the 4th inning, he swung at a full-count pitch that went foul but his bat nicked the catcher’s mitt. That, by definition, was catcher’s interference and the 30th of Ellsbury’s career. He surpassed Pete Rose’s record as the king of the category in the ML history. I’d prefer he had passed Pete’s 4,256 hits record.
A month ago, who would have predicted in September that the Indians would go more than almost 3 weeks without losing and that the Dodgers would go nearly that long without winning?
Im a Giants fan
Before I start…I am a Giants fan, and yes, I picked the Cowboys to win the division. Here’s why. Either you blindly ignore the numbers and reality or accept the reality and hope a few things go in our favor.
The Cowboys went 13-3 to take the NFC East last season. All three of their regular-season losses came within the division, including both games to the 11-5 Giants. It won’t be that easy this season for both teams.
There's no doubt the Cowboys and Giants took advantage of favorable schedules last season to inflate their records, combining for 24 wins. But facing both the NFC and AFC West as well as each other, both teams will roll back a bit. Their schedule is brutal this season, with games in Oakland, Denver, Arizona and San Francisco, they will face many miles on the road.
The 2016 Giants' spending on defensive improvements paid off with a much-improved unit that went from weak to often dominant. The familiar defensive line strength returned with Damon Harrison and Olivier Vernon, and the secondary became elite with Janoris Jenkins flanking young superstar Landon Collins, and let’s not forget JPP.
But the two other things critical to recent New York rings let the team down: the power running and Eli Manning. There's hope, with Paul Perkins' promotion plus the additions of Brandon Marshall and Evan Engram, that the offense will discover the gear needed to push to the top. The Giants are bound to have some big ups, but they still will hit some similar snags. The O line is still a huge question mark (left tackle, right guard), as is the play of Eli. Then of course, there is the Odell circus. This is not to say the offense won’t be better, but there ARE question marks.
Sunday’s game is a big one. They must stop Elliot who will play because the NFL wants huge ratings on its first Sunday night game. Their defensive line has to win in the trenches against the best O line in football. Big blue has to have a running game, and Eli has to have protection and he has to spread it out, as Beckham (he WILL play) will be doubled all game long. Marshall and Engram should be the options. If the Giants win, then just maybe they can take the division, if they lose, then best case scenario is a season split which leads me to believe they finish 11-5, behind Dallas’s 12-4. Either way, I’m a Giants fan and hoping they go 16-0.
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How did my son end up halfway across the world trying to kill Donald Trump?
An interview with the mother of Michael Sandford
Jonny Long
“It’s the foreign office, we’ve found Michael.”
Lynne Sandford was elated after hearing the news that her son who had been missing for a month, halfway across the world, had been found. When she was told that he had been arrested, her immediate assumption was that it would be for a minor offence.
One month on, she recalls what she heard next as “the biggest shock of all time.”
After posing as a Donald Trump fan seeking an autograph, Michael Sandford had tried to take a police officer’s gun and shoot the Republican nominee. His mother Lynne now has even more questions than answers after 12 months of erratic contact with her son. And now a campaign has been launched to raise money to bring Michael back to the UK for trial, and uncover the truth.
Michael, her 20-year-old son, who lived with her in their home in Surrey before leaving for America a year ago, suffers from a number of serious mental health conditions and is currently locked up in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day in a Las Vegas jail. Handcuffed, shackled, and reportedly on suicide watch, it’s a situation Lynne describes as “heartbreaking”.
Lynne had reported her son as a missing person a month before the Republican Presidential candidate’s rally that would see her son facing 30 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. This was after a year where “there were a lot of things that didn’t add up,” beginning with her son moving to New Jersey to visit a mystery girlfriend but then developed into Michael driving across America and sleeping in a car that his parents didn’t even know he had bought. “My knowledge of US geography wasn’t great but I knew [Las Vegas] wasn’t anywhere near New Jersey, which was where he was supposed to be.”
Michael had been allowed to travel across the Atlantic on the condition that he returned home to visit regularly. “The first clue that something was up was six weeks after he went there, he had promised to come back for his little sister’s third birthday, but he said that he couldn’t come as he’d heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest in the UK.”
No such warrant existed. Who had told him this? Michael wouldn’t say. Lynne explains that Michael’s autism means that he’s quite a private person. Just as they hadn’t pried too much into details about the girl, all they know is that her name was Lauren, who had moved back to the USA and Michael had flown over to visit because “being young you don’t want to have to tell your mum everything.”
Even after extending his stay in America past the allotted time on his travel visa, Lynne’s concerns grew on the rare occasions that Michael would call them via Skype. He would only ever show just his face and always with a white-walled background, “It just seemed odd that he wouldn’t show more of himself or show us around where he was.” Attempts to bring him home had proved unsuccessful as Michael is over the age of 18 and there was nothing that the American authorities could do.
Lynne’s concerns were first raised when Michael didn’t return home for his sister’s birthday.
After a “crazy and hellish” few weeks of dealing with two sets of lawyers across two time zones, thousands of miles apart, Lynne has decided to start a crowdfunding campaign to not only try and find the answers to explain the past 12 months of her son’s life, but also to ensure that her son faces justice in a system that takes into account his serious and complex health issues.
“Something, somewhere is very, very wrong for this to have happened to him. For someone to change to the degree that he has, and I think that has to be a massive consideration in this.
“Don’t get me wrong I know what he attempted to do was a bad thing but it’s just completely uncharacteristic of him, he was always a very gentle person, he didn’t pose a threat to anybody.”
A son described as “thoughtful and sensitive”, who had never mentioned to his family and friends anything about politics. Cards with messages of support started arriving that confirmed Lynne’s disbelief that her “quiet” son, who had a passion for building his own robots and would no doubt be watching the revamped series of Robot Wars, found himself in a Nevada jail, charged with attempted murder of one of the most controversial politicians.
Michael’s actions made headlines around the world.
“He’s never mentioned politics, not to me, family, his friends, nothing, ever.” Even with a motive, Lynne can’t understand that her son, “who has had a tremor in both hands since birth that makes his hands very shaky,” wouldn’t have been able to do what he is accused of.
“That’s not just me being a mum saying that. I’ve known him all of my life and I even approached one of his best friends and I said look you’ve known him in a different way to how I have as his Mum, has he ever given you any clue or insight that he could do something like this? He said no, never. Never.”
Not only does Lynne believe that the UK justice system will better understand Michael’s needs and be more sympathetic to his mental health conditions, the jail that Michael is currently in prohibits face-to-face visits. Even after paying for expensive air fares they would only be able to talk to him via video-link.
Complications and issues with Michael’s current imprisonment extend further than geographical challenges. Michael has only been able to speak to his mother once, the jail phone Michael is attempting to use is having issues connecting with international numbers despite assurances from American authorities, the British foreign office and Michael’s public defender that there shouldn’t be any problems. The only other contact that Michael has had with his family is a letter. Despite a number of attempted written correspondences, Michael has only received one and Lynne has received none that her son has sent back the other way. This struck his family as odd, as if something more sinister was going on.
Michael’s case has been passed on by the American secret service, after they have declared that this was not an act of terrorism, but then what was it? Along with the plethora of questions that need answers, another reason for the crowdfunding campaign is to raise awareness that Michael’s mental health must be taken into consideration throughout the entire judicial process.
Throughout the interview Lynne remains direct and matter of fact in the face of the unimaginable. Admitting with clarity that of course she knows that what her son did was wrong, but that it is not as simple as that.
Michael’s public defendant has had to explain to her a whole different set of protocols and laws, and that the initial investigation, called ‘The Discovery’, should have been completed two weeks ago. This investigation will reveal crucial details such as what happened to Michael’s personal belongings; his wallet, his phone, his car, his passport. The fact that the investigation has not been concluded suggests to Lynne that the American authorities are no closer to putting together the pieces than she is.
A friend put Lynne in touch with a lawyer who is offering the family reduced legal fees, and Lynne also tells me that the foreign office are now much more involved with the case. However, the need for the crowdfunding campaign is because there are still legal fees to be paid on the other side of the Atlantic, and Michael’s complex health issues mean that “any medical care here would be free when it costs quite a lot over there.”
Lynne’s wait for answers will continue, but she is determined to get her son back.
“Ultimately we want to bring him back here, and yes raising awareness [of his mental health conditions] is the first part of that.
“If people are kindly willing to give a small amount to help us pay the legal fees here it’s just so heartbreaking to know that he’s thousands of miles away, in a cell 22 hours a day, and he can’t even speak to us. He was only 20 in April, he’s still young. I mean for anyone it would be hard, but he’s not the sort to be able to cope with being in a rough US prison.”
There are 2,525 miles between New Jersey and Las Vegas. We may never know the events that took place in between a “sensitive and gentle” son arriving in New Jersey and him allegedly trying to shoot Donald Trump.
Love Island Gossip Column: Tommy’s ex reveals his LIES and who got caught texting about cocaine?
The tea is boiling today!!!
Every single time Joe from Love Island was Joe Goldberg from You
MAJOR RED FLAGS
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Minneapolis: February 9 to February 12, 2017
Here are some concerts taking place in the Minneapolis/St Paul area from February 9 to February 12, 2017.
Red Sun Rising
Red Sun Rising from Akron, Ohio, was one of the band who opened up the show ... touring in support of their debut album Polyester Zeal (Razor & Tie). . ....
POP EVIL
at The Cabooze
Thursday, 02/09/17, 7pm ($20)
cabooze.com
Michigan’s Pop Evil (featuring singer Leigh Kakaty) will be headlining the Cabooze this Thursday. The band’s latest release Up is available now.
Joining them on tour will be rock radio chart toppers Red Sun Rising (not to be confused with Red Tide Rising). The band is touring in support of their debut record Polyester Zeal, out now on Razor & Tie. We previously saw the band in October 2015 and said, “These guys have been around since 2007 but haven't really gotten the attention they deserve. That is all about to change. They blew me away last night. Mike Protich, singer, has a voice like I have never heard before. He is fronting a metal band but has a voice that would turn all the chairs on The Voice. That's something that you don't get all the time. There's nothing wrong with a metal singer that can't sing, that's part of the charm for me. But when you have a singer that is nailing every note and actually has feeling in his voice, that's something special and that's exactly what this band has.”
Also on the bill is Badflower (not to be confused with Badfinger). The band is described as “one of L.A.’s most buzzed-about rock ‘n’ roll bands.” The band features Josh Katz [vocals, guitar], Joe Morrow [lead guitar, backing vocals], Alex Espiritu [bass], and Anthony Sonetti [drums]—has shared stages with the likes of KONGOS and The Veronicas. They are signed to John Varvatos Records.
2/04 - Lincoln, NE - Bourbon Theatre
2/06 - Des Moines, IA - Wooly's
2/09 - Minneapolis, MN - The Cabooze
2/10 - Chicago, IL - House of Blues
2/11 - Milwaukee, WI - The Rave
2/12 - Cincinnati, OH - Bogarts
2/14 - Cleveland, OH - House of Blues*
2/16 - Boston, MA - Brighton Music Hall
2/18 - Sayreville, NJ - Starland Ballroom
2/19 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of Living Arts
2/22 - Indianapolis, IN - Deluxe
2/23 - Niagara Falls, NY - Rapids theatre
2/24 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore Detroit
*Without Red Sun Rising
Fresh from an appearance a few days before on The Late Late Show with James Cordon, Swedish singer LÉON found herself along the banks of Lake Minnetonka, for a promotional ...
Friday, 02/10/17, 7pm ($15)
Swedish singer LÉON (not be confused with Germany’s Leon, Swedish singer Janet Leon, Leon Bridges, Leon Else, Leon of Athens, King of Leon, etc.) is back in Minnesota this week. We previously saw her in August 2016 and wrote, “The statuesque 22-year old Swede began the afternoon with the EP’s title track, a video of which, has just debuted online. Lyrically, like Tove Lo, she gets sometimes brutally honest, not afraid to mix a curse word or two in to get her point across, as on the un-recorded and unreleased song, ‘For You’.”
Show up early to check out Nigeria-born but England-based Jacob Banks. The British singer-songwriter/producer recently released his new single ‘Monster 2.0’, featuring Boogie, via Interscope Records.
Banks is a special guest on this North American tour, per LÉON, so you can count her as a fan.
02/04 New York NY - Bowery Ballroom
02/06 Montreal, QC - Bar Le Ritz PDB
02/07 Toronto, ON - The Garrison
02/09 Chicago, IL - Schubas
02/10 Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
02/13 Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
02/14 Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret
02/15 Seattle, WA - Barboza
02/17 San Francisco, CA - PopScene
02/18 Los Angeles, CA - The Roxy
02/19 Santa Ana, CA - Constellation Room
02/20 San Diego, CA - Casbah
02/23 Dallas, TX - Three Links
02/24 Austin, TX - Antone’s Nightclub
02/26 New Orleans, LA - Gasa Gasa
02/27 Atlanta, GA - Vinyl
02/28 Nashville, TN - Mercy Lounge
Sister Polygon Records (not to be confused with British label Polygon Records) is releasing Priests’ Nothing Feels Natural on January 27th. Priests is also doing ...
02/09/17 Meat Wave is playing the 7th Street Entry.
02/10/17 Dead Man Winter is headlining First Avenue this Friday. The band’s latest release Furnace was produced by Trampled By Turtles’ frontman Dave Simonett.... so expect a hint of progressive bluegrass in their record. Opening up for DMW will be The Pines and Erik Koskinen.
02/10/17 Robert Ellis is embarking on 2017 extensive tour... stopping by the Turf Club in St Paul this Friday. If you miss him this week because of prior commitments - don't worry he'll be back with Nikki Lane in March. Ellis’ new self-titled album came out in June via New West Records.
02/10/17 Ronnie Baker Brooks released Times Have Changed, his first album in 10 years! To celebrate, Brooks is going on tour and will be at the Minnesota Music Café in Saint Paul this Friday. We previously saw the Blues singer in November 2016.
02/11/17 Cloud Nothings will be headlining Fine Line Music Café on Saturday in support of his new record Life Without Sound (Carpark Records).
02/11/17 We’ve already previously mentioned that Priests is on tour for Nothing Feels Natural (Sister Polygon Records). The band headlines 7th Street Entry, with Stef Chura to open.
02/12/17 Chicago-based breakout artist Noname will be at the 7th Street Entry with Ravyn Lenae.
Posted by W♥M on Saturday, 04 February 2017 at 12:32 PM in Badflower, Cloud Nothings, Dead Man Winter, Erik Koskinen, Jacob Banks, Leon, Meat Wave, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Music Guide, Pop Evil, Ravyn Lenae, Red Sun Rising, Robert Ellis, Ronnie Baker Brooks, The Pines, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
SXSW 2014: The Magic Numbers at SXSJ (03/14/14)
South by Southwest (SXSW) Music is next week: March 11-16th. Since March 1st, I've received about 200 emails with the subject header of "SXSW" …
South by San Jose is a five day community event at the Hotel San Jose parking lot. Events are always free to attend.
Dan sent in these notes and live photos, leading up to the Magic Numbers. Dum Dum Girls and The Black Lips were headlining this event on "Pi-day", March 14.
Hurray For The Riff Raff just released their latest, Small Town Heroes, on ATO. Really good Cajun Sound. I saw them at the Mojo BBQ, two or three years ago and have always been impressed.
The New Orleans-based folk-blues and southern gothic Americana band is led by singer-songwriter and banjo player Alynda Lee Segarra. Small Town Heroes, this is their major label debut on ATO Records.
Robert Ellis is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Nashville, Tennessee. His third studio album, The Lights from the Chemical Plant, was released last February 2014 via New West Records.
Songs on his set included a covered Richard Thompson's "Teared Stained Letter".
The Magic Numbers are from West London, consists of two pairs of siblings (Angela & Sean Gannon and Michele & Romeo Stodart). The band have a fourth studio album coming out this year. Their last studio release was The Runaway in 2010, which W♥M brought you exclusive interview with Angela.
New highlight "Roy Orbison", "Forever Lost" was second, which was a smart play. They also covered Skeeter Davis' "The End Of The World". Amazing harmonies...
They have been gone from the US too long. Recognition is an issue.
The Magic Numbers at South by San Jose, Austin (03/14/14)
dan + vu ( ) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic
Posted by W♥M on Friday, 14 March 2014 at 09:37 PM in Dan, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Magic Numbers, Robert Ellis, South by San Jose, SXSW, The Magic Numbers, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Workforce Overview
Logistics & Wholesale
Central Manufacturing District
Downtown West Chicago
Neltnor Boulevard
Roosevelt Road
Spirit & Pride
New Business Support
Worldwide Business Support
Worldwide Businesses
Proximity to efficient transportation networks is of critical importance to location scouts searching for destinations with accessibility to the regional, national and global marketplace. West Chicago’s access to highway, rail and air transport gives it a leading edge for business development.
Situated in the heart of the western suburbs and offering excellent schools, housing stock with a range of attractive price points and lifestyle amenities including DuPage County forest preserves, the Illinois Prairie Path and an award winning aquatic center, West Chicago holds enormous appeal to the creative talent pool employers are scrambling to engage. All this and only 32 miles from downtown Chicago, West Chicago’s location has it all!
Situated between I-90 Tollway and I-88 Tollway along Illinois Route 59.
Impressive traffic counts on three primary corridors (North Avenue, Roosevelt Road and Route 59).
Home of DuPage Airport, Illinois' third busiest airport.
Service by two major rail lines.
Commuter train station located in downtown West Chicago served by the Metra-Union Pacific West Line.
Ongoing Transit Oriented Development (TOD) opportunities adjacent to the Metra station.
Strong community based and regional demographic spending capability.
A downtown Historic Business District which is located within a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District, just west of Illinois Route 59.
Availability of a diverse labor force of professional, skilled and semi-skilled workers.
West Chicago’s general aviation needs are exceedingly fulfilled with the establishment of DuPage Airport and Flight Center. The DuPage Airport, adjacent to the DuPage Business Center, has a 7,570 ft. runway able to support corporate and private travel with the convenience of customs and immigration service available. Located between IL Route 64 (North Avenue) and IL Route 38 (Roosevelt Road), this facility is one of the busiest airports in Illinois.
DuPage Airport is located less than an hour away from the heart of Chicago and within minutes of western Chicago’s major commercial centers. Those in need of regional, national and international transport have access to Chicago’s O’Hare (33.3 miles away) and Midway (41.3 miles) International airports. They are situated approximately ±45 minutes from West Chicago, and travelers can take advantage of a variety of limousine and shuttle services in the area for worry-free transportation to these busy airports.
Mass Transit, Pedestrian Access, and Rail
The Metra-Union Pacific West Line serves the commuter train station located in downtown West Chicago. More than 50 freight trains and 60 Metra trains carrying nearly 30,000 passengers share the line each day. The station is conveniently located in the pedestrian-friendly Historic downtown where merchants and residents live, work and play.
Easy access to three Illinois highways provides residents and businesses with a link to the region’s extensive system of interstate highways. Stretching east to west across northern
Illinois, IL Route 38 (Roosevelt Road) and IL Route 64 (North Avenue) traverse the southern and northern borders of the city. Both routes converge with IL Route 59 (Neltnor Boulevard) and Interstate 355, offering a connection with Interstate 88.
Average daily traffic volume for major thoroughfares includes IL Route 38 (Roosevelt Road), with approximately 24,850 vehicles per day, IL Route 64 (North Avenue) with an average of 32,810 vehicles per day, and IL Route 59 (Neltnor Boulevard) corridor experiences approximately 32,025 vehicles per day.
West Chicago Economic Development
Peter Kelly, Business Development Coordinator
pkelly@westchicago.org
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Paul Pazen sworn in as Denver's new Chief of Police
Paul Pazen will become the second Latino Police Chief in Denver's history.
Author: Jacob Rodriguez, Jennifer Meckles
Updated: 10:04 PM MDT July 9, 2018
Denver officially has a new police chief. Paul Pazen was sworn in on Monday.
Pazen's appointment was announced at a press conference with the mayor in downtown Denver in late June.
The announcement comes a little after two months since White announced his plans to retire as soon as Mayor Michael Hancock named a replacement for him.
During the press conference to announce the pick, Hancock called Pazen a clear top choice for the job.
"Paul was chosen because he proposed innovation and he's innovative," Hancock said. "Because he proposed collaboration and he is a collaborator. And because he proposed to further expand Denver as a community-focused police department and he is a community-focused police officer."
After he was introduced as the new chief, Pazen expressed his desire to use the position to help give back.
"We owe it to our community to challenge ourselves to do better every single day," Pazen said. "Thank-you very much for this opportunity."
Five finalists were announced for White's position two weeks ago, and Pazen was among them. He had been assigned to District 1 and was in his role as commander since 2012.
He'd worked with the department since January 1995 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership. Pazen is also a Gulf War veteran.
MORE | Here are the five finalists to be Denver's newest police chief
Denver's police union issued a statement to 9NEWS congratulating Pazen on his new position.
"The Denver Police Protective Association would like to formally congratulate Commander Paul Pazen on his appointment as Denver's new police chief. Chief Pazen was chosen from five very qualified candidates, and know was selected for the job due to his quality of leadership and management," the statement reads. "We are looking forward to a close working relationship with Chief Pazen and under his leadership, we look forward to many years of collaboration in serving the officers in the community."
This optimistic outlook comes on the heels of a contentious relationship with the previous chief, as at one point last year, 582 members of the Protective Association voted that they had no confidence in White.
White announced his plans to retire after nearly seven years of leading the Denver Police Department. He sat down with 9NEWS Ryan Haarer shortly after the announcement to talk about his biggest achievements and regrets while on the job.
"We're a relatively safe community," he told Haarer, "but we're not as safe as I think we should be or as we're going to be."
When it comes to closing the door on his policing career, White said he intends to stay in Denver - and that the first day after his retirement he's loading up his entire 13-member family and hitting the Dominican Republic.
You can view that interview at this link or at the bottom of this article.
In a release from the city, several of White's accomplishments were listed and included increasing safety along the 16th Street Mall and increasing bike patrols on the Cherry Creek Bike Path.
White came to Denver in 2011 after several high-profile excessive force cases and was seen as a reformer based on his work in Louisville, Kentucky. He worked in law enforcement for 40 years.
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Tag Archives: National Book Award
A Rave About a Book
Opening of De rerum natura, 1483 copy by Girolamo di Matteo de Tauris for Pope Sixtus IV (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have just finished The Swerve, by Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt. It was recommended to me by (shameless plug coming up) my dazzlingly bright 18-year-old grandson, who has studied Latin for seven years and is an avid reader. I have to say this is one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read. Thank you, Josh!
Greenblatt’s style is completely accessible, entertaining and fascinating. The briefest way to describe the book is that in the early 15th century, a papal scribe (there were three, count them, three, men claiming to be pope at this time) named Poggio Bracciolini, was obsessed with finding long lost Greek and Roman manuscripts and copying them in his meticulously beautiful handwriting to preserve them for posterity. He was looking particularly for Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), and serendipitously found it stowed away, ignored, in a German monastery in 1417.
Because of the rediscovery of Lucretius’ poem, the world swerved in a very different direction from where it was and where it had been heading: Lucretius posited that everything in the universe is made of atoms colliding randomly; that humankind has free will, that there is no life after death, that the goal of life should be pleasure, and many other ideas that foretold the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Darwin’s thinking, as well as that of modern liberal-minded writers (e.g., Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins). Remember, Lucretius conceived of these ideas 1,400 years before Poggio rediscovered him.
This book is far from dry; in fact, it is a page-turner. Greenblatt vividly paints what life was like in Roman times and in Europe during the chaotic years of the plague. The machinations around the time of the three popes and what had to be done to decide who was the “rightful” heir to St. Peter were fascinating, as all three contenders and their retinues, numbering perhaps 100,000 people, descended on the small town of Constance in Germany to prove their legitimacy.
Greenblatt explains what was necessary to copy manuscripts: finding and preparing vellum and ink, the scriptoriums that monks (primarily) labored in: cold, unlit, with no candles because of risk of fire, writing over previous manuscripts after scraping off as much ink as possible so they could re-use the vellum—and who knows what treasures were lost because of that practice?
This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the National Book Award. No surprise to me. Five stars!
Tagged as atoms, calligraphy, Christopher Hitchens, Darwin, De rerum natura, Enlightenment, free will, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Lucretius, National Book Award, nonfiction, On the Nature of Things, palimpsest, Pulitzer Prize, Renaissance, Richard Dawkins, Rome, Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve, vellum, writing
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Home » Medical Intel » An alternative to open-heart…
An alternative to open-heart surgery? How TAVR is changing the game for aortic stenosis patients
Aortic stenosis is one of the most common and most serious valve disease problems, according to the American Heart Association. It’s a condition that used to require an involved open-heart surgery to treat it, but now patients have a less-invasive option that improves their overall experience.
This content is sponsored by MedStar Washington Hospital Center
Aortic stenosis is caused by the progressive narrowing of the main heart valve through which blood flows from the heart to the rest of the body. The condition is very common, particularly in older patients, said Dr. Toby Rogers, an interventional cardiologist at the MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Patients who have aortic stenosis often experience shortness of breath, chest pain and dizziness even when doing something as simple as walking across the room. Historically the only way to remedy the condition was open-heart surgery, however a technique called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) is now offering hope to many who suffer, Dr. Rogers said.
“You can imagine open-heart surgery is a big deal and it’s very stressful on the body, and the older you are, the more stressful a big surgery is,” he said. “So TAVR is an amazing new technology that over the last decade has revolutionized cardiac surgery in that we can now replace that heart value through a little tiny catheter in the groin with the heart still beating; in fact, with the patient awake … and we can replace the heart valve and improve the blood flow to the rest of the body.”
At first TAVR was only available to people who were too ill to undergo open-heart surgery because of underlying health conditions, but clinical trials have shown that TAVR is a good treatment for most—if not all—patients with aortic stenosis.
“I think within the next 12 months, we will expect that the FDA will approve TAVR so that we can offer it to anyone with aortic stenosis,” Dr. Rogers said.
During a TAVR procedure, patients are under conscious sedation – a benefit because they are relaxed and not on a ventilator, which has risks such as getting a chest infection.
The doctor then takes the heart valve and crushes it down onto a catheter so that it is small enough to go through an artery. Then the catheter with the new valve is threaded through the artery in the groin to the heart and then positioned with the help of X-rays and ultrasounds. The new heart valve is implanted inside the old valve, opening and closing with every heartbeat.
TAVR allows patients to spend significantly less time in the hospital compared to open-heart surgery, Dr. Rogers pointed out.
”We’ve gone from a process where open-heart surgery patients would be in the hospital for a week or more, to a process where people are having a heart valve replacement and they are out sometimes the day after the procedure, which is a revolution in this treatment,” he said.
In addition to less time in the hospital, those who undergo the TAVR procedure experience fewer complications because there is no major incision, Dr. Rogers said.
”In terms of getting back to normal-day activity, getting back to work, TAVR allows for much faster recovery,” said Dr. Rogers, who added that patients still need to take it slowly at first.
MedStar Washington Hospital Center has been on the cutting edge when it comes to TAVR, Dr. Rogers said. The hospital has been part of the TAVR program since it first took off in the United States and continues to test some of the newest developments with the procedure and its technologies.
“MedStar Washington Hospital Center was part of the first waves of hospitals to perform this procedure. And we have performed almost 2,000 of these procedures now,” Dr. Rogers said.
Read more about TAVR and listen to a podcast from Dr. Rogers here.
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JK Scott
Wilson’s big hit sends Rams to 8-0 with 29-27 win over Pack
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ramik Wilson was not the most likely candidate on the Los Angeles Rams’ superstar-laden roster to make the decisive play late in the fourth quarter of a tight game with Green…
Late fumble keeps Rams unbeaten with 29-27 win over Packers
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Greg Zuerlein hit a 34-yard field goal with 2:05 left and Ramik Wilson forced and recovered Ty Montgomery’s fumble on the ensuing kickoff return, allowing the Los Angeles Rams to remain…
The Latest: SMU receiver Trey Quinn is ‘Mr. Irrelevant’
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the NFL draft Saturday (all times local): 6:15 p.m. “Mr. Irrelevant” 2018 is SMU receiver Trey Quinn. Quinn was the final player selected in the three-day NFL draft,…
The Latest: Cowboys acquire Jihad Ward from Oakland
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the NFL draft Saturday (all times local): 5:30 p.m. The Dallas Cowboys have acquired defensive lineman Jihad Ward from Oakland for receiver and kick returner Ryan Switzer. It’s…
Alabama, Georgia players say Trump visit not a distraction
ATLANTA (AP) — The magnitude of having President Trump in the stands for Monday night’s college football national championship game is not lost on the players, nor is the hoopla that comes with it. But…
Alabama’s Rashaan Evans hoping for another big title game
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Alabama’s Rashaan Evans has saved his best for the last game two years running. He twice sacked Clemson’s Deshaun Watson in the national championship game two years ago as a backup…
Georgia, Auburn split top awards on AP All-SEC football team
ATLANTA (AP) — After meeting in the Southeastern Conference championship game, Georgia and Auburn split the top awards on The Associated Press All-Southeastern Conference team released Monday. Auburn running back Kerryon Johnson was picked as…
Harris helps No. 1 Alabama outlast Texas A&M 27-19
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Nick Saban thinks his players have gotten too wrapped up in the constant talk in the media about how good they are. And he shared just what he thinks about…
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Low Topsoil Moisture Becoming a Concern
by Sara Schafer
09:04AM Jun 07, 2012
Dry, hot weather will prevail in much of the already dry Corn Belt, according to USDA's Joint Ag Weather Facility.
The NWS 6- to 10-day outlook for June 12-16 calls for near- to above-normal temperatures and rainfall across much of the U.S. Cooler-than-normal conditions will be confined to the southern Atlantic region and the Pacific Northwest, while drier-than-normal weather will be limited to the Rio Grande Valley and parts of the West.
This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor shows abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions have crept further north, taking over the majority of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.
David Miskus, of the Climate Prediction Center, reports that although cooler air finally filtered into the northern Plains and Midwest, the combination of a very warm and dry May (less than 50% of normal rain) in the lower Midwest, plus the emergence and growth of crops that require adequate topsoil moisture, has quickly deteriorated conditions in parts of the Midwest.
"Extension agents in Iowa and Missouri reported curling corn leaves, stunted or no root growth, and soybean emergence problems, with some cracks in the soil. Stream flows have declined rapidly during the past few weeks. According to the Iowa State Climatologist, rapid deterioration of the crops is likely in the next few weeks if substantial rain does not arrive as crop moisture needs greatly increase over the period and subsoil moisture is mostly out of reach of young plants at this stage of development."
On the Plains, scattered showers and thunderstorms are benefiting pastures, summer crops, and immature winter wheat, although some areas remain very dry. Some of the most significant rain is falling on the southern High Plains, where gradual recovery from last year’s historic drought continues. Across the southern half of the region, the rain is causing minor winter wheat harvest disruptions.
In the West, precipitation is returning to the northern Pacific Coast. Elsewhere, dry weather favors fieldwork, but cool conditions are slowing crop growth.
In the South, showers are confined to the southern Atlantic region, where soil moisture for pastures and summer crops has improved in recent weeks. However, extremely dry conditions persist in several parts of the region, particularly in the Mid-South.
Across the eastern half of the U.S., a cool weather pattern will be replaced by above-normal temperatures during the weekend. Meanwhile, a reinforcing surge of cool air will arrive in the West.
The Weather Ahead
During the next several days, most of the significant precipitation will occur in the Deep South and across the nation’s northern tier. Five-day rainfall totals could exceed 3 inches along the Gulf Coast and may top an inch from the Pacific Northwest into the upper Great Lakes region.
In contrast, dry weather will prevail in the Southwest, while only light showers will occur in the Midwest. Temperatures should average above normal in the southern High Plains, Great Lakes region, eastern Corn Belt, and Northeast.
Check your local forecast with AgWeb's Pinpoint Weather.
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Luxuries for a Terrorist Mass Murderer
by Cliff Kincaid on December 2, 2003
Print: Share:
http://www.aim.org/mp3/2003/12/02.mp3
It was big news that beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was convicted of murder and could be given the death penalty. Meanwhile, in a case that has received no attention from the U.S. media, a man found guilty of murdering 270 people, including 189 Americans, is living in a comfortable five-room apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, shower, sitting room, an office with a computer and bookshelves, and entertainment center with television.
His name is Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi. He is a former Libyan intelligence officer convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The luxurious accommodations are in a Scottish prison, where Al Megrahi was sentenced to a term of “life,” which may turn out to be far shorter than that, as little as 20 years.
Secretly filmed video footage that was smuggled out of the prison and handed to the News of the World, Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper, shows that Al Megrahi has facilities that “rival a four-star hotel.” The paper reported that, “Fresh food and meat butchered in accordance with his Muslim faith is delivered for him to prepare himself. Other hot meals are delivered to his rooms.” The paper said that visitors to his suite have included former South African president Nelson Mandela and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Mandela was always close to Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, and Annan brokered the deal that resulted in Al Megrahi and another Libyan being turned over for trial as long as the prosecutors did not pursue the responsibility of Gadhafi and his regime for the terrorist crime. Clinton’s Department of State had originally “classified” the documents outlining the deal to prevent their release.
Critics called it a version of “Let’s make a deal,” and noted that Gadhafi was given, in effect, a “Get out of jail free” card, even though the British government reportedly had evidence that Gadhafi personally ordered the bombing. The deal resulted in U.N. economic sanctions against Libya being lifted. The U.S., however, still maintains sanctions and prohibits investment by U.S. companies in Libya.
The report of Kofi Annan’s meeting with Megrahi was greeted with outrage from Susan Cohen, who lost her daughter in the blast. She asked, “Why is Kofi Annan meeting with a mass murderer in his cell?” She said it is apparent that Annan regards Al Megrahi as a political prisoner who deserves compassion. Susan Cohen and other family members want compassion for their loved ones?the Americans, most of them college students, who were on their way home from studying abroad.
The Bush administration is considering departing from its customary full-year extension of a policy that restricts travel to Libya. Such a move would anger Pan Am 103 family members and many other Americans while we are fighting a global war on terrorism. The Gadhafi regime is one of seven countries still on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and is believed to be developing chemical weapons. But it serves as chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.
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