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Owl Investment Group
Invest yourself!
Bryn Mawr at Work Series
Owl Investment Group Alumnae
Global Alumnae Career Networking Events
Exploring Careers in CHINA
An international career focused conversation with:
Danny Tang ’07
A native of Guizhou, China, Danny graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2007 with a double major in Economics and Mathematics. Upon graduation, Danny joined KKR Financial, an affiliated group of Kohlberg, Kravis & Co. in San Francisco to work on fixed income investments and later relocated to KKR’s Beijing office to work on private equity opportunities in mainland China. In 2010 Danny left KKR and joined CDB Capital, an investment subsidiary of China Development Bank, where she has been working as an investment professional. Danny now lives and works in Shanghai.
Date: Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Time: 10:00 P.M – 11:00 P.M (EST)
Location: Dalton 300
(Space is limited: 20 students)
Skype conversation with Danny Tang ’07.
(Photo- Andrea Parra ’13)
Exploring Careers in Latin America: MEXICO
Edith V. Avilés de Kostes ‘88
Managing Director, Financial Sponsors Coverage Group of BNP Paribas
Edith Avilés de Kostes ‘88 is a Managing Director in the Financial Sponsors Coverage Group of BNP Paribas’ Corporate & Investment Banking Group. She focuses on large international private equity funds, targeting investment banking products to meet client needs. BNP Paribas is the fifth largest company in the banking industry worldwide. Headquartered in Paris, it has operations in over 85 countries.
Prior to joining BNP Paribas, Ms. Avilés de Kostes was a Principal of D.F. Hadley & Co., a boutique investment and merchant bank. She holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvanian.
* PLEASE NOTE: This event has been postponed. Students who signed up will be notified of new event date.*
Date: Thursday, April 4th, 2013
Time: 11:00 A.M – 12:00 P.M (EST)
Location: Taylor Seminar Room (2nd floor)
(Space is limited: 8 students)
Exploring Careers in Indonesia:
Pushing Sustainability in an Emerging Economy — One Woman’s Professional Journey
Isna Marifa ’85
Isna Marifa holds an MSc in Technology and Policy (1987) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor degree in Geology (1985) from Bryn Mawr College (USA). Her professional career started at the US Agency for International Development in Jakarta, where she was involved in natural resource management. Following that, she worked as an advisor at the Ministry of Environment under CIDA’s Environment and Development in Indonesia Project. She then moved to Mobil Oil Indonesia, as environmental advisor. In 1995, she and several colleagues established a private firm providing environmental consultancy and training services. Through various activities, Isna Marifa conducts policy studies and provides inputs to the government, and in turn observes the impact of policies at the local level and on the private sector.
Date: Thursday, April 18th, 2013
Time: 4:00 P.M – 5:00 P.M (EST)
Location: Park (TBD)
*Open to all students.*
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Shakespeare's Audience (book)
A couple months ago I met with a professor of mine, it was the first time in over twenty years we had been in each other’s company. He looks the same, though he was much younger than I am now when he was my director, theater history professor, and curriculum advisor. His hair was thin then, and it is the same now, whereas mine is just gone.
Dr. William Faricy Condee is today Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University. During my time as an undergraduate I spent sophomore year in his theater history class (for which I read absolutely nothing) and I took a course of his on theater architecture. I also like to brag that I am the only person at O.U. Ever to be directed by the good Doctor twice, as a sophomore in The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and as a fifth-year in the world premiere of The Hanged Angels by W.R. Smiddie.
Condee's expertise is in theater space. He has written two books, Coal and Culture: The Opera House in Appalachia (Ohio University Press, 2005) and Theatrical Space: A Guide for Directors and Designers (Scarecrow Press, 1995) in addition to numerous articles on the subject.
The architecture course I took was a summer course, so I and a classmate were the only actors in attendance, with a dozen or so “others” who were complete to fulfill liberals arts credits. Condee impressed we two to make a few points abut the relative importance of space. He chose a scene from a translation of the original Medea, and the "Gentlemen Caller" scene from The Glass Menagerie, and asked us to perform each in a small, windowless office in the basement of the T-Com Building, and by the light of a candle. The Tennessee Williams piece played quite well, but we were never loud enough the suit the Doctor for Euripides.
Then we took the class to Peden Stadium and we stood at the fifty-yard line and performed both scenes again.
One way to look at is is, you have to consider the space when choosing which production to mount. But the more basic observation, though not obvious to me at first, is that these plays were written for their intended spaces. Nobody wrote intimate plays in Ancient Greece (that we know of) because they were producing work for the “theatron”.
Currently I am tossing ideas around my head for a new play about The Globe playhouse, the theater for which Shakespeare wrote his plays. This is why I finally, at long last, got in touch with my mentor. That’s a lesson, kids. Stay in touch with your mentors.
On the date in question, last April, Condee had an hour to spare and I had a lot of really, uh, super questions prepared … like, what effect did the space have on Shakespeare’s work?
He said, “I have no idea.”
That was like, the best question I had.
However, the hour passed quickly, as I told stories from the past twenty years, to kind of justify my existence, and he gave me a bibliography. He strongly recommended Architecture, Actor and Audience (1993) by Ian Mackintosh, and also Shakespeare’s Audience (1941) by Alfred Harbage, among others. It was this second that I went through rather swiftly, for though it is an academic investigation into the demographics of the audience for the Globe theater, it is charmingly written, easy for the layman, full of facts but also colorful details.
I did begin the Mackintosh book, and now intend to finish it. The view from the Globe “tiring house” and stage is very different from that of its audience.
“Their builders succeeded in getting as many people as close as possible to the actor without jeopardizing the actor’s primary task of communicating with every spectator, however distant.” - Mackintosh, p. 10
Such was the feeling I had a couple weeks back, standing on the stage of the Hanna Theatre, upon the thrust stage. I was leading a small tour through the all the Playhouse Square theaters, and as is my wont, began in the massive 3,200-seat State Theatre and concluded in the intimate 550-seat Hanna.
Looking out, from the edge of the platform thrust (the only such professional stage in Cleveland) I had the sensation that the balcony was leaning towards me, a feeling at once emboldening and vertiginous.
LOWIN
Planted upon this scaffold,
A swaying sea of ragged heads at my feet,
I feel twenty hands high.
The eyes of merchants without number,
Men of means within the galleries,
So close that I could slap the wig off of a lord.
Slap it right off. Not only with my words --
My words.
-- But with my mitts. That close.
David Hansen © 2014
Early estimates (dating from early last century) of the size of that crowd were based on modern fire codes or a basis of contemporary seating, one which includes seats. Those scholars suggested the Globe held around 500 as well. Since that time, we take into account the fact that those in the pit stood, fire codes did not exist, and that even the galleries were packed. A contemporary account suggest a number as high as 3,000 but was probably two-thirds or half that. That is still an awful lot of people in an intimate space.
One of the things I truly enjoyed about Harbage’s book is that is dispels certain points of conventional wisdom, and in doing so honors the Elizabethan people, and the reputation of Shakespeare himself.
When speaking of Shakespeare’s audience, the opinions of members of the clergy are often quoted, those who despair at the den of sin and vice represented by the theater. In this case, they are speaking specifically of the building itself, and not the content of the work.
Harbage’s careful examination of contemporary accounts provides to indication that more crimes took place in a public theater than anywhere else. If anything, it indicates the opposite. He could also find no indication that those who publicly warned against the attendance at the theater actually ever went there themselves.
Of the private theaters, they said nothing. When the working class were priced out of attendance, and only those who could afford could attend, apparently everything was copacetic within the hall. But Shakespeare did not write for those houses, he wrote for the Globe. And Shakespeare was and is the more popular playwright.
As Harbage puts it, “The difference between Shakespeare and (John) Fletcher is, in some inverse fashion, the difference between a penny and sixpence.”
The documentable fact is that Shakespeare was popular in his own time, and very popular. The conclusion based on the assumption that those in the higher (more expensive) galleries were erudite and intelligent and those in the pit a mob of cat-calling thugs is that that Shakespeare wrote part of his play for one class, and part for another.
But that would make as little sense then as it would today. The so-called “groundlings” were intelligent, they were trained professionals, craftsmen and apprentices, and most likely regular theatergoers. Listening to plays was something they (unlike you) did very often. They were self-trained in hearing, in listening and appreciating.
William Shakespeare was successful because he wrote everything he wrote for everyone.
"Shakespeare's Audience" by Alfred Harbage
Columbia University Press, 1941
"Architecture, Actor and Audience" by Ian Mackintosh
Routledge, 1993
Labels: Alfred Harbage, Architecture Actor and Audience (book), Ian Mackintosh, Ohio University, Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Audience (book), The Great Globe Itself, theater architecture, William Condee
Creative Workforce Fellowship
Cuyahoga Arts & Culture is reviewing the role of individual artist funding as it relates to its mission. CAC’s board will discuss this topic at its September board meeting. There will be no Creative Workforce Fellowship application deadline until Cuyahoga Arts & Culture has completed its review. - Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, June 6, 2014
The Creative Workforce Fellowship has been suspended.
As an honored recipient of a fellowship in 2010, I would like to make clear my deep appreciation for the opportunity this award provided me in pursuit of my work.
The award means money, to be sure, which means freedom. Freedom to take time from my regular work (for which I must thank my employer, Great Lakes Theater) to engage in research and travel, which resulted in several new works.
New writing materials (which I still have and use and care for) continue to facilitate my work, four years on.
I had the opportunity to experience more plays, from immersive house performances to Broadway productions of award-winning works and everything in-between.
Most, most importantly, however, was how this fellowship changed the way I think as a professional artist, living and working in this region. Prior to my CPAC fellowship, I was fortunate to produce one work a year, or every two years.
Since 2010 I have had five plays produced, two solo performances remounted, one play published, one production in New York City, another in California, one of my scripts has been produced in high schools across America, another in England, and also a fully-realized workshop of a sprawling, large-cast play I had always hoped to create, and will someday beat into submission. And the work continues.
All this, in addition to having joined the Dramatists Guild of America, increasing my production with the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit, participating in the development of a Broadway-bound play script (as an actor) and all the several shorter works I have provided to companies across Greater Cleveland.
I used to say I write plays. Now I am a playwright.
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture has a very important job ahead of them, in educating the voters of Cuyahoga County how an unqualified success their organization has been. No one I know questions how fortunate our region has been for this remarkable funding. We are the envy of arts communities around the nation.
An important part of that success, however, has been the individual funding provided through the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. A shortlist of fellowship recipients include nationally recognized artists as playwright Eric Coble, fashion designer Valerie Mayen and dancer David Shimotakahara. (Complete list available here.) Their work has been fostered through this program, also, to the benefit of our larger community.
I will make sure the CAC board has heard my opinion prior to their September board meeting. Please be sure they hear yours as well.
Labels: Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, Creative Workforce Fellowship, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture
This entry is adapted from a piece originally composed in Spring, 2008. The source material for the work that is the subject of this piece was a comic strip I created for The (Ohio University) Post for two quarters in early 1988.
In spring 1988 (before the strip concluded) Scott K. asked for material to use in his radio production class. I adapted the original short story for which I created a character named "Kael" -- something I wrote freshman year -- into a brief script for his radio production class.
The story involved Kael and a mysterious woman named Carolyn with whom he was "psychically linked." Yes, very romantic. I wrote a paper on astral projection senior year in high school and used a lot of the business I picked up during interviews as the basis for my nonsense.
Scott produced the piece which featured himself, Ben D., Monique W., Andrea W. and myself. Kael was played by a friend of Scott's whose name I forget, but I remember his face (which you cannot see in this picture) because he was the drummer in The Humbert Humberts in Springfest series of strips.
Photo: Does the pose look familiar? See below.
As my junior year progressed, I became increasingly obsessed with my comic, which was cancelled without explanation at the end of the school year. I decided to propose a studio production of an adaptation of the Carolyn story, crossed with the Bob/Barbara series for Spring quarter, 1989. So, in addition to performing on main stage in a small role in Romeo & Juliet and a core acting requirement of a Shaw one-act with an MFA director, I was offering to not only write, but direct my first play at O.U.
The faculty actually called me in for a meeting - just me and all of my professors and advisers, where they told me they didn't think I could manage this. I told them I could. Somehow I convinced them. I do not know how.
Having almost suffered a nervous breakdown in fall 1988, this turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to my psyche. I had little sleep, but I spent all my time dedicated to these three productions (skipping Elvis Costello at Mem Aud!!!) learning how to take effective, ten-minute naps, and just having absolutely no social life whatsoever. It kept me out of the apartment, in which the atmosphere was entirely toxic at this point, and that was a good thing, too.
My friends were sick of the strip. When the play was accepted into the spring playwrights' festival, one said, "Good, good. And then will you drop it?"
Did I deserve that? Of course I did.
Promo photo by Sal, which was duplicated on stage for pre-show (see below.)
The play takes place during the same period as the strip - spring 1988. I even incorporated some text from the practice strips I did in 1987 as a flashback. Our cast consisted of fellow school of theater people like David L. as Simon, Nancy F. as Cheryl, and Jill C. as Barbra and Carolyn. That's right, one woman played both love interests because all women are the same woman ... except Cheryl, who is just a doormat. This was something I became embarrassingly aware of during this process, my inability to write women.
We also met some non-theater majors who always wanted to try acting, like Jon M. as Wilson (a big, TALL, imposing Wilson) and the unbelievably awesome Ron C. as Bob. Scott appeared as Roger, which was fabulous because he not only did the best impression of himself, but he also played guitar between scenes in "The Tavern" with drummer Keith H., who we all met through the radio program Sunday Progressions on WXTQ.
And finally, casting Kael. Originally I had promised to role to a good friend. But I discovered very late in the game that due to his poor studies, he had been banned from performance for the year.
Photo: Final dress, from left: Drummer Keith, Ron heading to front door, Brendan on couch, Jill and Jon at right. Note Keith's Church T-shirt.
Instead, a friend suggested Brendan M., who I had met at School Kids Records. Not an actor, Brendan was quiet and unassuming, and not at all the type I would have imagined as the lascivious twerp from the strip. He was sweet, slinky, and game.
Keith and Brendan met through this production, and shortly afterward formed the band Bingo Smith, for which Brendan played bass.
The most important member of the team was my stage manager, Maiharriese. I'd never had a stage manager before. I didn't know what they could do for you. She took full responsibility for assembling a team of artists to do the tech work, which shocked me because I figured I would be doing all of that because, well, who else would?
I was a junior. In the theater department. I still had no idea how these things worked.
The space was what was used to be called the "Little Theatre" in Kantner Hall, which was a tiny, proscenium stage with a working curtain and fifty seats fixed in position facing the stage. In the early 90s it was remodeled into a proper, fully-flexible black box, much more suited to a professional theater school.
The big question was whether or not anyone would see it. Sure, my fellow theater chums would, and that might be enough. There was no money to be made, these were free performances, open to anyone, it's a school, after all. But few outside our community generally attended these studio productions, if they even knew about them.
Opening night, Sunday, May 14, attracted about half a house. That was good. But the next day, there was a photo in the A-News of Brendan as Kael lying on the floor from an overdose of muscle relaxants. That afternoon, we had to turn people away.
For what was supposed to be our final performance on Tuesday, there were enough people in the courtyard to fill another house. And so we were given permission to announce an additional performance the next afternoon.
None of this suggests the show is any good, just that there was real publicity for it. Even THE POST was caught off-guard, reading in the A-News that a comic strip from their paper had been turned into a play. They sent a photographer for the final performance and I got an interview out of it, after the show had closed, which was a delightful vindication.
In addition to directing, which I was terrible at (pacing was really slow) I did all the graphic designs myself ... stand-ups of the characters, the Peter Gabriel and Cure posters, The Tavern logo, all life-size. I remember working on the floor of the Little Theater, by myself, listening to Oranges & Lemons, Three Feet High and Rising, Disintegration and the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ. Vanessa's costumes were just perfect in spite of her working against the fact that so many of my characters wore nothing but jeans and white T-shirts. Bob's chino-commando outfit was particularly brilliant, and Ron wore it so well.
By the time it was through, I guess I really was ready to "drop it." And I had made it through the most taxing quarter of my career at O.U. getting As in every course - except R&J for which I got a B+ because I missed one costume call. Or because I am a terrible actor. Who cares, it was twenty-five fucking years ago.
Through Facebook I have managed to reconnect with many of the original company members.
Brendan died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1997.
Labels: Breaking Point, comic strips, Ohio University, The Post
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Princess Royal opens Deafblind Scotland’s ‘Field of Dreams’ state-of-the-art learning centre
November 9, 2017 November 9, 2017 Margaret Fisher 420 Views 0 Comments British Sign Language, Deafblind, education, HRH Princess Anne, Princess Royal, sensory impaired
HRH The Princess Royal has opened Deafblind Scotland’s new £2 million learning and development centre – the first of its kind in Scotland.
Dual sensory impairment is a double whammy few of us ever want to think about, and, according to Scottish Government figures, 5000 people in Scotland suffer with both hearing and sight loss to varying degrees.
The total number of those affected in UK is 23,000 which is equivalent to the population of a town the size of Arbroath or Bathgate.
The new centre, however, will provide a centre for the sensory impaired community to meet and interact, with state-of-the art facilities including a high-tech IT room, an arts facility and a recording studio. The building, on the outskirts of Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, is sensory neutral with sound and light absorbing surfaces.
HRH Princess Anne opens the new centre
Bob Nolan, who himself has significant sensory impairment, is Chair of Deafblind Scotland. He began work as a volunteer with Deafblind UK in 1998 and was a member of the original Scottish Management Committee.
He said: “After ten years of hard work, fundraising and public support, we are so proud to welcome Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal and our members here today to mark this special occasion.
“As the only charity in Scotland to support adults who acquire deafblindness at some stage in their life, we wanted to create a centre where members could meet and interact.
“In 2007 we identified the perfect location in Lenzie which became our ‘Field of Dreams”, a vacant space where we could turn our idea into a reality.”
Deafblind Scotland has been serving the needs of the sensory impaired community for 25 years, becoming an independent charity in April 2001.
The organisation supports those with dual sensory impairment to live within their own communities and works in partnership with various health and social care providers to improve quality of life.
Being deafblind does not always mean complete sensory loss, though it certainly brings with it challenges for those affected, since it can lead to balance problems and difficulties with communication and mobility. Some people retain some residual sight and/or hearing.
A person can become deafblind in one of three ways:
1. Being born deaf then later losing sight due to a condition known as Usher Syndrome, a major cause of deafblindness, named after C H Usher, a British ophthalmologist.
2. Being born blind and later losing hearing.
3. Losing both sight and hearing in later life.
Usher Syndrome is a genetic condition which causes hearing loss from birth and a later progressive loss of vision due to retinitis pigmentosa.
Sensory impaired people use tactile interpreting methods to communicate. British Sign Language (BSL) is a first language for deaf people and is used by more than 12,500 people in Scotland.
It is recognised as a minority language under equalities legislation.
Deafblind people will be protected under the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015, which began as a private member’s bill proposed by Mark Griffin, MSP in October, 2014, supported by all parties in the Scottish Parliament.
This means BSL is now recognised as a language of Scotland, resulting in the first British Sign Language National Plan 2017-2023.
Its goals cover early years and education; training and work; health; culture and the arts; justice and democracy and sets out the Scottish Government’s ambition for Scotland to become the best place in the world for BSL users to live, work and visit.
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Margaret Fisher
Margaret is a mature student studying practical journalism with the objective of making a career change writing for magazines, copywriting and PR. She currently works part-time in human resources specialising in employment law. She has a background in business development, management and training, at one time working for Highlands & Islands Enterprise when she lived in Inverness. During her career she has written articles for business publications and for a Scottish magazine. For fun she likes to keep fit, plays bridge, mahjong and sings in a community choir.
Being a Millennial – a blessing or a curse?
October 27, 2017 Lauren Maclean 0
English school abandons LGBT education after protests from parents
March 20, 2019 Kirsty McGregor 0
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You are here: Home / Archives for David Bainbridge
David Bainbridge on Stripped Bare
September 19, 2018 by Matthew Taylor
For more than two thousand years, comparative anatomy—the study of anatomical variation among different animal species—has been used to make arguments in natural philosophy, reinforce religious dogma, and remind us of our own mortality. This stunningly illustrated compendium traces the intertwined intellectual and artistic histories of comparative anatomy from antiquity to today.
Stripped Bare brings together some of the most arresting images ever produced, from the earliest studies of animal form to the technicolor art of computer-generated anatomies. David Bainbridge draws on representative illustrations from different eras to discuss the philosophical, scientific, and artistic milieus from which they emerged. He vividly describes the unique aesthetics of each phase of anatomical endeavor, providing new insights into the exquisite anatomical drawings of Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer in the era before printing, Jean Héroard’s cutting and cataloging of the horse during the age of Louis XIII, the exotic pictorial menageries of the Comte de Buffon in the eighteenth century, anatomical illustrations from Charles Darwin’s voyages, the lavish symmetries of Ernst Haeckel’s prints, and much, much more.
Why The Art of Animal Anatomy?
Although my day job is teaching anatomy to veterinary students, it has taken me until my seventh book to write about it. All my other books have been about how very strange and unusual human biology is when compared to animals, but this time I thought I’d try something different. Animal structure has been a central artistic element since early humans were painting on cave walls, and I wanted to write a book that reflects how much it has permeated our artistic culture. To do this, the format had to be right – everything else I’ve written has been very text-heavy, but Stripped Bare had to let the images speak for themselves. I did have to weave it into a narrative, but just as important is the quality of the reproductions. Enormous effort and skill went into them, so we wanted to do them justice.
Has the artistic side of science always interested you?
I’ve always found that some of the most interesting aspects of science are when it interacts with language, culture and the arts. Right back when I was slogging through my science subjects to get into vet school, I was also lucky enough to be able to take a two-year course in Art History. I suppose that’s where I learnt the language – knowing my Cubists from my Fauvists, and so on – but also understood for the first time the very real ways that changes in the visual arts reflect, and are reflected by, changes in thought and society. It didn’t take long for me to realise that animal anatomy is not only depicted for its own practical sake, but has also become an eerie, visceral motif to which artists have returned again and again. It has the power to both shock and inspire, and often that’s just too good for artists to ignore.
So how important is it to be familiar with anatomy and art history to enjoy the book?
Not at all, I would say. I assumed nothing of the reader, other than an intelligent inquisitiveness. Comparative anatomy is so much more interesting than seeing the striking ways in which a human, a flamingo and a trout differ, and are similar. It’s a story which almost writes itself. In the book, I tried to highlight what I think are fascinating snippets of the science, but anatomy is a huge topic, and I couldn’t assume any prior knowledge of it. I guess I assumed slightly more foreknowledge of art history, but still not much. A general sense of the flow of the centuries and movements is beneficial, but that’s all. And if readers are teased into finding out more about Futurism or Hyperrealism, then that’s great.
Who is the most important character in the book?
It would have to be Carlo Ruini, an anatomist from Bologna who wrote the remarkable 1598 Anatomia del Cavallo (Anatomy of the Horse), what I like to think of as the Principia Mathematica of comparative anatomy. Before the Anatomia anatomical writings just looked ancient – rare, error-strewn, unscientific, fragmentary, and worst of all, often unillustrated. In contrast, for all its four centuries of existence, Ruini’s book looks recognisably modern: structured, enquiring and detailed. For example, Ruini discovered the one-way nature of the valves of the heart, an important component of later discoveries of the circulation of the blood. The anatomical precision in the book is amazing, especially as it seems to have sprung into existence as if from from nowhere, but most striking is its artistic beauty. There are hundreds of meticulous wood-block engravings, capturing not just the science of the animals’ structure, but also the emotional visual impact of gnarled bones, contorted intestines and convoluted brains. Most of all, the animals retain a remarkable dignity, despite their progressive ‘disrobing’ – they stand proud, or even sometimes trot gaily through renaissance landscapes.
And which artist brings you the most pleasure?
It would have to be Georgia O’Keeffe. In many ways she’s at the other end of the spectrum. Ruini’s book was a practical, scientific book, whereas O’Keeffe uses animal bones solely as elements, often central elements, in her compositions. Just like her paintings of libidinous flowers, her depictions of animal bones allowed her to explain her own feelings about her adopted environment in the American Southwest. Bleached skulls become the central band in the American red, white and blue, while a crumbling pelvis on the desert floor becomes a grand, eroded rock arch framing the distant sierra. I believe that the use of the dusty white skull as a symbol of the desert states (think of an Eagles album cover!) can be traced directly back to O’Keeffe’s decision to place them centre-stage in her compositions.
Has the art of animal anatomy run its course, do you think?
Not at all. If anything, there’s more happening now than ever before. Over recent decades it has become clear that biology is bewilderingly complex and detailed, and one of the major challenges we face is explaining and depicting the new superabundance of information in a comprehensible way. As soon as a neuroscientist generates a scan of the internal nervous pathways of the brain, they have to make artistic – yes, artistic – decisions, if they are to intelligibly represent the tangled and cascading neural superhighways they’ve discovered. Modern, computer-generated diagrams of animal structure and biology are usually beautiful, and always striking. Animal anatomy has even made its way into modern street art. One of the most inspiring images in the book is of a dog’s skull, spay-painted freehand apparently, by the artist SHOK1, onto a building-site hoarding in Walthamstow, North London. It’s one of the most anatomically accurate depictions in the book, a true memento mori for the modern age. The pace of anatomical art is hastening, not slowing – I’m sure there is much more to come.
David Bainbridge is University Clinical Veterinary Anatomist at the University of Cambridge. His books include Curvology: The Origins and Power of Female Body Shape and Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey through Your Brain.
Filed Under: Author Interviews, Birds and Natural History Tagged With: animal science, Animals, Author Q&A, birding, birds, David Bainbridge, ornithology, stripped bare
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MISSED SIGNALS
Cop Thought It Was Drugs. It Was a Teen Coping With Autism: Lawsuit
An Arizona police officer pinned a 14-year-old to the ground, believing the boy’s ‘stimming’ calming method was something sinister. And his department says he did nothing wrong.
Victoria Albert
Fourteen-year-old Connor Leibel just felt overwhelmed.
He was sitting in a sunny and quiet neighborhood park in suburban Phoenix while his caretaker visited a nearby store. To calm himself, Leibel, who is autistic, started “stimming” with a piece of string—an exercise commonly taught to people with autism to help them cope with stressful environments.
But that’s not what it looked like to Officer David Grossman. Grossman, who the Buckeye Police Department has called a drug-recognition expert, said he thought Leibel was bringing his hands toward his mouth to somehow inhale drugs. After driving by multiple times, Grossman stopped to ask Leibel what he was doing.
“I’m stimming,” Leibel replied, taking a few jerking steps back, footage of the July 19, 2017, incident captured by Grossman’s body cam shows.
Grossman apparently didn’t know what that meant. He told Liebel to stop walking away, while Leibel, confused, told him “it’s a string.” After the teen awkwardly told the officer he didn’t have identification on him, Grossman grabbed his arm and tried to restrain him. In a blur of fast movements that are difficult to distinguish in the footage, the pair hit a tree and fall to the ground.
The camera captures Grossman struggling to pin down the teen, while Leibel, his breaking voice rising in increasing panic, repeatedly screamed “I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m OK,” as the policeman on top of him tells him to “stop moving” and “relax.”
Moments later, when Diane Craglow, Leibel’s caretaker, arrived at the scene, she told the officer that the boy was autistic. As she looked on in horror, Leibel, his voice trembling, asked her, “Am I going to be OK?”
Craglow tried to explain to the heavy-breathing policeman that “he [was] stimming,” to which Grossman replied, “Yeah, I don’t know what that is,” while Leibel continued to struggle beneath him.
After speaking with the caretaker, Grossman began to soften and deescalate the situation. He dropped a pair of handcuffs to the ground, and stood up to release Leibel. But the damage had already been done.
“He pushed me down on the grass and he just hit me on the tree, and he tackled me and then he didn’t stop,” Leibel later told CBS News. “It made me feel sad.”
In a case filed this week in a Phoenix federal court, Leibel’s family is suing the city of Buckeye, Arizona, its police department, and Grossman for punitive damages “on nine counts, including battery, excessive force, negligence, failure to train, and illegal arrest,” Courthouse News reports. They also seek civil penalties, and a corrective injunction that would force the department to better educate its officers on how to interact with people with disabilities.
In court documents cited by Courthouse News, the Leibels claim Grossman had no training in dealing with people with autism, and that he admitted as much while speaking with their son’s caretaker. They also claim that Leibel was “forcibly restrained, slammed against a tree, and pinned to the ground by” the policeman.
“Connor was doing nothing illegal,” the complaint states.
The Buckeye Police Department has insisted that Grossman did nothing wrong. “Within 20 seconds of contact, Connor goes to run from the officer,” Police Chief Larry Hall told West Valley View. “The officer holds on to him and they fall to the ground. There’s no escalation of force at that point.”
In an initial claim filed in January, the Leibels said Grossman had a history of poor conduct within the department, noting a personnel file that said “supervisors have long been ‘concerned that [Grossman’s] situational awareness may not be adequate enough for the rigors of law enforcement.” In a separate incident predating Connor’s, Grossman was documented as having grabbed a suspect at a park, wrestled him to the ground, and “deployed a chemical agent” twice to his face. A department Performance Improvement Plan for Grossman appeared to recognize a problem: “As we have previously discussed, ‘seizing’ a person requires articulation which you could not provide when you performed these actions.... Looking for charges after an arrest is made is unacceptable and unconstitutional.”
According to the court documents, Leibel “suffered cuts, bruises, and scratches to his face, back, and arms from the attack, and a grotesquely swollen ankle, which required surgeries.”
But it’s the emotional damage from the incident, the January claim argues, that is more severe. “A feature of Connor’s condition is that he often relives past grievances over and over, without an appreciation of how far in the past they occurred. Consequently, Connor continues to relive the events of last year in excruciating detail,” the claim states. “He asks if he is going to be hurt again when he sees a police car. In fact, he expresses fear of meeting new adult men in general—something that he never experienced previously. His parents are anguished at the changes they witnessed in Connor.”
According to one of the family’s lawyers, Timothy Scott, the lawsuit was filed to prevent this from happening again. “Officer Grossman detained and injured a child, literally because of the boy’s autistic mannerisms,” Scott told The Daily Beast via email. “Targeting a person based on their disabilities violates basic civil rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. After this first happened, the family asked for three things: 1) an apology from the officer; 2) that the officer perform community service with the autistic community; and 3) that Buckeye institute a mandatory training program to prevent an incident like this from ever happening again. Sadly, they never even responded to our letters.”
Buckeye PD has repeatedly argued that Grossman’s use of force was justified. Shortly after the event, it cleared him of any wrongdoing. In a September news release, the department wrote that Leibel was “moving his hand to his face in a manner consistent with inhaling, and then [Grossman] observed the teenager’s body react accordingly after that movement,” and that Grossman “lawfully detained the teenager, causing both of them to fall to the ground,” according to NBC affiliate 12News.
And in any case, the department said its “officers receive training on a variety of situations, including interactions with people who have disabilities.”
“I hope the family sees that we will learn from this incident and we are human and things are constantly evolving and changing—absolutely—and it’s almost impossible to know and understand every single little piece of every single disorder,” Det. Tamela Skaggs told CBS News.
As the January claim notes, misperceptions like Grossman’s are illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). According to the ADA, the claim says, an arrest is considered wrongful even if an officer “misperceive[s] the effects of [a victim’s] disability as criminal activity.”
“We can do a better job in dealing with people with disabilities in the community,” Chief Hall told West Valley View, describing to the paper how the department enhanced its training procedures in the weeks after the Leibel incident and became the lead on a grant to provide officers training on dealing with individuals in crisis. “It’s our responsibility, as holders of the grant, to make sure other agencies benefit from this and the training. We understand how important that is. There’s a narrative out there that we don’t care about people with disabilities. That’s simply not true. It’s not accurate.”
The Buckeye Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But other actions the department has taken regarding disabilities have caused controversy in Buckeye. In November, it implemented a voluntary registry program for individuals with autism, Alzheimer’s, bipolar disorder, panic disorders, and schizophrenia. Each diagnosis corresponded to a different colored wristband, which the department asked registry members to wear for self-identification.
Leibel’s mother, Danielle, was angered by the proposal. “I think it’s disgusting that you have to label someone with a disability with a special mark so they don’t have to live in fear from being hurt by police,” she told ABC15.
Will Gaona, a representative for the ACLU, agreed. “People with disabilities shouldn’t have to broadcast their diagnosis to the world, just because police officers have insufficient training.” he told ABC15. “A better solution would be to have special wristbands for officers who’ve found to be engaged in excessive use of force, so the public knows who they’re dealing with.”
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From Rick Stengel to David Axelrod, All of the President’s Journalists
Rick Stengel is only the latest member of the media to go to work at the Obama White House.
Ben Jacobs
AP; Getty
These days, journalists don’t retire, they just join the Obama administration.
As Capital New York reported on Thursday, Time managing editor Rick Stengel is leaving the venerable newsweekly to become under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. This is not the first foray into politics for Stengel, who has been the top editor at Time since 2006. He spent a year as a speechwriter on Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign in 1999–2000.
But it is the latest example in a growing trend of the White House reaching out to hire journalists. According to one count, at least 15 journalists have joined the Obama administration since 2009.
Here are six of the most notable journalists who have taken roles with the Obama administration, as well as one of their predecessors on the road from ink-stained wretch to White House flack.
White House press secretary Jay Carney spent nearly 20 years at Time, rising to Washington bureau chief before becoming Joe Biden’s spokesman in 2008. After two years with the vice president, Carney took over from Robert Gibbs at the podium in the Briefing Room on January 27, 2011, becoming the first person in decades to go from being a White House reporter to White House press secretary.
Linda Douglass was a career journalist who worked in television for CBS and ABC and then in print for the National Journal before joining the Obama campaign in May 2008. Her decision surprised many at the time and was cited by Ben Smith, then at Politico, as “a home run of a data point for anyone who thinks the press is in the tank for Obama.” Douglass later went on to be the top spokesperson for the administration in its effort to pass and promote the Affordable Care Act before returning to the National Journal in 2010.
Until this year, Glen Johnson was the dean of Massachusetts political reporters. He had spent nearly 20 years covering politics in the Bay State, alternating between the Associated Press and the Boston Globe. In January, Johnson joined the State Department as a senior adviser to John Kerry, with a focus on strategic communications. As he told the Globe at the time, “This is an unexpected opportunity. All I’ve ever wanted to do since junior high school—and have done professionally—is be a news reporter. But this chance to serve the country and Secretary Kerry at such a tumultuous time, as well as work in foreign affairs and travel the world, was too compelling an opportunity to pass up.”
It must be hard to walk the halls in Foggy Bottom these days without running into an ex-journalist. In addition to Johnson and Stengel, the State Department also now has former Washington Post national-security editor Douglas Frantz on staff. It’s Frantz’s second stint working for John Kerry, having spent two years as an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the Democrat was its chairman. However, Frantz has spent most of his career as an investigative reporter for publications like The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
When Jay Carney left Joe Biden’s office, he didn’t leave the voluble vice president without any former journalists on staff. Shailagh Murray, a veteran congressional reporter for the Washington Post, quickly replaced Carney as Biden’s communications director. The hiring of Murray, who had previously been a politics reporter for The Wall Street Journal, came under scrutiny as she apparently continued covering politics while interviewing with Biden’s office, which theoretically could have been a conflict of interest. However, even with Biden, Murray has continued to stay in practice as a reporter, playing ABC’s Martha Raddatz when Biden prepped for the vice-presidential debate in 2012.
The godfather of ex-journalists in the White House orbit: David Axelrod. The political consultant who served as a senior adviser to Obama in between stints on both presidential campaigns, started in politics as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. While at the Tribune, Axelrod rose to city hall bureau chief, covering the rough-and-tumble politics of the Windy City. However, in 1984, Axelrod left journalism to work for Paul Simon’s campaign and never looked back, building a successful career as a Democratic political consultant before finally arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with Obama in 2009.
Yet hiring journalists isn’t an Obama innovation. Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, John Nicolay, had been editor of the Pike County Free Press in Pittsfield, Illinois. Even George W. Bush’s administration hired former journalists. Tony Snow, the third of Bush’s four White House press secretaries, was a longtime editorial writer, columnist, and talk-radio personality as well as the first host of Fox News Sunday before he joined the Bush administration in 2006. Snow, fighting cancer, left the White House in September 2007 and passed away in July 2008.
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SHOW, DON’T TELL
How to Fix Hillary’s Trust Deficit
Poll after poll shows that few voters think Clinton is honest and trustworthy. After decades in the public eye, is there any way to fix that?
Eleanor Clift
Brian Frank/Reuters
Tell us something we don’t know—that’s one suggestion for Hillary Clinton, who is looking to rebuild her cratering trust numbers with voters. Not about policy, something personal, like the summer she spent in Alaska washing dishes at a national park and sliming salmon at a fish processing cannery.
“Get people saying, ‘I didn’t know that,’” says Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report and a seasoned political handicapper.
“At some point we’re going to see her walking through the neighborhood where she grew up in Chicago,” he says. “Do the whole package,” he advises, not just her mother, get her talking about her father. He was a pretty stern fellow. When she didn’t put the top back on the toothpaste tube, he’d toss it out the window and she had to find it, even in the snow.
And go easy on the grandmother schtick. “She borders on overplaying that,” says Cook.
Political analysts and academics asked by The Daily Beast what Clinton should do about her sinking numbers, and how much they matter, agree that she is on the right course trying to humanize herself in an unforgiving partisan environment. “A lot of people see her as smart and competent but not necessarily as a person,” says Cook. “Make her a human being.”
Clinton has been so guarded for so long that she is wary of opening up to the media or letting voters into what she considers her zone of privacy. But showing vulnerability and making an emotional connection is the key to reaching voters, especially women. She can’t match Barack Obama with African-American voters or the excitement he generated among young people, but she can out-perform him with women, especially white married women, who Mitt Romney carried in the last election.
Clinton is also correct in concentrating on “one on few” meetings as opposed to the “one on many” large rallies that were Obama’s signature events, says Bill Galston with the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. “He needed to lend credibility to a long shot and even quixotic campaign; she needs to connect with voters in a more intimate way.”
Negative stories about her email server, her paid speeches and the continuing investigation into Benghazi have taken their toll, bringing the high favorable rating she enjoyed as secretary of state “down to mere mortal level,” says Cook. A Quinnipiac poll last week found the number of voters who see Clinton as honest and trustworthy dropped to 34 percent in Colorado, 33 percent in Iowa and 39 percent in Virginia. In each of those swing states, she lost in theoretical matchups with Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio, a flashing yellow warning sign to Democrats.
Clinton’s ramped-up public appearances show she’s paying attention along with the orderly rollout of policy positions designed to appeal to progressives while not veering too far from the center where she came of age politically. Speculation that Vice President Biden might yet enter the race picked up after this latest round of polls, but for Democrats to panic would be silly: Clinton is still the most commanding non-incumbent presidential candidate either party has seen in modern times.
“Candidates are big packages,” says Cook. “Bill Clinton got elected and reelected with lousy trust numbers…There are other issues, like being an adult and knowing stuff.”
Asked how serious Clinton’s trust deficit is, Galston replied, “I’m going to say exactly what you expect me to say. It’s early, number one, and number two, the comedian Henny Youngman put it best, ‘Compared to what?’ If people continue to see her as a strong, knowledgeable, experienced leader, that is going to be worth a lot in the end. That’s her ace in the hole, and she can play it to great advantage.”
Al From worked with Bill Clinton to help develop a centrist policy agenda that could move the Democratic Party back to the middle after losing three successive presidential elections. “The thing that would help her the most, which is what she’s starting to do, [is to] lay out a clear agenda and give people a reason to vote for her. And when she does that, I think she’ll be fine,” From told The Daily Beast.
“The Clintons never come without controversy, but they also have enormous support. She has to energize her people, but the main thing is to lay out where she wants to take the country compared to the Republicans. There always were questions about trust with President Clinton. But if she makes a good case for being president, her numbers are going to go up and her trust number will go up as well. Presidential elections are a choice and it’s about the future of the country. We have a lot of serious problems, and she’s well equipped to deal with them.”
The Democratic Leadership Council, founded by From in 1985, provided a policy framework that carried Bill Clinton to the White House. Calling for 100,000 more cops on the street and promising to “end welfare as we know it” positioned Clinton to win back Reagan Democrats that had fled the party.
The DLC folded in 2011, bankrupt financially and resigned to a different era requiring different policy prescriptions. Hillary Clinton is developing her signature ideas in a noisier media environment than her husband faced in 1992, or that she faced eight years ago. Still, there are some truisms, says Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.
“Talk about the future rather than the past. She doesn’t want to get dragged into a discussion of the scandals of the nineties. …So long as she stays substantive and puts out a coherent and persuasive policy agenda, she will put the focus on the issues.”
That focus on issues kept Bill Clinton’s approval rating high as president even in the midst of impeachment. “I need to get back to work for the American people,” he would say. News broke of his relationship with a White House intern shortly before he was to stand before Congress and deliver the State of the Union address. A record number of people tuned in to see what he would say about the scandal, Pitney recalled. Clinton didn’t mention it.
A final piece of advice to Hillary, says Pitney: The last thing she should say is “Trust me, I’m trustworthy.” She needs a better answer than the one she gave CNN when she said, “People should, and do, trust me.” As with all good drama, a successful campaign is more show than tell.
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Obama’s 177 Unconfirmed Appointees
Where was the TSA chief on Christmas Day, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to set off an incendiary device on a Detroit-bound airplane? Trick question: there isn't one. President Obama's nominee for the position, Erroll Southers, remains unconfirmed, barred from even working provisionally or sending deputies in his place. And he's not the only one: 177 White House appointees are still awaiting confirmation one year into Obama's first term—that's 107 more than the 70 unconfirmed appointees who were hanging around during Bush's first year. The culprit, unsurprisingly, is the Senate, whose members can place anonymous holds on appointees for any reason they choose (Kentucky Republican Jim Bunning held the nomination of the U.S. trade representative last year over a dispute the tobacco industry was having with Canada about clove cigarettes). And Southers? Still being blocked—by notorious hold-user, South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint—for saying he would review the TSA's policy of preventing collective bargaining.
Read it at Foreign Policy
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Fashion Cheat Sheet
Rihanna Reportedly Sues Topshop; John Galliano May Participate in a TV Interview with Charlie Rose
The Fashion Beast Team
Mike Lawrie/Getty
Rihanna Sues Topshop: Rihanna is reportedly suing British retailer Topshop to the tune of $5 million for selling T-shirts that feature her name without her permission. According to the New York Post, Rihanna’s management had asked that Topshop not sell her image “a number of times,” but the store refused. The singer has reportedly already spent over $1 million in litigation fees. [New York Post]
Galliano To Do TV Interview?: John Galliano may be supplementing his sit down interview with Vanity Fair with an appearance on the small screen. According to WWD, talks of the designer participating in a TV interview with Charlie Rose are underway. If it pans out, this would mark one of the rare occurrences that Galliano participates in a long interview. His publicist, Liz Rosenberg, denied the claims: “There are no plans in place regarding TV appearances for John at this time,” she told WWD. [WWD]
Rooney Mara for Calvin Klein: Calvin Klein is rolling out a new fragrance this summer—“Downtown”—aimed at a younger set of consumers aged 25 to 35, and has tapped Rooney Mara as the face of its campaign. Advertisements will include TV ads directed by Mara’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo director David Fincher and print spots shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, which will chronicle a young woman (Mara) breaking away from the “unexpected,” according to Thomas Burkhardt, vice president of marketing for fragrance business Coty Prestige. The brand also hopes to better integrate social media, with an increased presence on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. [WWD]
Carine Roitfeld’s Livestream: Next week Carine Roitfeld’s second fashion show at the Cannes Film Festival will be livestreamed for a larger audience. The “Ultimate Gold Fashion Show” will honor the late Hollywood starlet Elizabeth Taylor, and will feature over 40 of the world’s top models, including Alessandra Ambrosio, Karlie Kloss, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, all outfitted in gold dresses. The livestream is sponsored by LoveGold, an online website for gold jewelry, and will stream live at 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 23. [Telegraph]
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The Girls of Paris, China
Author Lisa See talks to Sandra McElwaine about her turbulent historical novel, Shanghai Girls, the Paris of Asia pre-WWII, arranged marriages, and the terror in 1940s Los Angeles.
Sandra McElwaine
Patricia Williams
The gorgeous cover of Shanghai Girls, Lisa See’s instant bestseller, may be misleading. The soft-toned image of two young smiling Chinese women may lull readers into thinking they’ve picked up the conventional chick lit or summer beach read. Although See comes up with a traditional plot about the turbulent life of two beautiful Chinese siblings, her latest book is an intriguing, evocative, and sometimes lyrical historical novel.
“I remember my editor was sort of disturbed by people just walking past these dead babies. But that was something they would have seen their whole life—it wasn’t anything extraordinary.”
Meticulously researched, Shanghai Girls depicts the allure of pre-World War II Shanghai, the Paris of the Far East; the brutality of the Japanese occupation; the plight of two sisters as they accept arranged marriages; their escape to California, only to encounter discrimination in Los Angeles in the 1940s; and the witch hunts of the McCarthy Era, which traumatized the Chinese community in the U.S.
See, who is one-eighth Chinese and proud of her heritage, travels frequently to remote parts of China for research and relies on poignant tales about family members and the obstacles they overcame. Her two previous novels, Snowflower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, were also bestsellers. She is writing a sequel to Shanghai Girls, which takes some of the characters back to China during the period of the Great Leap Forward. “Lately there’s been a lot written about the Cultural Revolution, but very little about the Great Leap Forward,” she said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I think it’s time.”
Were you surprised by the book’s immediate success?
I'm always surprised when someone buys the book and this is the highest [that] one of my books has been on The New York Times' book list. It's wonderful.
This book is the one that is closest to my heart. Although it's not about my own family, there are a lot of things that came out of my family, the emotional core of the book, and Los Angeles Chinatown and China City and the experiences of women in arranged marriages in America. But I also love that jacket so much.
It’s quite stunning.
I was just a couple of months into writing the book when I talked to my editor. I didn't think he quite understood what I was talking about when I would refer to Shanghai girls, beautiful girls, so I just did some color Xeroxes and mailed them to him with a note saying this is who my girls are, Pearl and May. And then, 18 months later, that jacket came in the mail.
You are of Chinese descent?
I'm only one-eighth Chinese, on my father's side. My great-great-grandfather was the first one to come to this country, to work on the building of the railroads. My great-grandfather became the kind of patriarch, godfather, of Los Angeles Chinatown. He had four wives, and one of his wives was a Caucasian woman back when it was against the law for Chinese and Caucasians to marry in California.
My own parents were only the second couple in our whole extended family to be married legally in the United States. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, great aunts and uncles in our family store in Chinatown. This is a very large family—today there's something like 400 relatives. There are about a dozen who look like me, the majority are still full Chinese, and there's a spectrum in between…. My great-grandfather really got his start in California manufacturing crotchless underwear for brothels. That was first in Sacramento and then in Los Angeles. By 1900, he was selling Chinese antiques and that business is still there today.
Do you speak Chinese?
I grew up hearing Cantonese and then I studied Mandarin for a while. When I go to China, I spend a lot of time in the countryside in small villages and I always hire someone who speaks that very local dialect.
I see why this is a bestseller—it’s not just a story of two women. You have interwoven a fascinating history that suddenly evaporated.
This is the final moment in Shanghai before everything really started to change in a very dramatic way. I think most of us in our daily lives, we don't really question what's around us, we just take it for granted. So for them, it's all they really know, rickshaw pullers and night stool collectors, and all of the food vendors, and dead babies on the street. I remember my editor, and a couple of early readers, were sort of disturbed [by people] just walking past these dead babies. But that was something they would have seen their whole life, it wasn't anything extraordinary.
Pearl and May, your main characters, had what sounds like a very glamorous lifestyle.
Yes, I think for them it was, but that wasn't everyone's experience. You had the White Russians who had escaped out of Russia seeking refuge. You had Jews already leaving Germany, the first wave—things were not going to go well in Germany, and that's where they went, to Shanghai. So there was this great power, great desperation, extraordinary poverty—and extraordinary wealth. I didn't use this in the book, but they used to have people who would check the bank's basements. There was so much money and Shanghai is built on sort of silty soil, so they had to keep adjusting the gold to keep the buildings from tipping. That's how much gold they had, it could actually cause these buildings to tilt one way or the other.
Do you consider yourself Chinese?
I don't look Chinese, but I did grow up in this very Chinese family and how do you identify yourself? It's by the people who are around you, they are really your mirrors, and so much of the culture and the food and our traditions were very traditionally Chinese.
Do you think that part of the interest in your book is that China is such a topical subject right now?
I've been writing about China for a long time so I have the family memoir, and then I wrote three mysteries that take place in contemporary China and they did well. Have we come to a place where there is more of an interest in China? I actually don't think that that's why people read my books. I think that they will come away at the end thinking, I learned something that I didn't know.
Also, you write about strong women.
Yes, women who go through an awful lot, they endure a lot and yet they are survivors, up to a point. I think what does set these books apart maybe from other books about women is that I'm actually very interested in the dark shadows side of women's relationships. But I'm also I think pretty forgiving.
What are you trying to do in this novel?
I really wanted to write about sisters and what is that difference between actual blood sisters and friends who are just like sisters. What holds sisters together, even when they do really terrible things to each other. I also really wanted to write about Los Angeles Chinatown in a way that I hadn't before.
What do you want a reader to get out of this novel?
Open the pages, step into another world and you can learn things along the way. But really what you do in a novel is you connect to the characters and you're connecting to your own life, and in a larger way to the human condition. I would hope that happens for other people, that they are transported into another time and another place, that they can connect to these two sisters, good or bad, whether you like them or not, and think about your own life, the things that have happened emotionally, your own sister, husband or ungrateful daughter— whatever it is that will make people think, oh, yeah, I went through that too.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Sandra McElwaine is a Washington-based journalist. She has been a reporter for The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, a correspondent for CNN and People and Washington editor of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. She writes for The Washington Post, Time and Forbes.
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Shooting Violence
Victim of Aurora Shooting Takes on Gun Control
In a new ad, survivor Stephen Barton calls on Obama and Romney to end gun violence. Eliza Shapiro reports.
Eliza Shapiro
Robert Ray / AP Photo
Earlier this year, Stephen Barton was shot 25 times in the face, neck, hand, chest, shoulder and forearm in the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo., during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. This week, he will take his scars on the national stage.
Barton appears in a 30-second ad produced by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that calls for stricter gun control laws. The ad airs this week in Washington, D.C., and Denver, including a primetime slot before the first presidential debate on Wednesday night, which will be held a few miles from Aurora. “We can’t think of a better time to talk about this,” Barton told The Daily Beast.
While the national news zeroed in on the gun-control debate in the days and weeks immediately following the shooting, the conversation in Aurora initially focused more on memorial services and vigils.
“I realized I have a unique responsibility and opportunity to talk about gun control,” Barton said. “I couldn’t just sit back and be frustrated by the politics. If you throw your hands up, that’s surrendering.”
Barton, who graduated from Syracuse University in May, embarked on a cross-country bicycle trip with a friend. The two arrived in Aurora and got two tickets for the movie premiere on July 20. They took their seats in the center of the theater. About 15 minutes after the movie started, Barton saw a gas canister fly across the screen. When the firing began, he briefly thought he was seeing fireworks. He put up his right arm to shield his face just as alleged gunman James Holmes fired rounds of bullets from a shotgun into Barton’s body. “I fell forward in my seat,” Barton said, “I was trying to stop the bleeding and hoping and praying that the firing would somehow stop. The thought crossed my mind that the shooter was going to go up and down the aisles. That was probably the worst moment.”
Holmes’s shotgun jammed and the gunshots stopped. Barton ran for the back left emergency exit and was quickly transported to the Medical Center of Aurora, where he and another person were the first victims of the attack to arrive at the emergency room. He was taken into surgery and woke up a few hours later.
“I remember the strongest feeling being joy that I had made it through the night,” he said.
While he was recuperating back home in Connecticut, Barton met with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to talk about gun control. Barton decided to defer his Fulbright teaching scholarship in Russia to work for Mayors for Illegal Guns.
In the ad, Barton sits in an empty movie theater as pictures of his massive scars flash across the screen. “This past summer in a movie theater in Colorado I was shot in the face and neck,” he says. “But I was lucky. In the next four years, 48,000 Americans won’t be so lucky because they’ll be murdered with guns in the next president’s term.” That figure, an average of the last five years of available data from the Centers for Disease Control, includes mass murders and gang violence, and excludes suicide.
It’s a startling figure, but one that may not do much to convince President Obama or Mitt Romney to take a tough stance on guns. Gun control is a historically tricky issue for politicians due to the power and influence of the NRA and the nation’s state-by-state patchwork of varying gun laws.
That may explain why Obama has never been a favorite of either the NRA or gun control advocates.
During the 2008 campaign, he supported a federal ban on assault rifles while telling gun owners, “I believe in people’s lawful rights to bear arms … I am not going to take your guns away.” After the 2011 Tucson shooting, he called for “sound and effective steps” to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, although no new legislation has been proposed. After the Aurora shooting, White House press secretary Jay Carney described Obama’s stance on gun control thus: the president “supports common-sense measures that protect second amendment rights of Americans, while ensuring that those who should not have guns under existing law do not get them.”
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed a ban on assault rifles and raised the price of gun licenses, but he also loosened rules for obtaining a gun license. In 2006, however, he joined the NRA. Last year, he told the organization, “We need a president who will enforce current laws, not create new ones that only serve to burden lawful gun owners.” After the Aurora attack, he said: “There is something we can do. We can offer comfort to someone near us who is suffering or heavy laden, and we can mourn with those who mourn in Colorado.”
A quarter of a million people have signed a petition addressed to Obama and Romney, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, calling on both candidates “to step forward with a substantive plan to end gun violence.”
Barton and his friends are talking about finishing their cross-country bike tour next summer to raise money for the Aurora victims.
“When people say it’s too soon to talk about gun control,” he said, “it’s really too late.”
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Engaged Anthropology Grant: Laura Montesi
Some workshop participants; and Adolfo Rebolledo, the second on the left, and anthropologist Laura Montesi in the middle (picture by colleague Diego Martínez)
While a doctoral student at University of Kent, Laura Montesi received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant in 2014 to aid research on “Making Sense of Diabetes Among the Indigenous Huave People of San Dionisio del Mar, Oax., Mexico,” supervised by Dr. Anna Waldstein. After successfully defending her dissertation Dr. Montesi received an Engaged Anthropology Grant in 2016 to aid engaged activities on “Structural Food Nostalgia in Times of Diabetes”.
I arrived in Mexico in the aftermath of the Nochixtlán repression. In several Mexican states teachers had taken to the streets in protest of federal education reform. The government’s subsequent repressive acts were fiercest in Nochixtlán, a municipality on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. On the 19th of June, the confrontation between striking teachers and the federal police left a death toll of twelve civilians.
The education reform includes teacher evaluations aimed at selecting “good” public school teachers. Opponents argue that such evaluations allow the government to justify mass layoffs and the gradual demolishment of public education, and that they also ignore the ethno-cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity of the nation and punish teachers stronger in traditional knowledge systems than in the national, hegemonic curriculum.
It was in this atmosphere of tensions that I reached my fieldsite, San Dionisio del Mar, an Ikojts/Huave community of 3,000, located in one of the most politically unstable regions of Oaxaca, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Here, the teachers’ discontent combined with other social demands, such as the defense of the territory against aggressive industrial exploitation.
Interviewing the elderly on the epidemiological transition and social change in San Dionisio del Mar (picture by workshop participants). Anthropologist Montesi in the back observing the interview process
My Wenner-Gren workshop, which promoted reflection on the link between health, food practices and cultural identity, was designed to be participatory and collaborative, encouraging research-actions that build upon the participants’ interests and skills. In a way, this engaged workshop is consonant with the social movements in Mexico that are fostering a transformative and culturally plural kind of education.
My PhD explored the experiences of Ikojts rural men and women living with diabetes in San Dionisio. In my research, I scrutinized how Sandionisians make sense of diabetes at a personal, family and community level. I discovered that diabetes is an idiom for vulnerability, namely a manifestation of structural and ordinary violence, and a metaphor expressing compelling concerns. These concerns include changes in the local diet, the most tangible sign of a more general loss of cultural identity and cohesion.
Learning about and playing with photos (picture by workshop participants)
With my Wenner-Gren grant, I could stay in San Dionisio for a month and work with younger members of the community (high school students, aged 15-16). They documented, analyzed and produced materials on past, present, and future foodways through photographs, interviews, and videos. A holistic view of health emerged from the multiple relationships discovered between wellness, ecology and local knowledges.
The workshop was divided into four main parts:
During the first week, my colleagues — Adolfo Rebolledo (ecologist), Juan Pablo Mayorga (journalist specialized in environmental topics), and Diego Martínez (documentary maker) — and I encouraged discussion on a range of related topics: everyday diets, origin of food resources, characteristics of local and imported/processed foods, emerging diseases and the epidemiological transition, and the nature of diabetes, including its medical and social aspects.
Workshop participants present their work at the local high school
These topics were addressed through a number of activities. For example, the participants categorized their food and beverage intakes of the previous 24 hours into sets. Some chose to classify them by nutrients, others by origin, others by when eaten. All identified comida chatarra, junk food, as an independent food category, prompting us to analyze processed food labeling. As a result, the students realized how little pre-packaged food labels revealed and how privileged they were to have locally produced foods such as corn, fish, shrimp, and fruits. A territory mapping exercise followed, with workshop participants asked to draw San Dionisio del Mar and all its surroundings, and to locate its sources of food. This exercise helped us rethink the value of local food systems and the implications of food dependence on community well being. We also interviewed elders about the social, dietary and health changes they have witnessed. The students enjoyed being researchers in their community.
During the second week, they received training on the basic principles of interviewing as well as documenting through photographs and videos.
A view of San Dionisio del Mar and its salty lagoons
The third week was dedicated to research projects. One group explored the fishing techniques of poor fishermen and analyzed the unequal relationship between Ikojts fishermen and external, often Zapotec, traders. In a wonderful documentary they made, they express the hope that Ikojts fishermen will be able one day to compete more fairly.
The second group exemplified the dietary transition in a photo essay portraying an Ikojts woman, Doña Carmela, preparing supper. Diabetic, Doña Carmela told her interviewers that she is confused about processed food: “My daughter-in-law cooks Maruchan pasta often. My husband thinks it’s not good and causes cancer. I sincerely don’t know.” Her words reflect how uncertain people are about food today.
The fourth week of the workshop ended with the presentation of the students’ work at the local high school. Pupils from other classrooms and the students’ families were invited. I also shared my research results and underlined the importance of community-based initiatives that, conjugating scientific and community knowledge, craft appropriate responses to local needs. The project met with great approval, and the students’ families requested it be repeated next year. May this be the first of similar initiatives!
Attentive at the presentations
As part of my Wenner-Gren activities, and thanks to the initiative of anthropologist Citlalli López, I also helped organize an intercultural exchange between the teachers of San Dionisio del Mar and the educational community of the Intercultural University of Veracruz (UVI). This university, which offers bachelor degrees to young minority and/or disadvantaged students, is nationally recognized for its strengthening of communities’ knowledges and practices. I traveled with my friend Obdulio Muriel, an Ikojts teacher, to the UVI in Zongolica, in the state of Veracruz. Obdulio, an advocate of linguistic rights, and I have worked together on several projects.
At the UVI, we presented our work in the interrelated fields of language/culture revitalization and traditional medicine. In exchange, the UVI students and teachers, mostly Nahuatl speakers, showed us their projects on environmental and food systems conservation. We all found that our topics display interesting overlaps and agreed to continue this intercultural exchange.
Ikojts teacher Obdulio Muriel talks about his community and our work on language/culture revitalization to UVI students and professors
At the end, Obdulio said: “This experience was very useful. I feel satisfied because I was able to make public all the work that we [the school he works in] have done and that usually remains confined to our small village. Reciprocally, the people here showed us the work they are carrying out with their communities, and this can be an example we [the Ikojts] can follow.”
Just after a lively discussion on the socio-cultural aspects of diabetes at the General Hospital in Tamaulipas
These exchanges of ideas and experiences, which were helped by the Wenner-Gren grant, should have a place in academia as well as in the public health sector. To this end, I presented the core themes of my research to diverse audiences. During one presentation, given at CIESAS (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social), I met with Mexican anthropologists working on diabetes among indigenous peoples. This was a valuable opportunity to make ethnological comparisons and explore future research collaboration. With medical doctors and nurses at a public hospital in the northern state of Tamaulipas, which has one of the highest prevalence rates of diabetes in Mexico, I shared a sociocultural perspective on diabetes. The medical staff talked about its successes and failures in working with diabetes patients, and was glad to learn about a more “humanistic” approach to this metabolic disorder.
Overall, all these experiences made me realize how transformative anthropological research can be when we dare to cross spatial, cultural, and disciplinary frontiers.
Engaged Anthropology Grant: Ather Zia
A preliminary meeting in progress: Discussing the Engaged Anthropology project with the APDP (JKCCS)
Ather Zia is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2011 while a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, she received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on “Politics of Absence: Women Searching for the Disappeared in Kashmir,” supervised by Dr. Victoria Bernal. In 2016 Dr. Zia received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Exploring Strategies for a Stronger Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons in Kashmir”.
This project, building on the findings of my previous study worked on how the women-led Association of Parents of the Disappeared Persons popularly called the APDP[1] in Kashmir could overcome three challenges that pose a threat to its goals and long-term sustainability. In Kashmir, since the armed movement broke out in 1989, India has deployed massive number of armed troops. In the lethal counter-insurgency laws measures implemented by India, human rights groups claim that over 70,000 people have been killed and more than 8000 men have been forcibly disappeared in custody by the Indian army. The APDP member-activists are mainly Muslim women, including mothers and wives (called half-widows) of the disappeared men who have become tireless human rights activists, an unprecedented engagement in a conservative Muslim-dominated society. The APDP activists mobilize demonstrations, pursue court cases and collect documentation.
Lawyers and activists strategizing
On one hand the APDP has become an internationally visible movement, but on the other hand it faces three challenges that threaten its effective working towards searching for the disappeared men; 1) the legal cases pertaining to the disappeared persons filed in courts against the army and the state by the APDP activists are languishing in courts without results, 2) APDP suffers lack of funding to support its day to day activities which includes documentation, legal proceedings, creating public awareness and even salaries for the member staff [who are trained human rights activists) 3) In case of half-widow-activists, there is lack of awareness about the duration they have to wait before they can remarry. While not a direct challenge to APDP as a movement, the half-widows need support because having lost husbands who were their primary breadwinners, these women have also lost financial means and social status.
Within the purview of the engaged anthropology project as proposed I conducted a series of workshops with various sections of the host community and external resource persons to understand the breadth of the aforementioned issues and interrogate strategies through which the APDP as a organization can be made more robust and create support for its members. These workshops provided a chance to generate a dialogue between the members and other participants for creating successful legal strategies, raising funds, and supporting the organization in most crucial aspects.
APDP activists discuss life, activism, financial, and legal struggles
This engagement project aimed 1) To enable a dialogue between the APDP members and legal practitioners, scholars and activists to explore strategies for making legal procedures for enforced disappearance cases yield maximum results; (2) To generate a conversation amidst APDP members about their challenges and struggles of emotional, legal and financia nature, (3) To enable a dialogue between APDP member-activists, professional HR activists and potential donors towards exploring the possibilities for fundraising, (4) To enable a dialogue between the APDP members and religious scholars to address the issue of re-marriage for half-widows; its religious and social consequences and creating awareness.
The participants in the workshops included those that have previously and/or are currently involved with APDP, such as, mothers, half-widows and other kin-activists; APDP administrative staffers and internees; Lawyers, judicial officials, and legal activists; Religious scholars and social activists.
Workshop 1: Legal Workshop – Rethinking, and Strategizing Human Rights Cases
Exchanging ideas and recording details
This workshop proved to be a significant milestone in rethinking and strategizing APDP’s legal struggles. The Wenner Gren Engaged anthropology project was pivotal in generating a legal network; gathering relevant participants, and creating discussion.
Workshop 2 & 3: Sustaining solidarity and the Future of APDP
The conversation between the activists was cathartic and eye opening. This meeting opened floodgates of emotion and concerns by asking the members “now what from here on?” The activists shared their concerns and challenges both concerning their private and public activism. The discussion included talking about topics: like sustaining solidarity; reinforcing the APDP efforts; funding for APDP; help for families; half-widows; engaging the next generation with APDP and future challenges. A few initiatives were discussed aiming at alleviating some financial challenges of the activists and the organization.
Workshop 4: Future of Half-widows: Remarriage or Property Rights?
Discussing Legal Challenges and Struggles
One of the most important findings of this workshop was that remarriage is not a priority for the half-widows but in the last 30 years acquiring property rights has emerged as a their primary concern. Concerning remarriage as per the Indian law, half-widows are not recognized as widows until seven years after the disappearance; in the interim, a half-widow cannot remarry or qualify for any government welfare plans. To counter the rising social problems of half-widows, Islamic scholars in Kashmir have shortened the duration of time until remarriage to four years. The time duration, either four or seven years, implies the possibility of return, and the men are technically considered not dead. Most half-widow-activists maintained a strong hope that their husbands will return and have not remarried. This is supported by a survey of half-widows, which records that about 91% of the half-widows refused to remarry. Most participants in the workshop agreed that attaining property rights was where they required support. The JKCCS/APDP in collaboration with designated lawyers and Islamic scholars plans to devise legal and religious strategies to solve the property rights issues of the hal-widows.
Property Rights not remarriage an issue for Half-widows
Fieldwork Highlights
Guest contributor for ASAP – Association for the Anthropology of Policy
The PI was invited to be a Guest Contributor from the field and post to the instagram website of Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP). The PI has tweeted all the postings to the Wenner Gren twitter account, which was duly acknowledged. The postings with images are available on the link provided. Please see from Kashmir Post 1 through 15.
[1] This project was specifically conducted with APDP (Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society). A similar project is planned in future with my other host community APDP (headed by Parveen Ahangar).
Engaged Anthropology Grant: Doc Billingsley
The author describing the research that preceded the report, with friend Jaime García (L) who served as MC and organizer
Doc Billingsley is a member of the faculty in the Department of Modern Languages, Anthropology, and Geography at Southeast Missouri State University. In 2010, while a doctoral candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, he received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on “Networks of Maya Knowledge Production: An Ethnography of Memory in Practice,” supervised by Dr. Bret Gustafson. In 2015, he was awarded an Engaged Anthropology Grant, which allowed him to return to several of the key communities who participated in his research in Guatemala, sharing the results of his work in a bilingual Spanish-K’iche’ report.
In the five years since I completed my dissertation research, Guatemalan civil society has experienced a number of watershed events: from the short-lived conviction of former President Ríos Montt for genocide, to the election and eventual imprisonment of President Perez Molina after tens of thousands of citizens took up the call for an end to impunity. As I’ve observed these events unfolding and discussed their significance with my Guatemalan friends, I’ve been continually reminded that the questions I set out to study five years ago remain important for understanding the context of these democratic transformations: What is historical memory? How are memory activists expanding the Guatemalan national narrative to include more perspectives—including the experiences of Maya communities who have suffered the greatest burdens of state-inflicted violence? And what are the wider social and political consequences of this democratization of knowledge production?
Copies of the report lay ready for participants before the Cantel presentation
Thanks to the support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a Fulbright-Hays award, I was able to live in Guatemala during 2010-2011, working alongside the members of several influential Maya intellectual organizations that play a role in linguistic and cultural activism. I also became familiar with the groups of activists—primarily young, urban, and Ladino—who draw on historical memory as an organizing theme and objective in their diverse public events, from marches and graffiti campaigns to film festivals and teach-ins. My research gradually shifted to examine the relationship between the projects of these two public spheres—Maya intellectuals and memory activists—and the broader question of how knowledge production can serve to create, shape, and unite publics. I adopted an interviewing method for collecting historical memories from my participants. As I coded and compared narratives from participants of different linguistic communities, age groups, and educational and class backgrounds, I was struck by how much of their knowledge about the past shared common features, patterns, and metanarrative characteristics—a common “gist” to the story of their nation’s past. I also noted that the vision of history presented by my friends and participants differs greatly from the perspectives enshrined in Guatemala’s museums, monuments, and textbooks. I began to imagine the possibilities for returning my findings to the communities who originally shared their experiences, showing them how much they have in common with each other and how their shared perspective may offer an alternative to the stale, racist, status quo version of Guatemalan history.
With the support of an Engaged Anthropology Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, I returned to Guatemala in June and July of 2016 to begin this new, collaborative phase in my research. The primary objective I set out in imagining this project was to share some of my ideas about the common features of Maya historical memory, combined with excerpts of the original interviews and some discussion of the theories and methods that informed my work. My preferred means of communicating this information was to prepare a multi-lingual written report, which could be shared and discussed following the model of a book presentation. Based on my earlier work with Editorial Cholsamaj, I knew that published materials featuring Mayan languages or incorporating indigenous forms of knowledge are regarded as symbolically charged indicators of the rising epistemic authority of indigenous communities. That is, regardless of the specific contents of a given book or whether the possessor has even “consumed” the literature, the very existence of the object is recognized as a sign of a revolutionary shift in access to education, citizenship, and human rights. The public debut of printed materials also provides valuable opportunities for members of the public to participate in lively intellectual discussions about topics of interest. These events typically devote at least half of the allotted time to allow questions from the audience—a stark departure from the paltry few minutes typically reserved after a similar talk in the U.S academy. The support provided by the Engaged Anthropology Grant, combined with the editorial assistance and goodwill of my friends at Editorial Cholsamaj, led to the just-in-time production of a visually appealing, short report containing a few key ideas from my dissertation, translated into Spanish and K’iche’. In addition to providing the impetus for gathering in workshops, these printed reports allowed me to leave behind a small yet tangible reminder of each community’s participation in the research and discussion.
Surprises, as Expected
Discussing the research topic with the members of Editorial Cholsamaj, with reports still warm from the printers
In the course of preparing and carrying out this engagement project, I experienced several interruptions, chance encounters, and logistical challenges. I came to think of these hiccups as “expected surprises”—I knew there would be difficulties as well as serendipitous discoveries, based on past experiences and the wise council of predecessors—Micha Rahder’s post on this very blog a year ago was especially enlightening. Consequently, I tried whenever possible to allow for flexibility in planning, expecting surprises to come along and change my plans—sometimes for the better. Indeed, it felt like every scheduled event was tentative, sometimes right up until its conclusion.
Some of the surprises were known to me in advance, but their full impact was only registered once I was in situ and chatting face-to-face with old friends. Most significant for the project was the news that all of my colleagues in one organization had been dismissed by the newly-elected president of that organization—a move that is fairly typical in state politics, but a new feature in organizations associated with the Maya movements. The economic hardships caused by their sudden lack of employment was an unwelcome sight; the lingering tension between them and the new representatives of their organization was also a complication for my plans. Fortunately, I was able to draw on another NGO in the community to serve as the host for the local workshop—a decision which led to a more diverse audience, in the end.
Other surprises crept up at the last moment, including such happy occasions as one of my friends—and the principal organizer of one of the workshops—going into labor on the same morning we were scheduled to meet. Nonetheless, her fellow teachers showed up in force and participated in the largest and most interactive of the workshops, in the K’iche’ town of Cantel.
Some surprises were the result of technical issues common to our digital age. One of the four workshops was ultimately postponed until next summer, due to simple miscommunication involving email. The preparation of the report was delayed at several points by missing drafts and spotty data coverage, and the task of coordinating translations from multiple assistants required more face-to-face communication—and cross-country bus travel—than I had anticipated. In the end, the three workshops were conducted in a three-day blitz near the end of my trip—not the most restful approach, but nonetheless a satisfyingly climactic and productive end to the trip.
Articulating historical memory: “Power,” “patterns,” and “databases”
A view of the cover of the report printed by Editorial Cholsamaj
One of my goals in this project was to extend discussions of anthropological topics—especially collective or historical memory—to broader audiences, and to evaluate and improve my understanding of the local interpretations of his concept. I was pleasantly reassured that memoria histórica remains a peculiarly salient and widespread topic of interest in Guatemala. The discussions that followed my presentation at each workshop were enormously valuable for me as a researcher, and many participants told me afterward that they appreciated the opportunity to gather and discuss these topics from a thoughtful perspective.
There were three comments in particular that immediately grabbed my attention, each offering a definition of historical memory and its relevance to current events. For one participant, the community of Cantel has a unique relationship with history, in that Cantelenses have on multiple occasions fought back against the status quo or dictates from the state; they have the power to respond as a people, and “Historical memory gives us this power.” Another noted that the contents of Guatemala’s past, as experienced by indigenous communities, are shaped by “patterns of violence and racism” that continue up to today. Another commented on the utility of my project itself, referring to the printed report and our gathering to discuss the topic as a process of transforming historical memory into a “database,” “when it’s shared like now, and written down.”
The Engaged Anthropology Grant allowed me to experiment with new methods of research that are more accessible and collaborative, and ultimately more meaningful for everyone involved. I view this past summer’s project as the pilot for a new, more engaged methodology going forward—I’ve already begun making plans for additional workshops next summer. And with the benefit of first-hand experience, I hope to be better prepared for any more expected surprises that come my way.
Engaged Anthropology Grant: Carina Heckert
Preparing for the workshop for civil society organizations
Carina Heckert is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. In 2013 she received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on “Gender Relations, Illness Experiences, and HIV/AIDS Care in Santa Cruz, Bolivia,” supervised by Dr. Nia Parson. In 2015 she received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Improving Experiences of Care for People Living with HIV/AIDS in Santa Cruz, Bolivia”.
From 2013-2014, while a Ph.D. candidate at Southern Methodist University, I conducted fieldwork supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for the project “Gender Relations, Illness Experiences, and HIV Care in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.” In the summer of 2016, a Wenner-Gren Engaged Anthropology Grant gave me the opportunity to return to Bolivia for one month to host a workshop series titled “Improving the Quality of Life for People Living with HIV.” This series included activities with public health officials, people living with HIV, and representatives from civil society organizations. The workshops involved a presentation of my research findings alongside room for debate and discussion about how to improve experiences of care for people with HIV. The series culminated in a roundtable forum that brought together various local stakeholders as a means to foster dialogue among these different groups.
My dissertation fieldwork explored the ways that global health, national, and local policies intersect to shape the context of care for HIV and how individuals experience various forms of care. As I began my research, an AIDS funding crisis began to emerge as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria froze Bolivia’s active grants. The Global Fund had been funding nearly 80% of HIV-related activities at the time. The freezing of funds came after the Ministry of Health announced that they would takeover the management of Global Fund grants, which involved a violation of the terms of their grant agreement. The Ministry of Health’s actions were in part motivated by the national government’s agenda of moving away from vertical, disease-specific initiatives, which it sees as a vestige of the neoliberal era. Widespread shifts under the political party in power, MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo/Movement toward Socialism), include efforts to implement a single-payer universal healthcare model, viewing NGOs and international aid efforts as undermining this larger goal. Subsequently, actions on the part of the national government have resulted in a loss of funds from major donors that were financing HIV programs. However, the national and local governments are far from achieving a universal healthcare system and have yet to commit sufficient funding to the maintenance of HIV programs that had been financed by international organizations.
Beginning the presentation aspect of the workshop with people living with HIV
At the time of my research, there was substantial anxiety over the state of HIV care in Bolivia, especially among people living with HIV. Upon returning to Bolivia, I discovered that this anxiety, and the effects of it, had become significantly worse. While the Ministry of Health had been able to meet the requirements to have their grants from the Global Fund reinstated, their most recent grant agreement had come to an end. While the Country Coordinating Mechanism, an invention of the Global Fund that involves a group of local stakeholders, was in the process of developing grant proposals for the next funding cycle, there was little optimism and a general sense that Bolivia would receive insufficient funding to continue with the level of support for HIV programs that had existed in the past. Further, as the Country Coordinating Mechanism awaits a decision, there is no money flowing in from the Global Fund.
When I returned to Bolivia during this halt in Global Fund support alongside the loss of funds from other international financers, organizations that I had worked with in the past were in a state of disarray. The most well known HIV-related NGO in Bolivia had gone from a staff of roughly 10 to operating with a staff of two people, who were doing a majority of their work without pay. To continue operating weekly support group sessions, they had resorted to holding weekly raffles where support group participants all purchased raffle tickets upon their arrival. The Ministry of Health HIV clinic continued to have a steady stock of first-line ARVs that are now being purchased by the national government, but several staff positions have been terminated, second and third-line ARVs are no longer available, and the provision of care for opportunistic infections has been dramatically reduced. Within this context, there was substantial interest in my workshop series. Some people saw potential to use my research findings in grant proposals and as a way to support their demands for a more comprehensive response to HIV from the national and regional governments.
A group of women discussing how to improve access to ARVs during the second workshop
I tailored the first workshop toward the concerns of civil society organizations, many of which are struggling to keep their doors open and have had to significantly scale back their programs due to insufficient funding. Within this group of 10 participants, there was significant interest in discussing how my research could be applied to improve services that still exist and how my data could be used for the justification of reinstating programs that had been cut. The second workshop, geared toward people living with HIV, had 25 participants. In this workshop, I only dedicated a short amount of time to presenting my research, since much of what I had to say was intuitive to this group, whose experiences I had learned so much from. Instead, I used a majority of the time during this workshop to conduct a group work activity aimed at generating points for debate for the upcoming roundtable forum. I had initially planned to also hold a third workshop for public health officials, but this turned out to be far more complicated than I had anticipated. A formal invitation is necessary for employees in the public health system to receive authorization to participate in such events during work hours. I had anticipated this and had put together formal invitations to distribute. However, as I began to speak with public health officials about my plans, I realized that many viewed a workshop and a roundtable on the same issue as duplicate events and would only commit to one of the two events. Since I viewed the roundtable as the more important of the two events, I dropped plans for a third workshop to ensure participation from public health officials in the roundtable. In lieu of the third workshop, I had several small group and one-on-one meetings with the public health officials who were eager to discuss my research with me.
At the end of my month in Santa Cruz, I hosted a roundtable forum where I served as the moderator for a panel consisting of people living with HIV, the director of the regional HIV program, and representatives from civil society organizations. While the event was open to the public, primarily public health officials and representatives from civil society organizations were in the audience. Unfortunately, to accommodate the schedules of these audience members, I had to have the roundtable in the morning when fewer people with HIV could attend due to work conflicts. However, I was able to use the ideas generated in the activity from the second workshop as a way of bringing in the perspectives of people with HIV. The roundtable discussion focused heavily on how different parties could contribute to improving the quality of life of people living with HIV in Bolivia in the midst of cuts to programs. The aspect of the roundtable that I found most important was the opportunity for panel members with HIV to share their perspectives with public health officials who are very often disconnected from the everyday realities of people with HIV.
Roundtable panelists and a few of the audience members
I found that this workshop series was an effective means for sharing the results from my research in a meaningful way. Further, the roundtable brought together different groups who have a common interest in improving the lives of people with HIV, but who have different perspectives in how to achieve this. I do have to admit that organizing the workshops turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated. Just the delivery of invitations to the roundtable took days of bus rides across the city. While I could have delegated this task to a research assistant, I decided this was a good way to touch base with people I had established relationships with during fieldwork. In many cases, the delivery of an invitation turned into a lengthy conversation. In one case, it turned into a several hours long event that involved me accompanying a doctor on rounds to check on patients in the hospital.
While I feel like my efforts had some positive effects, I also cannot help but feel impotent to some extent as the broader structural issues that perpetuate AIDS deaths in Bolivia remain unchanged. However, being an engaged anthropologist requires a best effort to make research accessible and relevant, even if it is an imperfect endeavor.
Engaged Anthropology Grant: Joshua Walker
December 7, 2016 MarkREngaged Anthropology Grant
University and high school students follow discussion.
While a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Joshua Walker received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant in 2009 to aid research on “Crisis or Reconstruction? Street Children and Diamond Miners in Mbujimayi, Democratic Republic of Congo,” supervised by Dr. Jean Comaroff. In 2015 Dr. Walker received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Post-Extractive Futures: Living Without and Beyond Diamonds”.
University of Mbujimayi Rector Tumba Ghislain Disashi officially opens the conference. To his left is conference participant Academic General-Secretary Tshula Kabongo.
Between October 21-23, 2015, Dr. Joshua Walker and Professor Emmanuel Kambaja Musampa of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and the University of Mbujimayi (Democratic Republic of Congo), respectively, co-organized a conference at the University of Mbujimayi. The conference theme was based on Dr. Walker’s Wenner-Gren funded doctoral dissertation research. It was entitled: “Post-Extractive Futures: Living Without and Beyond Diamonds in Mbujimayi.” This constituted an opportunity for local academics from a variety of disciplines (including anthropology, geography, geology, history, linguistics, and sociology) to meditate on the past, present, and future of the city of Mbujimayi in relation to the diamond industry.
The exchanges included both formal conference papers given by academics as well as an intervention by two former diggers, known as creuseurs in French. It was an occasion for academics, as well as university students and others, to reflect on the role and impact of diamond mining on the city and its environs. Mornings included formal academic papers and question and answer sessions; afternoons were largely devoted workshops where conference participants and attendees (most of whom were university students) reflected on different aspects of the morning’s theme.
Professor Adrien Munyoka consults with student Patrick Kambaja on the program.
Following the conference, the organizers produced a report (in French) that includes an introduction co-authored by Dr. Walker and Professor Kambaja; the conference abstract; the conference program; the written texts of the papers presented; and a conclusion written by Professor Kambaja. The latter includes a series of recommendations and reflections concerning the relationship between the diamond industry and the city. It proposes, among other things, the creation of a diamond museum; and the creation of a chair at the university in natural resource studies. It also notes some of the themes of the various papers: the need to diversify the local economy; the need to convert former mining sites into ecologically sustainable lands; and the need to promote other forms of income generation that have arisen since the decline of the artisanal and industrial diamond economies.
The report has been distributed to local academic institutions, government offices, and non-governmental organizations in Mbujimayi. It has also been made available online here. Finally, Professor Kambaja also did an interview in French and Cilubà concerning both Dr. Walker’s dissertation research as well as the theme of the conference and its outcome that was broadcast on multiple local radio stations over a period of several days.
University students follow discussion and debate.
In addition to this principal activity, two others were undertaken: Dr. Walker addressed a group of adult literacy learners and a church group in Cilubà on the questions surrounding the conference theme: namely, what have been the effects of the industrial and artisanal diamond mining industry on the city of Mbujimayi, and how citizens can begin to imagine and create a collective future outside and beyond diamonds.
Chef de travaux Banoka Nsona presents her paper. To her left are conference participants Tshibanza Monji and Joshua Walker.
Finally, Dr. Walker, along with Professor Kambaja and Professor Munyoka (one of the academics who presented at the conference) held two field workshops in mining villages near Mbujimayi: Kabwe and Bakwa Tshimuna. These two localities have both historically depended on artisanal diamond mining in the postcolonial period. Under the auspices of the Catholic church, we gathered small focus groups of 10 people in each place, with a mixture of men and women, young and old. The purpose of these workshops was to both inform members of communities surrounding the city about the ideas that had been presented at the conference, as well as to solicit their own reflections. The most important theme that arose in these conversations was that while a return to agriculture may be a way to mitigate the effects of the decline of the diamond economy, agriculture is no panacea. There is difficulty in finding arable land, for example. There is also the question of the scale at which agriculture can be conducted: a return to subsistence agriculture will not necessarily be useful in promoting a general reduction in poverty. Agriculture at a larger scale will require investment and coordination with the local and provincial authorities.
Prof. Emannuel Kambaja (MP3))
Engaged Anthropology Grant: Dolly Kikon
Bihu dancers from Gelekey with a Naga Dobashi from Anaki C Village (Photo by Dolly Kikon)
While a doctoral student at Standford University Dolly Kikon received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant in 2009 to aid research on “Blurred Borders: Unsettling the Hill/Valley Divide in Northeast India,” supervised by Dr. James G. Ferguson. In 2015 Dr. Kikon received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “A Foothill Sanrhutav: Sharing Experiences of Women Traders in Northeast India”.
I successfully completed the foothill community gathering and feast on July 13. As I had submitted in the proposal, I was able to complete the key proposed goals: (a) present my research to the host communities; (b) provide a forum for the communities to gather and share their experiences and establish mentoring networks; (c) invite key actors of different indigenous communities such as village headmen, student associations, coal traders, teachers, border peace committees, and householders from Naga and Assamese villages to discuss the plight of women traders, and broadly gender relations among foothill communities. Due to the monsoon and unprecedented floods across Northeast India, several landslides had washed away roads and bridges. This prevented certain Naga villages situated in the uplands to attend the meeting. Given the existing challenges, I chose Gelekey, a small town in the foothill border of Assam and Nagaland as the venue of the community meeting and feast. The border town of Gelekey town (in Sibsagar district of Assam) shares its boundary with the districts of Longleng and Mokokchung (in Nagaland). Thus, Ahom, Assamese, Phom, and Ao villages attended the community gathering and shared their experiences and hardships of living in the militarized landscape.
Women from Gelekey at the gathering (Photo by Dolly Kikon)
The gathering was held at the Adarsha Bidyapith School in Gelekey town. The location of the meeting was both symbolic and strategic. Gelekey is not only an important coal-trading hub and oil exploration site, but also attracts numerous Naga villages from the uplands to the Atkhel haat, a weekly market that takes place in the outskirt of the town. Although the electricity was erratic, I was able to make a power point presentation and shared my experience about doing an ethnographic work among the host communities in the Assam-Nagaland border. Drawing from my field notes and the publications I have brought out (Anthropology News, Economic and Political Weekly, South Asia: Journal of South Asia), I explained my ethnographic journey at the gathering. During the community interaction session, communities underlined the anxieties of living in the foothills. They reiterated my ethnographic notes that I had connected between 2006-2011 about the place that witnessed a heightened presence of armed forces. This was due to the extractive resource activities like oil explorations, tea plantations, and coalmines across the foothill border of Assam and Nagaland. In addition, the foothills, like other parts of Northeast India, were under the jurisdiction on an extra-constitutional regulation known as the Disturbed Area Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958). Movement of goods and people in the militarized foothills, as the community sharing revealed, immensely highlighted the importance of the Engaged Anthropology Grant that helped communities to come together and share their reflections and experiences. A central point of the community gathering and feast was to discuss the experiences of women traders from Nagaland in the foothill markets known as haats. Sharing my field notes and interviews of several women traders I had collected, I explained how these weekly markets represented the dynamic, multifaceted, and tangled lives of the residents of the villages in the foothills of Assam and Nagaland.
Ahom Women at the community feast (Photo by Dolly Kikon)
Women traders from Anaki C village shared their thoughts. Ms. Emer Phom, the president of the Phom women’s collective known as the Bedestha Group said that they had to go down to Assam for their basic needs like medicine, food, and clothing. Speaking at the research interaction, Mr. Shingnyu Phom, member of the Border Peace Committee from Yonglok village appealed to the gathering to maintain peace in the border areas and the importance of engaging in meaningful community dialogue. Adding to the conversations about peace, Mr. Imkong Phom, the village headman from Anaki C village thanked the gathering for the conversations and stressed the importance of understanding and respecting each others history. Mrs Kunti Borah Gogoi, an Ahom educationist from Gelekey reiterated the importance of maintaining the people to people dialogue and connection in the border area. She said that such communities gathering were important events to bring together the Naga people and the Ahom community to reaffirm their friendship and kinship as well. As a gesture of solidarity and love, she presented all the Naga guests with a phulon gamusa (a traditional Assamese scarf). Ms. Rashmi Saikia and Mr. Promud Monuranjan sang Nagamese, Assamese, and Hindi songs for the audience, and a group of mainas (little children) performed a Jhumur dance to conclude the meeting on a musical note. After the interaction, the guests were invited to a community feast.
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Responding to the Message of Peace
Posted on May 25, 2017 by Dr. Michael A. Marinelli, Ed.D, '76
When I was in grade school, I looked forward to May, not because it was the end of the school year – though that was exciting – but because it was the month of the Blessed Mother (and my birthday!) Every May, I would set up a “May Altar” in my bedroom. I really don’t know if that concept even relates to this generation of young people. I just recall that devotions to the Blessed Mother were very special in my family and in my school community as I was growing up. I attended Saint Helena Parish School staffed by the Sisters of Saint Joseph. And each week in the spring, we would practice the hymns and format for the May Procession that took place in the parish church. It was simply magnificent! As students, we would process around the block and into church as we sang hymns to Mary. There was the crowning of the Blessed Mother statue in the church, followed by Benediction.
On May 13, 2017, the Vatican canonized Jacinta and Francisco Marto, two of the three children who saw the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary six times between May 13, 1917, and Oct. 13, 1917 at Fatima. They died in the influenza epidemic during 1918-1919. Lucia Santos, who was their cousin and whose beatification process began in 2008, died in 2005 at the age of 97. The vision told the children three “secrets,” and according to the Vatican website, they are described as: “The first and second parts of the ‘secret’ . . . refer especially to the frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism. . . The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks of us: ‘If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, etc.’. “
Saint Norbert, when he established his first community of Norbertines at Premontre, France, incorporated a special devotion to Mary, and since that time, all of the churches or communities of the Norbertine Order around the world are dedicated to the Blessed Mother. Archmere is dedicated to the patronage of Mary of the Immaculate Conception.
So why are there many different titles for Mary? Wasn’t she just one person? It is true that Mary was singularly the Mother of Jesus, but she has been given a variety of titles over the centuries that are dogmatic, poetic, or allegorical in nature. Additionally, more titles of Mary are found in religious art. All of these are reflections of the ways in which Mary has revealed herself to us, delivering messages of peace, love, and devotion to her Son, Jesus.
The Blessed Mother is the quintessential figure of motherhood in the Catholic Church and in other Christian faiths. A life of sacrifice completely dedicated to God’s will and to her Son’s ministry, she said, “Yes,” to a plan that included her holding the lifeless body of her son after he was crucified. She also had to “let go” of her Son so that he could fulfill his life’s plan, and potentially hear words that may have been difficult to understand or emotionally accept:
“Someone told Him, “Look, Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to You.” But Jesus replied, “Who is My mother, and who are My brothers?” Pointing to His disciples, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers.…” (Matthew 12:48)
The Blessed Mother is a powerful role model for parents. At this time of year, we contemplate our seniors graduating and leaving “the home nest” to go on to college. Being with family pretty much every day, students will become more independent, finding their way in new academic communities and creating new social circles. Just as Mary, with her husband, Joseph, provided guidance and support for Jesus through his formative years so that he would be ready to take on his public ministry later in life, parents have created the foundations for their sons and daughters to take the next steps in their lives.
As we graduate the members of the Class of 2017, let us pray for them through the intercession of Mary, our Blessed Mother. May they be inspired to challenge themselves academically, enrich themselves with new friendships, and strengthen themselves through prayer. Our graduates have the capacity to make change in the world, and to respond to the messages of peace delivered by Mary under her many titles.
Tags: archmere academy, blessed mother mary, catholic high school, class of 2017, fatima, headmaster, influenza epidemic, jacinta and francisco marto, Lucia Santos, matthew 12:48, norbertine, premontre, russia, second world war, vatican
Posted on October 13, 2016 by Dr. Michael A. Marinelli, Ed.D, '76
The Class of 2016 unveils their class gift, “The Great Auk”
Although the weather was rainy for Homecoming Day festivities, the crowds were enthusiastic and significant in size to celebrate well the Archmere spirit. One of my favorite roles as Headmaster is to serve and host and act as a tour guide to guests visiting the campus. It is particularly exciting to lead a tour with fellow alumni who have not been to the campus in a number of years. One can usually tell who they are. For example, last year, I watched an alumnus in his car negotiate the pedestrian walkway in front of the Science Center, looking bewildered because there was no parking lot in the center of campus – only a grassy quad! This year, graduates were impressed by the renovations to Saint Norbert Hall. Although they could no longer visit “their locker,” they had fun remembering classes in a very similar classroom footprint. The added student lounges, study rooms, and renovated library and learning commons generated good discussion around how the style of learning has evolved over the years.
Even though alumni noted with pride and approval the many changes on campus, I believe that the sense of community and belonging that they remembered still exists, and our current students are having a similar experience. After Homecoming weekend, I invited the members of the Student Council to meet with me over lunch to discuss their views about the school. Their comments were positive, hopeful, and inspiring. One student asked how the senior class might help with the current fund raising effort to underwrite the renovations to Saint Norbert Hall. Another student talked about strategies that help measure the school spirit of the students by the number of extra-curricular events they attend. Our students want to be engaged and partner with teachers and administrators in making the Academy the best it can be.
Most of us have had positive experiences in our childhood homes, and returning home, whether to the physical place or to be with the ones who love us and know us best, is usually a heartwarming experience. Archmere is like home to many people on many levels – from alumni who used to board at the Academy in the days when there was a boarding program, to the members of the Class of 2016 who gathered excitedly to unveil the bronze statue of The Great Auk, a project they underwrote with their five-year class pledge. The fact that Archmere was founded in the home originally built by John and Helena Raskbob for their 13 children also contributes to the special feeling that is Archmere. As Mrs. Raskob wrote in the conclusion of her Raskob-Green Record Book, “And so ‘Archmere’ now is a beautiful dream come true. But the greatest charm, aside from the voices of the children, is the homelike spirit that has been fostered within its walls. I value the delicious home feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.” I hope that Archmere may always be a place for students, alumni and their families to feel “at home.”
Michael A. Marinelli, Ed.D. ‘76
Tags: archmere academy, catholic high school, dr. michael a. marinelli, effective leader, freden germany, headmaster, helena raskob, holy roman emperor, home, homecoming, leader, norbertine, premontre, saint norbert, science center, servant leadership, serve, the raskob-green record book
Give of Your Hands to Serve
Posted on September 8, 2016 by Dr. Michael A. Marinelli, Ed.D, '76
On Tuesday, September 6, 2016, we held our traditional Installation Ceremony for the newly elected Student Council officers. The entire student body, faculty, and administration participated in a prayer service during the morning assembly period. The first reading was taken from the writings of a Norbertine priest, Father Alphonsus van den Huck, O. Praem., about the virtues of Saint Norbert. The second reading was taken from Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus tells his followers that the “the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” (22:24-27)
In preparing my remarks for the ceremony, two thoughts came to mind. First, I considered Saint Norbert’s conversion experience, described as a very dramatic moment when he was on his horse on the way to Freden, Germany. He was caught in a bad storm, and a bolt of lightening frightened his horse, throwing him to the ground unconscious. As he awoke, he heard a voice saying, “Turn away from evil and do good.” He decided to spend time in private prayer in a nearby abbey, and for three years after, became an itinerant preacher, giving up his possessions and his nobility status. It was only after three years of discernment that Norbert founded a new community of religious and laymen and women in a forest clearing in Premontre, France. In 1120, the Premonstratentian Order was born.
I commented to the students that Norbert was a leader before and after his conversion experience, but I suggested that the kinds of leadership he demonstrated in each of these periods of his life were different. As he grew up as part of the nobility of the time, he was given opportunities to be educated and have a position in the Catholic Church of the day. Because of his family’s noble status, his talents, and personal gifts, he served in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor and was a leader in developing liturgical traditions and celebrations. He had positional power in the Emperor’s Court. However, it was only after his conversion experience that Norbert’s leadership deepened and became even more effective, for he not only had the education, skills, and talents, including persuasive oration, that he developed in his youth, but he also was passionate about his life’s work – a vision of reforming the Church by creating a new community that would be inclusive and true to the Gospel – a Gospel that preaches love of God and service to others, especially the poor. Norbert recognized that the servant-leader model, demonstrated by Christ himself, was more powerful than any positional or man-made authority could give.
I challenged our students to consider two things: first, to be servant-leaders, and to understand that it involves using their talents to build community with each other, and being passionate about what they are learning and doing. Second, to be effective leaders, carefully choose what they say and do. Jesus, before or after he preached or performed acts of healing, often went off to pray alone. Norbert, after he experienced a moment of enlightenment and conversion, spent time in an abbey in prayer, and continued to discern his purpose in life for three years, while he preached from town to town. In our highly technical world, it is so easy for us to send a quick electronic message or photo without thinking or as a reaction to a strong emotion. A truly effective servant-leader pauses, thinks, and prays about the appropriateness of that message or photo, and how it might affect others, including their relationship to others.
We have an impressive group of young people at Archmere Academy. I am excited to begin another school year with them as we lead and learn together, ever shaping our school to be a creative, welcoming, and inclusive community in the spirit of Saint Norbert.
Tags: archmere academy, catholic high school, dr. michael a. marinelli, effective leader, freden germany, headmaster, holy roman emperor, leader, norbertine, premontre, saint norbert, servant leadership, serve
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Researchers develop new approach for studying deadly brain cancer
Human glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most common, aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer, is notoriously difficult to study. Scientists have traditionally studied cancer cells in petri dishes, which have none of the properties of the brain tissues in which these cancers grow, or in expensive animal models.
U. of I. chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Brendan Harley, right, and postdoctoral researcher Sara Pedron found a way to adjust the malignancy of brain cancer cells in a newly developed polymer gel that mimics conditions in the brain. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
Now a team of engineers has developed a three-dimensional hydrogel that more closely mimics conditions in the brain. In a paper in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers describe the new material and their approach, which allows them to selectively tune up or down the malignancy of the cancer cells they study.
The new hydrogel is more versatile than other 3-D gels used for growing glioma (brain cancer) cells in part because it allows researchers to change individual parameters – the gel’s stiffness, for example, or the presence of molecular signals that can influence cancer growth – while minimally altering its other characteristics, such as porosity.
Being able to adjust these traits individually will help researchers tease out important features associated with the initial growth of a tumor as well as its response to clinical therapies, said University of Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Brendan Harley, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Sara Pedron and undergraduate student Eftalda Becka. Harley is an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.
The researchers found that they could increase or decrease the malignancy of glioma cells in their hydrogel simply by adding hyaluronic acid, a naturally occurring carbohydrate found in many tissues, especially the brain.
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a key component of the extracellular matrix that provides structural and chemical support to cells throughout the body. HA contributes to cell proliferation and cell migration, and local changes in HA levels have been implicated in tumor growth.
“Hyaluronic acid is one of the major building blocks in the brain,” Harley said. “The structure of a newly forming brain tumor has some of this HA within it, but there’s also a lot of the HA in the brain surrounding the tumor.”
Previous studies have used hydrogels made out of nothing but hyaluronic acid to study gliomas, Harley said. “The problem there is that HA is structurally not very strong.” It also is difficult to adjust the amount of HA that the glioma cells are exposed to if their environment is 100 percent HA, he said.
In the new study, Pedron observed how glioma cells behaved in two different hydrogels – one based on methacrylated gelatin (GelMA) and the other using a more conventional polyethylene glycol (PEG) biomaterial. These two materials vary in one important trait: GelMA is a naturally derived material that contains adhesive sites that allow cells to latch onto it; synthetic PEG does not.
“The purpose of having these two systems was to isolate the effect of HA on glioma cells,” Pedron said. If changing HA levels produced different effects in different gels, that would indicate that the gels were contributing to those effects, she said.
Instead, Harley and Pedron found that additions of HA to glioma cells had “very similar” effects in both materials. Adding too little or too much HA led to reduced malignancy, while incorporating just enough HA led to significantly enhanced malignancy. This held true for multiple types of glioblastoma multiforme cells. This suggests that “it’s the HA itself that is likely the cause for this malignant change,” Harley said.
“If you have a material that allows you to selectively tune up or down malignancy, that will allow you to ask lots of questions about treatment methods for more malignant or less malignant forms of glioma. It also will allow scientists to try to get a response that’s closer to what you see in the body,” he said.
“If you talk to pathologists, they’ll say a biomaterial will never allow you to grow a full brain tumor, which is probably true,” Harley said. “But it’s realistic to think that a well-designed biomaterial will allow you to study aspects of glioma growth and treatment in a way that’s much richer than simply looking in a petri dish and much more accessible than trying to study tumor development within the brain itself.”
The U. of I. department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, the Institute for Genomic Biology and the Campus Research Board supported this research.
Writer: Diana Yates, Life Sciences Editor, University of Illinois News Bureau
The paper, “Regulation of Glioma Cell Phenotype in 3D Matrices by Hyaluronic Acid,” is available online.
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Not Coming To A Theater Near You
by Jason
Hollywood has plundered its TV catalog for feature film fodder for so long, it’s getting harder to think of older shows that haven’t been put onto celluloid. Still, there are a few no-shows that do stand out, that make you wonder, “Why didn’t the studio chiefs put this property onto the big screen?”
I compiled my own personal list of surprises that stayed on the small screen, VHS, and DVD, and didn’t make that leap. Some could have been made when the show was still on the air and featured the TV cast, while others more likely would have been rebooted with a new cast. In ascending order of surprise, I give you my list of TV shows that I’m surprised never got made into movies.
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: Okay, I’m not actually surprised there wasn’t a Lois and Clark movie. Warners was obviously trying to reboot its Superman film franchise and any resulting movie would carry the Superman moniker and not be related to an existing TV show. At the time, however, the studio had picked Nicolas Cage to be Supes for its proposed Superman Reborn/Lives flick that ultimately never got made, which left a lot of people (myself included) wondering what the producers were thinking. At one point I wondered why they didn’t just port over Dean Cain, since he obviously looked the part and for five seasons played the part to no great complaint. It seemed like Warner Bros. didn’t have a clue how to properly cast Superman, so it seemed weird why they didn’t just go with a pretty good choice right under their nose. And painful memories of Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane in Superman Returns makes me retroactively pine for Teri Hatcher to have joined Cain on the big screen.
Kung Fu: This was a popular show in the early 70s and helped popularize kung fu action for American audiences. Given the rise of Asian martial arts movie stars and Hong Kong-style fight choreography in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it’s surprising Hollywood hasn’t rebooted this show for a feature film.
Max Headroom: Most people that grew up in the 80s remember Matt Frewer’s well-dressed A.I. with an occasional stutter (though I don’t know if anyone remembers the actual plot of the show Max was spawned from). The actual show never did better than cult status, but with decades of advances in computer technology, one would think someone would cart out an updated version of Max for the big screen. Be-be-be-believe it!
Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Call this the Irwin Allen smorgasbord, outside of Lost in Space which did get a movie in 1997. Back then, it seemed Hollywood was going crazy plundering sci-fi and adventure shows for movies, but they seemed to miss (or just not care for) much of Irwin Allen’s produced catalog. Also, I’m only counting Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as a reboot movie, since there was a 1961 movie that the subsequent show was based on.
Space 1999: Again, it’s a surprise this British-made sci-fi show got missed in the 90s’ TV-to-movie run, although I’m sure it’d end up called Space: 2099 for obvious reasons.
V: Actually, you could argue Independence Day is pretty much what you’d get from a V movie, minus the allegory of fascists-as-aliens walking among us. Plus I wonder how many people would think this is a prequel to V for Vendetta.
Babylon 5: An awesome sci-fi show that, for all of its quality, still suffered from being in the shadow of Star Trek. Still, it had enough name recognition that a movie could have been made. For a while in the late 90s, series creator J. Michael Straczynski was planning to make a movie, but then stated he’d rather wait until after the Star Wars prequels were finished, as his movie might suffer in comparison, f/x wise. For whatever reason, a B5 movie was never made, although recently JMS has talked up a reboot possibility.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I know there was a 1992 movie starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy, but I’m referring to the much-better received TV show instead. Like Babylon 5, this is another cult TV show that never quite broke out into the mainstream, and getting a movie made might have helped boost its standing. A lack of a Buffy movie with its TV cast is a bit more surprising than B5 because teen horror movies (The Scream movies, for example) were hot in the late 1990s, and a Buffy movie could have easily ridden that wave. For whatever reason, it’s unlikely there will be any big screen Buffy except for a reboot, as the TV cast has likely aged too much out of the roles.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess: Either one of these shows. This franchise was big back in the day, Xena especially, as it pretty much overtook Hercules in popularity (Xena got so big at one point you almost forgot Hercules even existed). Yet it’s surprising Universal never tried to parlay its success into a motion picture franchise, even when Lord of the Rings became a smash and memories of Herc and Xena were still relatively fresh, although the failure of the Kevin Sorbo-headliner Kull may not have helped.
The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman: Another male action show and its female protagonist (and arguably more popular) spin-off. Isn’t it strange that two well known shows featuring cybernetic humans, with stories rife with the possibility of big screen action and explosions, haven’t been adapted to the screen while Starsky and Hutch and The Dukes of Hazzard have? I heard at one point a comedy version of Six Million Dollar Man was being considered. Oy.
Quantum Leap: One of the most successful science fiction network TV shows of all time, although that’s probably because this is more Highway to Heaven than Star Trek when you think about it. Again, another Universal-made show that was big at the time, with talk that it would go to the big screen while the series was still on the air. But Scott Bakula never got to make that big leap (yeah I know, bad pun), even after the series was cancelled.
Magnum P.I.: The lack of a movie for this show must prove Universal really doesn’t give a rip about its TV catalog, as Magnum was absolutely huge back in the 80s. How is it that Universal never considered making a Magnum movie, particularly with Tom Selleck in the role? For years after the series wrapped, he could easily have reprised the role, and Selleck had already proven he could carry movie roles. Today a Magnum movie would likely be a reboot, but it’s quite surprising we haven’t seen that, either.
Family Guy: Out of the hugely popular teen and adult-skewering animated comedies of the past few decades (South Park, The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head), this is the only one I can think of that never got a feature film. I suspect it’s more because of lack of interest on the part of the show’s creator Seth McFarlane, although considering his recent spate of projects haven’t been as successful, like The Cleveland Show, the move of American Dad! to TBS, and the disappointing box office of his last two movies, he may end up going for it.
So, any titles I’ve missed? What TV show are you surprised that Hollywood hasn’t butchered, uh, I mean, “adapted” for the big screen?
Posted by AndrewPrice at 11:00 PM
Backthrow said...
Jonny Quest - I'm sure there has probably been an ongoing attempt to make a big-screen, live-action JQ movie/franchise for years, but it's pretty amazing that nothing has resulted yet... while Tin-Tin (which never had much of a following in the U.S.) did get a big Spielberg movie version.
The Prisoner - Sure, it got remade as a TV mini-series a few years ago, but you'd think something with the sort of fanatical fan following this has had, its surreal, '60s-spy appeal, and all the critical praise its gotten over the years, would translate into big-screen fodder, but not so far.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker - Of course, the short-lived series was kick-started by two rather excellent made-for-TV movies, and was rebooted (badly) for TV a few years ago, but you'd think that with the emphasis on zombies, vampires, demons, etc in popular theatrical movies in the last decade or so, plus the impact of popular "monster-of-the-week" TV series like The X-Files (Chris Carter credits Kolchak as a prime inspiration), Buffy, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, etc, would translate into an attempt to make a big-budget, rebooted Kolchak movie, but... nope.
I Dream of Jeannie - I guess there was a major push to make a big movie comedy out of this, a decade or so ago, but I suspect the lousy Nicole Kidman Bewitched movie's non-success put the brakes on it. Still, genie magic is a perfect excuse for lots of CGI effects and dumb comedy, so I'm still surprised nothing's come of it.
Gunsmoke, The Rifleman and/or Rawhide - New westerns generally aren't popular draws in theaters these days, with a few exceptions, though I'm surprised that no attempts were made to create some "action-ized" reboots of these long-running popular TV westerns, in the wake of the success of Unforgiven, Maverick and 3:10 to Yuma.
The Outer Limits - Anthology films generally don't do well, but they still made Twilight Zone: The Movie and Heavy Metal, and Outer Limits is well-remembered, well-regarded and is sci-fi with monsters... and got the '90s TV reboot. What surprises me is that they haven't tried making a series of one-story films under the OL brand, much like the original idea behind the Halloween films (which got scrapped after Halloween III).
Mannix - Surprised this didn't get either the campy spoof or dark/"realistic" treatment, when everything from SWAT to I Spy to Charlie's Angels to Starsky & Hutch was getting the green light.
Columbo - No one can replace Peter Falk as the title character, but I'm still surprised (and thankful) that no spoof version has been made (with Will Farrell, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, etc), ala Dragnet... or a rebooted black/female/gay/etc Columbo.
The Invaders (or UFO)... alien invasion scenarios. We have a ton of them already, but still, these have "brand names" that I'm surprised have remained untapped as theatrical films, since Hollywood otherwise likes to reboot like nobody's business.
Hawaii Five-0 - Again, it's had a successful small-screen reboot, but I'm surprised it didn't get either a spoofy or a "darker/grittier" theatrical reboot before then.
The Rat Patrol - Wartime vehicles and machine guns in the desert, with almost no relation to actual historical events; sounds like something tailor-made for a modern Summer blockbuster.
Honey West - A cult, one-season wonder (like Time Tunnel), forgotten by most, but since it had a female lead as an American quasi-Emma Peel/Cathy Gale detective/crimefighter, I'm surprised it wasn't dusted off to give the starlet du jour license to wear sexy outfits while beating-up big, physically-powerful men.
"I'm still ...thankful that no spoof version of Columbo has been made with Will Farrell, Adam Sandler,Jim Carrey et al or a rebooted black/female/gay etc Columbo."
And all the people said AMEN!
I'm glad that somehow they missed that one.
GypsyTyger
I have to say though, that back in the 90's an I Dream of Jeannie big screen adaptation with Pam Anderson would have worked. She was perfect to play the well meaning but naive title character and she had ditzy comedy down to an art form. And of course, we'd have gotten to look at her in that costume, updated for the 90's of course. ;)
tryanmax said...
A few responses and a few of my own:
Magnum P.I.: If they did this as a movie today, it would most likely be a comic homage, a la 21 Jump Street. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Frankly, Jump Street surprised me by obliterating my low expectations.
Family Guy: This show is very much made on the cheap using cost-cutting techniques pioneered by Hanna-Barbera, where MacFarlane got his start as an animator. If you know what to look for, they're easy to spot. That's not a knock, per-se. Credit to Seth for understanding his business. The point is, the necessary production value improvements for a feature film would greatly disrupt his syndication and DVD sales based business model.
I Dream of Jeannie: This could be fun, but an update would look very different from the TV show. Could be a great vehicle for a couple of comics looking to break into movies. The big challenge right now: we're in a phase where women comediannes can't be pretty, and I think the role of Jeannie calls for both looks and wit.
Columbo: I would entertain Chris Pratt in the title role.
And now for my own:
ThunderCats: This has been announced and then put on hold several times. Now there's a new TV series, so I doubt it'll get made any time soon. Maybe it's better that way.
Doogie Howser, M.D.: Admittedly, I'm picturing this as a comedy vehicle for NPH, who was the only reason to watch How I Met Your Mother.
Carnivale: The producers were expecting a third season when HBO unceremoneously cancelled the show after season two ended on a cliffhanger. It's been ten years and I'd still like some closure. The show's unique ambiance was maybe ahead of it's time, meeting depression-era social-issues and politics with magic and mysticism, as lived by the motely performers and crew of a traveling circus.
Galaxy High: This was an animated '80s high school comedy set in space. It could just as easily be a live action/CGI 2010's high school comedy set in space. Perfect for a cast of unknowns and up-and-comers bookened by a couple established stars in minor adult roles. Maybe I should work up a treatment and shop it around?
The Tick: This super hero send-up has been both animated and live action on TV. Just make a damned movie already. I even bet Patrick Warburton would be up for the title role again.
Twin Peaks: Technically, there was a Twin Peaks movie, but it was basically a glorified episode. I think a cinematic retelling of the Laura Plamer murder story arc that resolved halfway through season two (that was a dumb decision) with all the cruft removed would make for a very compelling film.
I’ve read about several of these possibly being rebooted over the years but I imagine they’re all stuck in what’s known as Development Hell.
Re: Nic Cage as Superman, I recommend The Death of Superman Lives documentary that was produced last year and funded via Kickstarter. (Got my name in the credits, albeit in a super-small font!)
I’m surprised the Irwin Allen stuff hasn’t been remade yet (even on TV), though as far as 60s-era sci-fi adventures go, the one title that keeps popping up is Fantastic Voyage - there’s a new remake rumor every few months.
They remade V a handful of years ago and it lasted for a couple seasons.
JMS has indeed talked about doing a B5 movie but it’s pretty obvious that it’s not exactly on WB’s priority list. I’d love to see the show released on Blu-Ray but they’d most likely have to redo all the visual effects - a pricey proposition.
JMS has a B5 store on CafePress and they’re selling a ton of cool stuff: scripts, DVDs of convention appearances, making-of material, etc. I assume he retained the rights to certain things because none of this stuff is available in stores.
The Six Million Dollar Man has been rumored for years. I think Kevin Smith even wrote a draft at one point. (He can do other things - it’s not all dick jokes!) :-)
Yeah, but you gotta think there's still a few dick jokes in there. I mean, the word "enhancement" is unavoidable. "Better. Stronger. Faster." The jokes were written back in 1973, they're just holding out for the punch line to be delivered.
Jason, Thanks for the article! You definitely got me thinking!
Like tryanmax, I would love to see an ending to Carnivale. And like GypsyTyger, I'm thankful they haven't tried to rape Columbo.
I'm a little surprised Hollywood hasn't just done a number on any show with cops or fire or doctors in it, like Hill Street Blues and E.R.. I'm definitely shocked they never did Magnum P.I.. Knight Rider too seems ripe for never-ending remakes.
I had heard something about them rebooting Space 1999, but you never know these days.
Backthrow: That’s an awesome list, and I’m surprised I didn’t think of a lot of those earlier, especially Hawaii Five-0 and I Dream of Jeannie.
Re: The Prisoner. After The Avengers flopped (the movie adaptation of the TV show, obviously not the Marvel movie), I suspect the appetite for adapting 60’s spy-style stories waned. The recent failure of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie won’t help, either.
Sadly, I think the reason Kolchak is neglected is because its protagonist is too old. A lot of movies today featuring zombies, vampires, demons, etc, have teenagers or young adults as the main protagonists. If they remade it, I fear it’d look more like Twilight.
tryanmax: You’d think Thundercats would have been picked up in the 80s toon-to-screen craze that’s been going on. For similar reasons, I’m wondering why a Masters of the Universe reboot hasn’t made it yet. I suspect the fact that both universes feature totally exotic settings (not on our normal-day Earth like Transformers, G.I. Joe and Jem) is what’s hanging things up.
ScottDS: I have to confess today I’m actually a bit sad that they didn’t go forward with Cage as Superman, especially after the lackluster job Superman Returns did. It would have made for an interesting movie, I think, and even if it failed, it would have been an interesting failure.
Andrew: Yeah, I should have thought of Knight Rider!
I suspect the dearth of movie adaptations of shows like E.R. or Hill Street Blues is probably why those kinds of shows are on TV in the first place, that Hollywood doesn’t think those stories can turn a profit on the big screen, so they don’t make them. Not enuff ‘splosions.
Kenn Christenson said...
Did you see the remake of the "V" TV series? The Alien Queen was pretty-much portrayed as a "space Obama" which was actually pretty cool. The British TV series U.F.O. was a favorite of mine, growing up, and seems like a sure-fire natural - with its' story-lines' similarity to the war-on-terror. I'd heard they were planning to shoot a film around 4-5 years back - guess it went nowhere.
...also thought a (way) more historically accurate "Baa Baa Black Sheep" would make an excellent film. There was an excellent book: "Black Sheep One" written about Boyington which would be a great basis for a feature.
Going from the small screen to big screen is great for shows that rely on effects as film generally has the budget to do it right. Outside of that, I don't know why anyone would bother. Small screen allows for better story telling.
Best examples-
The aforementioned "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The tv show is MUCH better than the movie.
"Star Trek: the next generation"- I think most people would agree that TNG only had one movie worth the price of admission. And while there are a number of duds in the series, it did indeed have a number of gems.
Star Trek- generally accepted that the movies are hit or miss, I like all of them, although "Final Frontier" is very weak. Other than "The Motion Picture" all the others felt like the t.v. show with an upgraded budget.
The X-Files. Enjoyed the first movie a bunch, the second not so much. The series easily outshines the movies.
Veronica Mars. The recent kickstarter made film was entertaining, but could just as easily been a tv episode.
Outlaw13 said...
Burn Notice and Justified...I think both would make excellent films.
As I don't really follow box office figures I didn't know Man From UNCLE bombed, I thought it was actually pretty good.
PikeBishop said...
Here's an amazing one that would never ever pass muster in today's Hollywood. About 20 years ago, both Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe were interested in playing Col. Hogan in a reboot of "Hogan's Heroes." That would have been something but PC Hollywood and Gibson's subsequent drunken antics pretty much ended that thought.
Eric M. Blake said...
A show that would've been interesting to have a movie remake:
Cheers. Specifically the Sam-and-Diane era, the iconic story arc that forever set the gold standard for the Romantic Comedy genre, TV or film.
I think Amy Adams would be the perfect Diane, with her incomparable Hepburn-esque blend of playful innocence and classy sophistication. Anyone who's seen "Leap Year" would surely agree she's be the right gal for the job.
Monsterpiece Theater: The Strange Case of Dr. Jeky...
Monsterpiece Theater: The Hound of the Baskerville...
Film Friday: Guardians of the Galaxy (2015)
Monsterpiece Theater: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
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Militarised sex, prostitution and violence in Okinawa
October 31, 2015 No comments admin
The main island of Okinawa today is an intensely militarised US ‘garrison island’ in the Pacific. US Forces in Japan (USFJ) are concentrated here and more than 18 per cent of the main island is occupied by US airfields, warehouses, barracks, firing ranges, hospitals, and post-exchange shops, making up what are known as ‘America Towns’ confined behind fences and barbed wire (Gillem 2007). Some 56,000 members of the US forces and their families train, work and live in this segregated space, while more than one million local residents live around the fenced properties, tightly confined on the remaining land. In Okinawa, as in other places, colonisation is experienced in the concrete forms of various gendered relations — violent, amicable, temporary, romantic, and abusive — closely associated with military occupation. Sex is an informal and private ‘contact zone’ between the two domains (see Pratt 1992: 7), albeit regulated in various ways by the US military, the Japanese government and the local Okinawan prefectural government.
Although there are US bases in other parts of Japan, the situation in Okinawa is distinctive. To understand this distinctiveness, we need to briefly note some features of Ryukyu history. Since the Ryukyu islands were annexed by Japan in 1879, both Japanese and US colonialism and militarism have defined islanders’ lives. Prostitution has existed since at least 1672, with the Ryukyu court’s creation of an officially sanctioned district for prostitution around Tsuji in Naha. Poor families from villages all over the Ryukyus sold daughters to Tsuji, to be raised and trained as professional prostitutes, called juri. After annexation, Tsuji was frequented by Japanese colonial officials, and later by Imperial Japanese Army personnel. After Tsuji was burned down in the US raid on Naha in October 1944, local women were mobilised into the military brothels, most of them against their will (Takazato 1998: 457—58), alongside women transported from Korea. Local historians have unearthed as many as 146 wartime military brothels built since 1941 across Okinawa, including remote islands such as Miyako and Iriomote (Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace 2012: 14, 20-21).
In March 1945, Okinawa became the site of 82 days of fighting between the US and Japan, known as the Battle of Okinawa. The battle claimed more than 122,000 civilian casualties, over a quarter of the island’s local population at the time. One of the most contentious issues is the ‘group suicides’ of Okinawans carried out at the time of US landings. Feminist historian Miyagi Harumi (2009a, 2009b) uses the term ‘group suicides’ in quotation marks, and points out an often overlooked gendered dynamic. It was the anticipated shame which would be placed on rape victims and their families which forced the residents to choose ‘group suicide’ before capture. In Zamami Island, where more than half of the villagers died this way, most casualties (83 per cent) were women and children killed at the hands of their fathers, brothers or sons. The stories of the deaths of Okinawan teenage girls in the Himeyuri (Maiden Lily) Student Nurse Corps have been integrated into mainland Japanese narratives of war centred on victimhood.
After 1945, the entire island was secured for US defence purposes: the military removed local residents from their homes, put them in internment camps, and instituted military rule (Sarantakes 2000: 37). US soldiers committed numerous sexual assaults on local women, even infants and elderly women, sometimes in front of family members (Okinawa Taimusu Sha 1980, 24—25, cited in Kikuchi 2010:111). Sexual violence became a recurrent source of friction between local community members and the US occupiers (Sarantekes 2000: 73).
The military government officially prohibited prostitution in the 1947 Special Proclamations 14 and 15, but the US Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR, established in 1949) instigated the establishment of ‘special drinking business districts’ that provided soldiers with alcohol and sexual services in central Okinawa. This seemingly contradictory policy was in order to control the spread of sexually transmissible diseases (STDs) among the US personnel. Women engaged in prostitution were concentrated in limited areas, with regular medical examinations and treatment. Despite opposition, the special district of Koza (now Okinawa City), was reluctantly accepted and justified by the need to control US—Okinawan sexual relations to protect a majority of women and children.
Before 1946 most Okinawans had made their living from agriculture. As land suited for farming was also suited for building airfields, training grounds and munitions disposal areas, 20 per cent of formerly cultivated land was behind barbed wire and fences in 1947. The soil had become infertile because of the military use, and farming provided only 13.9 per cent of the gross income in 1964. Now local residents had nothing but their labour to sell to the occupation forces (Fische, 2005: 79, 168, 169), and prostitution around US military facilities became the only source of income for many local women. Shimabuku argues that women’s bodies literally became ‘a terrain rich in sexual resources that they must work in order to produce in a new base-centred economy’ (2010, 367).
Kikuchi (2010) argues that the prohibition of prostitution and control of sexually transmissible diseases was simultaneously an effective political measure for governing Okinawan society. The US at times prohibited US military personnel from entering certain districts, quoting the practice of prostitution as the reason, but often using such prohibition to discourage protests against the occupying forces (Tanji 2006: 103). Deprived of their source ofincome, the Okinawan business owners and workers would petition to have the bans lifted, and comply with the US requirements of forced treatments for STDs and the restriction of female workers’ mobility (Kikuchi 2010, 119-24).
In 1953, the US military police responded to high rates of STDs in the US forces by requiring bars, restaurants and cafes to obtain and display a permit that proves grade ‘A’ hygienic standards (Sarantakes 2000, 104). Under this system, which persisted until Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, businesses without ‘A’ permits were prohibited from serving US military members. This reduced the number of legal businesses, further facilitating STD inspections, and had the effect of dramatically reducing individual street prostitution. The US personnel paid these businesses for the opportunities to meet women working as hostesses, often in the guise of ‘dating’ (Kikuchi 149—50). Under this regime, the illegal sex industry thrived, making Okinawa an ‘island of prostitution’. According to a survey conducted in 1969, ‘one out of every 50 women was involved in prostitution’ (Takazato 2007, 44), and in 1970 the income earned by prostitution was more than the sugar-cane industry, then the biggest local industry (Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1992, 252).
Local women engaged in illicit sexual labour have been constantly one step away from violence and death. According to Takazato Suzuyo, a former counsellor, many women serving US soldiers suffered fatal or near-fatal violence and still suffered nightmares decades later (Kikuchi 2010, 157-58; Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence [OWAMMV] 2011: 19-20). Most cases of violence and sexual violence against local women who worked in ‘A sign’ districts were either unsolved, acquitted or ‘results not known’. Violence against women working in this stigmatised industry largely failed to arouse public concern, and the women were often criticised for putting themselves in a vulnerable situation, rather than focusing on the perpetrators.
On at least two occasions, however, incidents of sexual violence have aroused political protest. One case in 1955 involved the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl; another involved the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl in 1995. On both occasions, the victims’ sexual innocence was the focus and the assaults were seen as abstract metaphors for the violation of Okinawa’s sovereignty. They were seen as innocent victims in a similar way to the story of the Himeyuri schoolgirls’ death in the Battle of Okinawa (see Angst 2001).
In the US military, as in other military institutions, soldiers have been trained in a particularly aggressive form of masculinity. The military’s need to nurture aggressive militarised masculinity might also explain the leniency towards its members’ sexual crimes and violence. In Okinawa, US military crimes on local residents were exclusively dealt with in court martials until 1972. Only following reversion to Japan were US military crimes committed off-duty handled at local courts. The US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) confers sole US jurisdiction over US crimes committed on duty outside the military bases, which is open to interpretation by the US military authority. SOFA also restricts the local custody of US suspects prior to trial, and various other local rights, to protect the privileges of US military personnel. To the locals, SOFA prolongs the inequalities and lack of respect for Okinawans’ basic human rights and sovereignty. (Similar Status of Forces Agreements are in place in South Korea and other places hosting US bases.)
Similar to South Korea and mainland Japan, sex work is increasingly being carried out in Okinawa by immigrant workers. Many come from the Philippines, mediated by local gangsters (Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1992). These immigrant women are vulnerable in various ways. In 1982, two Filipino women were burned to death in a nightclub near a military base, unable to escape as they were confined to their rooms (Takazato 2007, 45). Undocumented workers are particularly vulnerable.
Children born to local women and US military personnel have been subjected to particularly fierce discrimination. Until the revision of Japan’s Nationality Law in 1985 to allow women to pass on nationality to their children, such children were often stateless (Takushi 2000, 12-14). As in Occupation period Japan, local women who fraternise with US soldiers have often been stigmatised. Although the rights and social position of local women who marry US military personnel are legally sanctioned, Ames (2010) points out their isolation in the local community, especially when exposed to hostility from anti-base activists.
Prompted by the 1995 rape incident, Takazato and her Okinawan colleagues organised the group, Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence (OWAAMV). OWAAMV members are distinctive in their attempt to make sexism and gendered military violence a central focus of the Okinawan anti-base struggle, which has traditionally focused on political sovereignty. They also gave birth to a transnational women’s movement against militarism as a patriarchal institution (Akibayashi and Takazato 2009: 264—65). While often working with mainland Japanese women, the OWAAMV members have recorded specifically ‘Okinawan’ experiences. For instance, as few cases have been reported, let alone punished, the accurate number of the US military’s sexual crimes involving Okinawan locals since the early Occupation era is unknown. US crimes in Okinawa have been relegated to an informal oral history, excluded from official history (Kikuchi 2010: 127). Frustrated by the non-existence of systematic data on military crimes in Okinawa, OWAAMV started creating their own data, an ongoing compilation from hearings, interviews, historical records and police records. Their message, that the ‘military does not protect women’, has nevertheless appealed to broader humanity, and has created a platform for activism with women in other regions similarly hosting US military bases, but particularly places with a colonial history like South Korea, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
Militarised sexualities can be observed in most of the countries of the region. In some countries this is because matters of marriage, sexuality and reproduction are shaped by the government’s privileging of military concerns. This is true even when a nation is not actually at war. The post-Second World War Allied Occupation of Japan and Okinawa, and the anti-Communist wars on the Korean peninsula in the 1950s and in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s brought the armies of the US and its allies to the region. In each war zone, sexual service industries were created or adapted to serve the occupying armies, often stratified and segregated along racialised lines. This was paralleled by the development of a transnational sexual service industry, initially servicing soldiers on so-called ‘rest and recreation’ leave, but gradually morphing into a transnational tourist industry based on the provision of sexual services to tourists from wealthier countries. Japan (particularly Okinawa) and South Korea continue to host US bases, but as these two countries have become more prosperous, sexual services are increasingly being provided by immigrant workers from poorer countries. Issues of sexual violence in areas surrounding military bases have often led to political protests, and activists in the region who are faced with similar problems are increasingly seeking international solidarity with other similar communities. Their campaigns are overlaid by history, as they make connections with earlier examples of the mutual imbrication of militarised violence and militarised sexualities.
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Romain Alessandrini relieves frustrations with brace against Crew
2018 Season, Feature, Game Recap, LA Galaxy, Major League Soccer, News, StubHub Center
Carson, CA. – These have not been the best of times for the LA Galaxy’s Romain Alessandrini, but his season-long frustrations could be over.
The Frenchman had two goals in Saturday’s 4-0 romp over the visiting Columbus Crew in front of a StubHub Center crowd of 21,211 for his first multi-goal game since scoring twice in a 3-0 victory over Minnesota United last Oct. 15.
That last year’s leading scorer with 13 goals and 12 assists had his fourth and fifth goals of the season Saturday may have been borderline surprising, considering he had scored just once in his previous five games. An even bigger eye-opener was he came off the bench in the 60th minute in place of an ailing Ola Kamara, who continued to suffer from a strained left calf.
Alessandrini, who had played in 13 games – all starts – this season and missed three games in March with a hamstring injury, needed just seven minutes to get his first goal and added his second score deep into stoppage time to help the five-time MLS Cup champions complete the rout.
To say he had a little jump in his step was putting it mildly.
“He was highly motivated,” Galaxy head coach Sigi Schmid admitted. “He certainly gave us a really, really good spark off the bench.”
Alessandrini said he was told at training Friday he would not start, and he understandably was not thrilled with Schmid’s reasoning for the move.
“He felt I was a little bit tired, that’s why he put me on the bench,” he said. “Obviously I wasn’t happy. I want to play (start) every game, I want to be on the field. But I respect the choice and tonight when I came on I gave everything for the team.
“It was easy for me because we were winning 2-0 and I just needed to come back and defend and use the chances I got. Tonight I scored two goals and I’m very happy.”
Schmid said he was as pleased with Alessandrini’s work in helping craft the shutout, the team’s sixth this season and first since a 3-0 victory over Real Salt Lake on June 9, as he was with his goals.
“He also contributed when he came in, not only just on the goals but his discipline about helping us out as well defensively,” Schmid said. “I was probably equally as pleased by that as I was by his offensive display.”
Alessandrini was particularly pleased with the team’s collective effort. The Galaxy had squandered a pair of two-goal leads in its previous two matches, both draws, but they alleviated any concerns of a repeat scenario with a three-goal second half.
“It’s very important because we play in front of our fans, and we needed these three points,” he said. “We lost points the last two games against San Jose and D.C. (United, in 3-3 and 2-2 ties, respectively), and if you want to come back to the top and get in the playoffs we need every game, three points.
“Tonight is good for the confidence. The most important thing is we don’t concede goals. I think the defense got a lot of confidence for the next few games.”
Columbus CrewLA GalaxyRomain AlessandriniSigi Schmid
Senior Writer / Editor
Larry Morgan is an ex-Clevelander who still avidly follows his hometown teams (Browns, Cavaliers and Indians), but he’s always had an affinity for “the beautiful game.” He started covering the Galaxy when Steve Sampson was head coach.
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Education Under Occupation, Part 2: Responsibilities of the Occupying Power
Education Under Occupation
Part 2: Responsibilities of the Occupying Power
In Part 1 of this newsletter – available here -, we have discussed the applicability of the Geneva Conventions referring to the protection of the Palestinian civilian population living under Israeli military occupation. Political and diplomatic stands vary but nowadays, form the law perspective and the consensus of the international community, the applicability of the International Humanitarian Law is indisputable, in particular the IV Geneva Convention. We have briefly shown the controversy between the public image presented by Israeli diplomats, politicians and their allies with the clear position taken by the Israeli Supreme Court that recognizes the status of occupied territories and considers applicable the aforementioned normative body.
In this second Part we explore the responsibilities and obligations of Israel as the occupying power with respect to the civilian population. In particular, we focus on the realization of the right to education that every child, in times of peace or conflict, must be able to exercise and enjoy.
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all
Obligations of the occupying power
Article 43 of the Hague Regulations prescribes the fundamental obligations of an occupying power. The Israeli Supreme Court of Justice ruled that this should be considered as a ‘mini-constitution’ of an occupation regime. The article indicates that the occupying power should take all the measures to restore and guarantee ‘public order and safety’, including all aspects of public life or civil life, with full respect to the local laws. The Israeli Supreme Court described in a judgment that the meaning of ‘public life’ includes ‘conducting proper administration on all its branches accepted nowadays in a well-functioning country, including security, health, education, welfare and also, inter alia, quality of life and transportation…’. The Court held the notion that ‘proper administration’ is that of a modern and civilized state at the end of the twentieth century – and not a society prevalent when the Hague Regulations were adopted. (Kretzmer, 2012)
The General Assembly and the Security Council of the UN produced a large number of resolutions broadening the protection of children in conflict situations and specifying concrete obligations of the belligerent powers. The obligation of the international community is to respect and ensure respect of those provisions.
General Assembly Resolution 64/290 on the right to education in emergency situations reaffirms “…that everyone shall enjoy the human right to education…” and recalls the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War of 1949 among others. It also highlights that the Convention on the Rights of the Child “…must constitute the standard in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child and that the requirements for the realization of the right to education, pertinent also to emergency situations…” Moreover, the General Assembly acknowledges that the protection of schools and the provision of education in emergency states should remain a key priority and urges the Member States to implement policies and strategies to ensure the realization of the right to education, respecting the obligation with the International Law and the International Law of Human Rights.
Domestic legislation must be adapted in order to combat impunity and to criminalize the attacks against “…buildings dedicated religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes…” considered to be grave violations of the Geneva Conventions and war crimes according to the Rome Statute of the ICC, article 8.b-ix.
In 1985 the General Assembly approved resolution 40/161 that reaffirms that a military occupation itself “…constitutes a grave violation of the human rights of the civilian population of the occupied Arab territories;” and condemns the “…continued and persistent violation by Israel of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and other applicable international instruments…”. In particular, the resolution condemns a series of practices and policies executed by Israel like collective punishment, interference with the educational system and social, sanitary and economic development and interference with the freedom of movement of individuals. Security Council resolution 1998/2007 – unanimously adopted – further expands the protection of children in armed conflicts.
The 1994 Oslo Accords enabled the creation of the Ministry of Education within the newly created Palestinian Authority, developing the educational sector for Palestinian children. Enrollment in schools substantially increased, school construction and rehabilitation became a priority, and the Ministry of Education made progress towards greater inclusiveness in schools – particularly for girls and children with disabilities. The Ministry also addressed early childhood education programmes, as well as technical and vocational training. (EAPPI – WCC, 2013)
However, today thousands of children still face difficulties exercising their right to education due to the military checkpoints, the harassment and violence of solders and illegal Israeli settlers. Continuous conflict and the military occupation difficult – or even forbid – the proper access of children to the schools. Recurrent incursions of the military into the schools impose delays or early suspension of the class day. The use of teargas to quell spontaneous rock throwing towards the checkpoints has a great impact on the activities of the neighboring schools, affecting children and teachers. (DCI – Palestine, 2016) In only 8 months of the year 2012, there have been 12 registered incidents that impede or denied access to schools in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. As an example, hostilities in November 2012 damaged 43 educational facilities preventing 25000 children from returning to school. Another 285 school buildings suffered damage as a result of airstrikes. (UNICEF, 2012) (Education Cluster, 2014).
Final reflections
It is evident that the effects of war – in all its forms – are devastating and it is not possible to mention one armed conflict that has brought any positive outcome or common benefit to us as a species. Today, more than ever in human history, it is clear that war is not an expression of conflict but a modus operandi of the concentrated, authoritarian power and of war economics. Conflict is perhaps a face of our human nature but the ways we act and address conflict are certainly social, political and economic constructs. Never before in human history have we invested so many resources in the accumulation of war potential and in the development of new forms of combat and weapons. The outcome of these processes has never been a lasting just peace but a continuous growth of military tension.
In this context, the International Humanitarian Law plays a fundamental role providing a framework to limit damage. Unfortunately, the rights and their realization – justice – come often too late. It has been 49 years since the beginning of this military occupation – perhaps the longest in our modern history – which seems to have no end in the short term.
Having the apparent controversy debunked, the IV Geneva Convention, the Resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly of the UN are very clear with respect to the responsibilities of the occupying power with respect to the civilian population living under that rule. The occupying power is responsible for the maintenance of public order and the conduction and administration of the education system for all the children living under military occupation. The 1993 bi-lateral agreements known as Oslo Accord led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority that has, however, limited government capabilities. The effects and consequences of the persistent military occupation – which include severe restrictions to the freedom of movement, harassment from the military forces, illegal settlers and restrictions to get construction permits for new schools – prevent any possible realization of the right to education by the Israeli military authority nor the Palestinian Authority.
Although we have not discussed the applicability of other international treaties, it is important to keep in mind that both Israel (1991) and Palestine (2014) have signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. Moreover, the right to education has already been consecrated in article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has become part of the consuetudinary law, therefore applicable regardless of the ratification status of other international treaties.
According to official reports, education facilities have been damaged or destroyed due to Israeli attacks. (UNICEF, 2012) (UNRWA, 2016) The Rome Statute of the ICC states that these practices are severe violations to laws applicable in times of armed conflict. Unfortunately, Israel has not ratified the Rome Statute which prevents the ICC prosecutor from investigate violations. In early 2015, the State of Palestine ratified the Rome Statute accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court allowing therefore investigations committed in its territory and by foreign – Israeli – forces.
The fate of the civilian population living under military occupation and in armed conflicts depends on the observation by the belligerent powers of the international treaties. But a large responsibility lies also in the hands of the international community as all the international human right treaties require respect of the rules and oblige all Parties to ensure respect.
A political and economic formulation is indispensable to prevent any belligerent actions from stepping into the pool of possible solutions of a conflict. The protection of life, the wellbeing and the guarantee of a fruitful future for children and their families is the fundamental mandate that we have, as human beings, imposed on ourselves.
DCI – Palestine, 2016. Raids, tear gas, and a burned house: Three West Bank school days. Available at: http://www.dci-palestine.org/…[Last Access: 20 Julio 2016].
EAPPI – WCC, 2013. Education under Occupation. Geneva: Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.
Education Cluster, 2014. Case studies on protecting the right to education: the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the Democratic Republic of Congo, s.l.: Education Cluster.
Kretzmer, D., 2012. The law of belligerent occupation in the Supreme Court of Israel , s.l.: International Review of the Red Cross.
UNICEF, 2012. Children Affected by Armed Conflict bulletin, s.l.: UNICEF.
UNRWA, 2016. Half of UNRWA schools affected by conflict in the last five years. Available at: http://www.unrwa.org/… [Last Access: 28 07 2016].
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Today the Federal Government has converted into Law the former Executive Decree that granted tax benefits for activities related to the FIFA World cup in Brazil.
Named Act 12.350, the bill describes a series of benefits to be granted to all FIFA's suppliers and service providers, as well as to FIFA itself. The benefits include:
*Exemption of Income Tax and all related taxation;
*Exemption of Importation duties for the equipments to be used during the games
Moreover, the bill brings several tax easements for the companies involved in the restoration or construction of sports arenas, in a set of measures that has been called RECOPA. It includes many exemptions applicable to the raw materials, either imported or purchased in Brazil.
There is no doubt that this Act brings many business opportunities to sport and medical equipment suppliers, as well as to real estate ventures willing to contribute to the Brazil World Cup.
As for me, I'm crossing my fingers. Go Brazil.
Labels: Tax benefits Brazil World Cup FIFA games
INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTS WITHIN THE BRIC - First part
Please check the second part here.
You may find a Chinese version here.
Please download the full article here.
THERE HAS BEEN IMPORTANT CHANGES. PLEASE READ: BRAZILIAN IMPERFECT ADOPTION OF CISG.
I'm posting the first part of the translation of my article about international agreements among Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Hope you enjoy it.
INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTS WITHIN THE BRIC
Rules governing international transactions of sale of goods and
1. THE BRIC DREAM
The discussion about the BRIC countries began in 2001 in a report Goldman Sachs Group entitled Building Better Global Economic BRICs , which forecasted that by 2050, Brazil, Russia, India and China would exceed, in terms of GDP, the economy of the six major industrialized nations of the world (USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Italy).
Since then, other reports have been published by the same group in 2003 and 2005, confirming the prognosis. In 2007, the book BRICs and Beyond was published. The work sought to reassess the assumptions of previous studies and noted that the BRICs economies grew well above expectations from the beginning of the decade. Early studies of Goldman Sachs Group may have been too conservative for, while hoping that the 4 countries would reach around 10% of world GDP at the end of 2010, by 2007 they owned 15%.
It is noteworthy that, after the economic crisis of 2008-2009, a new publication Goldman Sachs Group said categorically that the BRIC countries were to recover more quickly from the crisis. Notably, part of good performance economic development of BRICs is due to trade among themselves. Brazil, for example, benefited from the fact that China has become its largest importer for several months in 2009, according to statistics from the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade of Brazil (MDIC). According to data from MDIC, from January to July 2010 the value of exports from Brazil to China was approximately 40% higher than the value of exports from Brazil to the United States.
In this perspective, IMF data also indicate that the BRICs have been, alone, responsible for more than 50% of the additional wealth production in the world during the decade of 2000-2010.
At the same time, the BRIC countries have developed their diplomatic relations and formed coalitions outside the economic realm. To name a few examples, one can point out the role of Brazil and India in the Doha negotiations, the IBSA forum between India, Brazil and South Africa, which brings together three democracies from three continents, the BASIC coalition, formed by Brazil, South Africa, India and China, which sought to defend common interests on environmental and climate issues among the countries, besides the participation of BRIC countries in the G-20.
Brazil and India also seek - along with Germany and Japan, in what is called the G-4 - a permanent seat on UN Security Council United, which already has two other BRIC countries: China and Russia.
It is important to note that the relationships described above generate consequences and needs that go beyond the economic sphere. Since it is clear that a closer economic cooperation among BRIC countries in the future is inevitable, it becomes necessary to study the legal framework of the group members, especially regarding to international contracts, in order to remove barriers to economic integration within the BRIC.
In this context, this work has been devised to analyze the internal rules and international conventions ratified by each of the BRIC countries, in order to guide entrepreneurs and lawyers dealing with international contracts in those nations. Specifically, this paper will study the rules applicable to international sales contracts and to international commercial arbitration.
2. MAJOR CONVENTIONS TO BE EXAMINED
2.1 Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods
Several international organizations aim at creating uniform standards for international trade.
Amongst them, the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) is the most prominent, and has fulfilled a key role in developing uniform standards for trade.
Specifically in the case of contracts for sale of goods, the most important convention on the subject is certainly the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), established under the auspices of UNCITRAL in 1980.
In its preamble, its universalizing purpose is clear:
[The States parties to this Convention] BEING OF THE OPINION that the adoption of uniform rules which govern contracts for the international sale of goods and take into account the different social, economic and legal systems would contribute to the removal of legal barriers in international trade and promote the development of international trade (…)
Currently ratified by 74 countries , representatives of more than 90% of global trade in goods (GAMMA JR, 2009), the CISG is the most successful trade treaty in history. In fact, it has been classified by some authors as the Magna Carta of international trade (ZELLER, 1999), or as an "unexpected success story" in Professor Schlechtriem’s words.
Some of the topics covered by the CISG are: formation and execution of international contracts of sale of goods ; the seller’s obligation to deliver the goods and the buyer's obligation to pay the price , the rights of the parties in case of breach of contract ; exceptions from liability for breach, as the occurrence of force majeure , among others . The goal of the CISG rendering the regulation of such issues was to establish core standards on which there could be a reasonable consensus between countries of different legal backgrounds.
It should be noted that the CISG applies only to the sale of tangible goods, excluding from its rule the sale of services, financial services or workforce.
The position of each of the BRIC countries towards the CISG will be further analyzed.
2.2 International Arbitration and Recognition of foreign arbitral awards
International commercial arbitration is a tool of enormous relevance in international trade agreements. Arbitration has advantages in relation to national courts. It is not only a mechanism generally faster and more economical than the traditional procedures, but often a more convenient and specialized one. It can be carried out secretively, and allows the parties to choose the applicable law. There are two main international conventions on arbitration, both covered on the following topics:
2.2.1 UNCITRAL Model Law on Arbitration Procedures
Aiming at harmonizing the various national laws on the subject, a committee consisting of representatives from 58 countries and 18 international organizations, chaired by the UN Commission for International Trade Law, was formed to discuss a model law on arbitration procedures.
The UN General Assembly, through Resolution n.40/72 of December 11, 1985, approved the final text of the Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration at the end of the 18th annual meeting of the committee. The General Assembly recommended that:
All States give due consideration to the Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration in view of the desire for uniformity in arbitration laws and the specific needs of the practice of International Trade Law (UNCITRAL, 1985).
The Convention received accession of countries that move two thirds of the global trade. Its text has solved several flaws from previous Conventions, as well as influenced the review of arbitration rules from the major arbitration chambers. It also influenced a great part of domestic laws on arbitration, especially those promulgated after its approval. The Model Law covers arbitration since its formation until the execution of the final decision, constituting a relatively complete code.
2.2.2 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards
This convention is of paramount importance, since it provides that arbitration shall be recognized as a valid and legal instrument for the settlement of conflicts, and establishes the enforcement of foreign arbitration awards by local courts of each contracting State.
In short, the New York Convention allowed individuals to escape the relative insecurity of national courts, since the choice of jurisdiction and governing laws became virtually free. Therefore, its importance cannot be underestimated. According to the United Nations:
The Convention is widely recognized as a founding instrument of international arbitration and requires courts of contracting States to give effect to an arbitration agreement and also to recognize and enforce awards made in other States, subject to specific limited exceptions. The Convention entered into force on 7 June 1959.
The position of each of the BRICs towards international arbitration will be detailed in topic 4.
3. THE BRICS’ LEGAL SYSTEM AND THE VIENNA CONVENTION ON THE INTERNATIONAL SALE OF GOODS
3.1 BRIC’s domestic laws on International Commercial Contracts
Despite the many advantages of CISG, only Russia and China among the BRICs have ratified it to date. And yet it is worth noting that both countries have made reservations, as will be discussed below.
3.1.1 Application of the CISG in China
China ratified the CISG in December, 1986. However, it has adopted a significant reservation to the text: it compromised to apply the CISG only if the other country involved in the transaction has also adopted the convention.
Regarding this reservation, the renowned author Peter Schlechtriem weaves interesting comments:
The consequence of article 1(1)(b), which meant that parties in non-contracting states could be subject to the application of the CISG, (a law that their country had not ratified), met with serious objections in Vienna, and it was accepted only on account of a compromise allowing a reservation, that is a ratifying state could declare that it would not be bound by article 1(1)(b).
In the immediate aftermath of the Chinese position, it is clear that instant application of the CISG to contracts between China and other BRIC countries is limited to agreements with companies in Russia. Put in another way, as noted by CHEN Weizuo in an article entitled "The conflict of laws in the context of the CISG: A Chinese perspective’’:
In accordance with Article 95 of the CISG, the People's Republic of China declared, at the time of the deposit of its instrument of ratification with the UN Secretary-General on 11 December 1986, that it did not consider itself bound by Subparagraph (1)(b) of Article 1 of the CISG. As a result, situations where the CISG is directly applied by Chinese judges are relatively limited but certain; the CISG applies practically to contracts of sale of goods only if the parties have their places of business in different Contracting States.
In consequence, in contracts between Brazil and China and between India and China that are brought upon Chinese courts there is a strong possibility that the applicable law will be deemed to be the Chinese internal legislation, especially the "Law on Contracts of the People's Republic of China of 1999" and the “General Principles of Civil Law of People's Republic of China’’. If this is not the wish of the parties, they must study the conflict of law rules applicable to the case and adopt preventive measures.
Regarding the application of Chinese law, it is interesting to note that Chinese law allows parties to choose the rules applicable to international contracts. Such possibility is always interesting since it allows the parties to choose a neutral legal system or, in some cases, the one most favorable to the transaction at hand.
However, we must understand that, in a contract between a Brazilian trader and a Chinese exporter, the parties cannot choose the application of the CISG, because the Chinese law explicitly says that CISG would not apply. Nevertheless, it would be possible choose it indirectly, by stating the applicable law as being the Russian Law, for example.
Finally, the application of the CISG would still be possible in a Sino-Indian or Sino-Brazilian contract if the parties adopted arbitration, as will be discussed in a specific topic.
3.1.2 Application of the CISG in Russia
In accordance with the provisions of Article 1, paragraph (a) of CISG , international contracts for the sale of goods between Russian and Chinese parties will be governed by the CISG.
Regarding the other two countries, Russia took no reservations to paragraph (b) of article 1 (1).
Thus, contracts between Brazil and Russia and between India and Russia may be governed by the CISG, provided that, after examining the case, the conflict of law rules indicate the Russian legislation as dominant in that particular case.
This possibility adds to the fact that Russia accepts that the parties choose the applicable law, which allows the legal planning of agreements entered into with companies in the country.
In the words of the authorized doctrine :
According to the Russian conflict of law rules the parties to a contract, when one party is a foreign entity, may choose the law applicable to their rights and duties under that contract including sale agreements provided that such a choice does not affect the operation of mandatory rules of the country with which the contract is actually related. In the absence of an agreement between the parties on the applicable law, the law of the country with which the contract is most closely connected shall apply to the contract. Generally, the law of the country with which the contract is most closely related shall be considered the law of the country in which the party performing execution of crucial importance for the contract has its place of residence or main place of activity (the seller in the sale and purchase transaction, the lender in a loan agreement, financial agent in a contract of financing against assignment of a monetary claim etc.)
The same can be envisioned for the comment below :
Under Clause 166 of Fundamentals, the parties to the construction contract are free to choose the governing law for their contract. However, absent the express agreement of the parties, the governing law will be that of the country where the works are being constructed (the project country).This corresponds to the customary practice of selecting the law of the project country as the governing law of contract.
In short: in contracts between Russian and Brazilian and Indian and Russian parties, the CISG can be elected as the applicable law, provided that the conflict of law rules does not demand it to be applied and that the parties do not wish to allow Brazilian or Indian Law to rule the case.
3.1.3 Application of the CISG in India and Brazil
Neither of these countries adopted the CISG. However, the Indian law allows the parties to choose the applicable law for the agreement.
Therefore, when entering into a contract that is expected to be enforced before Indian Courts, the parties may specify the law of a CISG adopter. The strategy, however, faces some limitations, clearly summarized in the following excerpt:
In the circumstances, parties entering into contracts with Indian companies enforceable under a foreign law must note that if an action is brought under such contract in an Indian court, foreign law will have to be pleaded like an ordinary fact and proved by experts. Further, parties cannot, by agreement, confer jurisdiction on a court which does not have any jurisdiction over the subject matter. (Patel Roadways v. Prasad Trading Company, AIR 1992 SC 1514). Moreover, in order to select one out of two courts by an agreement, both the courts must have jurisdiction, and the agreement should be clear and unambiguous as regards the forum selection clause .
In Brazil, on the other hand, the parties are not allowed to choose the applicable law.
Under Brazilian conflict of laws rules (Decree-Law No. 4657 from 1942, entitled ”Civil Code Introduction Law’’), contracts between absente parties – understood as those that are not face to face at the moment of signature - are always governed by the proponent’s domicile law. (The proponent, in this case, being the one who sent the last draft accepted without alterations of any kind)
Therefore, entrepreneurs making business in the BRIC countries should pay attention to the following situations:
In contracts with Brazil, where the final proposal is sent by a party located in Brazil, the law applicable should the subject be judged by Brazilian courts shall be the Brazilian law. In this case, the CISG can never be applicable.
On the other hand, whenever the final version of the proposal is sent by Indian, Russian or Chinese parties, the law of the respective country will be applied by the Brazilian courts.
That is to say, in contracts governed by Brazilian law, any clause specifying the applicable law is void. Although, if the same contract is governed by the law of other BRIC countries, it will be deemed valid and may be enforced before Brazilian courts.
3.2 RECOGNITION OF UNWRITTEN AGREEMENTS IN CHINA AND RUSSIA
The CISG does not address the issues concerning the "validity of contract or any of its provisions or of any usage”. Even so, the convention has, in its articles 14 to 28, several provisions concerning the formation of international trade contracts, which include the use of verbal and written offers, the conceptual definition of offer and its binding power.
In this sense, the Convention adopts a liberal stance, by not limiting the expressions of willingness to a written form, as provided by Article 11: "A contract of sale need not be concluded in or evidenced by writing and is not subject to any other requirement as to form. It may be proved by any means, including witnesses".
However, this provision is virtually ineffective in the scope of application of the CISG in the BRICs, since both Russia and China adopted the reservation of Article 96 of the Convention, which bans recognition of any expression of intent designed to celebrate, modify or accept a contract of sale which is not expressed in writing . Therefore the negotiations between these two countries must be rigorously documented in writing.
Labels: Brazilian law, bric agreement contract Brazil Law investment, BRICS, China, CISG, India, International agreements, lawyer, Russia
INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTS WITHIN THE BRIC - First pa...
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President Rajapaksa’s London address to Commonwealth Economic Forum cancelled
Posted by Administrator on 5 June 2012, 5:33 pm
By D.B.S. Jeyaraj
In an unexpected,sudden development the Commonwealth Economic Forum the event in which Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was scheduled to deliver the keynote address has been called off.
The Commonwealth Business Council that had organized the event made a special announcement announcing the decision. In a tersely worded statement the Commonwealth Business Council stated-
“After careful consideration the morning sessions of the Forum on Wednesday 6th of June have been cancelled and will not take place. The event will therefore commence with lunch at 1300hrs followed by the originally planned afternoon sessions beginning at 1400hrs.”
Although the Business Council had not given any reasons for the abrupt cancellation speculation was rife that the decision was taken on account of the huge controversy generated by President Rajapaksa’s anticipated address.
Earlier the Commonwealth Business council had organized a two – day symposium to commemorate Queen Elizabeth the second’s Diamond Jubilee of accession to the Throne.
The symposium titled “Diamond Jubilee:Commonwealth Economic Forum” was to take place at Mansion House in London June 6th and 7th.
Tickets for the two day event had been sold out. They were each priced at 795 pound sterling plus Value added tax.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was to deliver the keynote address during the morning sessions of the Economic Forum at 10.30 am on June 6th the first day.
Thereafter a Commonwealth luncheon hosted by the Comonwealth Secretariat was to take place at Marlborough House in Pall Mall London. Queen Elizabeth was to grace the occasion.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa arriving in UK-Jun 4, 2012
President Rajapaksa had been invited for the luncheon by Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma who had earlier been India’s High Commissioner to Britain.
President Rajapaksa arrived by special flight with his entourage at the Heathrow Airport in London in the early hours of June 4th. He is staying at the London Hilton Hotel on Park Lane.
The Sri Lankan head of state was expected to deliver his special address in the morning to the Economic Forum at Mansion House and then return to his Park Lane Hilton Hote. After freshening up he was to leave for Marlborough House to attend the Commonwealth Luncheon scheduled to commence at One pm.
Several Human rights activists and members of the Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates in London had mounted a protest campaign to exert pressure on the Commonwealth Business Council to disallow the Sri Lankan President from addressing the Business Forum.
Demands have also been made that President Rajapaksa should be debarred from participating at the Commonwealth luncheon also.
Those protesting Rajapaksa’s London itinerary allege that he is a “war Criminal”. Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates accuse the Sri Lankan President of genocide against Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Protest at Heathrow
Hundreds of Tamils carrying flags with the tiger emblem of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)assembled at Heathrow Airport on June 3rd expecting the President to arrive on a Sri Lankan Airlines flight at 8.05 pm.
Rajapaksa however arrived hours later in the early hours of June 4th by a special flight and was whisked away through a side entrance.
Tamil Diaspora elements carrying tiger flags also gathered in the vicinity of the Hilton Hotel where President Rajapaksa was staying and demonstrated against him.
Sri Lankan Sinhalese also mounted a counter demonstration in support of President Rajapaksa near the Hilton Hotel opposite the Tamil demonstration.
pic courtesy of: Navamani.lk
Sri Lankan Muslim expatriates in London also organized a demonstration in support of President Rajapaksa in the same location.
Demonstrators with Sri Lankan and British flags
While Tamil demonstrators shouted “Rajapaksa War Criminal” the Sinhala demonstrators hailed him as “Our King”.
At one point there was a scuffle between both sides and a Tamil protester named “Sakthi” was allegedly injured.
Heavy contingents of British Police were deployed in the area to maintain peace.
At one stage when President Rajapaksa left the Hotel premises in a motorcade to visit the Sri lankan High Commission in London, several Tamil demonstrators threw tomatoes and eggs at the vehicles.
Tamil Diaspora organizations were also gearing up to launch a mammoth demonstration in the vicinity of Mansion House on June 6th where President Rajapaksa was scheduled to address the Business forum in the morning.
Racist rabble rousing politicians from Tamil Nadu like Vaiko, Seeman, Thirumavalavan had issued statements urging Tamils abroad to launch a struggle and chase away Rajapaksa from London. These rhetorical statements were heavily insulting and amounted to incitements to violence.
These statements were widely circulated in Britain and Europe by the tiger flag bearing Diaspora elements to mobilize huge crowds for the demonstration near Mansion House.
Special buses were arranged to transport demonstrators to the venue while a number of activists from other European countries also began arriving.
Appeals were made to Tamils to gather in large numbers and prevent the Sri Lankan President from speaking as in the case of the aborted Oxford Union speech in 2010.
In November 2010 , President Rajapaksa had arrived in Britain to address the prestigious Oxford Union at Oxford University. Mounting protest demonstrations against the event by LTTE and pro-LTTE diaspora elements compelled the organizers to cancel it at short notice fearing a breach of security and possible violence.
Even though the Oxford Police was prepared to provide adequate security the Oxford Union decided to cancel the address by Rajapaksa.
In a statement at the time, President Rajapakse said “I am very sorry this has had to be cancelled, but I will continue to seek venues in the UK and elsewhere where I can talk about my future vision for Sri Lanka.” The Mansion House speech was to have been his first such address in the UK since the Oxford event was cancelled.
Tamil diaspora media appealed to fellow Tamils to gather in large numbers saying the British Police had stated that the event may be called off for security reasons if a crowd exceeding 20,000 gathered at the venue.
Meanwhile efforts were also on by Sinhala expatriates to organize a counter demonstration near Mansion House in support of President Rajapaksa.
With the course of events taking a dangerous turn the Commonwealth Business Council office-bearers held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in consultation with British law enforcement authorities. It is learnt that security assessments and intelligence reports were also examined.
According to Scotland Yard sources the Police were ready to guarantee President Rajapaksa’s security but the Commonwealth Business Council decided it was not in the CBC/s interest to stage the event due to excessive policing requirements, risk of unruly incidents and potential violence, and also the likely disruption to business in the City of London.
Thereafter the Business Council decided to cancel the entire morning session of the envisaged Economic Forum.
According to a British official who requested anonymity the decision was to avoid potential “ugly incidents” in the Mansion House vicinity by eliminating the key provocative factor involved .
This was identified as the scheduled address by President Rajapaksa!
However in a bid to spare President Rajapaksa embarrassment by cancelling his speech alone the organizers resolved to call off the entire morning session of the forum.
Thus President Rajapaksa’s scheduled address has not been singled out and cancelled. Instead his speech along with other speeches will not take place as the entire morning session has been cancelled.
President Rajapaksa will attend the Commonwealth luncheon at Marlborough House on June 6th.
Meanwhile Tamil Diaspora media organs have begun gloating over the cancellation and are claiming that this was another victory for the “Pulathup Puligal” (Diaspora tigers) as in the case of what happened in Oxford in 2010.
Moves are also on to continue with the protest demonstration in the vicinity of Marlborough House where the Luncheon hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat in honour of the Queen is to be held
DBS Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com
« An effort is on to drive a wedge between traditional moderates and one-time militants
Commonwealth Institutions seem unable to lend a helping hand with Sri Lanka »
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Jack Perez |
Sports staff
Perez is currently a Sports staff writer on the beach volleyball and women's water polo beats. He was previously a reporter for the gymnastics and men's water polo beats.
@JackPerezDB
Baseball, Beach Volleyball, Football, Gymnastics, Men's Golf, Men's Tennis, Softball, Sports, Women's Soccer
June 9, 2:15 am
Superlatives: Daily Bruin recognizes UCLA’s standout athletes from 2018-2019
Male Athlete of the Year: Joshua Kelley, football Jason Maikis, assistant Sports editor In a rough year for UCLA football, one Bruin stood out in a big way. Read more...
Beach Volleyball, Football, Men's Basketball, Men's Water Polo, Sports, Women's Basketball, Women's Volleyball
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A year’s review of UCLA-USC’s crosstown rivalry filled with highs, lows
UCLA and USC faced off in the Crosstown Cup this year with the Trojans prevailing over the Bruins by a score of 105-85. In a year filled with exciting matchups, here are a few that the Daily Bruin staff think warrant a second look. Read more...
Sports, Women's Water Polo
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> High Court of Ireland Decisions >> North East Pylon Pressure Campaign Ltd. & anor -v- An Bord Pleanala & ors [2017] IEHC 338 (22 August 2017)
North East Pylon Pressure Campaign Ltd. & anor -v- An Bord Pleanála & ors
Barrett J.
2017 No. 151JR
IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION PURSUANT TO THE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT ACT 2000
IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION PURSUANT TO SECTION 50 AND 50B OF THE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT ACT 2000
IN THE MATTER OF AN APPROVAL GRANTED UNDER SECTION 182B OF THE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT ACT 2000 (AS AMENDED)
NORTH EAST PYLON PRESSURE CAMPAIGN LIMITED
First-Named Applicant
MAURA SHEEHY
Second-Named Applicant
AN BORD PLEANÁLA
First-Named Respondent
THE MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS, CLIMATE ACTION AND ENVIRONMENT
Second-Named Respondent
IRELAND AND THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Third and Fourth-Named Respondents
EIRGRID PLC
Notice Party
JUDGMENT of Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered on 22nd August, 2017.
(Numbers in square brackets are paragraph numbers).
I. Introduction [1]
II. Reliefs Sought [2]
III Some General Points Arising [3]
IV. Consent [4]
(i) Critical Issue Arising. [4]
(ii) Legislative Requirements. [5]
(iii) Frescati, et al. [9]
a. Overview. [9]
b. The decision in Frescati. [10]
c. Section 53 and Gormley. [16]
d. The Form and the Letter. [20]
A. Overview. [20]
B. The Form. [21]
C. The Letter. [25]
V. Entitlement to Make Application? [29]
(i) Critical Issue Arising. [29]
(ii) The Act of 1999 and the Regulations of 2000. [30]
(iii) A Consideration of Certain of the Affidavit Evidence. [32]
(iv) The Infrastructure Agreement. [35]
(v) Some Conclusions. [36]
(vi) The East-West Interconnector. [38]
(vii) Section 53 of the Act of 1927. [43]
b. The decision in Killross. [44]
(viii) Some Further Conclusions. [48]
VI. Designation, Bias, and Validity of Decision [49]
(i) Overview. [49]
(ii) The Question of Designation. [51]
a. The PCI Regulation. [51]
b. The European Union Law Dimension. [52]
(iii) Some Particular Aspects of the Case at Hand. [59]
VII. Bias [82]
VIII. What if the Court is wrong? [88]
(ii) Issuance of Consent pursuant to s.182B. [89]
(iii) De Facto Designation. [91]
IX. Delay [95]
X. ‘Brexit’ [98]
(i) Concerns Raised by Applicants. [98]
(ii) Uncertainty as to the Future. [100]
(iii) Listing of Project. [104]
1. The PCI Regulation. [104]
2. The 2015 Regulation. [106]
(iv) Some Conclusions. [109]
XI. Error on the Face of the Record [111]
XII. The Inspector’s Report [113]
XIII. Access [115]
(i) Overview. [115]
(ii) The Substance of the Inspector’s Report. [124]
(iii) Question as to Consideration of Access. [141]
(iv) Complaints about information provided. [144]
(v) The Agricultural Liaison Officer/s. [151]
(vi) Boland et al.[153]
(vii) Some Further Observations as to Access. [161]
XIV. Alternatives [168]
(ii) The Consideration of Alternatives Undertaken. [169]
a. Route Alternatives. [169]
b. Consideration of Technology, including Undergrounding. [176]
c. Cost-Benefit Analysis. [182]
(iii) Some Legal Issues Presenting. [183]
XV. Health Impacts [185]
(i) Electric and electro-magnetic fields. [185]
(ii) Childhood leukaemia. [187]
(iii) Other cancers. [188]
(iv) Non-cancerous diseases. [189]
(v) Children with Autism. [190]
(vi) Compliance with the ICNIRP Guidelines. [191]
XVI. The Whooper Swan [195]
XVII. Closing Submissions [198]
(i) Section 182B(10)(f). [199]
(ii) Ordinary and legal intent. [201]
(iii) ‘Brexit’ as an issue of need. [202]
(iv) Vires. [203]
(v) Which Routes Were Approved? (The ‘Yellow and Purple’ Issue) [206]
XVIII. Jus Tertii [219]
XIX. Closing [220]
1. These proceedings concern a challenge to the decision of An Bord Pleanála on 19th December last to grant planning approval to EirGrid under s.182B of the Planning and Development Act 2000 for the proposed North-South 400kV Interconnector development located in counties Monaghan, Cavan and Meath. The overall North-South Interconnector project comprises a 400kV overhead line circuit that is approximately 138km long, inclusive of approximately 34km in the North, linking an existing 400kV substation in Woodland, County Meath with a planned substation in Turleenan, County Tyrone. If it proceeds, the North-South Interconnector project will provide a second high-capacity all-Ireland electricity interconnector. (The existing interconnector, a 275kV double circuit overhead line (such lines being sometimes referred to in the documentation before the court as ‘OHLs’) connects existing substations in counties Louth and Armagh).
II. Reliefs Sought
2. The principal reliefs sought by the applicants in their application are as follows:
(1) an order of certiorari quashing the decision of An Bord Pleanála, on 18th December, 2016, to grant approval under s.182A(1) of the Planning and Development Act 2000 for an interconnector of 138km length (inclusive of 34km located in Northern Ireland which will link the existing electricity network of Northern Ireland between Turleenan in County Tyrone and Woodland (near Batterstown) County Meath, which interconnector has been designated as a project of common interest (PCI) pursuant to the provisions of Regulation (EU) No. 347/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17th April, 2013, on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure (O.J. L115/39, 25.4.2013) (the ‘PCI Regulation’), and in particular a new single circuit 400kV overhead transmission line between Crossbane, County Armagh and Lengare, County Monaghan to the townland of Bogganstown, County Meath, which transmission line crosses the jurisdictional border between Ireland and the United Kingdom in the townlands of Lengare, County Monaghan and Crossbane, County Armagh and comprises 299 new lattice steel support structures ranging in height from 26 to 51 metres above ground and associated conductor, insulators and other apparatus, which determination was approved pursuant to s.182B of the Act of 2000; (notwithstanding the applicants’ contention to the contrary the impugned decision of An Bord Pleanála, as per the court’s analysis later below, extends solely to the portion of the North-South Interconnector that sits south of the border between this State and Northern Ireland);
(2) a declaration that in making its decision of 19th December, 2016, An Bord Pleanála failed to have regard (and/or sufficient regard) to the designation (pursuant to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/89 of 18 November 2015 amending Regulation (EU) No 347/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the Union list of projects of common interest (O.J. L19, 27.1.2016, 1) (the ‘2015 Regulation’)) of the proposed development as a Cluster-Ireland-United Kingdom interconnection, including one or more of the following PCIs: Ireland-United Kingdom interconnection between Woodland (IE) and Turleenan (UK) and Ireland-United Kingdom interconnection between Srananagh (IE) and Turleenan (UK);
(3) an order of certiorari quashing the “purported” decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, granting approval under s.182B of the Act of 2000 for the proposed development of a 400kV electricity transmission interconnector linking the electricity transmission networks in Ireland and Northern Ireland;
(4) a declaration that the “purported” decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, is contrary to and in breach of Council Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13th December, 2011, on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (O.J. L26, 28.1.2012, 1), as amended (the ‘EIA Directive’);
(5) a declaration that An Bord Pleanála failed properly to consider and/or comply with the EIA Directive and failed to carry out an EIA, failed to ensure that the documentation lodged complied with the obligations under the said directive and failed to ensure appropriate public participation and/or failed to consider and/or apply any or any appropriate mitigation measures in respect of the EIA process;
(6) a declaration that the “purported” decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016 is contrary to and in breach of Council Directive 92 /43 /EEC of 21 May, 1992, on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora (O.J. L206, 22.7.1992, 7) (the ‘Habitats Directive’);
(7) a declaration that the “purported” decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, infringes and/or violates the applicants’ rights pursuant to Arts. 40.3, 43 and 40.5 of the Constitution;
(8) a declaration that the said “purported” decision is contrary to Art. 6, Art. 8 and Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights as given effect by the European Concvention on Human Rights Act 2003;
(9) an order of certiorari quashing the decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, as a “purported” competent authority under the PCI Regulation and/or the 2015 Regulation to grant the approval aforesaid;
(10) a declaration that An Bord Pleanála was not lawfully designated as a competent authority (as described in the PCI Regulation) in the “purported” decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016;
(11) a declaration that the decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, is null and void (and/or voidable) as An Bord Pleanála was not, it is claimed by the applicants, lawfully designated as a competent authority as described in the PCI Regulation (and/or the 2015 Regulation);
(12) a declaration that the decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, contains an error of law on the face of the record of the decision, as An Bord Pleanála was not, it is claimed by the applicants, lawfully designated as a competent authority as described in the PCI Regulation (and/or the 2015 Regulation);
(13) in the alternative, a declaration that the decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, is ultra vires as An Bord Pleanála, it is claimed by the applicants, was not lawfully designated as a competent authority as described in the PCI Regulation and/or the 2015 Regulation;
(14) a declaration that the decision of An Bord Pleanála of 19th December, 2016, is ultra vires, in that there was no lawful basis for An Bord Pleanála to exercise decision-making powers in relation to a permit-granting procedure for PCIs and/or clusters of PCI;
(15) a declaration that the decision of 19th December, 2016, whereby An Bord Pleanála stated that it confined its decision to the matters pertinent to the Strategic Infrastructure Development (‘SID’) application and in particular issues arising in respect of appropriate assessment, environmental impact assessment and the consideration of the proper planning and sustainable development and did not consider that it was conflicted in any way by the separate administrative role fulfilled by An Bord Pleanála as the competent authority for PCIs constitutes an error of law on the face of the record; and
(16) an order of certiorari quashing the entirety of the decision of An Bord Pleanála considered, dealt with and/or determined the application in its decision of 19th December, 2016, gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.
III Some General Points Arising
3. Before proceeding further, the court pauses to make some general remarks:
(1) the burden of proof to establish the grounds on which judicial review is sought rests on the applicants. (See, inter alia, Harrington v. An Bord Pleanála [2014] IEHC 232).
(2) the decision of An Bord Pleanála enjoys a presumption of validity. (See, inter alia, Ratheniska Timahoe and Spink (RTS) Substation Action Group & anor v. An Bord Pleanála [2015] IEHC 18).
(3) the applicable standard of review, in particular relating to the decision of An Bord Pleanála, for the purposes of the EIA Directive and in relation to the Appropriate Assessment is that identified in O’Keeffe v. An Bord Pleanála [1993] 1 I.R. 39.
(4) it is a significant feature of the case as pleaded that no leave has been granted to challenge the accuracy of any matter in the inspector's report.
(5) although the applicants have put affidavit evidence before the court that addresses matters of visual impact, health and property values, no leave has been granted to raise any challenge in relation to those matters save in respect of two identified landowners.
(6) the effect of the permission is not to grant any interest in property, nor indeed to authorise anything other than the development, the subject of the of the application. Although, as counsel for the applicants noted, “permission is an appendage to the title to…property” (per Henchy J. in Readymix Éire Ltd v. Dublin County Council (Unreported, Supreme Court, 30th July, 1974), 6) that observation was made in the context of a decision that the terms of the permission had to be clearly ascertainable and identifiable and nothing more.
(7) although the amount of material before the court was extensive, the court cannot but note the vastness of the enterprise that has preceded the within application. Thus (i) the oral hearings in this case were preceded by an extremely detailed environmental impact statement that extended over five volumes and comprised some 14,000 pages of text and maps; (ii) some 903 sets of submissions from members of the public were responded to by detailed submissions or replying submissions from EirGrid; (iii) those (entirely proper) public submissions, as one would instinctively expect, presented a wide range of issues from matters affecting the particular situations of particular landowners to very general issues; (iv) there were 35 days of oral hearing over a period of eleven weeks, with some 204 people addressing the inspector; and (v) the inspector’s report features over 600 pages of analysis.
IV. Consent
(i) Critical Issue Arising.
4. So far as the issue of consent is concerned, the critical issue arising is whether there is any rule (a) in legislation, (b) at common law, or (c) pursuant to the Constitution or the European Convention on Human Rights which mandates that EirGrid can only seek approval pursuant to s.182A of the Act of 2000 with the consent of the owners of an affected property?
(ii) Legislative Requirements.
5. Section 182A of the Act of 2000 provides, inter alia, as follows:
“(1) Where a person (hereafter referred to in this section as the ‘undertaker’) intends to cary out development comprising or for the purposes of electricity transmission, (hereafter referred to in this section and section 182B as ‘proposed development’), the undertaker shall prepare, or cause to be prepared, an application for approval of the development under section 182B and shall apply to the Board for such approval accordingly.
(2) In the case of development referred to in subsection (1) which belongs to a class of development identified for the purposes of section 176, the undertaker shall prepare, or cause to be prepared, an environmental impact statement or Natura impact statement or both of those statements, as the case may be, in respect of the development.
(3) The proposed development shall not be carried out unless the Board has approved it with or without modifications….” [Emphasis added].
6. By way of initial observation, it is perhaps notable that the requirement to prepare an application for approval (or to cause same to be prepared) rests on the person who intends to carry out a development within the meaning of s.182A.
7. As to what constitutes “transmission”, this is defined in s.182A(9) by reference to the Electricity Regulation Act 1999 and reflects the division of function which is provided for under the regulations envisioned in that earlier legislation. Per s.182A(9):
“In this section ‘transmission’, in relation to electricity, shall be construed in accordance with section 2(1) of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999 but, for the purposes of this section, the foregoing expression in relation to electricity, shall also be construed as meaning the transport of electricity by means of -
(a) a high voltage line where the voltage would be 110 kilovolts or more, or
(b) an interconnector, whether ownership of the interconnector will be vested in the undertaker or not.” [Emphasis added].
8. A number of points might usefully be made at this juncture:
(1) the above-quoted provisions make no reference to, nor are they obviously or necessarily consistent with a requirement of landowner consent as an element of a successful development consent application.
(2) in contrast to applications made under s.34 of the Act of 2000, there is no provision in the regulations governing applications of the kind now in issue that demonstrates any intention that consent from owners of property affected by development is required for the purposes of such an application.
(3) on a more general note, if one steps back for a moment from the detail of the legislative provisions in issue, it is unsurprising that there would be a want of provision making landowner consent a pre-requisite to, or a necessary component of, a successful development consent application. There are a range of applications that can be brought under the legislation involving public utility works which would conceivably involve development on the lands of many different persons. (Another example of such an application is an application under s.182C of the Act of 2000 which is concerned with strategic gas infrastructure developments.) Were the consent of all of those persons to be a mandatory element of such applications, the applicable application process would quickly become unworkable. Thus, regrettably but almost certainly necessarily, and not without regard for individual rights, but concomitant with that concern for the overall public good which central government invariably and properly brings to the formulation of national policy and legislation, individual landowner consent is neither a pre-requisite to, nor a necessary component of, a successful development consent application, whether by virtue of primary or secondary legislation.
(iii) Frescati, et al.
a. Overview.
9. To sustain the contention that the court should interpolate into the applicable legislation a requirement for landowner consent, counsel for the applicants has sought (a) to rely upon the decision of the Supreme Court in Frescati Estates v. Walker [1975] I.R. 177, and (b) to deduce from An Bord Pleanála’s standard application form and a letter written by ESB in the course of the events under consideration, an implied obligation to obtain landowner consent even in the context of an application made under s.182A. Both propositions, the court respectfully concludes, are without foundation.
b. The decision in Frescati.
10. Frescati House is one of the lost gems of 18th-century Irish architecture, allowed by an earlier generation to fall into decay and eventual ruin despite its architectural merit and, as importantly (perhaps even more importantly), its historical significance as the onetime favourite residence of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the prominent United Irishman. In the case that went before the Supreme Court in Frescati Estates v. Walker, the plaintiffs were the owners of the house and surviving demesne. They proposed to demolish it and to build in its place a shopping centre wanting in aesthetic merit. Ms. Walker, the defendant, was an activist concerned about the demolition of the house. Despite having no estate or interest in the plaintiff’s property, she applied for planning permission that would have required the retention of the house had it been granted. The Supreme Court decided that in those circumstances Ms Walker’s application for permission was not a valid application on the basis that although the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1963 did not require Ms Walker to have an estate or interest in the property described in her application, it did require that her application should have the imprimatur of the owner of an estate in the property sufficient to enable such applicant to carry out the proposed development. Per Henchy J., at 185-187:
“Not alone has the defendant no legal estate or interest in it but the trial judge found as a fact that "she has no intention or hope of acquiring any estate of any kind in the property or of developing it."
The sweep of the argument of counsel for the defendant, however, carries with it the further submission that because no limiting qualifications are laid down by the relevant sections for an applicant, anyone can be an applicant for development permission. An applicant may not be debarred, the argument runs, not alone because he has no legal estate or interest in the property but also irrespective of the genuineness or otherwise of the proposed development, or whether the applicant is acting in good faith or not, or whether those with a legal estate or interest know or approve of the application, or whether other (and possibly conflicting) applications have been made or are pending. There is nothing in the Act, it is said in effect, to debar a pauper from making an application for permission for a multi-million pound development of a property which he has only read about in a newspaper.
That the proposition that virtually anyone may apply for permission to develop a particular property could lead to strange incongruities was shown by instances raised in the course of the argument. However, it is a matter of principle that a statute - particularly a statute like the present one which makes substantial inroads on pre-existing rights - should not be construed as intending to confer unqualified and indiscriminate rights on people generally in respect of another's property such as the right to avail themselves of the legal processes of a planning application so as to gratify what may be merely an idle or perverse whim. The long title of this Act proclaims its purpose to be ‘…to make provision in the interests of the common good, for the proper planning and development of cities, towns and other areas…’ The powers given by the Act must be read as being exercisable in the interests of the common good and the Courts should lean against a construction which would make the exercise of such powers available to an individual for the purpose of advancing a purely personal motive at the expense of the general purpose of the Act.
Apart from the irreconcilability with the general principle of the proposition put forward on behalf of the defendant, a number of specific provisions of the Act clearly show its unsoundness. For the sake of brevity I shall confine myself to a selection of those provisions for the purpose of showing that the operation of the Act requires that an applicant for permission must have a particular degree of standing….”
11. A couple of points might be made in connection with the above-quoted text:
(1) the “Not alone…developing it” element of same provides a significant and obvious point of distinction between the circumstances that pertained in Frescati and the type of situation with which the court is now concerned, where a legislative provision (s.182A) is directly engaged by an application by a party (EirGrid) which intends to carry out the relevant development.
(2) the “That the proposition…perverse whim” element of same is also significant. In this segment of his judgment Henchy J. formulates and/or applies a common law rule of statutory construction as to how statute-law falls properly to be construed - and unsurprisingly elects to construe the applicable statute as a whole, and to have the effect that it does not permit an application by a party who is gratifying an idle or perverse whim or seeking an unqualified and indiscriminate right over somebody else’s property. The court cannot but note in passing that that is a long way from the facts of the within proceedings where the court is confronted with a body (EirGrid) that is designated by statute with particular purposes concerning the operation of the State’s electricity transmission system and seeking development consent under a self-contained legislative code designed for that end.
12. Henchy J. moves on in his judgment to consider a selection of provisions from the Act of 1963 that he believes to show that the operation of that Act (and the judgment has equal applicability in the context of current planning legislation) requires that an applicant for planning permission have a particular degree of standing. Per Henchy J., at 188-190:
“Section 25, sub-s. 1, of the Act of 1963 requires the Minister to make permission regulations and enacts that permission shall be granted on application being made in accordance with the regulations and subject to the requirements of the regulations. Sub-section 2 of that section proceeds to set out what the regulations may require from applicants. The regulations may require any applicants ‘to furnish to the Minister and to any other specified persons any specified information with respect to their applications’ (para. c) and ‘to submit any further information relative to their applications (including any information as to any estate or interest in or right over land)’ and ‘the production of any evidence to verify any particulars of information given by any applicants’ - see paras. (d) and (e).
Since applications cannot be successful unless they comply with the requirements of the regulations (s. 25, sub-s. 1), the legislature must be credited with the intention of delineating the range of eligible applicants by the extent of the permitted requirements. Thus, a total stranger to the property, who has no liaison with those interested in it, could scarcely have been envisaged as a successful applicant, for normally he could not furnish the specified information (including any estate or interest in or right over the land) or produce evidence to verify particulars given as to such information.
Furthermore. when we turn to s. 9, sub-s. 1, of the Act of 1963 we find that a planning authority may, for any purpose arising in relation to their functions under the Act, require the occupier or the person receiving the rent to state in writing within a specified period particulars of the estate, interest or right by virtue of which he is an occupier or receives the rent and the name and address (so far as they are known to him) of every person who to his knowledge has any estate or interest in or right over or in respect of the property. Sub-section 2 of that section makes it an offence punishable on summary conviction with a fine not exceeding £20 for a person from whom such information is required to fail to state it within the time specified, or to make a statement in writing which is to his knowledge false or misleading in a material respect.
The effect of s. 9 is that when an application for permission to develop is made, the planning authority, in order to carry out their functions under the Act, may find it necessary to serve on the occupier or the person receiving the rent the notice referred to in sub-s. 1 of the section; if the person so served does not comply with the notice in the way specified in sub-s. 2, he will become liable to the sanction of the criminal law. If, as counsel for the defendant contends, applications for development permission may be made in multiplicity and indiscriminately by persons at large, obligations would be cast on occupiers of or persons receiving rent out of property and failure to comply with those obligations would subject such people to a fine with a liability to imprisonment in default of payment. The fundamental rule that a statute must be construed so as to keep its operation within the ambit of the broad purpose of the Act rules out such an interpretation; otherwise it would be possible for persons, by means of frivolous or perverse applications, to cause the imposition of duties and liabilities which would be wholly unnecessary for the operation of the Act in the interests of the common good.
Section 83 of the Act of 1963 provides an equally cogent reason why the Act does not envisage persons unconnected with any real interest in property or its development being allowed to apply for development permission. That section provides that an authorised person (i.e. , a person so authorised for the purposes of the section by the planning authority or the Minister) may enter, subject to an order of the District Court prohibiting or restricting the entry, on any land for any purpose connected with the Act and may do all things reasonably necessary for the purpose for which the entry is made and, in particular, may survey, make plans, take levels, make excavations, and examine the depth and nature of the subsoil. If the Act had to be read as allowing that degree of intrusion at the behest of any individual who chooses to make a development application in respect of another person's property, the constitutionality of the statute would be very much in question.
The inequities and anomalies that would follow if there is to be an unrestricted right to apply for permission to develop another person's property is shown by the terms of many provisions of the Act. For example, since the planning authority must investigate and deal with each application with sufficient care to ensure that their decision will have due regard to the development plan required by Part III of the Act, a group of people making multiple applications in respect of properties in which they have no legal interest, and which they have no intention or hope of developing, could put such a strain on the resources of the planning authority as to stifle the operation of the Act in delay and confusion. Since s. 41 requires particulars of all applications for development permission to be entered on the register (which s. 8 requires the planning authority to keep), and since s. 28, sub-s. 5, provides that a grant of permission will normally inure for the benefit of the property and all persons interested in it, the register (which incorporates documents by reference) would become encumbered with bulk and detail if applications without restriction were allowed, and consequently might prove confusing or misleading for those who would be required to consult it.If there need never be a connexion between the applicant and those who have a legal estate or interest in the property, the period for appealing against the decision of the planning authority would be, for the applicant, one month from the receipt of the decision, but for others (who, if the argument on behalf of the defendant is correct, could include those with a legal estate or interest) it would be 21 days from the day of the giving of the decision (s. 28, sub-s. 5) - thus giving preferential treatment to someone who may be merely a meddlesome interloper. It is no answer to this complaint to say that a grant or refusal of an application for development permission cannot prejudice a subsequent application. As I have shown, the mere making of an application by a person with no legal interest can operate to the detriment of the owner or occupier. And in any case, I find nothing in the scheme of the Act that would allow interfering, if well-intentioned, outsiders to intrude into the rights of those with a legal interest to the extent of lumbering the property with unwanted grants or refusals of permission, thus cluttering the title.
To sum up, while the intention of the Act is that persons with no legal interest (such as would-be purchasers) may apply for development permission, the operation of the Act within the scope of its objects and the limits of constitutional requirements would be exceeded if the word ‘applicant’ in the relevant sections is not given a restricted connotation. The extent of that restriction must be determined by the need to avoid unnecessary or vexatious applications, with consequent intrusions into property rights and demands on the statutory functions of planning authorities beyond what could reasonably be said to be required, in the interests of the common good, for proper planning and development.
Applying that criterion, I consider that an application for development permission, to be valid, must be made either by or with the approval of a person who is able to assert sufficient legal estate or interest to enable him to carry out the proposed development, or so much of the proposed development as relates to the property in question. There will thus be sufficient privity between the applicant (if he is not a person entitled) and the person entitled to enable the applicant to be treated, for practical purposes, as a person entitled.
As for the present case, the defendant's application was invalid and should not have been entertained for she had no legal estate or interest in the property and her application was made without the knowledge or approval of the plaintiffs who, as the owners of the fee simple, are the only persons who would be legally competent to carry out the development for which the defendant sought permission.”
13. Perhaps five points might usefully be made in connection with the just-quoted text:
(1) Henchy J.’s observations concerning s.25(2) of the Act of 1963 are of no relevance in the context of the within application because, as mentioned previously above, the regulations applicable to the form of application now in issue do not require the provision of such information as falls to be provided in applications under s.34 of the Act of 2000. That this is so inclines the court to the conclusion that s.182A, properly construed, does not envision, let alone require, that landowner consent be provided as a pre-requisite to, or a necessary element of a successful development consent application.
(2) Henchy J.’s observations regarding s.9 of the Act of 1963 (a provision reflected but not repeated in s.8 of the Act of 2000) are not of relevance to the within application because the application in issue does not even begin to approach, let alone occupy the realm of frivolity and/or perversity.
(3) Henchy J.’s observations concerning s.83 of the Act of 1963 (as reflected in s.252 of the Act of 2000) are not of relevance in the context of the within application for much the same reason as was just touched upon in the last point, being that the court is not concerned here with an application that is made by, to borrow a colloquialism ‘any old person’ but rather by an entity that is an ‘undertaking’ both within the meaning of s.182A of the Act of 2000 and for the purposes provided for in that legislation.
(4) as to Henchy J.’s points concerning “[t]he inequities and anomalies that would follow if there is to be an unrestricted right to apply for permission to develop another person’s property…”, again his reasoning is not of relevance in the context of the circumstances now presenting, where the court is confronted with an entity that is an ‘undertaking’ within the meaning of s.182A and for the purposes provided for in that legislation. Here the court is not dealing with an entity that, to use the terminology of Henchy J., though the court suspects that even in his day it was the terminology of a bygone era, can properly be described as a “meddlesome interloper”.
(5) as to Henchy J.’s summation of his analysis and, in particular, his observation that “while the intention of the Act is that persons with no legal interest (such as would-be purchasers) may apply for development permission, the operation of the Act within the scope of its objects and the limits of constitutional requirements would be exceeded if the word ‘applicant’ in the relevant sections is not to be given a restricted connotation”, the court would merely observe that when it comes to s.182A one is dealing necessarily and solely with a restricted class of would-be applicant.
14. By way of overall observation, it can be seen from the preceding analysis that Frescati is a case the rationale of which is applicable to applications for permission of the kind now reflected in s.34 of the Act of 2000; it has no application to s.182A for at least three reasons:
(1) the regulations applicable to permission granted under s.34 of the Act of 2000 specifically require information as to interest or estate in land; by contrast, the regulations applicable to s.182A do not (a point that is returned to again later below).
(2) the legislation governing what might be styled applications for planning permission (as opposed to s.182A approval) was found by the Supreme Court in Frescati to be inconsistent with a scenario in which persons not having a legal interest in lands could be allowed make an application. By contrast, the legislation which governs the application made by EirGrid is consistent (and consistent only) with EirGrid being entitled to bring an application of the form that it has brought, and not requiring the consent or agreement of any other party so to do.
(3) none of the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Frescati, insofar as it is directed towards intermeddlers applies in the context of a statutory body empowered to undertake public utility works of a very specific kind such as those in issue here.
15. The court respectfully considers that the foregoing analysis suffices to deal with the consent issue raised by the applicants: there is no consent requirement in applicable legislation (it would perhaps be surprising if there were); and the decision in Frescati, pointed to by the applicants as a source of such a requirement, has no application to the construction of the provisions with which the court is now concerned. The court does not consider that it is necessary to address in detail the decision of the Supreme Court in Keane v. An Bord Pleanála [1998] 2 I.L.R.M. 241, beyond noting that nothing therein detracts from the court’s uncontroversial reading and application, in the foregoing pages, of the decision of the Supreme Court in Frescati.
c. Section 53 and Gormley.
16. Section 53 of the Electricity Supply Act 1927, as amended by the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act 1945 - it has been amended again since - provided, inter alia, as follows in respect of wayleaves:
“(1). The Board and also any authorised undertaker may, subject to the provisions of this section, and of regulations made by the Board under this Act place any electric line above or below ground across any land not being a street, road, railway, or tramway….
(3). Before placing an electric line across any land or attaching any fixture to any building under this section the Board or the authorised undertaker (as the case may be) shall serve on the owner and on the occupier of such land or building a notice in writing stating its or his intention so to place the line or attach the fixture (as the case may be) and giving a description of the nature of the line or fixture and of the position and manner in which it is intended to be placed or attached….
(4). If within seven days after the service of such notice the owner and the occupier of such land or building give their consent to the placing of such line or the attaching of such fixture (as the case may be) in accordance with such notice either unconditionally or with conditions acceptable to the Board, or to the authorised undertaker and approved by the Board (as the case may require), the Board or the authorised undertaker may proceed to place such line across such land or to attach such fixture to such building in the position and manner stated in such notice.
(5). If the owner or occupier of such land or building fails within the seven days aforesaid to give his consent in accordance with the foregoing sub-section the Board or the authorised undertaker with the consent of the Board but not otherwise may place such line across such land or attach such fixture to such building in the position and manner stated in the said notice….
(9). Where the Board or an authorised undertaker is authorised by or under this section to place or retain any electric line across any land or to attach or retain any fixture on any building the Board or such authorised undertaker (as the case may be) may at any time enter on such land or building for the purpose of placing, repairing, or altering such line or such fixture or any line or apparatus supported by such fixture.”
17. In Electricity Supply Board v. Gormley [1985] I.R. 129, Mrs. Gormley had acquired property after ESB obtained planning permission for development comprising the development of a transmission system which crossed her land. Wayleave notices were served under section 53 as it then stood. Mrs Gormley raised a number of objections to what was to be done by ESB, one of which was that the applicable legislation was unconstitutional because it did not provide any mechanism for the payment of compensation for what was in effect the imposition of a wayleave on her property. She failed in this contention in the High Court but she succeeded on appeal to the Supreme Court, that court deciding that the planning permission in issue was invalid consequent upon the absence of any facility for compensation. As mentioned in the above-mentioned report of the judgment, at 158, as a consequence of the decision of the Supreme Court, the Oireachtas subsequently enacted the Electricity Supply (Amendment) Act 1985 which substituted a new s.53(5) into the Act of 1927, which new provision provided as follows:
“(5). If the owner or occupier of such land or building fails within the seven days aforesaid to give his consent in accordance with the foregoing subsection, the Board or the authorised undertaker with the consent of the Board but not otherwise may place such line across such land or attach such fixture to such building in the position and manner stated in the said notice, subject to the entitlement of such owner or occupier to be paid compensation in respect of the exercise by the Board or authorised undertaker of the powers conferred by this subsection and of the powers conferred by subsection (9) of this section, such compensation to be assessed in default of agreement under the provisions of the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act, 1919, the Board for this purpose being deemed to be a public authority.”
18. Although Gormley is a renowned decision in terms of the conclusions arrived at by the Supreme Court as to the entitlement to compensation, its particular significance in the context of the within application is that, in the High Court, Mrs Gormley raised an issue by reference to Frescati, being that although she had acquired the property after the ESB obtained planning permission for the development, nonetheless the ESB did not have her consent to the development. Dealing with this aspect of matters, at 141, Carroll J. observes as follows:
“I am satisfied that the ESB had sufficient interest to support their application for planning permission. In Frescati Estates v. Walker [1975] I.R. 177 Henchy J. said the word ‘applicant’ must be given a restricted connotation and the extent of that restriction must be determined by the need to avoid unnecessary and frivolous applications for planning permission. The test which Mr. Justice Henchy laid down in that context at p. 190 of the report was that in order to be valid an application must be made:-‘either by or with the approval of a person who is able to assert sufficient legal estate or interest to enable him to carry out the proposed development, or so much of the proposed development as relates to the property in question. There will thus be sufficient privity between the applicant (if he is not a person entitled) and the person entitled to enable the applicant to be treated, for practical purposes, as a person entitled.’
When this is applied to the present case, the ESB had sufficient interest given by statute to enable it to carry out the proposed development on the property in question. It is also obvious that the application was neither frivolous nor unnecessary. Therefore the ESB falls within the restricted meaning of the word ‘applicant’ as set out in that judgment.”
19. The reasoning of Carroll J. in the above-quoted text applies with equal vigour to the within proceedings. Yes, there are differences between that case and this because (i) in Gormley, ESB was carrying out the development and was the party which sought planning permission, whereas (ii) (and in truth this is just the ‘flip-side’ of (i)) the impugned application in the within proceedings has been brought by EirGrid and the only body with powers under s.53 of the Act of 1927 is the ESB. However, to focus on those differences is, to borrow a colloquialism, ‘to miss the wood for the trees’. The critical points to note are that (a) EirGrid is in a position whereby it can procure ESB to do the works and ESB is in a position where it can exercise the powers, and (b) s.53 is directed to and concerned with the intent of the undertaker - and the undisputed evidence before the court (and the planning inspector) is (was) that EirGrid intends to carry out the development, it intends to do so with ESB constructing the development, and ESB has the requisite powers, insofar as the need arises, to allow that development to be done where there is no landowner consent. So while it is certainly the case that there is a difference, and an obvious one, between ESB as repository of the statutory power and EirGrid as applicant, it is a distinction without a difference.
d. The Form and the Letter.
20. If applicable legislation does not require landowner consent (and here it does not) and if Frescati is inapplicable (and for the reasons identified previously above it is inapplicable), on what legal basis can the applicants construct a requirement that landowner consent be obtained by EirGrid? Perhaps surprisingly, the applicants have pointed in this regard, inter alia, to (a) An Bord Pleanála’s standard ‘Application Form for Permission/Approval in respect of a Strategic Infrastructure Development’ and (b) a letter of 14th May, 2015, from the ESB to An Bord Pleanála.
B. The Form.
21. As to An Bord Pleanála’s ‘Application Form for Permission/Approval in respect of a Strategic Infrastructure Development’ there is: (i) no such form prescribed by law; (ii) for the reasons stated previously above, no requirement that a person making application under s.182A of the Act of 2000 obtain landowner consent; and (iii) no way that the said form could change this legal position - in and of itself the form is something of a legal nothing. Be that as it may, the applicants have pointed to Box 7 of the said form as support of their argument as to the need for landowner consent. The detail of that box, as completed, is replicated below:
“7. Legal Interest of Applicant in respect of the site the subject of the application:
Please tick appropriate box to show applicant’s legal interest in the land or structure: Owner Occupier
Where legal interest is ‘Other’, please expand further on your interest in the land or structure.
EirGrid plc is the licensed Transmission Service Operator for Ireland pursuant to the provisions of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999. Pursuant to the provisions of S.I. N. 445/2000, EirGrid plc has the exclusive function to operate and ensure the maintenance of and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system.
The Electricity Supply Board is the licensed Transmission System Owner for Ireland pursuant to Section 14 of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999.
The proposed transmission infrastructure will be constructed by the Electricity Supply Board pursuant to statutory powers.
If you are not the legal owner, please state the name and address of the owner and supply a letter from the owner of consent to make the application as listed in the accompanying documentation.
The owner of Woodland 400 kV Substation is the Electricity Supply Board. A letter of consent and approval to the making of the application from the Electricity Supply Board of 27 Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2 is included in Schedule 2 attached to this Application Form. The Electricity Supply Board is the licensed Transmission System Owner for Ireland pursuant to Section 14 of the Electricity Regulation Act, 1999.
The owner of the Temporary Construction Material Storage Yard to be located in the townlands of Monaltyuff and Monaltybane, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan is [Name and Address Stated]. A letter of consent and approval to the making of the application form from [the person aforesaid] is included in Schedule 2 attached to this Application Form.
Does the applicant own or have a beneficial interest in adjoining, abutting or adjacent lands? If so, identify the lands and state the interest.
EirGrid plc, the applicant for approval, does not have a beneficial interest in adjoining, abutting or adjacent lands. However, EirGrid Interconnector Limited (a wholly owned subsidiary of EirGrid plc) has an interest in lands within and adjacent to the southern portion of the overall 400 kV Substation, in the townland of Woodland, in the Barony of Ratoath, in the Electoral Division of Dunshaughlin, County Meath which comprises the western termination node of the existing East West Interconnector (EWIC).
22. Try as it has, the court does not see in the text inserted by EirGrid in the above-quoted segments of the application form anything other than a description of EirGrid’s interest that conforms with (i) the requirements of s.182A of the Act of 2000 and (ii) the decision of the High Court in Gormley. EirGrid commences by identifying itself as the licensed transmission system operator which, pursuant to the Act of 1999, has the exclusive function to operate, ensure the maintenance of and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system. That is its interest. It is its statutory interest in pursuing the development and it is properly recorded in the context in which the question is asked. By contrast, the ESB is (correctly) described as the licensed transmission system owner pursuant to the Act of 1999 Act. And that is where the ESB comes into the process, not just because of its sub-station ownership but because it is the transmission system owner for Ireland. Of final note in this regard is that the proposed transmission infrastructure will be constructed by the ESB pursuant to its statutory powers, being the very interest that Carroll J. found to be sufficient in Gormley, having regard to her construction of Frescati. As to identifying the legal owner and providing a suitable consent letter, the owner of the Woodland substation is (correctly) identified as the ESB; reference is made to a letter of consent but again it is made clear that the ESB is the licensed transmission system owner for Ireland under s.14 of the Act of 1999. So the application form in its own terms makes it clear that ESB is being referenced, not merely in the context of ownership of the substation, but also in the context of its ownership of the transmission system.
23. At the end of An Bord Pleanála’s ‘Application Form for Permission/Approval in respect of a Strategic Infrastructure Development’, the following “General Guidance Note” (in the version as furnished to the court) appears:
“The range and format of material required to be compiled/submitted with any application in respect of a proposed strategic infrastructure development shall generally accord with the requirements for a planning application as set out in the Planning and Development Regulations, 2001 to 2011 and those Regulations should therefore be consulted prior to submission of any application.”
24. As the court understands the applicant’s contentions, they include the contention that this general guidance note creates a legal obligation which does not otherwise exist under the legislation on EirGrid to obtain landowner consent. But if the court might borrow from the Ronseal man, this “General Guidance Note” ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’…and no more. Thus it is general guidance (so it is not specific), it is merely guidance (so it is not prescriptive), and it neither purports to, nor could, establish a legal obligation of the type contended for.
C. The Letter.
25. Turning to the letter of 14th May, 2015, from the ESB to An Bord Pleanála, it is, with respect, very hard to see how this letter adds to the legal analysis one way or the other. Nonetheless it was the focus of some attention on the part of the applicants at hearing and thus falls to be considered here. The letter commences with a statement of the statutory background and role of each of the ESB and EirGrid, then continues as follows:
“Pursuant to Regulation 18.1(a) of [the European Communities (Internal Market in Electricity) Regulations 2000 (S.I. No. 445 of 2000)]…ESB and EirGrid are required to enter into an agreement for the purpose of enabling EirGrid as Transmission System Operator to discharge its functions under S.I. No. 445/2000. On 16th March, 2006, ESB and EirGrid accordingly entered into such an agreement, known as the Infrastructure Agreement.
Pursuant to clause 7.6 of the Infrastructure Agreement, all activities connected with, seeking and/or obtaining planning permission/approval (if required) and any other consents required by the Transmission System Operator to discharge its functions as such, shall be the sole responsibility of the Transmission System Operator, i.e. EirGrid.
ESB is obliged under the legislation and the Infrastructure Agreement cited above to facilitate EirGrid’s planning intentions in the furtherance of EirGrid’s functions as Transmission System Operator. Therefore, pursuant to the Infrastructure Agreement and for the purposes of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, ESB, as the licensed Transmission System Owner (and a person with a legal interest in the lands the subject-matter of the enclosed application for planning approval) hereby consents to the making by EirGrid of this application for planning approval, which EirGrid considers necessary.”
26. The most sensible reading of this letter as a whole is that its provision is referable (a) to its interest in the Woodland substation, and (b) to ESB’s status as licensed transmission system owner. Any suggestion that the letter is referable solely to (a) is patently wrong when one has regard to the substance of the letter. After all, were it not for (b), there would be no need to repeatedly state, as the letter does, that ESB is the licensed transmission system owner under Section 14 of the Act of 1999.
27. In passing - and the court will return to the EirGrid-ESB Infrastructure Agreement in more detail later below - the court notes the reference in the above-quoted text to cl. 7.6 of that agreement. Though the significance of that agreement was somewhat underplayed at the hearing of the within application, it seems to the court notable that the Infrastructure Agreement itself provides in cl. 7.6 for EirGrid’s function in seeking a consent of the kind that was in fact provided by ESB in the context of the now-impugned application process. The ESB, in other words, is obliged under, inter alia, the Infrastructure Agreement to facilitate EirGrid’s planning intentions. Hence, in the letter, pursuant to the Infrastructure Agreement, and for the purposes of the Act of 2000, ESB (as licensed transmission system owner) consents to the making by EirGrid of the now-impugned application; and on its own terms the letter is provided to facilitate EirGrid’s planning intentions and in furtherance of EirGrid’s functions as transmission system operator.
28. The court began this section of its judgment by posing the question whether there is any rule (a) in legislation, (b) at common law, or (c) pursuant to the Constitution or the European Convention on Human Rights which mandates that EirGrid can only seek approval pursuant to s.182A of the Act of 2000 with the consent of the owners of an affected property? In this regard, the following conclusions, it seems to the court, may reasonably be stated by reference to the foregoing analysis:
(1) the question of whether a person needs a legal or beneficial interest to make an application for development consent is determined by the statutory provisions governing that consent.
(2) the decision of the Supreme Court in Frescati establishes a rule of statutory construction which, when brought to bear on the Act of 2000 yields the result that that Act allows EirGrid to make the now-impugned application and imposes no constraint by reference to landowner consent.
(3) the decision in Frescati is limited in scope to an applicant for permission who is seeking to assert an indiscriminate and unqualified right in order to gratify a whim. Thus it is not applicable to a body such as EirGrid that is discharging a function in the public interest and common good.
(4) having regard to the fact that ESB will construct the interconnector, having regard to the fact that it has the statutory power to acquire interests and having regard to the relationship between ESB and EirGrid under the internal electricity market regulations, the requisite interest under Gormley exists (if it is necessary indeed to proceed to an application of Gormley and, for the reasons stated elsewhere above, the court is not persuaded that it is).
(5) no part of the application form can or does change the legal position as described by the court in the preceding pages; nor does the letter from the ESB.
(6) no provision of the Constitution or the European Convention on Human Rights alters the foregoing conclusions.
V. Entitlement to Make Application?
29. The next issue that the court considers is whether EirGrid is entitled to make an application for approval for the North-South Interconnector under s.182A of the Act of 2000. Although counsel for the applicants suggested at hearing that this issue was not being pressed, it seems that it may continue to be a live issue and the court will therefore address it. In essence, the issue ‘boils down’ to the meaning of the phrase “carry out development” in s.182A. The court will also consider hereafter (i) the wayleave powers of the ESB under s.53 of the Act of 1927 and (ii) the issue contended to present as regards the East-West connector, both of which matters were referenced by counsel for the applicants in this context, though neither of which, the court respectfully concludes, is relevant to the issue of entitlement.
(ii) The Act of 1999 and the Regulations of 2000.
30. Mention has already been made of the text of s.182A, the reference therein to “electricity transmission”, the definition of that term in s.182A(9) by reference to the Electricity Regulation Act 1999, and the express provision in that subsection that “for the purposes of this section, the foregoing expression [i.e. ‘electricity transmission’], in relation to electricity, shall also be construed as meaning the transport of electricity by means of [inter alia]…(b) an interconnector, whether ownership of the interconnector will be vested in the undertaker or not”. But perhaps especially worth remembering in the context of the issues now under consideration is the emphasis placed on the concept of ‘development’ in s.182A. It will be recalled that that provision commences “Where a person…intends to carry out development comprising or for the purposes of electricity transmission…[that person] shall prepare, or cause to be prepared, an application for approval of the development…”. Indeed, it would not be an overstatement to assert that the notion of ‘development’ dominates s.182 and, as will be seen hereafter, the function of development has been vested by statute in EirGrid. Also notable in this context are the European Communities (Internal Market in Electricity) Regulations 2000 (S.I. No. 445 of 2000) which provide as follows, at regs. 8(1), 8(6)(a), 18(1)(a) and 19:
“(1) Subject to paragraph (2), the transmission system operator shall have the following exclusive functions:
(a) to operate and ensure the maintenance of and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system, and to explore and develop opportunities for interconnection of its system with other systems, in all cases with a view to ensuring that all reasonable demands for electricity are met and having due regard for the environment….
8(6)(a) Within such time that the Commission may direct, the transmission system operator shall prepare a plan (in these Regulations referred to as the ‘development plan’) for the development of the transmission system in order to guarantee security of supply, which shall relate to a period of 5 calendar years from the date on which the plan is prepared by the transmission system operator.
18(1)(a) EirGrid and the Board shall, no later than the effective date and subject to the approval of the Commission, enter into an agreement (in these Regulations referred to as the ‘infrastructure agreement’) for the purpose of enabling the transmission system operator to discharge its functions under these Regulations.
19. The transmission system owner shall -
(a) as asset owner, maintain the transmission system and carry out construction work in accordance with the transmission system operator’s development plan, subject to the provisions of Regulation 18(3),
(b) in accordance with the infrastructure agreement with the transmission system operator under Regulation 18 implement any other works required under the development plan, and carry out any other requirement applicable to it under these Regulations, having due regard for the environment,
(c) provide to the transmission system operator such information as the transmission system operator requires to ensure the secure and efficient operation, development and maintenance of the transmission system or otherwise in order to discharge its functions under these Regulations,
(d) have a duty to indicate to the transmission system operator and the Commission, within such period as shall be specified by the direction of the Commission, the measures which it proposes to take to implement the development plan in accordance with the infrastructure agreement,
(e) have a duty not to dispose of any assets constituting part of the transmission system or to create any encumbrance over the transmission system without prior notification, in writing, to the transmission system operator and the Commission.
(f) have a duty not to dispose of to an extent considered material by the Commission, any assets constituting part of the transmission system or create to an extent considered material by the Commission, any encumbrance over the transmission system, without the prior written consent of the transmission system operator and the Commission,
(g) comply with any regulations or directions applicable to it made by the Commission under these Regulations or under the Act of 1999, and
(h) otherwise comply with the licence issued under section 14(1)(f) of the Act of 1999.”
31. So EirGrid is the transmission system operator and has the exclusive function of developing the grid, whereas ESB, as transmission system owner, has the function of carrying out construction, as well of course as owning the grid.
(iii) A Consideration of Certain of the Affidavit Evidence.
32. How the legislative scheme plays out in practice is helpfully teased out in detail in some of the affidavit evidence before the court and certain of that affidavit evidence is worth reciting here. Thus Mr John Fitzgerald, the Director of Grid Development and Interconnection at EirGrid, avers, inter alia, as follows:
“EirGrid plc is a public limited company and is the licensed Transmission System Operator [TSO] for Ireland. EirGrid plc has the exclusive function to operate and ensure the maintenance of and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system. The functions of EirGrid as TSO and the Electricity Supply Board (as Transmission Asset Owner or TAO) are prescribed in legislation and in their respective licences. In terms of the relationship between EirGrid as TSO and ESB as TAO, ESB as asset owner maintains the transmission system and carries out construction work in accordance with EirGrid’s development plan. ESB has no function in respect of the development of transmission lines other than constructing same and the construction of the North-South 400kV Interconnector, which is the subject-matter of these proceedings will be undertaken by the ESB….
I say further that it is EirGrid’s intention to carry out the development the subject of these proceedings. EirGrid conceives, designs, [and] procures the construction of the infrastructure, and has the supervisory role provided for under the infrastructure agreement in respect of that construction. The construction itself shall be undertaken by the ESB….”.
33. This aspect of matters is subsequently taken up by Ms Aimee Treacy, a director and the company secretary of the first-named applicant, who avers, inter alia, that “Mr Fitzgerald states that the development shall be carried out by the ESB.” However, this, with respect, is a mis-casting of what Mr Fitzgerald in fact avers. He avers, and this is most certainly not a distinction without a difference that “The construction…shall be undertaken by the ESB”. But returning to Mr Fitzgerald’s affidavit evidence, he further avers as follows:
“[Ms] Treacy asserts that EirGrid has no legal interest in privately-owned lands and is incapable of acquiring any interest in same.
Whilst the issue of EirGrid’s interest and the lawfulness of the application for approval are more properly matters for legal submission. I am advised by EirGrid’s solicitor and so believe that the following points should be noted:
the application for approval in respect of the proposed development was made under section 182A of the 2000 Act, which does not require the applicant for approval to assert any interest in respect of the lands the subject-matter of the application;
the Electricity Supply Board [ESB] is the licensed Transmission Asset Owner [TAO] and owns the transmission system and is responsible for its construction in accordance with EirGrid’s development plan and is further responsible for the execution of maintenance;
EirGrid is solely responsible for making applications for planning approval or permission;
the application for approval was made by EirGrid, with the consent and approval of the Electricity Supply Board;
the application documentation…expressly stated that…EirGrid is the licensed TSO for Ireland and ‘has the exclusive function to operate and ensure the maintenance of and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system’, and that ‘the proposed transmission infrastructure will be constructed by the Electricity Supply Boatd pursuant to statutory powers….
Accordingly, I am advised and so believe that EirGrid could and did lawfully make the application for approval….
[A]t the oral hearing, on March 23 2016, Aidan Geoghegan (EirGrid’s Project Manager for the North-South 400kV Interconnection Development) gave uncontroverted evidence explaining the respective functions of EirGrid and the ESB and the legal and contractual relationship between these entities, insofar as is relevant to this application. Mr Geoghegan explained what ESB does in relation to the works and precisely why it is EirGrid that carries out the development; EirGrid conceives the plan, designs the project, procures construction and has a supervisory role during that construction. ESB’s role is to build and fix the transmission system to specifications set by EirGrid. EirGrid specify what, where and how; ESB acts under direction from EirGrid”.
34. In a separate affidavit, Mr Fitzgerald further avers as follows in this regard:
“EirGrid’s principal role as TSO is to plan the development of and operate the transmission system, and to ensure its maintenance. Under article 8(1) of the Regulations of 2000, EirGrid has the exclusive function to operate and ensure maintenance of, and, if necessary, develop a safe, secure, reliable, economical and efficient electricity transmission system. EirGrid further has the obligation to prepare a development plan for the development of the transmission system in order to guarantee security of supply….
The functions of both EirGrid as TSO and ESB as TAP are prescribed in legislation and in their respective licenses. In terms of the relationship between EirGrid as TSO and ESB as TAO…ESB as asset owner maintains the transmission system and carries out construction work in accordance with EirGrid’s development plan. ESB has no function in respect of the development of transmission lines other than constructing same….
The relationship between EirGrid and ESB is managed via an ‘Infrastructure Agreement’ which was entered into between the parties on the 16th March 2006….This agreement can only be amended with the approval of the CER….
Section 7 of the Infrastructure Agreement deals with ‘Development and Construction Activities’ and the following provisions are of particular importance to the issue which the Applicants seek to raise in the proceedings:
(i) EirGrid has the sole and exclusive right to determine and identify which development projects will be undertaken and the timing requirements for the development of such projects (clause 7.3.1)
(ii) It is Eirgrid’s decision to proceed with any project (clause 7.4.2);
(iii) Design standards and designs are a matter for EirGrid (clause 7.5)
(iv) Where a project is to proceed, the ESB must give EirGrid a project implementation plan with all details of how the project will be implemented, method statements, etc. EirGrid is given the power to reject the draft Project Implementation Plan with any disagreement between ESB and EirGrid being determined through dispute resolution (clause 7.7.4);
(v) EirGrid appoints a client engineer - and that description is itself significant - who are agents of EirGrid and who have rights of inspection of all aspects of a project (clause 7.9.1);
(vi) The client engineer then, representing EirGrid, has the power to monitor progress and ensure that ESB carries out the project in accordance with the Project Agreement (para. 7.9.3)
(vii) EirGrid has an input into procurement through its members of the Procurement Strategy Committee (7.10)
(viii) EirGrid has an ongoing role of review and assessment over delivery of the project (clause 7.11)
(ix) EirGrid has, subject to clause 11 (Access to transmission assets), unrestricted access and rights of inspection with respect to all aspects of the execution and completion of construction works carried out on the Transmission System and to ensure that such construction works comply with the Project Agreement (clause 7.12.2);
(x) Commissioning of the Development is undertaken in accordance with EirGrid’s procedures and the certificate of acceptance issues from EirGrid (clause 7.13.9)…”.
(iv) The Infrastructure Agreement.
35. Following on from the foregoing, the court would but note in passing, clauses 7.13.9 and 21.1 of the Infrastructure Agreement, with clause 7.13.9 of that agreement providing that “When the Board considers that a Project or section has been substantially completed in accordance with the Project Agreement and a Certificate of Acceptance has been issued for that Project or section, the Board may apply to the TSO for a Certificate of Completion in respect of that Project or section, stating the date on which it considers the Project or section to be substantially complete”, and clause 21 giving EirGrid various step-in rights where it “considers that the Board is in delay or default of its construction or maintenance obligations” under the Infrastructure Agreement. In essence, on the transmission side, the ESB’s role is to be a contractor, building whatever is decided by EirGrid to the specification set by EirGrid.
(v) Some Conclusions.
36. In the preceding pages the court has described at some length the legal framework that governs, and the infrastructure agreement that exists between, EirGrid and ESB, and how that legislative and infrastructural schema operates in practice. Taking all of the foregoing together, the legal issue that presents when it comes to deciding eligibility to make an application under s.182A is not who is constructing the development, but who is carrying out the development? And looming through the preceding pages is the clearest of answers to this question: EirGrid is carrying out the development. It is the body which designs the development, as only legally it can do. It decides that the development is necessary. It identifies the route. It decides on voltage. It chooses the pylons. It determines their location. Yes, having done all of that, having obtained the necessary approvals, EirGrid then instructs and requires ESB to construct the infrastructure, though with a significant measure of control and oversight, including step-in rights. But with every respect to the applicants, they have never really elucidated how it is, as it must be if they are to be right in their contentions in this regard, that EirGrid is not the person that, to borrow from the wording of s.182A(1) “intends to carry out [the] development”. There is reference by the applicants, it is true, to the fact that ESB is doing the construction work; and some reliance is placed by them on the fact that it is ESB that has the power to obtain wayleaves under s.53 of the Act of 1927. But does the fact that ESB is doing the construction work change the fact that it is EirGrid which is the party that intends to carry out the development and procures the various steps that are required to achieve that end? The short answer, unfortunately for the applicants, is that it does not.
37. Some reference was made in this context, by counsel for EirGrid, to the decision of the High Court of England and Wales in Blaenau Gwent Borough Council v. Khan (1993) 35 Con LR 65. The case is perhaps something of a distraction in that the proposition for which counsel seeks to pray it in aid is not especially adventurous; indeed it might even be suggested to be fairly obvious - a suggestion from which counsel for EirGrid would himself perhaps be unlikely to demur. Thus Blaenau Gwent is an example of a case in which a building owner who hired a contractor was held, for the purposes of building regulations, to be the person who carried out building work for the purposes of particular enforcement provisions. It therefore offers support for the proposition, if support is required, that the notion of ‘carrying out development’ is, properly construed, a notion that is apt to cover the person who authorises and procures the relevant works, that person being EirGrid in the context of the within proceedings. How then can the applicants contend that EirGrid is not the person carrying out the works? Aside from the suggestion that one has to be the person actually doing the physical work of construction, a proposition which both everyday experience and the decision in Blaenau Gwent suggest to be (and is considered by the court, with respect to be) misconceived, great emphasis has been placed by the applicants on s.53 of the Act of 1927. Some emphasis was placed too, by counsel for the applicants, on the example offered by the East-West Interconnector, which the court now proceeds to consider.
(vi) The East-West Interconnector.
38. Perhaps the best way to introduce the issue of the East-West Interconnector is to flag certain aspects of the respective written submissions of the applicants and EirGrid. The East-West Interconnector is a 500 megawatt link between the electricity transmission grids of Ireland and Britain. It plays an important role in transferring power between Ireland and the the United Kingdom. At para. 119 of the applicants’ written submissions, the following appears:
“The actual practice carried out by EirGrid in relation to the previous East West Interconnector between…Britain and Ireland can be seen in the application for a special order which was made by EirGrid to the Commission for Energy Regulation (‘the CER’) in relation to private lands affected by that development….As can be seen from same, EirGrid therein stated that it (i.e. EirGrid and not the ESB) had engaged the contractor (ABB) to carry out the construction in question…and confirmed that it could not use a section 53 wayleave notice under the 1927 Electricity Supply Act since the road in question was a private road. In light of the foregoing, there is no reason to suspect that any different methodology would be used in the current development and that Mr Fitzgerald is incorrect in asserting that ESB would construct the interconnector and simply cannot state same as he has no basis for such assertion and no authority to state same on behalf of the ESB which is independent of EirGrid. It is submitted that the Applicant herein has [not] obtained any such special orders of the type sought in relation to the East-West Interconnector in relation to this scheme and such orders are not within its control.”
39. The court cannot but note in passing that in fact Mr. Fitzgerald, in his evidence before the court and, as it happens, before the Inspector, has stated in the clearest terms that, pursuant to the infrastructure agreement (to which EirGrid is a party and which it has the power to invoke) ESB will be doing the construction of the North-South Interconnector. But leaving that not insignificant detail to one side, it is worth reciting the following detail that appears at para. 84 of EirGrid’s written submissions:
“The submissions of the Applicants…refer to the purported practice of EirGrid in relation to the East West Interconnector between Britain and Ireland….[T]he issue of the use of wayleave notices in particular circumstances or special orders is entirely irrelevant to the validity of the Board’s decision which is the subject-matter of these proceedings. The East-West Interconnector has significant differences to the proposed North South Interconnector. For example, the East-West Interconnector is owned by EirGrid and not ESB and accordingly, is not part of the transmission system. Rather, EirGrid was authorised to construct the East-West Interconnector by the Commission for Energy Regulation [CER], pursuant to section 16 of the Electricity Regulation Act, 1999. The CER also consented, pursuant to section 49 of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999, to the exercise by EirGrid of the powers conferred on ESB by subsections (1) to (5) and (9) of section 53 of the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927. Moreover, Special Orders were sought from the CER under section 45 of the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927 as the development required the breaking up of a private road for the laying of cables under the road. As this was a private road, there was some doubt whether section 51 of [the] Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927 applied. In respect of the North-South Interconnector project, there is no breaking up of private roads to lay underground cables.”
40. Where does the truth lie when it comes to these competing submissions? To answer this, it is worth turning briefly to the Transmission System Operator Licence granted by the Commission for Energy Regulation to EirGrid in March, 2017 and, in the first instance, to the definitions of “North/South Circuits” and “Republic of Ireland Interconnector” therein, which definitions show that a distinction falls to be drawn between the North-South Circuit, which is part of the transmission system on the island of Ireland single electricity market and the Republic of Ireland Interconnector, which is a connector between this State and another jurisdiction:
“‘North/South Circuits’ means the electric lines and electrical plant and meters used for conveying electricity directly to or from a substation or converter station within the Republic of Ireland directly to or from a substation or converter station within Northern Ireland (and not for conveying electricity elsewhere);
“‘Republic of Ireland Interconnector’ means for the purpose of this Licence, equipment used to link the transmission system to electricity systems outside of the island of Ireland, and (for the avoidance of doubt) does not include the North/South Circuits”.
41. Moving on, the term “transmission system” is defined in the Transmission System Operator Licence as meaning:
“the system of electric lines comprising wholly or mainly the Board’s high voltage lines and electric plant and which is used for conveying electricity from a generating station to a substation, from one generating station to another, from one substation to another or to or from any Republic of Ireland Interconnector or to final customers (including such part of the North/South Circuits as is owned by the Board) (but shall not include any such lines which the Board may, with the approval of the Commission, specify as being part of the distribution system), and shall include any Republic of Ireland Interconnector owned by the Board”.
42. So as far as the East-West Interconnector is concerned, the ownership of this ‘Republic of Ireland Interconnector’, as that term is defined in the Transmission System Operator Licence, rests (as is recognised in the authorisation to construct that interconnector) in EirGrid. In the North-South Interconnector context, by contrast, what one is dealing with is a transmission system which will not be owned by EirGrid but rather by the ESB. And that is why, in essence, the two situations (North-South versus East-West) are not analogous and why, when it comes to the manner in which the two projects have been described, there has not been any sleight of words, let alone dishonesty, on the part of EirGrid or, so far as the court can see, any of the respondents in this regard. The two projects are, to use a metaphor, ‘chalk and cheese’.
(vii) Section 53 of the Act of 1927.
43. The substance and thrust of s.53 of the Act of 1927 has already been touched upon in the court’s consideration of Gormley and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to note that, regrettably for the applicants, their reliance on s.53 is misplaced insofar as they see in that provision a means of advancing their argument that EirGrid does not intend to carry out the development. It is quite clear from the evidence before the court that as a matter of fact EirGrid does intend to carry out the development, it intends to require ESB to construct it in accordance with the infrastructure agreement, and ESB has the statutory power to acquire wayleaves - and the fact that it is ESB that has that power, and not EirGrid, does not in any way affect the question of whether EirGrid intends to carry out the North-South Interconnector development.
b. The decision in Killross.
44. The court turns to consider briefly the decision of the Court of Appeal in Electricity Supply Board v. Killross Properties Limited [2016] IECA 210. Though Killross represents precedent binding on this Court at this time, it is perhaps worth noting in passing that, at the time of writing, the Supreme Court has recently given liberty for an appeal to be brought against the decision of the court below. As a result the decision in that case, though fully binding in all respects on this Court, nonetheless occupies at this time that netherworld in which appealed judgments are generally perceived to dwell pending adjudication on appeal.
45. The respondents in Killross brought a wide ranging challenge to wayleave notices issued under s.53 by the ESB. One of these is described as follows in the judgment of Cregan J., under the heading “Improper Delegation of Power Pursuant to Section 53 - Delegatus Non Potest Delegare [‘One to whom power is delegated cannot himself further delegate that power’]”, at para. 38:
“The appellant also makes a number of arguments under this heading. These are as follows:
(i) That ESB, in effect, delegated its power and/or discretion to issue wayleave notices to EirGrid and/or ESB Networks Ltd to such an extent that it no longer has any ability to exercise a discretion as to whether to issue a wayleave notice or not;
(ii) That Mr Waldron [the man authorised by the Chief Executive of ESB to issue the wayleave notice] is, in effect, directed and controlled by ESB Networks Ltd and therefore he is not in a position to exercise his power to issue a wayleave notice for [and] on behalf of ESB;
(iii) That the delegation by the Board to the Chief executive and by the Chief Executive to Mr Waldron of the Board’s power to issue wayleave was ultra vires s.9 of the 1927 Act, was an unlawful delegation of power and was a breach of the principle delegatus non potest delegare.”
46. One slight point of confusion that can arise on reading the judgment, and that is worth noting before proceeding further with a consideration of the decision of the Court of Appeal, is that there is a division within ESB called ESB Networks and a legal entity, separate from ESB, known as ESB Networks Limited. In any event. Cregan J. observes as follows, at paras. 39-43, 46-50, 59 and 61-64:
“The regulatory structure of the electricity transmission system.
39. It appears that under the current regulatory structure in Ireland the following is the division of responsibility for the transmission of electricity:
ESB - Transmission Asset Owner (TAO)
Eirgrid Plc - Transmission System Operator (TSO)
ESB Networks Ltd - Transmission Asset Manager
40. The division in responsibility in relation to the distribution of electricity is as follows:-
ESB - Distribution Asset Owner (DAO)
ESB Networks Ltd - Distribution Systems Operator (DSO)
ESB Networks Ltd - Distribution System Manager.
41. Mr. Padraig Ó hIceadha in these proceedings swore an affidavit on behalf of ESB and Eirgrid to set out:
(1) who ESB is, who ESB Networks is, who ESB Network Ltd is, and who Eirgrid Plc is
(2) the relationship between these entities;
(3) who gave what direction in relation to the notice of 28th June 2013.
42. In the course of that affidavit Mr. Ó hIceadha explained that ESB owns the electricity transmission system, that the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) has granted it the Transmission Asset Owner (TAO) licence and that ESB’s functions and duties as TAO include the carrying out of maintenance tasks on the transmission network in accordance with the specifications of the Transmissions System Operator (TSO), namely, Eirgrid. As a condition of its TAO licence ESB was required to designate an internal division of its business to carry out its TAO functions. Accordingly ESB designated a division of its business called ESB Networks for this purpose. (Indeed much of the confusion in relation to this issue is caused because there is an internal division of ESB called ‘ESB Networks’ and a separate company called ‘ESB Networks Ltd’.)
43. Mr. Ó hIceadha’s affidavit also sets out the fact that ESB Networks Ltd is the electricity distribution system operator (DSO) and that ESB Network Limited fulfils the same role in respect of the electricity distribution system as that which Eirgrid fulfils in respect of the transmission system. Article 15 of EU Directive 2003/54/EC requires that the DSO must be independent in terms of its legal form from other activities of ESB not relating to distribution. ESB remains the owner of the distribution system (the distribution asset owner) (DAO) but ESB Networks Ltd, as a wholly owned subsidiary, was established to discharge the DSO function. ESB Networks Ltd. is independent of ESB and is the holder of the DSO licence in its own right, not as the agent of ESB. Thus, decisions in respect of operating and ensuring the maintenance and development of the distribution systems are in the remit of the ESB Networks Ltd as DSO….
(1) The appellant’s first argument - that ESB delegated its power to issue wayleaves to Eirgrid and ESB Networks Ltd and that ESB does not exercise any discretion in relation to service of notices.
46. The appellant submits that ESB has essentially delegated its statutory functions to issue wayleave notices under the Act to Eirgrid, that Eirgrid directed the operation of the particular project in this case, that Eirgrid then appointed ESB Networks International to carry out this project, that Mr. Waldron is under the control and direction of ESB Networks Ltd and that therefore Mr. Waldron in signing the wayleave notice is in effect ‘cut adrift’ from the Board and the Board can exercise no supervisory powers over him. As a result therefore it submits that the wayleave notice was invalid.
47. In order to assess this submission it is necessary to consider each link in the chain of this argument.
48. Firstly, the appellant says that the ESB delegated its power to create wayleave notices to Eirgrid. It makes this argument based on clause 7.6.2 of an Infrastructure Agreement dated 14th March 2006 between the ESB and Eirgrid. Clause 7.6.2 provides as follows:
‘The Board, irrevocably for as long as this agreement exists, hereby appoints the TSO [Eirgrid] as its agent to
(b) make and process all applications for the acquisition of wayleaves and rights of entry on behalf of the Board and
(c) exercise all rights of entry on lands vested in the Board pursuant to regulation 29 of the statutory instrument or any other relevant statutory provision.
Insofar as these rights may be required for the development of the transmission system.’
49. The appellant seeks to argue that under this contractual agreement the ESB has in effect delegated its power to serve all wayleave notices to Eirgrid.
50. However Clause 7.6.4 of the agreement provides as follows:
‘Following receipt of relevant landowner details from the TSO under clause 7.6.2 the Board will issue wayleave notices, survey notices, borehole notices and similar instruments in accordance with the terms and arrangements agreed between the TSO and the relevant landowner and make all necessary payment arising under those terms.’
59. I am satisfied, therefore, that the submissions of the appellant in this regard are, in effect, mischaracterising or misinterpreting the legal reality of what was going on between ESB, Eirgrid, ESB Networks Business Unit and ESB Networks Limited. Given the degree of overlap between names, functions and agreements it is hardly any surprise that there should be such a miasma of confusion over the roles, functions and legal responsibilities of the various parties involved. However I am satisfied that there is a clear legal distinction between ESB and ESB Networks Limited and that there is a clear distinction between the ESB Networks Business Unit (as a division within ESB) and ESB Networks Limited. It is also clear that ESB and ESB Networks Limited carry out different functions under the regulatory structure now in place in Ireland. It is clear that ESB and ESB Networks Limited have entered into various agreements required by the regulatory structure and it is also clear that ESB and ESB Networks Limited have entered into an Asset Management Agreement whereby ESB Networks Limited manage the ESB Networks Business Unit of ESB for and on behalf of ESB. However, this does not change the fundamental legal fact that nowhere in any of the arrangements or agreements between ESB and ESB Networks Limited can it be said that ESB has delegated the power of issuing wayleave notices to ESB Networks Limited. Indeed, it is clear that the Board of ESB has specifically retained the power to issue wayleave notices not only in its infrastructure agreement with Eirgrid but also in its agreement with ESB Networks Limited.
61. The appellant also submits in the alternative, that even if neither EirGrid nor ESB Networks Ltd have the power to acquire wayleaves under s. 53, that ‘this dilemma has been addressed and practiced by a very troubling three card trick: where EirGrid decide, as in the present case, to develop or ‘operate’ an electricity line and to acquire a wayleave for that purpose, it directs ESB Networks Ltd to effect the acquisition by serving a notice describing itself as ESB Networks so that it can argue that wearing its wayleave acquisition hat it is actually part of the ESB. This is despite the fact that all works are actually carried out by ESB Networks Ltd at the direction of EirGrid’.
62. However, in my view, the description of this issue as a ‘three card trick’ is not correct. First, it is not correct to say that where EirGrid decide to ‘acquire a wayleave” it directs ESB Networks to effect the acquisition…’ because EirGrid has no legal power to ‘acquire’ a wayleave for that purpose; secondly, EirGrid cannot direct ESB Networks Ltd to effect the acquisition by serving a notice describing itself as ESB Networks as it does not have the legal authority to issue a wayleave notice in the first place and therefore it could not direct any other party to serve a wayleave notice; thirdly the notice describing itself as ESB Networks is in fact a reflection that ESB Networks is an internal business unit of ESB which has retained the power to issue wayleave notices.
63. One of the errors which pervades the appellant’s submissions in this regard appears to be its unwillingness to accept the distinction between the role of ESB Networks Ltd as the separate contractual entity carrying out certain functions under the new regulatory structure and the entirely separate and distinct role of ESB Networks Ltd in managing the ESB Networks Business Unit of the ESB. The appellant has conflated both of these roles and sought to argue that ESB has delegated its power to issue wayleave notices to ESB Networks Ltd when there is simply no evidence that this is so and indeed all the contractual documents appear to point in the opposite direction.
64. In summary, therefore, the argument that ESB has delegated its statutory power to issue wayleave notices to EirGrid and/or ESB Networks Ltd is wrong as a matter of law and is misconceived. The appellant’s argument that EirGrid has a right to issue wayleave notices and, in effect, is directing ESB Networks Ltd to issue wayleave notices is also incorrect as a matter of law.”
47. That then is the up-to-date legal position on the points addressed in the above-quoted extracts from the judgment of Cregan J. in the Court of Appeal, and is noted by the court.
(viii) Some Further Conclusions.
48. The court began this section of its judgment by posing the question whether EirGrid is entitled to make an application for approval for the North-South Interconnector under s.182A of the Act of 2000. In this regard, the following conclusions, it seems to the court, may reasonably be stated by reference to the foregoing analysis:
(1) the applicable legislation entitles EirGrid to apply if it intends to carry on a development (which it does). Legislation does not require that EirGrid intend to do the construction work. Given that EirGrid is the person designing and for whom the work is being done, it clearly intends in every sense to carry out the development.
(2) the applicable legislation must be construed in the light of the statutory function of the transmission system operator (EirGrid). It is the person in charge of the development. It would make no sense that the legislation would deprive the body with the statutory function of development of the legal power to develop.
(3) the position in relation to the East-West Interconnector is completely different from that arising in respect of the North-South Interconnector. The East-West Interconnector was not concerned with a development that formed part of the transmission network and s.53 and the other powers of the ESB do not affect any of that. ESB is entitled to exercise those powers and its entitlement to do so does not affect, one way or another, the inquiry as to who intends to carry out the development.
VI. Designation, Bias, and Validity of Decision
(i) Overview.
49. Three more issues arise now to be addressed and their inter-relationship is such that they are perhaps best addressed under a single heading, viz. (1) is it correct to say that legislation is required to vest in An Bord Pleanála the function of competent authority under the PCI Regulation? (2) does the vesting of such a dual function in An Bord Pleanála present an appearance of bias such as gives rise to an entitlement to legal relief on the part of the applicants? and (3) if there is a legal infirmity attendant upon the designation of An Bord Pleanála, does that affect the validity of the decision granting approval under s.182B of the Act of 2000?
50. When it comes to the just-mentioned issues, the court is dealing with what might be described as the State dimension of the within application. Insofar as that dimension of the proceedings is concerned, the claims made by the applicants are directed to no little extent at the designation of An Bord Pleanála as competent authority. So, for example, the applicants allege that:
(1) that designation should have been done by way of legislation, whether primary or secondary. In support of this contention, the applicants make the point that An Bord Pleanála is a creature of statute and thus can only act ‘within the four corners’ of statute. In support of this contention, reference was made by the applicants to: (a) the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2006, and the conferral of powers thereby in relation to railway orders and road schemes (with a contrast being drawn between the situation in the case at hand where there is no domestic legislation conferring additional powers on the Board in relation to its role as a competent authority); and (b) the decisions in Dellway Investments Ltd v. NAMA [2011] 4 I.R. 1 and Murphy v. Cobh Town Council [2006] IEHC 324. But underplayed in the applicants’ contentions, or so it seemed to the court, is the fact that the impugned designation of An Bord Pleanála has been done pursuant to European Union regulation, a fact that, as will be seen hereafter, carries with it certain legal consequences so far as the contentions made by the plaintiffs are concerned.
(2) there is a conflict of interest between the one entity, An Bord Pleanála, acting as competent authority and development consent authority. But what was, with respect, notably missing from the applicants’ submissions, was any explanation as to how that alleged conflict arises: they have not pointed to anything that is required to be done by the competent authority which impinges on the role of An Bord Pleanála as a consent authority. Moreover, the role of An Bord Pleanála becomes clearer when one has regard not just to the monochrome of what it is doing in the within proceedings but the full colour of what it might be called upon to do in other proceedings. In essence, the role of An Bord Pleanála as competent authority is what might be styled a ‘case management’ role. There is not a lot of case management to be done when, as here, there is only one development consent required. However, matters would be different and the case management role of An Bord Pleanála more apparent in a case where there was a number of consent authorities involved, as, for example, would be the case in a gas project where a battery of bodies have a role to play. In that latter context, An Bord Pleanála would play the role of ‘clock-watcher’ and would seek to ensure that applicable timelines were observed by all. When it comes to its interpretation of legislation, the court must ever be careful not to be blinkered by the monochromatic version of events represented in a single set of proceedings, but instead to keep its eyes open to the full colour of what particular legislation seeks generally to achieve, so that the court’s interpretation of that legislation holds good both in the general and in the particular. Just as a person may do wrong but be good, so legislation may appear wrong yet hold good.
(3) the vesting of a dual function in An Bord Pleanála presents an appearance of bias such as gives rise to an entitlement to legal relief on the part of the applicants, an allegation which, it seems to the court, is roundly met by the decision of the High Court in Callaghan v. An Bord Pleanála [2015] IEHC 357, considered later below.
(ii) The Question of Designation.
a. The PCI Regulation.
51. As mentioned previously, the decision challenged in these proceedings is a decision made by An Bord Pleanála, on 19th December last, to grant approval under s.182B of the Act of 2000 for the proposed construction and development of the North-South Interconnector. The relevant application for approval was made by EirGrid on or about 9th June, 2015. The proposed development was classified as a strategic infrastructure development (or ‘SID’). (Under s.2 of the Act of 2000, the definition of SID includes “any proposed development referred to in s.182A(1)”). In granting approval for the project under s.182B of the Act of 2000, An Bord Pleanála was carrying out its role as the decision-making body in applications for strategic infrastructure consents under Irish planning law. However, An Bord Pleanála also carried out a related role, namely that of national “competent authority” under the PCI Regulation, a European Union law measure, and it is to certain aspects of European Union law that the court now turns.
b. The European Union Law Dimension.
52. Article 288(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) provides that “[A] regulation shall have general application. It shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States”. In O’Neill, A., EU Law for UK Lawyers (2011), a work which is useful also to non-UK lawyers, the learned author observes, at 36, that “The ‘direct applicability’ of EU regulations means that no national legislation is required to implement the regulations in order to give them legal effect in the domestic legal systems of Member States. Regulations bind the Member States and have the force of law within the national territories without the intervention of national parliaments”. In a similar vein, Craig, P. and G. de Búrca observe, in EU Law and Materials (5th ed., 2011), at 190, that “[R]egulations will immediately become part of the domestic law of Member States, without needing transposition”.
53. It is well established by the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) that, when it comes to European Union regulations, member states are not required to adopt implementing domestic legislation, not least because such domestic measures might contain changes which affect the uniform application of the relevant regulation. In Case C-39/72 Commission v. Italy (1973), the European Court of Justice observes as follows, para. 17:
“Regulations are, as such, directly applicable in all Member States and come into force solely by virtue of their publication in the Official Journal of the Communities, as from the date specified in them, or in the absence thereof, as from the date provided in the Treaty.
Consequently all methods of implementation are contrary to the Treaty which would have the result of creating an obstacle to the direct effect of Community Regulations and of jeopardizing their simultaneous and uniform application in the whole of the Community.”
54. It is clear, therefore, that the CJEU wishes to guard against the fragmentary impact of unnecessary implementing measures. The various member states are also, of course, bound by the duty of sincere cooperation that presents under Art. 4(3) of the Treaty on European Union whereby:
“Pursuant to the principle of sincere cooperation, the Union and the Member States shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out tasks which flow from the Treaties.
The Member States shall take any appropriate measure, general or particular, to ensure fulfilment of the obligations arising out of the Treaties or resulting from the acts of the institutions of the Union.
The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union's objectives.”
55. In Case C-34/73, Variola v. Amministrazione Italiana delle Finanze (1973), a preliminary ruling was sought of the European court of Justice as to whether a regulation could be implemented by domestic measures which effectively reproduce the provisions of the regulation. In its judgment, the European Court of Justice explained as follows, at paras. 10-11:
“10. The direct application of a Regulation means that its entry into force and its application in favour of or against those subject to it are independent of any measure of reception into national law.
By virtue of the obligations arising from the Treaty and assumed on ratification, Member States are under a duty not to obstruct the direct applicability inherent in Regulations and other rules of Community law.
Strict compliance with this obligation is an indispensable condition of simultaneous and uniform application of Community Regulations throughout the Community.
11. More particularly, Member States are under an obligation to introduce any measure which might affect the jurisdiction of the Court to pronounce on any question involving the interpretation of Community law or the validity of an act of the institutions of the Community, which means that no procedure is permissible whereby the Community nature of a legal rule is concealed from those subject to it.”
56. The decision in Variola, cited with approval in numerous subsequent judgments of the CJEU, is clear authority that the provisions of a European Union regulation should not be replicated in a national measure, particularly if the effect would be to obscure from citizens the fact that it is the regulation which is the direct source of obligations. One such later judgment is the judgment of the CJEU in Joined Cases C-539/10P and C-550/10P Stichtung Al-Aqsa v. Council of the European Union (2012), in which the CJEU considered whether a freezing of funds imposed by national provisions against a person who is also subject to a freezing of funds imposed by a European Union regulation may affect the scope of a regulation. Per the CJEU, at para. 87:
“Member States are under a duty not to obstruct the direct applicability inherent in regulations, given that the scrupulous observation of this duty is an indispensable requisite for the simultaneous and uniform application of European Union regulations throughout the Union (see, to that effect, Case 34/73 Variola [1973] ECR 981, paragraph 10; Case 94/77 Zerbone [1978] ECR 99, paragraphs 24 and 25; and Case 272/83 Commission v Italy [1985] ECR 1057, paragraph 26). In particular, Member States must not adopt a measure by which the Community nature of a legal rule and the consequences which arise from it are concealed from the persons concerned (see Variola, paragraph 11; Zerbone, paragraph 26; Case C 113/02 Commission v Netherlands [2004] ECR I 9707, paragraph 16; and Case C 316/10 Danske Svineproducenter [2011] ECR I 13721, paragraph 41).”
57. Closer to home, in Maher v. Minister for Agriculture and Food [2001] 2 IR 139 what was in issue was a rule that had been introduced in relation to milk quotas by a statutory instrument that was implementing Community regulations, which statutory instrument was contended unsuccessfully by the applicants (both at first instance and on appeal) to violate the Constitution in that it did not come within the “necessitated” text of Art. 29, yielding the resut that the respondent minister had effectively been legislating contrary to Art. 15 of the Constitution. Keane C.J., at 181, observed that there were two routes by which to approach adjudication on these contentions:
“One can initially decide whether the making of the regulation in the form of a statutory instrument rather than an Act of the Oireachtas was ‘necessitated’ by the obligations of membership. If it was, then it is clearly unnecessary to consider whether it is in conflict with Article 15.2 or, for that matter the Articles guaranteeing the private property rights of the applicants. Alternatively, one can determine first whether it violates either Article 15.1 or the private property rights or both of them. If the latter course were adopted, and the conclusion were reached that no breach of the Constitution had been established, it would be unnecessary to consider whether enactment in the form of a regulation rather than by an Act was necessitated by the obligations of membership.”
58. The Supreme Court as a whole preferred the second approach. Fennelly J. was of the view, at 254-5, that “[T]he essential question is whether the first respondent was in breach of Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution. If he was, the Regulations of 2000 will be invalid, since unlike those involved in Meagher [v. Minister for Agriculture [1994] 1 I.R. 329]…they are not ‘necessitated’.” (The Chief Justice had already made a finding on this last point in his preceding judgment). Fennelly J., at 260, identified the test applicable to be “whether the scope of the discretion conferred by Community law in regulations which become part of national law was so independent of principles and policies laid down by those Community regulations, as to place the State in conflict with Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution.” This, of course, is akin to the test identified by O’Higgins C.J. in Cityview Press v. An Chomhairle Oiliúna [1980] 1 I.R. 381, 399, save that Maher involves the substitution of the European law measure for the parent statute referred to in Cityview, and a possible stretching of the Cityview language so as to require not only independence but a large degree of independence (“so independent”) before implementing legislation would be held to be in breach of Art. 15.2.1̊. The implications of Maher in the context of the within application are touched upon further hereafter.
(iii) Some Particular Aspects of the Case at Hand.
59. Perhaps nine points might usefully be made at this juncture.
60. (1) In Maher the Supreme Court was concerned with the principles and policies test under Article 15 of the Constitution. What the court ultimately decided was that the principles and policies presenting could legitimately be found in the relevant European legislation and hence there was no breach of Article 15. In effect, the Supreme Court treated the European legislation as they would a piece of primary legislation for the purpose of the Cityview test, though subject to the differences that have been touched upon previously above. So far as independence from the principles and policies of the PCI Regulation is contended, if it is contended, to present in what the State has done as regards designation of An Bord Pleanála as a national “competent authority” under Regulation (EU) No. 347/2013, the court sees none.
61. (2) Here the second-named respondent contends, and the court accepts, that if one were to regard the PCI Regulation as if it were equivalent to a domestic piece of legislation and then to ask ‘what would happen if a piece of primary legislation allowed the designation of a competent authority?’ it becomes clear that, absent some requirement to the contrary in the primary legislation, no further legislation would be required. To put a practical gloss on the foregoing, it is often the case that legislation will empower a minister or some other body to designate a person as say, a competent authority or an authorised officer (such authorised officers often enjoying quite extensive powers). That power to designate/authorise derives directly from the parent legislation, and clearly a ministerial edict will issue whereby the designation/authorisation is effected. That is all that presents here, save that the legislation in question is a European Union regulation, i.e. the PCI Regulation.
62. (3) The court notes the following observations of Denham J. in her judgment in Maher, at 206-7, under the heading “European Regulations”:
“Community regulations are binding on member states and are directly applicable within member states. They are of general application. They are norms created by the Community. They are used extensively in relation to agriculture. As they are directly applicable they are part of national domestic law automatically: see Variola SPA v. Amministrazione Italiana delle Finanze (Case 34/73) [1973] E.C.R. 981 at p. 990….Regulations, being part of domestic law of the State, may be treated as instruments setting out policies and principles for subordinate legislation. If the principles and policies are set out in the Community Regulations then there may be no role for the national parliament to determine principles and policies. If the principles and policies are established in law in the State, albeit in Community regulations rather than domestic legislation, then it is open to the first respondent to make the required and technically detailed statutory instruments.”
63. In the above-quoted text one sees Denham J., in dealing with an Article 15 argument, viewing a European Union regulation as akin to a piece of national legislation. That analogy also holds good in the within case - and in circumstances where the PCI Regulation did not in fact require detailed implementing measures because it is itself prescriptive, nothing further, it seems to the court, was required other than the designation by way of administrative act.
64. (4) The court notes too the following observations of Fennelly J. in his judgment in Maher, at 249:
“Community regulations are directly applicable, in that their entry into force and their application are "independent of any measure adopting [them] into national law." ( Zerbone v. Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato (Case 94/77) [1978] E.C.R. 99, para. 23.) As Denham J. explains in different words, they do not require any national act of implementation for their binding effect. Indeed, where they are, in their own terms, capable of being directly applied, it has been said that:- "Member States must not adopt or allow national institutions with a legislative power to adopt a measure by which the Community nature of a legal rule and the consequences which arise from it are concealed."
…Where, however, as frequently happens, especially in the case of a common organisation of the market, regulations, in addition to being directly applicable, allow member states discretion in their implementation, some national act of implementation or transposition will be required.”
65. Simply put, what flows from the foregoing is that it is a question of fact and degree in respect of any individual European Union regulation, as to whether or not implementing measures are required. Here, in circumstances where the PCI Regulation did not in fact require detailed implementing measures because it is itself prescriptive, nothing further, it seems to the court, was required other than the designation by way of administrative act.
66. (5) Turning to the text of the PCI Regulation, one can see the very limited effect of the impugned designation process. So, for example, Article 7(1), (2) and (8) of the PCI Regulation provide as follows, under the heading “‘Priority status’ of projects of common interest”:
“1. The adoption of the Union list shall establish, for the purposes of any decisions issued in the permit granting process, the necessity of these projects from an energy policy perspective, without prejudice to the exact location, routing or technology of the project.[1]
[[1] Under Article 3 of the PCI Regulation, inter alia, the European Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Art.16 of the Regulation that establish a Union list of projects of common interest, the characteristics of which projects include that the project is of a particular significance in the energy realm and involves at least two member states by directly crossing the border of two or more member states.]
2. For the purpose of ensuring efficient administrative processing of the application files related to projects of common interest, project promoters and all authorities concerned shall ensure that the most rapid treatment legally possible is given to these files.
8. With regard to the environmental impacts addressed in Article 6(4) of [the Habitats] Directive 92/43/EEC and Article 4(7) of Directive 2000/60/EC, projects of common interest shall be considered as being of public interest from an energy policy perspective, and may be considered as being of overriding public interest, provided that all the conditions set out in these Directives are fulfilled.
Should the opinion of the Commission be required in accordance with Directive 92/43/EEC, the Commission and the competent authority referred to in Article 9 of this Regulation shall ensure that the decision with regard to the overriding public interest of a project is taken within the time limit pursuant to Article 10(1) of this Regulation.”
67. It is clear from Art. 7(1) that the effect of designation is relatively limited: it simply establishes “the necessity of…projects from an energy policy perspective, without prejudice to the exact location, routing or technology of the project” So all of those ‘without prejudice’ issues are, to use a colloquialism, ‘up for grabs’, i.e. they are not predetermined in any way by, inter alia, the fact that that An Bord Pleanála is acting as a competent authority.
68. As to Art. 7(2), perhaps two aspects of that provision might usefully be noted. First, the desired-for rapidity is subject to what is legally possible. So this is not a regulation that ‘rides roughshod’ over the ordinary processing of these applications: it merely requires that applications are to be given some level of swiftness of despatch. Second, Art.7(2) requires that “all authorities concerned shall ensure…the most rapid treatment legally possible”. And that is important, because it applies not only to the competent authority as designated, it applies to other consent authorities - and while there are none other in this case, in other cases, such as for example in a gas infrastructure development, there would be a clutch of them.
69. As to Art. 7(8), Article 6(4) of the Habitats Directive only comes into play after a screening assessment (and, if required, an appropriate assessment) has been undertaken pursuant to Article 6(3) of the Habitats Directive. So all has to be done in the ordinary way: the consent authority must carry out its functions in the ordinary way; An Bord Pleanála must carry out its Habitats Directive assessment; and nought in this regard is affected by the provisions of the PCI Regulation. The PCI Regulation in this regard only comes into play if the consent authority decides that a project does adversely affect the integrity of the site. But on the facts of this case, An Bord Pleanála decided that there was no adverse effect on the integrity of the site.
70. (6) Continuing with its consideration of the PCI Regulation, the court turns next to Art. 8 of same, in particular Art. 8(1) and (3), which provide as follows under the heading “Organisation of the permit granting process”:
“1. By 16 November 2013, each Member State shall designate one national competent authority which shall be responsible for facilitating and coordinating the permit granting process for projects of common interest.
3. Without prejudice to relevant requirements under international and Union law, the competent authority shall take actions to facilitate the issuing of the comprehensive decision. The comprehensive decision shall be issued within the time limit referred to in Article 10(1) and (2) and according to one of the following schemes:
(a) integrated scheme: the comprehensive decision shall be issued by the competent authority and shall be the sole legally binding decision resulting from the statutory permit granting procedure. Where other authorities are concerned by the project, they may, in accordance with national law, give their opinion as input to the procedure, which shall be taken into account by the competent authority;
(b) coordinated scheme: the comprehensive decision comprises multiple individual legally binding decisions issued by several authorities concerned, which shall be coordinated by the competent authority. The competent authority may establish a working group where all concerned authorities are represented in order to draw up a permit granting schedule in accordance with Article 10(4)(b), and to monitor and coordinate its implementation. The competent authority shall, in consultation with the other authorities concerned, where applicable in accordance with national law, and without prejudice to time limits set in accordance with Article 10, establish on a case-by-case basis a reasonable time limit within which the individual decisions shall be issued. The competent authority may take an individual decision on behalf of another national authority concerned, if the decision by that authority is not delivered within the time limit and if the delay cannot be adequately justified; or, where provided under national law, and to the extent that this is compatible with Union law, the competent authority may consider that another national authority concerned has either given its approval or refusal for the project if the decision by that authority is not delivered within the time limit. Where provided under national law, the competent authority may disregard an individual decision of another national authority concerned if it considers that the decision is not sufficiently substantiated with regard to the underlying evidence presented by the national authority concerned; when doing so, the competent authority shall ensure that the relevant requirements under international and Union law are respected and shall duly justify its decision;
(c) collaborative scheme: the comprehensive decision shall be coordinated by the competent authority. The competent authority shall, in consultation with the other authorities concerned, where applicable in accordance with national law, and without prejudice to time limits set in accordance with Article 10, establish on a case-by-case basis a reasonable time limit within which the individual decisions shall be issued. It shall monitor compliance with the time limits by the authorities concerned.
If an individual decision by an authority concerned is not expected to be delivered within the time limit, that authority shall inform the competent authority without delay and include a justification for the delay. Subsequently, the competent authority shall reset the time limit within which that individual decision shall be issued, whilst still complying with the overall time limits set in accordance with Article 10.
Acknowledging the national specificities in planning and permit granting processes, Member States may choose among the three schemes referred to in points (a), (b) and (c) of the first subparagraph to facilitate and coordinate their procedures and shall opt to implement the most effective scheme. Where a Member State chooses the collaborative scheme, it shall inform the Commission of its reasons therefor. The Commission shall undertake an evaluation of the effectiveness of the schemes in the report referred to in Article 17.”
71. Perhaps three observations flow from the above-quoted text:
(i) Art. 8(1) is clearly directly applicable: it is the provision that allows and allowed the designation of An Bord Pleanála without any further legislative measure being required. It is akin to an Act of the Oireachtas for this purpose, and it is open for the competent authority to be designated: nothing further is required other than an administrative step.
(ii) of the three schemes identified in Art. 8(3), viz. the integrated scheme, the coordinated scheme and the collaborative scheme, the integrated and coordinated schemes are far more invasive. Under the collaborative scheme there is a much less invasive role for the competent authority; it effectively cajoles the other consent authorities to meet time limits and, if necessary, re-sets those time limits.
(iii) by virtue of the final (“Acknowledging…Article 17”) sub-paragraph, if a member state elects to go for the collaborative scheme, a rationale for that election must be provided to the European Commission. Notably, in the letter of designation of 4th December 2013 (considered later below) the explanation given as to why Ireland has chosen the collaborative scheme is the, frankly laudable, desire to preserve the independence other consent authorities. In other words, Ireland has deliberately chosen the system which best ensures independence and that each of the individual consent authorities gets to have its say in relation to the matter. And that matters should be so reinforces the point that the competent authority’s role is very limited in the Irish context, being essentially a co-ordinating role.
72. (7) Turning next to Arts. 9 and 10 of the PCI Regulation (and it makes sense to consider them in reverse), Art.10 introduces a two-stage permit-granting process which operates subject to particular time limits, providing, inter alia, as follows, under the heading “Duration and implementation of the permit granting process”:
“1. The permit granting process shall consist of two procedures:
(a) The pre-application procedure, covering the period between the start of the permit granting process and the acceptance of the submitted application file by the competent authority, shall take place within an indicative period of two years.
This procedure shall include the preparation of any environmental reports to be prepared by the project promoters.
For the purpose of establishing the start of the permit granting process, the project promoters shall notify the project to the competent authority of the Member States concerned in written form, and shall include a reasonably detailed outline of the project. No later than three months following the receipt of the notification, the competent authority shall, including on behalf of other authorities concerned, acknowledge or, if it considers the project as not mature enough to enter the permit granting process, reject the notification in written form. In the event of a rejection, the competent authority shall justify its decision, including on behalf of other authorities concerned. The date of signature of the acknowledgement of the notification by the competent authority shall serve as the start of the permit granting process. Where two or more Member States are concerned, the date of the acceptance of the last notification by the competent authority concerned shall serve as the date of the start of the permit granting process.
(b) The statutory permit granting procedure, covering the period from the date of acceptance of the submitted application file until the comprehensive decision is taken, shall not exceed one year and six months. Member States may set an earlier date for the time-limit, if considered appropriate.”
73. What is perhaps most significant about Art. 10, at least in the context of the within application, is that Art.10(1)(b) preserves existing statutory permit-granting procedures in the member states, being in this case the classic SID procedure. What is new is the pre-application procedure. What is comprised in that pre-application procedure is set out in Art. 9 which makes due obeisance to the demos, containing lengthy provision as regards public consultation/participation and general transparency of process - and there is not, and could be on the facts of this case, any complaint that An Bord Pleanála did not ensure public participation. There is, however, a not unrelated contention that An Bord Pleanála, as competent authority, is required to promote the North-South Interconnector Project and that this in some way has given rise to bias on the part of the An Bord Pleanála. But a close consideration of Art. 9 shows this contention, with respect, to be both unfounded and wrong. Thus Article 9(4) provides as follows:
“At least one public consultation shall be carried out by the project promoter, or, where required by national law, by the competent authority, before submission of the final and complete application file to the competent authority pursuant to Article 10(1)(a). This shall be without prejudice to any public consultation to be carried out after submission of the request for development consent according to Article 6(2) of Directive 2011/92/EU. The public consultation shall inform stakeholders referred to in Annex VI.3(a) about the project at an early stage and shall help to identify the most suitable location or trajectory and the relevant issues to be addressed in the application file. The minimum requirements applicable to this public consultation are specified in Annex VI.5. The project promoter shall prepare a report summarising the results of activities related to the participation of the public prior to the submission of the application file, including those activities that took place before the start of the permit granting process. The project promoter shall submit that report together with the application file to the competent authority. Due account shall be taken of these results in the comprehensive decision.”
74. Shortly put, Art.9(4) requires public consultation to be carried out by the promoter or competent authority before the submission of the application file. Thereafter, the project promoter must prepare a report summarising the results of activities related to the participation of the public prior to the submission of the application file, including those activities that took place before the start of the permit-granting process. This report must then be submitted together with the application file to the competent authority, with due account to be taken of the said results in the comprehensive decision. If one turns then to Annex VI, as referenced in the above-quoted text, one finds at para. 3(a), under the general heading “Guidelines for Transparency and Public Participation” the following provision:
“(3) To increase public participation in the permit granting process and ensure in advance information and dialogue with the public, the following principles shall be applied:
(a) The stakeholders affected by a project of common interest, including relevant national, regional and local authorities, landowners and citizens living in the vicinity of the project, the general public and their associations, organisations or groups, shall be extensively informed and consulted at an early stage, when potential concerns by the public can still be taken into account and in an open and transparent manner. Where relevant, the competent authority shall actively support the activities undertaken by the project promoter.”
75. Any suggestion, and there is suggestion, in the applicants’ submissions that the word “activities” in the last line of the above-quoted text must be read as requiring a competent authority actively to support a project is, with respect, incorrect: the activities being referred to there are the activities referenced in Article 9(4) and they are the public participation activities. So through Art. 9(4) and Annex VI, para. 3(a) a competent authority is being required ‘merely’ to make sure that public participation is effective, e.g., by making documents available on its website. In no sense is a competent authority being required to promote or support a project.
76. (8) Turning next to the letter of designation of 4th December, 2013, that issued to An Bord Pleanála from the Assistant Secretary General of what was then the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and is now the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, the substantive portion of which reads as follows under the heading “Designation of Competent Authority under EU Regulation 347/2013 on Guidelines for trans-European Energy Infrastructure”:
“I am writing to you in the context of the above-mentioned Regulation, concerning guidelines for the assessment, approval and permitting of cross-border energy infrastructure projects. As you may be aware, one of its requirements is the designation by Member States of a Competent Authority to oversee the permit granting process for these projects, known as projects of common interest (PCIs). Specifically, Article 8.1 of the Regulation provides that each Member State should designate a Competent Authority to facilitate and co-ordinate the permit granting process for PCIs. The purpose of this letter is to inform you that, following discussions with the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government, An Bord Pleanála is hereby designated as Competent Authority for the purposes of the Regulation. I am aware from discussions with officials from that Department that the Board is prepared to undertake the role.
You may also be aware of the other provisions in Article 8 of the Regulation which provide for a number of options that a Member State can take in relation to the decision-making process as regards the issuing of consents. Included in these options is the ‘collaborative scheme’….Under this option, the Competent Authority would co-ordinate decisions in respect of the relevant consents, which would be left to the existing bodies or bodies with the requisite technical expertise. Both Departments and the Board kept in close contact during the negotiations with the advice and insights from officials of the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government and from the Board being very helpful in that process. During those discussions the strong view emerged that such an approach is the most workable for Ireland in terms of maintaining the effectiveness of the existing domestic legislation; both Departments agreed that the ‘collaborative scheme’ would prove the most workable for Ireland in that it allowed the State to retain the existing balance it has between the different permitting authorities, while respecting the statutory independence they each have. It is on that basis that this Department is designating An Bord Pleanála as Competent Authority.
With the enactment of the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 (SIA Act), it is clear that many of the requirements for streamlined planning and permitting processes under the Regulation are already in place. However, it would be useful to hold a meeting of officials from this Department, from the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government and from An Bord Pleanála to discuss any additional legislative or administrative arrangements that need to be put in place….
The PCI projects relevant to Ireland that are now agreed at European level have the potential to make a very significant contribution to Ireland’s energy infrastructure, security of supply and competitiveness; I very much welcome An Bord Pleanála’s designation as Competent Authority, given your experience, trustworthiness and effectiveness when interfacing with all stakeholders. I can assure you of the full support and co-operation of this Department and the Commission for Energy Regulation to ensure the successful operation of the PCI process in Ireland.
cc. [Name]…Department of Environment, Community and Local Government
[Name], European Commission
[Name], Commission for Energy Regulation”.
77. There are a number of points to note about this letter:
(i) in designating An Bord Pleanála the letter complies fully with Art. 8(1) of the PCI Regulation.
(ii) the letter is copied to the European Commission, thereby discharging the obligation under Art. 8 of the PCI Regulation for a member state to give reasons if it opts for the collaborative scheme.
(iii) the reasons aforesaid, as mentioned previously, are precisely related to ensuring the independence of the decision-making authorities.
(iv) it will be recalled that under Art. 8(1) designation of a national competent authority was required to be done by 16th November, 2013, whereas the above-quoted letter of designation issued on 4th December, 2013. However, two points might be made in this regard. The first is that too often in litigation one or more parties comes to court pointing to some contended-for deficiency in process and suggests that as a consequence of that deficiency the ‘house of cards’ constructed on same must of necessity collapse. But houses can stand on imperfect foundations: law is an instrument of government, and government is ever an exercise in the practicable, not in perfection; a failure to do something strictly as required by law may not have any practical consequence. The second point is that a legal requirement to do something need not evaporate because the required is not in fact done by a prescribed date. Of course, legislation can provide to the contrary, but here it does not: the duty to designate contained in Art.8(1) subsisted beyond 16th November, 2013, and was satisfied by Ireland on 4th December, 2013.
(v) the applicants contend that the designation of An Bord Pleanála as a competent authority and that its role as such ought to have been done by way of primary or secondary legislation. The court admits that it harboured some initial doubt as to whether the principle of legal certainty (the principle that the law must provide those subject to it with the ability to regulate their conduct - a central tenet of any system based on the rule of law) could be satisfied where designation took place by private letter. And, in passing, the court respectfully does not accept the contention by counsel for the second-named respondent that had designation taken place by way of legislation this would necessarily have contravened the principle identified, inter alia, in Variola whereby the Community nature of a legal rule must not be concealed from those subject to it: Variola was concerned with the effective replication of Community provisions in the domestic context; the unvarnished designation of a competent authority consequent upon European Union regulation, so as to do what such regulation expressly requires, is but the plain and simple discharge of a European law obligation, nothing more. Indeed, it is notable in this regard that Malta, the only other member state to designate its planning authority as the competent authority in that jurisdiction for the purposes of the PCI Regulation, did so by way of secondary legislation, viz. the Environment and Development Planning Act (Amendment No. 2) Order 2014 (L.N. No. 362 of 2014) and nobody before the court has suggested that Malta is somehow in breach of European Union law in this regard - not that the court is competent, or would presume, to make any adjudication, or comment, upon such a suggested breach in any event. But, on reflection, it seems to the court that there must be and is a point at which the necessity for legislation may properly end and continuation by administrative mechanism may properly commence. That point, it seems to the court, was reached in the within context with the adoption of the PCI Regulation. What An Bord Pleanála has to do as competent authority is laid out in black-and-white in that regulation, especially Art.9 of same, there is no need to supplement that with domestic legislation (and to replicate in domestic law the provisions of, e.g., Art.9, would, as stated, have placed Ireland in breach of Variola).
As to the act of designation simpliciter, the court accepts the analogy advanced by counsel for the second-named respondent, and touched upon previously above, that here one is down to something akin to the designation of those ‘authorised officers’ whose appointment is so often contemplated by domestic legislation and who often have extensive powers, yet whose designation can quite properly take place other than by way of primary or secondary legislation. Nor does the court see any constitutional basis for the contention made as to the need for primary or secondary legislation: such a contention is not supported by Art. 15, this is not a case where legislation is required, the PCI Regulation is directly applicable, it gives the Minister (acting for the Government and consistent with Article 28 of the Constitution) the power to designate, such designation has been effected and that is an end of matters. And, returning to Maher, so far as any independence from the principles and policies of the PCI Regulation is contended, if it is contended, to present in what the State has done as regards designation of An Bord Pleanála as a national competent authority under the PCI Regulation, the court sees none.
78. (9) There is some suggestion made by the applicants that the Minister for Communications, Climate Change and Environment is not the correct Minister to make the designation. In this they are, with respect, wrong. Tracing the authority of the present minister and department back to the Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924 involves a somewhat byzantine trek through a myriad of primary and secondary legislation but, having regard to the legislative stepping-stones that take one through that journey (as identified below), there can be no doubt but that the correct minister has designated An Bord Pleanála as the national competent authority for the purposes of the PCI Regulation:
Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924
Establishes the Department of Industry and Commerce with responsibility for the administration and business generally of public services in connection with trade, commerce, industry, and labour, industrial and commercial organisations and combinations, industrial and commercial statistics, transport, shipping, natural resources, and all powers, duties and functions connected with the same, including the promotion of trade and commerce by means of educational grants, including in particular the business, powers, duties and functions of the branches and officers of the public services specified in the Sixth Part of the Schedule to the Act of 1924, and of which Department the head is stated to be the Minister for Industry and Commerce. (The Sixth Schedule includes the Electricity Commissioners).
Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 1959
Establishes the Department of Transport and Power.
Transport, Fuel and Power (Transfer of Departmental Administration and Ministerial Functions) Order, 1959
(S.I. No. 125/1959)
Transfers from the Department of Industry and Commerce to the Department of Transport and Power the administration and business in connection with the exercise, performance or execution of the functions under various Acts, including Acts in relation to electricity, gas, turf and oil. The functions of the Minister for Industry and Commerce under these Acts are transferred to the Minister for Transport and Power.
Energy (Transfer of Departmental Administration and Ministerial Functions) Order, 1977
(S.I. No. 295 of 1977)
Transfers from the Minister for Transport and Power to the Department of Industry and Commerce the administration and business in connection with the exercise, performance or execution of functions under various Acts, including Acts in relation to electricity, gas and turf. The functions of the Minister for Transport and Power under the said Acts are also transferred to the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
Industry and Commerce (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order, 1977
Alters: the name of the Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism to that of the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy; the title of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy.
(S.I. No. 9 of 1980)
Transfers from the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy to the Department of Energy, the administration and business in connection with the exercise, performance or execution of functions under various Acts, including Acts in relation to electricity, gas and turf. The functions vested in the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy are transferred to the Minister for Energy.
Energy (Transfer of Departmental Administration and Ministerial Functions) (No. 2) Order, 1993
(S.I. No. 12 of 1993)
Transfers from the Department of Energy to the Department of Tourism, Transport and Comunications the administration and business in connection with the exercise, performance or execution of functions under various Acts, including Acts in relation to electricity, gas and turf. The functions vested in the Minister for Energy are transferred to the Minister for Tourism, Transport and Communications.
Tourism, Transport and Communications (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order, 1993
Alters: the name of the Department of Tourism, Transport and Communications to that of the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications; the title of the Minister of Tourism, Transport and Communications to that of the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications.
Communications, Energy and Geological Survey of Ireland (Transfer of Departmental Administration and Ministerial Functions) Order 2002
Transfers from the Department of Public Enterprise to the Department of Marine and Natural Resources the administration and business in connection with the exercise, performance or execution of functions under various Acts, including Acts in relation to electricity, gas and turf. The functions vested in the Minister for Public Enterprise are transferred to the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources.
Marine and Natural Resources (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order 2002
Alters: the name of the Department of Marine and Natural Resources to that of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources; the title of the Minister of Marine and Natural Resources to that of the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.
Communications, Marine and Natural Resources (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order 2007
Alters: the name of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to that of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources; the title of the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to that of the Minister of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.
Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Alteration of Name of Department and Title of Minister) Order 2016
Alters: the name of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to that of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment; the title of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to that of the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment.
79. The applicants complain that the designation of An Bord Pleanála was effected by a letter from a senior civil servant (the letter of 4th December, 2013) , without any evidence as to the status or nature of the decision and, per the applicants’ written submissions, “[p]resumably (though this is not clear), on the application of the Carltona principle” (so-called after the decision of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Carltona Ltd. v. Commissioners of Works [1943] 2 All E.R. 560, which, though devised by reference to the exigencies of wartime conditions, is now perceived as having recognised as a practical reality of modern government that it would be unworkable that a minister, as political head of a government department could personally take every decision given by law to that minister).
80. The suggestion that there is any deficiency from a Carltona perspective with the manner in which An Bord Pleanála was designated as a competent authority in the circumstances at issue in the within application is not well-founded and is perhaps best addressed by reference to the relatively recent decision of the Supreme Court in W.T. v. Minister for Justice and Equality [2015] IESC 73. That case was concerned with an issue which had for some time troubled judges tasked with working on the Immigration List, specifically whether a deportation order under s.3 of the Immigration Act of 1999 had to be signed individually by the Minister. The Supreme Court found that this was not a requirement of the Act of 1999. In his judgment, MacMenamin J., at para. 1, identifies, in the following terms, the substance of the Carltona principle:
“It is now well recognised in the law that each minister must both bear political responsibility to the Dáil, and legal responsibility in the courts, for actions taken by their own departments. In law, ministers are regarded as being one and the same as the government departments of which they are the political heads. Conversely, departmental officials act in the name of the minister. In making administrative decisions, therefore, discretion is conferred on a minister, not simply as an individual, but rather as the person who holds office as head of a government department, which collectively holds a high degree of collective corporate knowledge and experience, all of which is imputed to the political head of the department. Frequently a minister’s officials will prepare documents for consideration, consider objections, summarise memoranda, and outline a policy approach to be taken by the Minister as an integral part of the decision-making process. Part of this arrangement, identified as the eponymous Carltona principle, is that the functions entrusted to departmental officials are performed at an appropriate level of seniority, and within the scope of responsibility of their government department. No express act of delegation is necessary. When the principle became a recognised part of Irish law, it was characterised as being a ‘common law constitutional power’ (see Carltona Ltd v Commissioners of Public Works [1943] 2 All E.R. 560; Bushell v Secretary for State for the Environment [1981] AC 75; R. v Home Secretary, ex p.Oladehinde [1991] 1 AC 254 at 282 approved by Hamilton C.J. in Tang v Minister for Justice [1996] 2 I.L.R.M. 46 and in Devanney v Minister for Justice [1998] 1 IR 230; [1998] 1 ILRM 81). The constitutional origins of the power derived from the executive power of the State, identified, inter alia, in Art.28 of the Constitution”,
and then concludes as follows, at para. 39, as to the issues raised before the court:
“I am not persuaded that the appellants have succeeded in demonstrating that the decision-making power in question has been negatived, confined, or restricted by express statutory provision, or by clear necessary implication. The statute of 1999 simply does not allow for such an interpretation. It is true that the Carltona doctrine can sometimes be criticised as imposing an exception of uncertain scope to what is sometimes called the rule against ‘sub-delegation’. But what is in question in this appeal is clearly devolved power to an official, rather than delegation per se. Effectively, the principle is that departmental officials are the alter-ego of the Minister and their decisions are, legally and constitutionally, the Minister’s acts and decisions. The decisions here cannot be impugned on the basis of the case made. But this is not to ignore the principle of vires. I would dismiss the appeal therefore.”
81. Likewise in the within case, what the applicants have sought to impugn, as somehow inconsistent with the Carltona principle, devolved power exercised by a very senior official (an Assistant Secretary General). The court respectfully does not see any deficiency to arise in this regard.
VII. Bias
82. So far as the applicants’ allegation of bias against An Bord Pleanála is concerned, the court understands that what is contended for is what might be styled a ‘pre-determination’ argument, i.e. that An Bord Pleanála as competent authority has some bias in favour of the North-South Interconnector proceeding. Such a contention is not borne out by what is required under the PCI Regulation. The regulation involves, in effect, a form of case management and a form of public participation, and there is no criticism made of the public participation dimension of the application process that EirGrid underwent. The proposition that a body whose function it is to facilitate the efficient disposition of planning applications or any other sort of applications is, by reason of exercising that function, disabled from dispassionately deciding upon the application is, with respect, unusual. The court has been referred, inter alia, in this regard, to the decision of the Supreme Court in Reid v. IDA [2015] IESC 82. One of the many interesting aspects of McKechnie J.’s judgment in that case is his recitation in the context of his consideration under the heading “The Bias Argument”, at para. 78, of the information of which he considered the notional reasonable person or “observer” would stand possessed. It is instructive to undertake, in the context of the case now presenting, a like analysis of what information the notional reasonable person would stand possessed. It seems to the court that that information would comprise, at the least, that: (i) contrary to what the applicants have contended, An Bord Pleanála is not the promoter of the project; (ii) EirGrid is the promoter; (iii) An Bord Pleanála’s role as competent authority is effectively administrative; (iv) within An Bord Pleanála its competent authoritity-related functions are discharged by a separate unit; and (v) the object of the PCI Regulation is to expedite the consent process (something which is surely in the interests of all stakeholders).
83. In the context of bias, the court has been referred to the decision of Callaghan v. An Bord Pleanála [2015] IEHC 357. The statutory focus of that case was the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006, under which applications in respect of strategic infrastructure development may be made directly to An Bord Pleanála. Before An Bord Pleanála can accept such applications, it must, under s.37A(2) of the Act of 2006, be satisfied as to certain matters, viz. that the development (i) would be of strategic economic or social importance to the State or the region in which it is situate, (ii) would contribute substantially to the fulfilment of any of the objectives in the National Spatial Strategy or in any regional planning guidelines in force in respect of the area/s in which it would be situate, and (iii) would have a significant effect on the area of more than one planning authority. So what happens in practice is that application is made to An Bord Pleanála, with that part of the process being essentially a bilateral process, i.e. it occurs between the developer and An Bord Pleanála, with the public having no opportunity to make submissions at that stage of the process. If An Bord Pleanála forms the opinion that a proposed development satisfies the criteria aforesaid, it will admit it into the Strategic Infrastructure Development (or ‘SID’ process) and then progress it accordingly. Among the many different arguments made in Callaghan was an argument that in addressing its mind to the factors aforesaid for the purposes of admission to the SID process, the Board was prejudging part of the elements of the final application and the reason why that was stated to be the case, inter alia, was because s.143 of the Act of 2006 requires that:
“The Board shall, in performing its functions, have regard to:-
(a) the policies and objectives for the time being of the Government, a State authority, the Minister, planning authorities, and any other body which is a public authority whose functions have, or may have, a bearing on the proper planning and sustainable development of cities, towns or other areas, whether urban or rural,
(b) the national interest and any effect the performance of the Board’s functions may have on issues of strategic economic or social importance to the State, and
(c) the National Spatial Strategy and any regional planning guidelines for the time being in force.”
84. There is an echo in the just-quoted text of the matters (mentioned previously above) that An Bord Pleanála has to consider at the ‘admission to SID’ stage. So one of the arguments advanced in Callaghan was that because An Bord Pleanála had received this information ex parte, without any opportunity for the public to be involved, and had adopted a view for the purposes of admission, when it then came to look at, inter alia, those factors for the purposes of determining the substantive planning application, it had effectively prejudged part of the considerations of proper planning and sustainable development. That argument was rejected by Costello J., who states as follows, at para.75 of her judgment:
“It is argued that it necessarily follows, either as a matter of fact or perception, that the Board predetermines the issue as to whether or not the proposed development is of strategic economic or social importance in the State before the application for planning permission is submitted. In my opinion, this falls very short of the position in Tomlinson.
[Brief consideration of the just-mentioned case ensues. Then Costello J. continues as follows.]
…In my opinion, the cases of Dublin And County Broadcasting Limited v. Independent Radio and Television Commission (Unreported, High Court, Murphy J., 12th May, 1989) and Spin Communications Ltd v. Independent Radio and Television Commission [2000] IEHC 128 are of more relevance. The test there established is that the question of bias must be determined on the basis of what a right-minded person would think of the real likelihood of prejudice and not on the basis of a suspicion that might dwell in the minds of a person who is ill-informed and who did not seek to direct his mind properly to the facts. Applying this test, it cannot be said that such a reasonable well-informed person would reach the conclusion that the board was biased and had predetermined the planning consent application on the basis of the Section 37(B) opinion….
In this case, the Board's decision pursuant to Section 37(B) is not determinative of socio-economic aspects of the application for planning permission and the decision it has to make pursuant to Section 37(G) [that being the decision on the substantive application]. The Board will re-visit some of the material which it considered in the context of Section 37(B) when reaching the different decision required of it pursuant to s.37(G) [i.e. to grant or refuse]. In addition, of course, at this stage, the Applicant and others will have had full opportunity to present such information or arguments to the Board in relation to this aspect and other aspects of the application as they see fit. This applies in all applications under the scheme. These matters must be considered by the Board when exercising its discretion in respect of the application for permission. In those circumstances, I do not accept that it can fairly be argued that every case which goes before the Board pursuant to the statutory scheme must appear tainted by bias and pre-determination. As the applicant’s case is based on the statutory scheme and not on any particular facts, I am not persuaded by this argument.”
85. Notably, Costello J. does not, in the just-quoted text, require applicants to put their faith blindly in the inherent or natural goodness of public administration. She merely points to the fact that the scheme as constructed by statute does not yield the necessary conclusion that “that every case which goes before the Board pursuant to the statutory scheme…[is] tainted by bias and pre-determination”. If, of course, an applicant can establish “particular facts” which do show a contended-for prejudice to arise then the possibility presents that they will receive discretionary relief pursuant to any ensuing judicial review application.
86. Applying the decision in Callaghan to the facts at hand, in that earlier case An Bord Pleanála had to form at least a preliminary ex parte view on matters which were relevant to the ultimate grant or refusal of permission. Yet that dual role, on the facts presenting before Costello J. was not sufficient to lead to a reasonable apprehension of bias. The facts of the case before this Court seem even weaker than those at issue in Callaghan because at the competent authority stage of the process, An Bord Pleanála looks at no matters of substance and no matters of procedure turn upon the fact that there even was a competent authority PCI process prior to the permit in this case.
87. The applicants’ case, so far as bias is concerned, ‘boils down’ to the following issue: does the fact that An Bord Pleanála, as competent authority, has a coordinating role (whereby effectively it tries to keep other consent authorities, if there are other consent authorities on track in terms of time limits) impinge in some way upon its impartiality? The short answer to that question is ‘no’. There is nothing that An Bord Pleanála is required to do as competent authority that in any way directs it to grant planning approval for the North-South Interconnector project. It is simply required to ensure that there is an outcome one way or the other within the timeframes envisaged. That is all that is required. There is nothing in the PCI Regulation that presupposes that An Bord Pleanála will not duly carry out assessment in terms of the environmental impact assessment, in terms of appropriate assessment, or in terms of the national law test of proper planning and sustainable development. Even in a more complicated case with a number of consent authorities, there is a striking limit to what An Bord Pleanála is empowered or able to do. As counsel for the second-named respondent colourfully put it in the course of argument, in that multi-party situation “all that An Bord Pleanála can do is effectively herd cats”. In other words An Bord Pleanála can attempt, to use a colloquialism, to ‘put some order’ on the other consent authorities; however, it cannot sanction them, it cannot make their decisions for them, and it cannot overrule their decisions. There is nothing in any of the foregoing or in the evidence before the court which suggests that either generally or on the facts of the case at hand, An Bord Pleanála can promote or has been promoting the North-South Interconnector project. In truth, notwithstanding the vigour with which the allegation of bias was contended for, it is striking that the court was never pointed to a particular provision of the PCI Regulation which creates the inevitable conflict posited to arise…and with good reason, for there is no such provision. Viewed as aforesaid, viewed through the prism of what the reasonable observer knows, it seems to the court that the claim of objective bias must and does fail.
VIII. What if the Court is wrong?
88. What if the court is wrong and the designation of An Bord Pleanála as competent authority ought, whether by virtue of the principle of legal certainty or otherwise, to have been effected by way of primary or secondary legislation? The court does not consider that it is wrong in this regard; however, if it is, the proper legal conclusion is not that everything that An Bord Pleanála has done vis-à-vis EirGrid’s application collapses for want of validity, with the court having to press a notional re-set button that will cast everyone involved in the within matter back to the beginning of what has already been a long and challenging process. Rather it seems to the court that the circumstances identified at (ii) below and the consequences identified at (iii) would then present.
(ii) Issuance of Consent pursuant to s.182B.
89. If it is the case (which the court does not accept) that An Bord Pleanála’s appointment as competent authority under PCI is in some sense irregular because that designation was not done by way of primary or secondary legislation, what does that mean for the development consent? The answer to that question is ‘nothing’. The development consent has issued under s.182B and stands on its own two feet. In this regard it seems to the court to be important to note the terms in which An Bord Pleanála expressed its decision having regard to the requirements of the PCI Regulation. Thus if one has regard to the Board Order that issued consequent upon the application, it states as follows, in the “Notes” section, under the heading “Project of Common Interest (PCI) - Regulation (EU) No. 347/2013”:
“The Board acknowledged that the matter of PCI was raised by observers and was referred to in the Inspector’s report.
The Board considered that, even in the absence of PCI status, the need for the project and the need to improve the quality of energy transmission in the island of Ireland has been clearly established, as set out in the reasons and considerations.
In reaching the decision in this case the Strategic Infrastructure Division of An Bord Pleanála confined its decision to the matters pertinent to the SID application and in particular issues arising in respect of Appropriate Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment and the consideration of the proper planning and sustainable development. The Board did not consider that it was conflicted in any way by the separate administrative role fulfilled by An Bord Pleanála as the Competent Authority for Projects of Common Interest.”
90. In light of the foregoing, it appears to the court, with respect, that there is a significant disconnect between (a) the complaint that there has been some irregularity in the appointment of the Board as competent authority and (b) the challenge to the planning decision. The planning decision stands on its own; the Board was entitled (and indeed required) to reach that decision.
(iii) De Facto Designation.
91. Just as the acts of an officer or judge may be held to be valid in law even though her appointment is invalid and in truth she has no legal power at all, the court considers that in the event (not accepted by the court to present) that primary or secondary legislation was necessary for a valid designation of An Bord Pleanála as competent authority, the acts of An Bord Pleanála which it has been sought to impugn in the within proceedings would nonetheless remain extant and lawful. In reaching this conclusion, the court recalls, inter alia, the decision of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Fawdry & Co. v. Murfitt [2002] 3 WLR 1354. That was a case in which the principal issue was when could a judge who had been assigned to the Technology and Construction Court (‘TCC’) sit and hear a regular case in the Queen’s Bench decision (of which the TCC is, apparently, a specialist division)? Much of the judgment is given up to analysing the applicable rules and regulations and is of no interest in the context of the within proceedings. However, what is of note is that ultimately the Court of Appeal did find that the judge was properly authorised to sit in the regular division of the Queen’s Bench, with an obiter but still persuasive consideration of the concept and standing of a de facto officer (and in truth, when it comes to authority that is but persuasive, the standing of particular elements of a judgment as part of the ratio decidendi or as obiter dicta seems to the court to matter less than would be the case if it were treating with binding precedent: ultimately persuasive authority is but that, i.e. logic deployed in one context that the court may find persuasive in another context, and nothing more). In any event, at 1361-2, Lady Justice Hale, as she then was, makes the following observations:
“18…[W]e have heard argument on whether, even if the case had not been validly transferred to the TCC, the judge's order is valid as the act of a de facto officer. This longstanding doctrine of the common law is summarised thus in Wade and Forsyth, Administrative Law , 8th edition, at pp 291-292:
‘The acts of an officer or judge may be held to be valid in law even though his own appointment is invalid and in truth he has no legal power at all. The logic of annulling all his acts has to yield to the desirability of upholding them where he has acted in the office under a general supposition of his competence to do so.’
19. It was held by Sir Jocelyn Simon P in Adams v Adams [1971] P 188 that despite the lack of modern English authority applying the doctrine, it was still part of the English common law (and had been overlooked in R v Cronin [1940] 1 All ER 618). He referred to 'two masterly judgments of great learning', State v Carroll (1871) 38 Conn 448 , in the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and In re Aldridge (1897) 15 NZLR 361 , in the Court of Appeal of New Zealand, and also to an even more learned article by Sir Owen Dixon, later Chief Justice of Australia, 'De Facto Officers' (first published in Res Judicatae, Melbourne, 1938, reproduced in S Woinarski, ed., Jesting Pilate, 1965).
20.Sir Owen explains that the doctrine has its origin in the medieval conception of an office as property, an incorporeal thing, to which the usual principles of the law of property applied. Thus a person who dispossessed another of his office, a disseisor, was nevertheless entitled to exercise the authority of that office, unless and until the disseisee exercised his right of re-entry. Nowadays, the rule is based not on that technicality but on public policy. Sir Owen quotes from Curtis v Barton (1893) 139 NY 505 , at p 511:
‘When a court of competent jurisdiction is duly established, a suitor who resorts to it for the administration of justice and the protection of private rights should not be defeated or embarrassed by questions relating to the title of the judge, who presides in the court, to his office.’
21. Despite its technical rationale in the notion of disseisin, the authorities show that the de facto officer must have some basis for his assumption of office, variously expressed as 'colourable title' or 'colourable authority'. Quite what suffices for that purpose has been debated, a particularly broad view being taken in State v Carroll (1871) 38 Conn 448 . In that case, the elected judge of the city court not being available, the clerk of the court invited a justice of the peace to act in his place. The report does not reveal whether or not that justice knew that he had no lawful authority to sit. After an extensive review of the authorities, Butler CJ summarised the circumstances in which the doctrine would apply thus, at p 427:
‘An officer de facto is one whose acts, though not those of a lawful officer, the law, upon principles of policy and justice, will hold valid so far as they involve the interests of the public and third persons, where the duties of the office were exercised, First, without a known appointment or election, but under such circumstances of reputation or acquiescence as were calculated to induce people, without inquiry, to submit to or invoke his action, supposing him to be the officer he assumed to be. Second, under color of a known and valid appointment or election, but where the officer had failed to conform to some precedent requirement or condition, as to take an oath, give a bond, or the like. Third, under color of a known election or appointment, void, because the officer was not eligible, or because there was a want of power in the electing or appointing body, or by reason of some defect or irregularity in its exercise, such ineligibility, want of power, or defect being unknown to the public. Fourth, [under an unconstitutional statute, not relevant here]…’
The first was sufficient to validate the justice's acts.”
92. It seems to the court that (a) the above reasoning can be applied by analogy to the circumstance (not accepted by the court to arise) that An Bord Pleanála ought to have been designated as competent authority by primary or secondary legislation, (b) in that non-presenting circumstance the third instance identified by Butler C.J. and referred to above is what would then present, (c) to borrow from the above-quoted wording of Wade & Forsyth, the logic of annulling all of An Bord Pleanála’s acts as competent authority would have to yield to the desirability (in the public interest) of upholding them under a general supposition of An Bord Pleanála’s competence so to act.
93. The court has also been referred in this regard to still another decision of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, being Coppard v. Customs and Excise Commissioners (Lord Chancellor intervening) [2003] QB 1428. There, a case was heard by a circuit judge who knew that he had not been authorised under statute to sit as a judge of the High Court but wrongly believed that he had authority to sit in the Queen’s Bench Division by virtue of his appointment under statute to sit in the TCC. On appeal, it was held by the Court of Appeal, inter alia, that (a) the doctrine that acts of a de facto officer were valid in law did not operate to validate the acts of a person who, though believed by the world to be a judge of a court in which he sat, knew that he was not, (b) a person who knew he lacked authority included one who shut his eyes to that fact when it was obvious, but not one who had simply neglected to find out, (c) the judge in this case neither knew not ought to have known that he was not authorised to sit as a judge of the High Court, (d) therefore, on established principles of common law, the judge was a de facto judge of the High Court and his judgment was a valid judgment of the High Court.
94. Reasoning akin to that brought to bear by the Court of Appeal in Coppard falls to be applied, by analogy, in the circumstance - not accepted by the court to arise - that An Bord Pleanála ought to have been designated as competent authority by primary or secondary legislation. Thus: (a) An Bord Pleanála has hitherto been generally believed to be a validly designated competent authority and did not know that it was not; (b) An Bord Pleanála has neither shut its eyes to a want of validity in its designation as competent authority nor neglected to find out - it (rightly) is simply not an issue that has been considered to present; (c) applying established principles of common law to the analogous circumstance then presenting, An Bord Pleanála’s designation and actions as competent authority would fall to be treated as valid de facto. As Hale L.J. notes in her judgment in Fawdry, at 1366, “As Mr [now Lord Justice] Sales has been at pains to remind us throughout, the other party to this case has an interest in not being deprived of the benefit of his order and not being made to go through the whole process again unless there was something materially wrong with it. There was nothing materially wrong with this trial and it would be wrong to set it aside.” Likewise, in this case, EirGrid has an interest in not being deprived of the benefit of what it has attained through the application process, unless there was something materially wrong with that process…and there was nothing materially wrong with the process brought to bear and operated by An Bord Pleanála.
IX. Delay
95. The issue of delay was addressed by the judge who granted leave to bring the within application. It is clear, however, from the decision of the Supreme Court in O’Flynn v. Mid-Western Health Board [1991] 2 I.R. 223 that the judge hearing the full judicial review ought to re-visit the issue of delay. And, in any event, the judge who acted at the leave stage was only concerned with delay as a preliminary point, the argument there being that there had been a failure to comply with the time limit presenting under O.84 of the Rules of the Superior Courts (1986), as amended. At the trial stage, by contrast, delay also feeds in as a factor, that the court is entitled to take into account as regards the exercise of its discretion.
96. When it comes to the issue of delay, it is worth turning to consider certain of the exhibits furnished to the court as part of the affidavit evidence before it:
- on 15th May, 2014, An Bord Pleanála issued a document entitled “Projects of Common Interest, Manual of Permit Granting Process Procedures” which states as follows, at para. 1.3, under the heading “Competent Authority and Ireland”:
“The [PCI] Regulation seeks to facilitate the permit granting process for PCI by requiring Member States to appoint a Competent Auhtority responsible for making the comprehensive decision and to ensure that the comprehensive decision is made within the time limits specified in the Regulation. An Bord Pleanála was designated the Competent Authority in the Irish State on 4th December, 2013.”
So the fact of An Bord Pleanála’s designation was publicly available knowledge from at least 15th May, 2014.
- in point of fact, the applicants in this case were alive to the fact of An Bord Pleanála’s designation from November, 2014. Thus among the exhibits before the court is a letter from North East Pylon Pressure to the European Commission, signed by Ms Aimée Treacy, one of the deponents in the within proceedings and headed “Formal complaint to EU Commission by North East Pylon Pressure Campaign Group in relation to EirGrid’s planning applications for the North-South interconnector project, Ireland…”. This letter states, at p.39, that “DCENR [the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources] appointed ABP [An Bord Pleanála] as Competent Authority for PCIs on 4th December 2013. ABP confirmed its appointment as Competent Authority (CA) for PCI on 20th December 2013”.
- also exhibited in the evidence before the court is a planning inspector’s report of 2nd May, 2014. This report arose from the fact that an application previous to that which led to the within application was submitted on behalf of EirGrid to An Bord Pleanála but withdrawn; an issue then arising was whether the new application was to be treated as an entirely new or a continuation of the withdrawn application. At para. 1.1 of the inspector’s report, the following observation appears:
“The Board will be aware that on the 4th December 2013 the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources wrote to the Chairperson to confirm An Bord Pleanála’s appointment as the Competent Authority for purposes of implementation of the permit granting and other procedures for PCI’s established under Regulation (EU) 347/2013. This appointment was accepted by the Chairperson on 20 December 2013.”
So again one has in this document a publicly available document clearly confirming that An Bord Pleanála is and has been designated as the competent authority.
- finally, if one turns to the pleadings, one finds included among them a verifying affidavit of a Principal Officer in the Department of Communications, Climate Change and the Environment which includes the averment that “On the 12th June 2014, the then Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Minister Rabbitte, stated on the Dáil record that the Board was designated as the competent authority for Projects of Common Interest in Ireland, in response to two Parliamentary questions”. So the suggestion that in some way it was a secret that An Bord Pleanála had been designated, with respect, does not bear scrutiny.
97. Be all the above as it may, the court concludes later below that it is not minded to grant any of the reliefs sought by the applicants. That is a conclusion that can safely be arrived at whether or not there has been any delay on the part of the applicants. So to the extent that delay presenting on the part of the applicants can now be counted against them, in truth it has no consequence to the within application, at least as regards the reliefs sought: the court cannot make them any more refused than they are.
X. ‘Brexit’
(i) Concerns Raised by Applicants.
98. The issue of ‘Brexit’ is touched upon at paras. 59-61 of the applicants’ written submissions and it is as well to begin by quoting these so as to understand the complaint made by the applicants in this regard:
“59. The Single Electricity Market Operator (SEMO) aims to facilitate the continuous operation and administration of the Single Electricity Market. It is a joint venture between the two applicants for the development, the subject-matter of these proceedings, namely the Notice Party (EirGrid plc) and the System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI Limited). The organisation is managed as a contractual joint venture between EirGrid plc, the Transmission System Operator for Ireland, and SONI, the Transmission System Operator for Northern Ireland. It is licensed and regulated by both the Commission for Energy Regulation in Ireland and the Utility Regulator for Northern Ireland. It identified in September 2016 and February 2017 as a rising high or top risk what it described as ‘BREXIT Impact: Risk that Government revisits I-SEM decision, or National Grid/Ofgem choose not to comply with the European Network Codes or not actively support the Target Model cross border arrangements, resulting in changes to scope, project delays, cost overruns, reduced quality, or potentially undermine I-SEM’ and inter alia recommended close liaison between the Regulatory Authorities and the Departments (of Government) as part of the mitigating controls.
60. By virtue of Article 4(3) TEU and the principle of sincere cooperation, national courts are required, so far as possible, to interpret and apply procedural rules governing the exercise of rights of action in a way that achieves that result. Article 19(1) TEU…provides that Member States shall provide remedies sufficient to ensure effective legal protection in the fields covered by European Union law.
61. The First Named Respondent on page 9 of the decision dated the 19th December 2016 stated that the proposed development is likely to have significant effects on the environment of Northern Ireland which is described by the First Named Respondent as ‘an area of a Member State of the European Union (i.e. [the] United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).’ As a matter of EU law, the First Named Respondent by the manner in which it made its decision on the 19th December, 2016, has failed to consider the application of Article 3(4) and/or Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No. 347/2013 either as a PCI under Regulation (EU) No 347/2013 and/or as a Cluster as per Regulation (EU) 2016/89 and in circumstances where part of the said PCI and/or Cluster is within the United Kingdom and/or having regard to the consequences of the referendum held in the United Kingdom on the 23rd June 2016 (and/or in the alternative having regard to the consequences of any irrevocable withdrawal by the United Kingdom pursuant to Article 50 of the TEU.”
99. It appears from the foregoing that two separate points are made by the applicants. First, concerns are expressed about the consequences of the ‘Brexit’ referendum in the neighbouring jurisdiction for the North-South Interconnector project, the suggestion being that those concerns ought to have been addressed by An Bord Pleanála in its decision. Second, it is queried whether or not An Bord Pleanála was correct in concluding that the proposed development would have significant effects on the environment of another Member State in circumstances where the United Kingdom may or will at some point in the future be a non-EU member state, following on its ‘Brexit’ referendum of last year.
(ii) Uncertainty as to the Future.
100. A number of points might be made as regards the issues touched upon in the preceding paragraph:
(1) the general consequences of ‘Brexit’ are speculative at this time.
(2) the consequences of ‘Brexit’ for the implementation of the European internal energy market are speculative at this time.
(3) the consequences of ‘Brexit’ for the implementation of the North-South interconnector are speculative at this time.
(4) what can be stated with certainty is that: the United Kingdom was a member state of the European Union when An Bord Pleanála made its now-impugned decision, and the United Kingdom continues at this time to be so.
101. Additionally, the court notes that although the applicants indicate that there could be certain risks arising from Brexit, they do not appear to contend that those risks mean that the North-South Interconnector project should not be treated as a PCI. Insofar as there is a criticism of An Bord Pleanála having taken the view that the proposed development could have a significant effect on another Member State, that seems, with respect, a criticism that is hard to bring home. In fact, if one were to ‘flip’ An Bord Pleanála’s reasoning, i.e. if An Bord Pleanála was to have decided that it would not have any regard to any effects on another member state (on the basis that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom which is a member state that appears to be on the path to exiting the European Union) that course of action, it seems to the court, would offer a valid avenue of complaint as regards An Bord Pleanála’s actions…but that is not what An Bord Pleanála did; in fact the opposite pertains.
102. It seems to the court that An Bord Pleanála was correct to approach matters as it did. As a matter of practical reality, no-one knows what the United Kingdom’s future status vis-à-vis the European Union will mean for the United Kingdom or Ireland or the internal energy market. What is known is that the ‘Brexit’ referendum did not have any de facto effect as regards removing the United Kingdom or any part of same from the European Union. Nor did it have any de facto effect as regards removing the North-South Interconnector project from the European Union’s list of PCI projects: the North-South Interconnector project was on the list, is on the list and will remain on the list unless and until steps are taken to remove it therefrom and those steps are completed. The applicants merely make the point that it is not clear what the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the European Union will be, and one need merely read each day’s newspapers to see the uncertainty that continues at this time to present in this regard, especially following the United Kingdom’s recent general election. But, when it comes to the particular subject-matter of the within application, matters are actually clearer than they were, even in December, 2016, thanks to the publication, in February 2017, by the United Kingdom Government, of a White Paper entitled “The United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union” (Cm 9417), in which that Government’s commitment to the concept and reality of a single electricity market on the island of Ireland is manifest. Thus, at p.43 of the White Paper, the following observations appear:
“With respect to energy, EU legislation underpins the coordinated trading of gas and electricity through existing interconnectors with Member States, including Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. There are also plans for further electricity interconnections between the UK and EU Member States and EEA Members. These coordinated energy trading arrangements help to ensure lower prices and improved security of supply for both the UK and EU Member States by improving the efficiency and reliability of interconnector flows, reducing the need for domestic back-up power and helping balance power flows as we increase the level of intermittent renewable electricity generation. We are considering all options for the UK’s future relationship with the EU on energy, in particular, to avoid disruption to the all-Ireland single electricity market operating across the island of Ireland, on which both Northern Ireland and Ireland rely for affordable, sustainable and secure electricity supplies.”
103. In terms of chronology, the White Paper was published after the circumstances that are the focus of the within application. However, as counsel for the applicants properly conceded at the hearing of the within application, it is appropriate for the court, when considering whether and how to apply a discretionary relief, to have regard to matters that are known to it now: though focusing on the past in its considerations it need not be entirely blind to the contemporary. But even if the court were to ignore the White Paper, the time to judge the validity of the impugned decision of An Bord Pleanála is the date of that decision (19th December, 2016), and at that date all that had occurred was that the Brexit referendum had taken place on 23rd June, 2016. That, of course, was a non-binding referendum. Indeed the very limited effect of same can be seen from the fact that in R. (Miller) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, the United Kingdom Supreme Court determined that even following the ‘Brexit’ referendum the United Kingdom could not initiate its withdrawal pursuant to Art. 50 TEU without an Act of Parliament permitting it so to do. It is true that Parliament later gave the necessary assent, leading to the ‘triggering’ of Art. 50 on 29th March, 2017, with the presently likely result of that ‘triggering’ being that there will be some kind of ‘Brexit’ in 2019. But at the time that An Bord Pleanála made its decision, the Miller case, the need for the intervention of the Westminster Parliament and the ‘triggering’ of Art. 50 all lay in the future. All that was known when An Bord Pleanála made its decision was that there had been a non-binding referendum of uncertain consequence in the United Kingdom, and nothing more.
(iii) Listing of Project.
1. The PCI Regulation.
104. It is instructive too when it comes to the ‘Brexit’ aspect of matters to look at the text of the PCI Regulation in this regard. Articles 3 and 5 of that Regulation provide, inter alia, as follows:
Union list of projects of common interest
1. This Regulation establishes twelve Regional Groups (‘Groups’) as set out in Annex III.1. The membership of each Group shall be based on each priority corridor and area and their respective geographical coverage as set out in Annex I. Decision-making powers in the Groups shall be restricted to Member States and the Commission, who shall, for those purposes, be referred to as the decision-making body of the Groups.
[Court Note: Annex I of the PCI Regulation, under the heading “PRIORITY ELECTRICITY CORRIDORS” references, at (2), “North-South electricity interconnections in Western Europe” and mentions Ireland among the “Member States concerned”].
3. The decision-making body of each Group shall adopt a regional list of proposed projects of common interest drawn up according to the process set out in Annex III.2, according to the contribution of each project to implementing the energy infrastructure priority corridors and areas and according to their fulfilment of the criteria set out in Article 4. When a Group draws up its regional list: (a) each individual proposal for a project of common interest shall require the approval of the Member States, to whose territory the project relates; if a Member State decides not to give its approval, it shall present its substantiated reasons for doing so to the Group concerned; (b) it shall take into account advice from the Commission that is aimed at having a manageable total number of projects of common interest.
4. The Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 16 that establish the Union list of projects of common interest (‘Union list’), subject to the second paragraph of Article 172 of the TFEU. The Union list shall take the form of an annex to this Regulation. In exercising its power, the Commission shall ensure that the Union list is established every two years, on the basis of the regional lists adopted by the decision-making bodies of the Groups as established in Annex III.1(2), following the procedure set out in paragraph 3 of this Article. The first Union list shall be adopted by 30 September 2013.
5. The Commission shall, when adopting the Union list on the basis of the regional lists:
(a) ensure that only those projects that fulfil the criteria referred to in Article 4 are included…
Implementation and monitoring…
8. A project of common interest may be removed from the Union list according to the procedure set out in Article 3(4) if its inclusion in that list was based on incorrect information which was a determining factor for that inclusion, or the project does not comply with Union law.
9. Projects which are no longer on the Union list shall lose all rights and obligations linked to the status of project of common interest arising from this Regulation.
However, a project which is no longer on the Union list but for which an application file has been accepted for examination by the competent authority shall maintain the rights and obligations arising from Chapter III, except where the project is no longer on the list for the reasons set out in paragraph 8.”
105. The North-South Interconnector project was first listed in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1391/2013 of 14 October, 2013, amending Regulation (EU) No 347/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure as regards the Union list of projects of common interest (O.J. L349, 21.12.2013, 28). To argue, by reference to Art. 5(8) of the PCI Regulation that a project listed on information that was correct at the time of listing under the Commission Delegated Regulation but which later changed, thanks to ‘Brexit’, would be information that would then come within the ambit of the phrase “incorrect information” seems to the court, with respect, to be a most tenuous contention. However, even in the event that that such a contention was found to be correct, it would still not avail the applicants. This is because the North-South Interconnector Project would come within the saving embrace of the second paragraph of Art. 5(9) of the PCI Regulation.
2. The 2015 Regulation.
106. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/89 of 18 November, 2015, amending Regulation (EU) No 347/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the Union list of projects of common interest [i.e. the PCI Regulation] (O.J. L19, 27.1.2016, 1) commences, inter alia, with the following recitals:
“(3) Projects proposed for the inclusion in the Union list have been assessed by the regional groups and meet the criteria laid down in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) No 347/2013.
(4) The draft regional lists of PCIs were agreed by the regional groups at technical-level meetings. Following positive opinions of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (‘ACER’) on 30 October 2015 on the consistent application of the assessment criteria and the cost/benefit analysis across regions, the regional groups' decision-making bodies adopted the regional lists on 3 November 2015. Pursuant to Article 3(3)(a) of Regulation (EU) No 347/2013, prior to the adoption of the regional lists, all proposed projects were approved by the Member States to whose territory the projects relate.
(5) Organisations representing relevant stakeholders, including producers, distribution system operators, suppliers, and consumer and environmental protection organisations were consulted on the projects proposed for inclusion in the Union list.”
107. The Regulation then moves on to insert a new Annex VII into the PCI Regulation, identifying the Union list of projects and then makes, at para. 3 of the new Annex VII, the following provision in relation to the Union list that had been established by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1391/2013 (referenced previously above).
“(3) Definition of ‘No longer considered a PCI’
The phrase ‘No longer considered a PCI’ refers to projects from the Union list established by Regulation (EU) No 1391/2013 that are no longer considered PCIs for one or more of the following reasons:
- according to the new data the project does not satisfy the eligibility criteria;
- a promoter has not re-submitted it in the selection process for this Union list;
- it has already been commissioned or is to be commissioned in the near future and so it would not benefit from the provisions of Regulation (EU) No 347/2013; or
- it was ranked lower than other candidate PCIs in the selection process.
Such projects are not PCIs, but are listed with their original PCI numbers on the Union list for the sake of transparency and clarity.
They may be considered for inclusion in the next Union list if the reasons for not-inclusion in the current Union list no longer apply.”
108. The North-South Interconnector does not come within the definition of ‘No longer considered a PCI’ but continues to be listed at Annex VII, Section B, Category (2), para.2.13, under the principal heading “Priority Corridor North-South Electricity Interconnections in Western Europe (‘NSI West Electricity’)” and the sub-heading “Cluster of projects increasing the integration of renewable energy between Ireland and Northern Ireland”.
(iv) Some Conclusions.
109. The North-South Interconnector, at the time that An Bord Pleanála assessed it, was on the Union list. In accordance with Arts. 5(8) and (9) of the PCI Regulation, it was appropriate for An Bord Pleanála to progress the application as it did, concerning (as it did) a project on the Union list. The impugned decision of An Bord Pleanála reflects the legal position as of the date of that decision. As of that time (and this time), the United Kingdom remains part of the European Union, with all of the legal consequences that follow from that; and it will remain a full member until, at the very least, March, 2019. The precise implications for the single electricity market after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, if it leaves the European Union, are not clear. However, although the future can never be mapped with complete certainty, at this time it appears, by reference to the United Kingdom Government’s White Paper of February, 2017, as quoted from above, that the United Kingdom government is committed to the concept and reality of a single electricity market on the island of Ireland.
110. In truth, although ‘Brexit’ is put up by the applicants as a significant part of their case, at no stage in their oral or written submissions have they identified a single authority which suggests that an event of this kind, i.e. a referendum result that has uncertain consequences and which will not change the law for a period of time after an administrative decision is made, nonetheless has the effect of vitiating that administrative decision. Is it the case that every administrative decision made in this State by bodies which may or may not be affected by what ‘Brexit’ may or may not involve are now to be declared unlawful because decision-makers apply the status quo and the legal position as it prevails today to the facts before them? The answer to that question is simply stated: of course it is not. None of the risks that might be attributable to ‘Brexit’ have yet crystallised, it is not clear what those risks even are, it is not clear what the effect of those risks may be for the interconnector project. Thus it is premature for any challenge to be made to the decision of An Bord Pleanála by reference to ‘Brexit’; it was not a matter which An Bord Pleanála ought to have considered and it was appropriate for An Bord Pleanála not to do so.
XI. Error on the Face of the Record
111. The applicants contend, inter alia, that An Bord Pleanála acted ultra vires and without jurisdiction in purporting to grant approval for a proposed development inclusive of approximately 34km located in Northern Ireland (with the alleged error of law also appearing on various pages of the impugned record/decision). This assertion, with respect, does not withstand even the scantest of scrutiny. If one looks to the Board Order, it states as follows under the heading “Proposed Development”:
The overall interconnector (approximately 138 kilometres long inclusive of approximately 34 kilometres located in Northern Ireland) will link the existing electricity transmission networks of Northern Ireland and Ireland between Turleenan, County Tyrone and Woodland, near Batterstown, County Meath. This interconnector has been designated as a Project of Common Interest (PCI) pursuant to the provisions of Regulation (EU) No. 347/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17th April 2013 on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure.
he proposed North-South 400 kilovolt Interconnection Development located in Counties Monaghan, Cavan and Meath, which will be the subject of the application for approval, is approximately 103.35 kilometres long and consists of the following principal elements…”
112. In essence, what is stated in the above-quoted text is not so very removed from saying, to use a loose analogy, ‘Ms X’s farm straddles Counties Donegal and Tyrone. She is applying for planning permission to build a house on the Donegal end of her farm.’ The notion that in describing matters so, such an application assumes an extra-jurisdictional dimension is, with respect, fantastic. Putting an application in its cross-border context does not render that application a cross-border application. Returning to the facts at hand, EirGrid did not seek approval for development in Northern Ireland and An Bord Pleanála did not purport to grant approval for development in Northern Ireland, notwithstanding that the North-South Interconnector project in its entirety, and as its name would suggest, will reach into Northern Ireland. The decision of An Bord Pleanála on its face cannot reasonably be read as representing anything other than what it says it is, being a decision to accede to the application made by EirGrid, which application did not seek approval for any development in Northern Ireland, albeit that is it part of a wider development that in its joined-up form will straddle Northern Ireland.
XII. The Inspector’s Report
113. It is contended by the applicants that certain matters were not dealt with adequately by An Bord Pleanála. It may be useful in this regard to quote a portion of the applicants’ submissions so as to get a sense of what is contended in this regard:
134. Article 3(d) of the EIA Directive (2011/92/EU) requires information to be
provided by the developer to include ‘an outline of the main alternatives studied by the developer and an indication of the main reasons for his choice, taking into account the environmental effects.’ This requirement is replicated with identical wording, in paragraph 1(d) of Schedule 6 of the Planning and Development Regulations, 2001, as amended.
135. The First Named Respondent erred in failing to assess the alternatives to the proposed development, including: (i) failing to properly and comprehensively consider the undergrounding option or partial undergrounding option of the proposed development; (ii) erred in determining that the overhead power line was more appropriate and cost effective when compared to other alternatives, including undergrounding; (iii) had no and/or insufficient regard to the rights of affected landowners and the potential health hazards associated with the overhead lines when assessing alternatives to the project; (iv) failed to ensure that a proper cost/benefit analysis of the proposed development was completed; (v) had no or insufficient regard to alternative interconnectors and PCIs, specifically the First Named Respondent had no regard to the potential alternative interconnector between Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain (including Northern Ireland) namely the Interconnection between Srananagh (IE) and Turleenan (UK).”
114. The court proceeds with a consideration of these lines of objection hereafter. In passing, however, the court notes that it does not understand complaint to be made by the applicants by reference to the judgment of the court in Connolly v. An Bord Pleanála [2016] IEHC 322. However, even had such complaint been made, the court would in any event have found ample ground for distinction between that case and this in that in Connolly, unlike here, An Bord Pleanála placed reliance on an inspector’s report notwithstanding that (i) the development in issue had changed, and changed substantially, following the issuance of the inspector's report; and (ii) notably, even confusingly, the inspector's report was not favourable, or in material parts was not favourable, to the relevant development. In those circumstances, the court came to the conclusion that it did. In this case, by contrast, there has been no like change to the development and there is no ‘clear blue water’ between the inspector's findings and that of An Bord Pleanála.
XIII. Access
115. Before looking at the specific arguments that have been raised around access, it is helpful briefly to analyse what the relevance of access is to the North-South Interconnector project and to the within application. This is because the notion of access can refer to a number of different things, and it is important to identify what they are and what An Bord Pleanála was and was not concerned with.
116. As should now be clear, the intended pylons are to be constructed on private land and the relevant contractors will have to get themselves and their equipment onto the land so as to engage in the act of construction. A number of access-related issues then arise:
(1) as the land is private land, how do the contractors legally obtain access to the private land?
(2) does whatever the contractors are doing in the course of getting themselves and their equipment to the location of the pylon require development consent/planning permission?
(3) whether or not such consent/permission is required, insofar as An Bord Pleanála is considering an application for approval under Section 182A, is the access in the sense of getting from the road to the pylon something which needs to be assessed as part of the EIA?
(4) whatever the answer to (1)-(3), is An Bord Pleanála entitled in granting development consent to have regard to the question of access when fashioning conditions attached to that consent?
117. There does not appear to be any dispute between the parties, and at law there is no uncertainty, that an application for development consent does not allow a party to do anything except construct the development for which consent is obtained. Issues of access in the sense of getting a legal entitlement to get on the land are independent of that and are resolved in one of two ways: either (a) a landowner agrees to allow a developer onto affected land or (b) a contractor resorts to the use of such statutory powers as it may possess to achieve that access.
118. As to whether planning permission is required to get contractors from road to site of construction, EirGrid’s submission and position is that it is not required. It has presented methods of access which it believes can be achieved using existing entrances and using equipment which will not require the undertaking of works that would require development consent. EirGrid is either right or wrong in this regard. (It believes itself to be right). The way the inspector rationalised matters was to say, quite correctly, that An Bord Pleanála was concerned with the application before it, the developer maintained that they could obtain the necessary access and if the developer was wrong, that was for another place and day.
119. As to the third issue touched upon above - did access need to be assessed as part of the environmental impact assessment in any event? - the developer adopted the view that the information should be put before An Bord Pleanála so as to allow that assessment to occur and An Bord Pleanála, as it was entitled to do, agreed with that view and properly proceeded with its assessment.
120. Finally, if no development consent is sought in relation to access can there properly be any conditions that relate to access? At first glance, it seems almost counter-intuitive that the answer to this question would be ‘yes’. Indeed, counsel for the applicants contended that where an application does not include an application for access and a condition in the permission refers to access, that is unlawful. However, if one pauses to consider this last proposition, it just cannot be true or, at the very least, it cannot always be true. Suppose, for example, that a homeowner is having a rear extension built on to her house for which she needs planning permission. Suppose too that she does not seek any permission for access (because she does not need planning approval to get contractors and materials from the front of her house to the back). She may find that such permission as issues nonetheless comes subject to access-related conditions. She may, for example, be living on a very busy road and the local authority or An Bord Pleanála may condition the planning permission by providing, for example, that the homeowner during the period that the development is being constructed is not to have any lorries outside her house before ten o'clock in the morning or after four o’clock in the afternoon, perhaps because her house is situate on the main road to the local airport. That is a condition relating to access. But, with respect, no-one could reasonably, let alone correctly, suggest that such a condition was necessarily unlawful.
121. Returning to the conditions imposed in the case at hand, it will be recalled that these provide, inter alia, as follows:
“Prior to the commencement of development, a construction and environmental management plan, a traffic management plan and a waste management plan shall be submitted to, and agreed in writing with, the relevant planning authority following consultations with relevant statutory agencies….This plan shall incorporate the mitigation measures indicated in the environmental impact statement and shall provide details of intended construction practice for the proposed development, including…
(c) site specific arrangements for each temporary access route, to include, where necessary:
(i) arrangements for stepping down vehicle size,
(ii) arrangements for off-loading of materials,
(iii) short-term road closures,
(iv) the phasing of construction works which are accessed by single-lane carriageways, and
(v) the arrangements for the transfer and management of concrete, including wash out facilities.”
122. The criteria for conditions such as those just quoted, subject to the normal rules of vires, is that they are viewed by the permit granting authority as appropriate in the interests of proper planning and sustainable development and there is no evidence that in this case they were not so viewed (and the mere fact that they were included is evidence that they were so viewed). They are not affected, and their legality cannot be affected, by reason of the fact, to go back to the formulation that counsel for the applicants presented, that where an application does not include access, a condition in the ensuing consent which refers to access is unlawful.
123. So if the court stands back from the access issue and tries to analyse it element by element, matters reduce themselves to this: (1) the application before the court is for development consent; (2) if, in the course of undertaking a development for which consent is required, a developer is going to do something which does not require consent or permission, then the consent or permission need not be sought; (3) if the developer then breaches the planning laws by obtaining or seeking to obtain access in a manner which in fact requires consent or permission there are recognised methods in law for dealing with that: it is not a matter for the court to resolve before development commences. Viewed so, the vires objection now raised in relation to the above-quoted conditions concerning access is, with respect, an argument without merit.
(ii) The Substance of the Inspector’s Report.
124. “Access routes” are first considered by the inspector at p.98 of her report, in the following terms:
“The applicant proposes using existing access routes to agricultural land to access tower sites, stringing locations and guarding areas. Mr Keane [counsel for the applicants] queried why these temporary access routes did not form part of the planning application.
In the Board’s pre-application meeting with the applicant, the Board advised the then prospective applicant that ‘the planning application drawings should indicate access to tower locations for construction and servicing purposes at the point of the public road’ (Record of Meeting, December 2013).
I would also note that the Board advised the applicant (minutes of the Board’s pre-application meeting with the applicant held on the 23rd December 2013) in respect of the access to construction towers that the drawings ‘could be similar to those submitted in the application for the Laois-Kilkenny Reinforcement Project’ (VA0015). Statutory drawings for this route did not identify temporary access routes to tower sites.
It was confirmed by the applicant on numerous occasions during the oral hearing that the access roads do not form part of the planning application, but are presented in an indicative manner in order to allow environmental impact assessment of the development. In this context, it would not appear inappropriate that the access routes are omitted from the statutory drawings. The Board can only adjudicate on the application as so presented and should it transpire at some future date that works, constituting development, are required to facilitate access, then EirGrid will be constrained by the provisions of the planning acts. There is no substantial evidence before the Board at this time that any such works are likely to be required.”
125. It seems to the court that this last-quoted passage is a notable one. What An Bord Pleanála makes clear in this passage is that: it is not giving permission for any of the access roads; it is considering those access roads purely for the purposes of its environmental impact assessment; and should it transpire in the future that the temporary access routes require works such as to constitute development within the context of the planning legislation, that that is something which will have to be dealt with at another date. So in no sense are the temporary access routes being permitted by An Bord Pleanála.
126. There follows next in the inspector’s report a segment headed “Access routes in sensitive locations”, which reads as follows:
“Mr Keane SC also raised issues regarding ‘works’ including the laying down of matting to form a road which he argued constituted development under section 3 of the Planning and Development Act. He also noted the provisions of section 4(1)(ia) which states:
(ia) development (other than where the development consists of provision of access to a public road) consisting of the construction, maintenance or improvement of a road (other than a public road) or works ancillary to such road development, where the road serves forestry and woodland.
He stated that the type of access routes proposed by the applicant do not qualify for an exemption under this section. He also brought the attention of the Board to the provisions of Section 4(4) which de-exempts development where an environmental impact assessment of the development is required.
It was confirmed by EirGrid that the temporary access roads will not involve ‘works’ as defined under Section 2 of the Act. There will be no construction and no excavation. There are no proposals to develop stone roads and no timber sleepers will be installed. In the vast majority of cases, access will be along existing tracks and where this is not possible, mats will be placed on the ground surface to facilitate construction machinery.
I would again draw the attention of the Board to Class of the Regulation referred to above. It would appear that the placing of the temporary matting on the access routes, being land adjoining land where development is to take place pursuant to a permission, is exempt under the provisions of the Regulations. With regard to the removal of exemption under section 4(4), where an EIS is required, I note the development (works to temporary access roads) is not development of a class set out in Part 1 and 2 of Schedule 5 of the Planning and Development Regulations 2001, as amended, requiring EIA in its own right, and accordingly the matter of EIA does not apply.”
127. What is afoot (again) in this text is the following: if the pylons are to be built then, in certain cases, access from the public road to build those pylons will be required. In many cases it can be done directly from the public road but in other cases it will be necessary to secure assess by means of existing access routes, some of which will traverse over private lands. In that particular context, An Bord Pleanála thought it important to assess what the environmental effects of those access routes would be at the time of the granting or withholding of consent for the project. Again, An Bord Pleanála does not, in its impugned order, grant consent for those access routes; rather it assesses what would be the effect of same when and if the North-South Interconnector project is constructed.
128. As to the issue of works, which is also touched upon in the above-quoted text, it appears from the environmental impact statement that, in general terms, there will be three different kinds of lands that need to be traversed: first, good quality lands where no temporary tracks are required; second, relatively dry or peaty land where a defined track is required and in which case temporary rubber matting or aluminium in road panels will be used to distribute the weight evenly; and third, poor, boggy, undulating land. The environmental impact statement identifies that: the vast majority of the access routes for the building of the pylons along the North-South Interconnector route will be of the first type, i.e. land which can be traversed without any special provision being made; the remainder of the access routes are of the second type, where all that would be required would be aluminium matting or aluminium road panels; and no land has been identified as falling within the third category (where there might be excavation of topsoil or other matters required). However, all that will require to be assessed at another point; it is not something that An Bord Pleanála has decided in this case; and the Board has granted no permission for these access routes.
129. Turning then to the segment of the inspector’s report entitled “Construction”, the court notes the following observations:
“Access to construction sites, guarding locations and stringing areas will be via the public road network and the temporary use of existing private access lanes/lands which currently provide access to property and lands within the project area. The applicant is not seeking to consent for these routes but they are put forward to enable the Board to carry out its environmental impact assessment of the proposed development.”
130. Immediately following the above-quoted text, reference is made to various drawings and documents. Certain of these documents were handed in to court and the court’s attention drawn to the fact that the temporary access routes were marked thereon in yellow. These yellow lines and other purple lines were to play a prominent part in the closing stages of the hearing and will be returned to later below.
131. Under the heading “Temporary Access Routes”, the planning inspector makes the following observations:
“During the oral hearing, NEPPC [the North-East Pylon Pressure Campaign], CMAPC [the County Monaghan Anti-Pylon Committee] and many individual landowners raised concerns regarding:
The outdated aerial photography used by the applicant in the application documentation,
The absence of access to lands and the ability of the applicant to identify and assess the suitability of access routes, and
The adequacy of the proposed temporary access routes to accommodate the construction traffic associated with the development.
The concerns raised regarding the adequacy of access routes included the minor nature, inaccessibility and severe slope of some of the proposed routes, inadequate structure/width of some routes to accommodate the weight and size of construction vehicles and damage to drains, bridges and soils as a consequence of the large construction vehicles.
Other issues in respect of access routes are discussed in other sections of this report notably Legal and Procedural Issues, Human Beings - Land Use and Material Assets - Traffic.”
132. What follows next is a treatment by the planning inspector of each of these points. Under the heading “Viability and Adequacy of Access Routes”, the following text appears:
“In response to the site specific concerns raised by observers regarding the viability and adequacy of each access route the applicant (a) described the applicant’s approach to the use of access routes and (b) uploaded more recent, detailed aerial photography and Google street view to demonstrate the ability of a temporary access route to accommodate construction traffic. The following was emphasised in relation to the construction methodology:
It is not the intention of the applicant to create any new entrance onto the public road but to use existing access routes, preferably those which provide direct access to lands but if necessary, via existing accesses to farm yards.
Typically, agricultural scale equipment would be used to access construction sites (for example, using a tractor and trailer to transport bundles of steel for tower construction). However, for minor access routes or those with poor ground conditions, equipment would be scaled down to suit the nature of the access route. For example, use of a 26 tonne concrete lorry instead of [a] 32 tonne lorry, use of a 6 tonne wheeled dumper to transfer concrete from the concrete lorry to the construction site, use of a mini piling rug where necessary (applicant’s submission No 53).
Use of temporary matting or aluminium tracks for more sensitive access routes (Type 2), or if required by landowners, with the matting or aluminium tracks laid (by the transporting vehicle) at a width to suit the width of the access route e.g. less than 4m if required.
Use of temporary aluminium bridges to facilitate access over ditches etc. and to protect existing bridges (see visual image of bridge provided in submission No 26 presented to oral hearing).
Over sensitive ground, tracked, low pressure vehicles would be used to traverse sites to prevent damage to lands.
Use of tracked vehicles to traverse steep ground.
The assessment of temporary access routes allowed for bad weather conditions…Construction sites would not be accessed in storm conditions.
For the majority of cases referred to by the observers, I would accept that the applicant was able to demonstrate a viable access to each construction site, guarding location or stringing area. For example, by identifying existing gateways at the public road, existing agricultural tracks that would be followed to access tower sites and existing gaps in hedgerows to allow access between fields. Furthermore, the applicant was able to demonstrate appropriate ‘step down’ equipment (as described above) for some of the minor access routes proposed and tracked equipment for some of the steep routes proposed.”
133. There follows next a discussion of the fact that access there were alterations to certain of the access routes and consideration of those alterations. Thus, under the heading “Alterations to Access Routes”, one finds the following text:
“Notwithstanding the above, during the oral hearing the applicant brought forward a large number of changes to the proposed access routes, with 50 alterations and 23 minor deviations. These are set out in the applicant’s submissions to the oral hearing….
The proposed alterations are brought forward by the applicant in response to, or as a consequence of the following:
a. Issues raised by observers, for example, to make use of existing farm tracks/existing gaps in hedgerows, to avoid banks/fences or structures…
b. ‘Mapping discrepancies’ or ‘minor deviations’ where the mapped access point differed from the intended point…i.e. the access was incorrectly identified when moved from one scale of map to another.
The alterations brought forward under ‘a’ above would suggest that the survey of access routes was in a number of cases less than robust. Whilst some of this can be explained by a lack of access to lands for survey work, in other cases it arose due to the use of outdated aerial photography and in others because aerial photography could not pick up changes in levels e.g. banks etc. Alterations brought forward under ‘b’ were generally not substantial. Whilst these were deemed to be mapping anomalies, for an application at an advanced stage these discrepancies are remiss.
Whilst the above alterations are made late in the application process, as noted in the section on Legal/Procedural Issues, the applicant is not seeking approval for the temporary access routes. They are simply presented, in an indicative manner, to enable environmental impact assessment. Within this context, the submission of alternative routes to overcome issues raised by observers in response to the application or oral hearing, is acceptable.
Furthermore, in bringing forward the alterations to proposed access routes or alternative access routes, the applicant has ultimately demonstrated a viable access route to each tower site, guarding location or stringing area for the entire route corridor. As argued by the observers, it is possible that other issues may arise which prevent use of a proposed access route e.g. a bank or wall which a landowner has not drawn to the Board’s attention. However, in these instances, the applicant’s construction methodology and principles in respect of the use of access routes can be relied on to assess any environmental effects which may arise. It is considered therefore that the applicant has provided sufficient information in respect of access routes to enable environmental impact assessment.”
134. What one can see in all of the foregoing is the clarity that there was in the inspector’s report concerning access routes and that, decidedly, permission was not given and was not purported to be given for the access routes. Under the heading “Summary and Conclusion”, many of the points touched upon previously above were considered again in the following terms:
“The key issues arising in his section of the report [i.e. Section 5, “Planning Assessment”] relate to the ability of the applicant to predict ground conditions and assess the viability of access routes, based on the limited access to lands for survey.
It is considered that the applicant has demonstrated that the use of primarily desk top survey work (which includes LiDAR survey), supplemented by walkover survey, shallow augers and vantage point survey where possible, is consistent with the approach taken by the applicant in respect of other electricity transmission projects in the State and is sufficient to predict ground conditions for the design of foundations.
It is noted that the methodology adopted in respect of the proposed access routes (which was not subject to LiDAR survey) has resulted in alterations to access routes during the course of the oral hearing. As the applicant is not seeking approval for the proposed access routes, it is considered that this approach is acceptable. Furthermore, it is considered that the applicant has demonstrated a viable access route to each tower site, guarding location or stringing area for the entire route corridor and has set out clear principles regarding the proposed use of access routes for environmental impact assessment, should the indicative routes change.”
135. Further mention of access then appears at 287 et seq., under the headings “Disruption Arising from the Temporary Use of Access Routes” and “Adequacy of Access Routes and Damage to Lands”:
“As stated in the Construction section of this report it is the applicant’s intention to access construction sites, guarding locations and stringing areas via the public road network and the temporary use of existing private access lands/roads which currently provide access to property and lands within the project area. For the farming community, this could mean the temporary use of existing agricultural access tracks within their landholding and the movement of construction traffic through their working farm yards and the movement of vehicles across agricultural land.
I would accept in many cases that the use of such tracks, in particular if routed through a working farmyard, could impact on the day to day operation of the farm. However, whilst inconvenient, I am mindful of the applicant’s mitigation measures…which include liaison with landowners prior to construction and, as stated in the course of the oral hearing, agreements regarding the use of access lanes to enable farming practices to continue and use of an observer for HGV movements through sensitive sites (including farm yards). I would consider therefore that the shared use of access routes could be managed for the short duration of the construction phase by liaison between the parties to facilitate the on-going operation of the farm….
Many landowners draw the Board’s attention to the inadequate nature of…some of the proposed temporary routes which the applicant proposes to use, with heavy construction equipment damaging the lane or proposed route, for example surface condition, underlying drains, culverts etc. In addition, having regard to the nature of land within the study area, in particular, typically heavy soils, wet ground conditions and the steep topography of some of the tower sites…the observers argue that construction equipment would also damage agricultural land over which it traverses with long term effects.”
136. However, the inspector notes that in the “Construction” section of her report, she had concluded that, having regard to the proposed construction methodology, the applicant had demonstrated that the proposed temporary access routes would be adequate to accommodate the proposed development, the said construction methodology including: use of existing entrances from the public road; use of agricultural scale equipment or ‘stepping down’ vehicles to match the scale of the access route; means to minimise damage to access lanes/land/vulnerable soils; and proposals to engage with landowners prior to construction works so as to identify concerns and to repair or compensate for any damage caused.
137. Under the heading “Control of Contractors”, the inspector notes the mitigation elements of the outline construction environmental management plan (CEMP) and observes as follows:
“The above arrangements are acceptable and consistent with good practice, and should ensure the adherence to mitigation measures. However, I note that the outline CEMP does not refer to the appointment of agricultural liaison officers. I consider that due to the potential for impacts on the farming industry and the importance, therefore, of mitigation measures, I consider that this specific aspect of the development should be further controlled by condition (if the Board are minded to grant approval for the development) i.e. that prior to the commencement of construction the applicant shall appoint an Agricultural Liaison Officer who shall be responsible for liaison with landowners during the construction phase of the project, and thereafter, to identify issues of concern to individual landowners and to agree a detailed methodology for construction, in accordance with the measures set out in the application for approval.”
138. The mooted condition now appears as Condition 2 of the Board’s Order, requiring as follows:
“Prior to the commencement of development, an Agricultural Liaison Officer or Officers shall be appointed and shall be responsible for liaison with landowners, prior to and during the construction phase of the project, to identify and address issues of concern to individual landowners including disease protocols, if relevant, in accordance with the measures set out in the application for approval, and thereafter for the operational phase of the development.”
139. Then, under the heading “Impact of Temporary Access Routes”, the planning inspector concludes as follows:
“Having regard to the mitigation measures proposed in respect of the use of temporary access routes (as discussed in the Construction and Traffic sections of this report), it is considered that the use of temporary access tracks to construction sites, guarding locations or stringing areas will not give rise to significant environmental effects on soils, geology or hydrogeology receptors.”
140. Later in the inspector’s report, there is consideration of the “Use of Temporary Access Routes by Construction Traffic” which it does not seem necessary for the court to consider in detail herein.
(iii) Question as to Consideration of Access.
141. One point that arose at hearing is whether, why and when An Bord Pleanála would consider the issue of access at all when access (as here) was not being applied for. In this regard, the court was referred to the decision of the High Court in O’Grianna & ors v. An Bord Pleanála [2014] IEHC 632. There, Peart J. found that connection of a proposed wind farm to the national grid was an integral part of an overall development of which the construction of turbines was the first part and, in effect, that by neglecting to undertake an environmental impact assessment in respect of that integral part of the overall development, there had been project splitting which had precluded a cumulative assessment of the likely impact on the environment of the entire project presenting. In the subsequent related case of Ó Gríanna v. An Bord Pleanála (No.2) [2017] IEHC 7, An Bord Pleanála had gone on to carry out the cumulative assessment of the wind turbines, wind farm and grid connection. However, the applicants then contended that that further assessment was ineffective and/or inadequate and that any mitigation measures arising were incapable of being effected because the grid connection did not form part of what might be styled ‘the permission envelope’. That argument (which is not advanced in these proceedings) was rejected by McGovern J., whose thinking in this regard is perhaps best captured by McGovern J. in his own later decision in North Kerry Wind Turbine Awareness Group v. An Bord Pleanála & ors [2017] IEHC 12 where he observes as follows, at para.9:
[T]here is no necessity that a grid connection must be included in the planning application for the purpose of seeking consent in order for an EIA to be carried out; rather, the EIA requires information on the grid connection to enable a full EIA to be carried out and for the Board to assess the likely significant impact of the wind farm and grid connection as a whole.”
142. Here, access is not integral to the North-South Interconnector project in the same way that the grid connection was perceived by Peart J. in O’Grianna (No. 1) to be integral to the project before him. The reason access is not perceived to be integral is because, as counsel for An Bord Pleanála indicated at hearing:
“[I]n Ó Gríanna the grid connection would have to be built and would have to be there for ever and all time, whereas [here] the access is a very temporary arrangement that will occur for the purposes of construction effectively. I don't think one could necessarily say that it has the same integral nature. Be that as it may the Board did embark on a full EIA of the access insofar as same could have environmental effects.”
143. There will, it seems to the court, likely always be some element of legitimate divergence between professionals, acting in good faith, as to the proper parameters of an environmental impact statement, at least at the outer limits of those parameters; however, as will be clear from the balance of this judgment, the court does not see that any legal deficiency or issue presents in the fact that access was considered by An Bord Pleanála in the case at hand.
(iv) Complaints about information provided.
144. In his affidavit evidence, Mr John Fitzgerald, the previously mentioned Director of Grid Development and Interconnection with EirGrid, who avers, inter alia, as follows:
“It is…patently incorrect for [the applicants’ principal witness]…to assert [in her affidavit evidence]…that none of ‘the planning documents describe the works or give details of the specification of the works to the 299 separate structures’. On the contrary, the works are extensively described in the documents which were submitted with the application to the Board and which include the Planning Report…the Public and Landowner Consultation Report…and multitudinous references in the EIS…and in the Outline Construction and Environmental Management Plan. I say that, in addition, details were also furnished at the oral hearing in response to each individual landowner who made submissions. ‘Development’ as defined in the Planning Acts will only be carried out within a corridor of 19 metres in width, save at angle towers where the width extends to 24 metres. In addition, as set out in the application documentation, there are 4 no. tower locations where, due to specific excavation requirements, this standard corridor width is exceeded. The corridor within which the development is to take place is delineated by a red line in the planning application drawings. I reiterate that no new entrances onto the public road are required to be created for the proposed development; rather existing entrances and/or direct access (for example where there is no boundary hedgerow or wall) will be used. In certain limited instances, rubber matting or aluminium road panels will be laid on the ground such as where there are poor ground conditions or sensitive land use. In these cases there will be no excavation or construction works involved. Furthermore, there will be no construction of roads….
[The same witness also]…asserts that the application amounts to an infringement of the constitutional rights of the landowners on whose behalf NEPPC advocates, none of whom have given their consent. However, for the reasons set out in the Statement of Opposition, I am advised by counsel and so believe that NEPPC does not have standing and/or a sufficient interest to advance grounds purporting to arise from alleged breaches of the interests or rights of individual landowners. Moreover, there is no requirement under the Planning Acts or Regulations that an electricity transmission development under section 182A requires the consent of the owners or occupiers of land. In addition, all landowners were extensively consulted with in advance of the making of the application. As a result whereof, and in response to such engagement as did occur, certain pylons were moved and alterations were considered to the proposed temporary access routes in respect of certain landholdings (as was described in the documentation submitted with the application for approval and at the oral hearing). Finally, and again prior to the submission of the application for approval, landowners on whose lands a pylon was to be located were furnished with indicative details of the temporary access routes in respect of those structures. Indeed, such prior consultation is noted in the Inspector's report in the following terms..:
‘Consultation with landowners, identified through the PRAI database, took place in phases between 2011 and 2013, with letters to landowners on the 12th December 2013, advising them of the final line design….Subsequently, following a final technical review of the line design, 16 landowners were advised of changes affecting them in March 2015 (changes were made to tower locations not to the route alignment). All landowners were also advised of the proposed application in May 2015 and provided with details of the application in June 2015 (the application was lodged on the 9th June 2016)….
Moreover…the Inspector stated:
‘…it would appear to me from the documentation on file and oral hearing proceedings, that the applicant has been able to identify the vast majority of landowners along the route and has made significant efforts to engage with them.’
…The extent of landowner engagement is detailed in the Public and Landowners Consultation Report…which was before the Board…..
It must also be stressed that the access routes are merely temporary access routes required only for the limited duration of the works at any one pylon location. Also, as was noted previously, the EIS also contained a suite of numerous mitigation measures and commitments by EirGrid…which are relevant to individual landowners which involve notification to landowners, addressing the concerns of landowners in advance of any construction works or construction traffic coming onto their land and indeed after the completion of the works. Indeed, such mitigation measures and commitments have now been incorporated as part of the approval granted pursuant to Condition 1(b) attached to the decision to grant approval….
I further say that landowners and members of the public were afforded the opportunity to make submissions or observations on any issue which they deemed appropriate and, as noted in the Inspector's report, circa 900 observers made observations, including observations made by Eileen and Maura Sheehy…and on behalf of…[NEPPC]. Thereafter, by way of its response document dated 19th October 2015, EirGrid responded to those submissions and observations. Moreover, as a result of EirGrid's consideration of the submissions and observations made to the Board and in response to issues raised by certain landowners, certain modifications were proposed by EirGrid to a number of the temporary access routes….
[In her affidavit evidence, the same witness for the applicants]…again addresses the ‘red line’ boundary issue. As noted above the corridor within which the development is to take place is delineated by a red line in the planning application drawings. It should also be observed that, as set out in the Statement of Opposition, the requirements of the Planning Regulations in relation to planning applications are not applicable to application to an application for approval under section 182A of the 2000 Act. Nonetheless the application complies with the advice contained in the General Guidance note of the Board that applications for strategic infrastructure development should ‘generally accord’ with the requirements for a planning application set out in the Regulations….
It is also asserted by [the same witness]…that no details relating to access arrangements were included in the application. This statement is manifestly incorrect. Access arrangements are extensively described in the documentation submitted with the application for approval…as well as indicative access routes for each tower being included in figures with the application. In order to carry out the works for which approval was sought, access to the relevant lands will be required and accordingly temporary access routes were included within the application documentation so as to enable the Board to conduct an EIA of all aspects of the project, whether or not development consent was required for any aspect of the project. In this respect, a total of 584 no. temporary access routes have been identified within the EIS on 1:5000 scale mapping. Modifications to certain of those temporary access routes were presented by EirGrid as part of EirGrid’s review of temporary access routes and in some cases, in order to respond to issues raised at the oral hearing, EirGrid presented those modifications on 7 March 2016, 22nd March 2016, 19 April 2016, 26 April 2016 and 10 May 2016….
Maps were sent to the landowners affected which show the modified access route on each land holding with the revised section of the access route delineated in purple. These maps and accompanying letters were sent during the course of the oral hearing and landowners were subsequently facilitated to make submissions in respect of these alterations. Further, information on all the alterations to access routes was made publicly available during the course of the oral hearing. Under the heading ‘Access Routes’…it was stated as follows:
‘In the Board’s pre-application meeting with the applicant, the Board advised the then prospective applicant that ‘the planning application drawings should indicate access to tower locations for construction and servicing purposes at the point of the public road’.
I would also note [the Inspector says] that the Board advised the applicant…in respect of the access to construction towers that drawings ‘could be similar to those submitted in the application for the Laois-Kilkenny Reinforcement Project’. Statutory drawings for this project did not identify temporary access routes to tower sites.
It was confirmed by the applicant on numerous occasions during the oral hearing that the access roads do not form part of the planning application, but are presented in an indicative manner in order to allow environmental impact assessment of the development. In this context, it would not appear inappropriate that the access routes are omitted from the statutory drawings. The Board can only adjudicate on the application as so presented and, should it transpire at some future date that works constituting development are required to facilitate access, then EirGrid will be constrained by the provisions of the Planning Acts. There is no substantial evidence before the Board at this time that any such works are likely to be required’.
[The same witness for the applicants, in her affidavit evidence,] incorrectly asserts that there was ‘a lack of any approximate detail’ relating to access routes. It is worth emphasising that Part 2 of the oral hearing was entirely devoted to site-specific issues which included temporary access routes. It is clear from an overview of the documentation previously referred to in this Affidavit that the contention that the likely effects of the development are impossible to discern is completely mistaken. Moreover, the viability of the project is underscored by the accepted need for a second North-South interconnector, a summary of which was contained in the Planning Report referred to previously.”
145. Ms Sheehy, the second-named applicant, also made comment, in her affidavit evidence, about the access routes insofar as they affect her property. Mr Fitzgerald touches on those averments in the following way:
“At paragraph 4 of her Second Affidavit, Ms. Sheehy refers to two pylons on lands in the ownership of her sister, with whom she resides, and also says that certain planning drawings in respect of the cables are unclear and other matters. Towers 308 and 309 straddle the hedgerow of lands in the ownership of Eileen Sheehy, the sister of Maura Sheehy, with whom she resides….I say and believe that Tower 308 is located approximately 123 metres from the residence of Ms. Sheehy whilst Tower 309 is located approximately 392 metres away. Towers 306 and 307, which are not located on lands belonging to Ms. Sheehy but on adjacent lands, are located at distances of 339 metres and 149 metres respectively from the residence of Ms. Sheehy. Whilst the assertions made by Ms. Sheehy in relation to the planning drawings go to the merits of the application for substantive judicial review as opposed to addressing the issue of the discharge, Ms. Sheehy's contentions in this regard are not accepted by EirGrid.”
146. This is picked up by Mr Fitzgerald, at a later point in his affidavit evidence when he avers as follows:
“Insofar as Ms. Sheehy says, at paragraph 4 of her Affidavit, that the application was made without her consent or that of her sister, as noted earlier in this Affidavit, there is no legal requirement for such consent. Furthermore, where a tower or pylon is to be located on a person’s lands, the landowner will receive compensation plus an annual interference payment per tower to ensure the landowner is not at a financial loss. In addition, EirGrid has recently established a proximity payment scheme whereby payments are to be made to homeowners within 200 metres or closer to a new line of towers or a new transmission system, and this scheme will apply in respect of the residence shared by Ms. Sheehy….
At paragraph 5 of the Affidavit under reply, Ms. Sheehy states that the proposed development will involve a conductor ‘within eleven metres of the curtilage’ of residence. I say the lands owned by Ms. Sheehy's sister and the distance from the nearest point of the overhead line to her dwelling were identified [he then gives the map reference]…[on a map] included…with the documentation submitted to the Board. As appears therefrom, the distance provided in the drawing was 58.4 metres from the nearest point of the residence to the outer conductor and 67.9 metres to the centre line. The Line Route Map…also shows the configuration of the conductors which is clearly explained in the drawing legend information regarding the proposed alterations of the existing line which is located approximately 60 metres from Ms. Sheehy’s residence.…
In her affidavit, at paragraphs 7 and 8, Ms. Sheehy refers to a number of environmental impacts arising from the proposed development. I am advised and so believe that these are planning matters which were extensively addressed in the documentation submitted to the Board and at the oral hearing convened by the Board and extensively considered in the Inspector’s report. I am further advised that it is not appropriate for the Applicants to seek to re-argue such issues in these proceedings, which do not institute an appeal on the merits of the Board's decision….
At paragraph 9 of the Affidavit under reply, it is asserted that Ms. Sheehy and her sister are in an uncertain position of not knowing how access to lands will be achieved. However, this statement is incorrect. [Mr Fitzgerald then exhibits certain correspondence sent to Ms Sheehy and continues as per the below]….
In relation to the content of paragraph 10 of [Ms]…Sheehy, wherein issues are raised in relation to matters such as long-term effects of pylons on machinery, dangers of electrocution and potential for pollution during construction such as through spillages. I say that all of these matters were addressed in very considerable detail in the documentation submitted to the Board on the application and, in particular, in the EIS (and the Outline Construction and Environmental Management Plan appended thereto) and indeed these issues were discussed at length at the oral hearing. As noted earlier, the EIS contains a schedule of mitigation measures and commitments which addresses many of these concerns and these mitigation measures and commitments have been incorporated into the grant of approval by way of Condition 1(b)….Accordingly, Ms. Sheehy is incorrect in her assertion that the conditions of the Board give EirGrid a ‘charter of flexibility permitted by agreement to do as they like’. Moreover, given that these matters have been set out in the application documentation, which has been publicly available since June 2015, and that there was a ten-week period in which parties could (and did) make submissions and observations on those matters, followed by a 35-day oral hearing at which these issues were considered, she is incorrect in her reference to affected parties being excluded from the terms of the decision made by the Board to grant approval. Finally, EirGrid does not an accept that a sterile corridor is created by the positioning of the alignment, whether in the manner suggested by Ms.Sheehy or at all….
At paragraph 11, Ms. Sheehy refers to the previous application for approval which was withdrawal in 2010. However, as set out in detail in an earlier section of this affidavit, subsequent to the withdrawal of the application, EirGrid engaged in a detailed re-evaluation of the project, which included three round of public and landowner consultation….
The characterisation of the oral hearing set out in paragraph 12 of Ms. Sheehy’s Affidavit is inaccurate. Insofar as there were modifications to the proposed temporary access routes during the oral hearing, it is important to emphasise again that information on the proposed access routes was included with the application documentation as to enable the Board to conduct the required assessment of all aspects of the project, regardless of whether or not development consent is required for any particular aspect of the project. The proposed access routes do not form part of the development. Therefore, no part of the development was changed in any way in the course of the oral hearing. A total of 584 no. access routes were identified within the EIS. Following submissions to the Board in the period June to August 2015, in relation to temporary access routes, EirGrid carried out a review of certain access routes, and an alternative access route was identified in respect of 6 no. locations, which alternative access routes were identified on Day 1 of the oral hearing (7 March 2016). Subsequently, following the submission of a number of observations to the Board in relation to temporary access mutes, EirGrid carried out a further review of all proposed access routes described within the EIS and, as a result, a number of mapping anomalies were identified. An evaluation was conducted of these anomalies and 19 no. redrawn access routes were presented to the oral hearing on 22 March 2016. As the oral hearing progressed, EirGrid carefully considered the submissions made by landowners and other parties to the oral hearing, and continued to keep the issue of access routes under review. EirGrid considered all potential deviations or mapping discrepancies, whether those issues arose from the EIS access route mapping or the larger-scale landowner mapping. The review process revisited aerial imagery, landowner access mapping and EIS figures with follow-up vantage surveys, as necessary. In this context, EirGrid brought a number of access routes to the attention of the attendees at the hearing in order to enable the Board to assess the modifications proposed to those access routes and those modifications were brought to the attention of affected landowners and were all assessed. Furthermore, and contrary to a statement at paragraph 13 of the Affidavit of Maura Sheehy, none of these modifications involved the creation of new entrances or accesses….
The suggestion made at paragraph 14 of the Affidavit under reply that the development has not been properly been properly assessed because of the limitation on access of lands…is completely unfounded and rejected. The Board’s Inspector addressed this issue in the following terms:
‘The majority of the route is situated on lands classified as improved agricultural grassland i.e. with a uniform land cover. It has been selected to avoid sensitive receptors and to ensure that the siting of the towers etc. minimises potential impacts. The appraisal of the existing environment was not limited to desk top studies as contended by the observers. I would point out to the Board that EirGrid were granted access to c. 25% of the lands and were in a position to conduct visual assessment of another c. 38%, resulting in an assessment of c. 63% in total of the lands along the alignment. The appraisal was assisted by the use of LiDAR (recognised to have a high degree of accuracy), high resolution aerial photography, the use of third party published data sets/on line mapping, vantage point surveys, extended ecological surveys etc., allowing a comprehensive and detailed evaluation of existing environmental conditions to be established.
Whilst many of the observers query the efficacy of such measures, and I accept that it was not possible, for example, to obtain the level of detail required to identify specific species types in woodland in the Brittas estate, EirGrid were able to demonstrate the accuracy of the information provided during the various modules of the oral hearing. The Board will note from the various sections of this report the level of detail obtained and presented on the existing environment….Having reviewed the EIS, NIS and all the supporting documentation to the application, the observers’ submissions, applicant’s response and having considered the matters raised at the oral hearing, I am satisfied that the information is sufficiently detailed and comprehensive to allow the Board to carry out the robust and accurate assessment of the development for the purposes of EIA and EIS.”
147. It is useful at this point to turn to the environmental impact statement and the point at which it sets out an explanation of the locations and terrain relevant to the access routes, stating, inter alia, as follows:
“Temporary access routes capable of accommodating construction plant, construction materials and personnel are required for the construction of each tower, installation of the conductor and the setting up of guarding locations….
There are three locations along the proposed route where vehicular access is typically required for construction of OHL:
Access to tower sites….
Access to stringing locations….
Access to guarding locations….
Access routes to tower sites enable the deployment of excavators or piling rigs together with foundation materials…and for the removal of excess spoil. For tower erection, approximately 10 tonnes for an intermediate tower to 32.5 tonnes for an angle tower of steelwork will be delivered to each tower location site and erected using a gin/derrick pole….
As noted previously, appropriate route and site selection is the most effective method of avoiding or minimising the environmental effects of development….
The first part of the identification process is to develop some general principles to guide the decisions about identifying potentially suitable temporary access routes to construct the proposed development.”
148. The general guidelines are identified and the text of the environmental impact statement then continues as follows:
“Temporary access tracks tend only to be laid where there may be poor ground conditions, a sensitive receptor or sensitive land use….While the terrain of the proposed development is generally undulating with favourable ground conditions likely to be encountered for a vast majority of the proposed route, construction techniques and machinery may vary to accommodate localised ground conditions along specific parts of the route and/or as a result of weather conditions during the construction period. For the purposes of this appraisal, all temporary access routes have been assessed based on very wet weather conditions, expansive construction techniques with heavy machinery/equipment.
Details of the alternative types of temporary access route for wet conditions relative to land use, condition and having regard to specific environmental conditions are set out below. It is noted that these are not mutually exclusive in all cases and that a particular temporary access route may incorporate different track types along its length.
Type 1.
Good quality land…: In general, the laying of temporary tracks is not required. Using tracked machinery (low ground pressure vehicles where possible) usually means that access to tower sites can be achieved with relative ease using existing roadways where available and the crossing of fields.
Type 2
Relatively dry/peat land or very sensitive areas: Where a defined track is required, temporary rubber matting or aluminium road panels would be used to distribute the weight evenly. Low ground pressure vehicles would also be used where possible.
Very poor, soft, wet boggy and/or undulating land with unfavourable ground conditions: In such conditions roads with stone or wooden sleepers may need to be constructed. This involves the excavation of the topsoil and storage of this to one side of the track. A geotextile reinforcement would be placed on the subsoil surface and stone placed on top and compacted to form the track….
Based on the assessment criteria…the vast majority of access routes identified…will be Type 1. The access routes or part of the routes to the following tower locations and associated ancillary works have been identified as Type 2 which potentially require rubber matting or aluminium tracks….Type 3 roads constructed with stone or wooden sleepers will not be required at any of the proposed tower locations, stringing areas or guarding locations, stringing areas or guarding locations.”
149. Over the next number of pages of the environmental impact statement there follows a detailed appraisal of the methodology that will be used.
150. So built into the environmental impact statement, all of which has been assessed, is a very considerable amount of detail which in turn is supplemented by the draft construction management plan, which was also submitted as part of the environmental impact statement. The sheer level of information that was provided and addressed in the course of the development consent process, coupled with the opportunity that was given to anybody who wished so to do, to make submissions in relation to the access routes means that the applicants’ contention as to any information deficiency in this regard must fail: the information was there and a proper assessment was duly carried out.
(v) The Agricultural Liaison Officer/s.
151. Condition 2 contained in the Board Order provides as follows:
Reason: To ensure the satisfactory completion and operation of the development in the context of agricultural activities.”
152. To the extent that there is any suggestion that the creation of the Agricultural Liaison Officer is somehow objectionable, this is not accepted by the court. The above-quoted condition was suggested by the Inspector and adopted by An Bord Pleanála, not having been proposed by the developer. It does no more than to vest one or more officers with the function of liaising with the landowners, identifying their issues of concerns, and addressing them. It creates a conduit for ongoing engagement. It is not obvious how this could conceivably prejudice anybody, and in point of fact it does not prejudice anybody: rather than being an exclusion from dialogue, the requirement as to the establishment of the role of the said Officer/s involves the landowners in a continuing dialogue concerning matters of importance to them.
(vi) Boland et al.
153. It seems to the court that the conditions as to access come within what were referred to at hearing as ‘the Boland criteria’ as they (the conditions) pertain to matters of detail in the context of the development as a whole. It is as well to pause at this point and deal briefly with the principal case-law to which the court was referred in this regard, being the decisions in Keleghan and Ors v. Corby and Dublin Corporation (1976) 110 I.L.T.R. 144, Houlihan v. An Bord Pleanála (Unreported, High Court, Murphy J., 4th October, 1993) and Boland v. An Bord Pleanála [1996] 3 I.R. 435.
154. At issue in Keleghan was an application by the Holy Faith Sisters for the erection of three fabricated classrooms at St Brigid’s Secondary School in Killester. The application included plans for access. Those plans for access were not approved but when the permission was granted details were required to be resubmitted for agreement. The case focused on the adequacy of the notice of intention to apply for planning permission (which had made no mention that the issue of access was going to be part of the application). So the ratio of the case is not at all on point when one comes to identifying the relevance of Keleghan to the within application. However, the court’s attention has been drawn to the following obiter observation of McMahon J. in the next-to-penultimate paragraph of his judgment:
“I think it is better to reserve any decision on the third point made by Mr. Gaffney, namely assuming that the application had in fact been made as it was constructed by the planning authority, to include access or change of user of the land....Whether permission has been validly granted by imposing a condition that details of the access be submitted for agreement, I can see serious difficulties about that from the point of view of planning law. A planning authority is entitled to grant permission, subject to conditions requiring work to be done, but when that is done the planning permission must specify the work to be done, and any person, who thinks he is prejudiced by it, can appeal because he has before him details of the work to be done, but in this case what was granted was permission for access subject to the details to be submitted for agreement. The public would have no knowledge what details were in fact being agreed and no way of appealing against the details agreed between the applicants and the planning authority.”
155. The critical difference, and it is a very significant difference, between the facts at play in Keleghan and those here presenting, is that, in Keleghan, permission was granted for the relevant access, subject to agreement with the planning authority; here, by contrast, permission for access has neither been sought not granted. A second difference is that in Keleghan the public were to have no knowledge of what details were being agreed; here there is transparency as to what is to be agreed - and what is to be agreed is more detail than substance. So in truth when one gets down to the detail of Keleghan, it is, on its facts, far removed from the circumstances at play in the within application.
156. In Houlihan, Kerry County Council granted permission for the erection of 22 holiday homes, a reception block and the diversion of a road close by Ballyferriter. Mr. Houlihan objected to the development and an oral hearing was conducted into the application by An Bord Pleanála who granted permission for the development subject to nine conditions. Mr. Houlihan sought and obtained leave to apply for an order of certiorari quashing the said decision on a number of grounds. The ground relevant to the within proceedings was that the conditions attaching to the issue of the planning permission by An Bord Pleanála contained so many matters which were to be agreed between the developer and the Council that they could result in a totally different development from that originally sought and that by leaving so many matters to be agreed between the developer and the Council the statutory right of appeal from such decisions had been removed. In the course of his judgment, Murphy J. observes, at 5-7.
‘[T]he conditions attached to the permission granted by the Board do call for discussion and agreement between the planning authority and the developer on many issues….[C]ondition (6) requires that a public access road along the western boundary of the site should be constructed to the requirements of the planning authority. There are, therefore, approximately twelve matters on which the agreement or approval of the planning authority is required before one can say with complete certainty what is entailed in the conditions annexed to the permission granted by the Board. Notwithstanding the number of matters on which agreement is outstanding and the subject matter thereof, counsel on behalf of the Board contends that these are essentially technical matters which in the interests of all parties, that is to say, the developer, the planning authority and the local residents, can and should be delegated by the Board to the local authority and their resolution postponed to a later date. Undoubtedly some degree of flexibility must be left to any developer who is hoping to engage in a complex enterprise. The issue then is whether the nature or quantity of the matters left undefined is such as to render the permission granted invalid. In my view - and as I understand it neither party would disagree - the extent to which flexibility or uncertainty is permissible in a planning permission is largely a matter of degree. I have little difficulty in concluding that the Board was justified in stipulating that the new access road should be completed in accordance with the requirements of the planning authority. Again I take the view, though in this case with a lesser degree of confidence, that the matters stipulated in condition (4) [which was not concerned with access] are essentially technical matters or matters of detail, decisions on which could be left to the planning authority and developer without invalidating the statutory decision of the Board. However, it does seem to me that the condition in relation to the effluent discharge mains deals with a matter which is rather more serious and delegates a discretion which is very wide in its scope.’”
157. So the condition as to access, at least on the facts before him in Houlihan, was a condition that Murphy J. appears more wholeheartedly to have embraced than various other conditions that were before him.
158. In Boland, application had been made for the extension and refurbishment of the ferry terminal at Dún Laoghaire. The permission was granted with an array of matters being left for agreement with the planning authority. These included such matters as plans for the management of ferry traffic, arrangements for monitoring post-development traffic flows, the new design plans for traffic and egress arrangements, and plans for the carrying out of certain pedestrian works. Mr Boland applied for an order of certiorari in respect of the decision of An Bord Pleanála on the ground that the conditions attached to it constituted an improper abdication of its functions to the local planning authority, thus depriving interested parties of an opportunity to be heard. He was unsuccessful in both the High Court and the Supreme Court, Hamilton J. observing, inter alia, as follows, at 466-7:
“In imposing a condition that a matter be left to be agreed between the developer and the planning authority, the Board is entitled to have regard to:
(a) the desirability of leaving to a developer who is hoping to engage in a complex enterprise a certain limited degree of flexibility having regard to the nature of the enterprise;
(b) the desirability of leaving technical matters or matters of detail to be agreed between the developer and the planning authority, particularly when such matters or such details are within the responsibility of the planning authority and may require re-design in the light of the practical experience;
(c) the impracticability of imposing detailed conditions having regard to the nature of the development;
(d) the functions and responsibilities of the planning authority;
(e) whether the matters essentially are concerned with off-site problems and do not affect the subject lands;
(f) whether the enforcement of such conditions require monitoring or supervision.”
159. In the application now before this Court, the “limited degree of flexibility”, to borrow from the phraseology of Hamilton C.J. (itself borrowing from the phraseology of Keane J. in the court below) is very limited indeed, because there is already extant here the draft construction and environmental management plan, waste management plan and traffic management plan, all of which, together with the mitigation measures, have to be adhered to in any event. Moreover, the matters to be left over for agreement under Condition 3(c) fall properly to be construed as matters of detail, including, it will be recalled, “(i) arrangements for stepping down vehicle size, (ii) arrangements for off-loading of materials, (iii) short-term road closures, (iv) the phasing of construction works which are accessed by single lane carriageways, and (v)…arrangements for the transfer and management of concrete, including wash out facilities.” These are clearly but matters of detail in the context of a major development and thus come within the embrace of item (a) in the above-quoted segment of the judgment of Keane J. in Boland (with items (b) and (c) being variations on the theme of detail) and are also justifiable by reference to items (d), (e) and (f).
160. In the course of argument, the court was also referred to the decisions in Sweetman v. An Bord Pleanála [2016] IEHC 277, Dunnes Stores v. An Bord Pleanála [2016] IEHC 226, and People over Wind v. An Bord Pleanála [2015] IEHC 271, [2015] IECA 272, the court’s attention being drawn to how the imposition of conditions was treated in those cases as well as to such comments as were made therein regarding the limited role of the court in a judicial review application. The court notes, and has had regard to, those decisions but does not consider that it is necessary to engage in a detailed consideration of them; they merely buttress the court in its assessment of the applicable law, as outlined above.
(vii) Some Further Observations as to Access.
161. It seems to the court that the following further observations can be stated as regards the issue of access, some of which have been touched upon above.
162. First, as to the issue of how one can have a condition in relation to access if access is not sought, it seems to the court that the real question is not a ‘how’ but a ‘why’, i.e. ‘why is there a condition for access when access is not sought?’ The reason ‘why’ is because (i) as part of the EIA, An Bord Pleanála looked at access and (ii) for the reasons specified at the end of condition 3 (“In the interest of protecting the amenities of the area, sustainable waste management, preventing pollution of surface waters, protection of existing habitats, and traffic safety”), it has seen fit to impose conditions in relation to access - and those conditions are clearly relevant to proper planning and sustainable development. So access is neither sought nor granted; however, the manner in which access can be exercised, if it is obtained, has been restricted, even if (as may prove to be the case) that access transpires to be exempted development. As to the question whether, assuming that one is not dealing with exempted development, the ‘right’ public have been afforded the opportunity to participate in the planning process (or more exactly whether the public as they exist at any one time have been offered the opportunity to participate at the right time - public views and objections being varying and inconstant) that is something which, it seems to the court, is met through the due application of the full rigours of the applicable approval/permission process at the time when and if access does fall to be sought.
163. Second, the applicants complain that they (and presumably the rest of the public) have been excluded from the process leading to, or emanating from, condition 3(c). But the fact of any (if any) such exclusion is only relevant if it has a particular legal context. Here, the public were entitled to and did participate in the environmental impact assessment process, the public was extensively consulted in relation to the proposed access arrangements (with two rounds of public consultations, even before the application was lodged, and a split oral hearing, the second part of which was devoted to a seriatim examination of each access route and each access point. Some of the amendments and objections and difficulties of the land owners were taken into account during that process and changes made). When matters are viewed in that context it seems to the court that one is far removed from the facts that presented in Holohan & ors v. An Bord Pleanála [2017] IEHC 268, a case on which the applicants placed some reliance and which is considered below, with the contention as to exclusion becoming even weaker (to the extent that it has any strength at all, and the court respectfully does not consider that it does) when one recalls that, pursuant to condition 2, as touched upon previously above, one or more agricultural liaison officers are to be appointed who “shall be responsible for liaison with landowners, prior to and during the construction phase of the project, to identify and address issues of concern to individual landowners”, which concerns will doubtless include issues as to access.
164. Third, it will be recalled that Condition 3(c) of the Board Order provides as follows:
“Prior to the commencement of the development, a construction and environmental management plan, a traffic management plan and a waste management plan shall be submitted to, and agreed in writing with, the relevant planning authority following consultations with [named] relevant statutory agencies….This plan shall incorporate the mitigation measures indicated in the Environmental Impact Statement and shall provide details of the intended construction practice for the proposed development, including:
…(c) site specific arrangements for each temporary access route to include, where necessary:
(iv) the phasing of construction works which are accessed by single lane carriageways, and
165. A couple of observations might now be made regarding this condition:
(1) one of the points made by the applicants is that Condition 3(c) is concerned with work/s and development. The court respectfully disagrees. There is no application for such permission, no determination that it is required, and EirGrid holds fast to the position that it is not (the issue does not fall to be resolved by this Court at this time).
(2) Condition 3(c) must be viewed in the light of Condition 1(b) which, it will be recalled, provides as follows:
“All environmental mitigation measures set out in the Environmental Impact Statement, Natura impact statement, and associated documentation submitted by the undertaker with the application and the further information received by An Bord Pleanála by way of the ‘Response to the Issues Raised’... shall be implemented in full.”
The court, in the general observations made at the outset of the within judgment, has noted the extent of the EIS that was a feature of EirGrid’s application. The extensiveness and thoroughness of the EIS has, inter alia, the following consequence: when the applicants make the argument that Condition 3(c) goes beyond more detail, it is incumbent on them to establish that this is so. As will be clear from those parts of the EIS that the court has considered in its judgment (and these are just a part of a greater mass of most comprehensive text) it is prescriptive, it is detailed, and it has all been assessed in a process into which the public had a right of participation. In such a context it does not suffice for the applicants merely to say ‘This goes beyond Boland-style detail’. They must show exactly what are the substantive issues that these conditions leave open and, with respect, they have failed to show so. If one looks at items (i) to (v) these seem the almost pernickety details that would classically be left over in the manner in which they have been left over. And if one looks to the types of plan to which reference is made, EirGrid put before An Bord Pleanála detailed draft construction and environmental management, traffic management, and waste management plans which specify various mitigation measures to be taken. These remain as draft plans at this time (apparently because it was not possible to finalise them in advance of the permission) but those protections, as the court understands matters, will be the minimum level of protection going forward.
166. Fourth, the applicants contend that one cannot ‘leave over’ assessment of environmental effects and that this condition breaches that requirement. First, An Bord Pleanála has expressly determined that it has sufficient information to assess the environmental effects of the project. Second, although sufficiency of such information is a matter for An Bord Pleanála, the court notes again that EirGrid put before An Bord Pleanála detailed draft construction and environmental management, traffic management, and waste management plans which specify various mitigation measures to be taken. So, just by way of example, one finds the following in the inspector’s report (under the heading “Construction Environmental Management Plan” or ‘CEMP’):
“Dr Tierney (NPWS) [National Parks and Wildlife Service] expressed concerns regarding the final CEMP and its preparation by a contractor which may include the resolution of technical details and matters that could influence the nature and significance of the effects of the proposed development on the environment. It was made clear by EirGrid that all elements of the outline CEMP will be included in the final CEMP. It sets the minimum standards that must be achieved to ensure the protection of the receiving environment. Any additional measures that may be incorporated in the final CEMP as a result of conditions will provide at least the same or a better standard of protection. I accept that this is standard practice in construction projects and does not mean that an inferior level of protection will be provided.”
167. So in relation to flora and fauna and then seriatim in relation to any other consideration of this issue under any of the other environmental criteria, it is emphasised in each case that the draft plans will be subsumed into the final plans and will provide minimum levels of protection which can be enhanced but will not be diminished.
XIV. Alternatives
168. The applicants contend that An Bord Pleanála has failed to consider alternatives to the proposed development. It will be recalled that at para. 135 of the applicants’ written submissions, the deficiencies contended to arise in this regard are as follows:
(ii) The Consideration of Alternatives Undertaken.
a. Route Alternatives.
169. The EIS sets out the rationale for the various route alternatives considered for the proposed development, how these were evaluated against various environmental constraints and how the preferred route was justified. The inspector, in his report, concludes, inter alia, that “Whilst it is correct to say that the study area and the route corridor remain largely similar to the previous proposal...it is incorrect to suggest that this was accepted as a fait accompli.” The inspector then continues:
“The review process took place in a series of steps or phases between 2010-2012 resulting in the publication of two reports both of which were subject to public consultation. The first phase culminated in the publication of the Preliminary Re-evaluation Report in May 2011….It consisted of a comprehensive re-evaluation of the previous application, the EIS and supporting documentation, written and oral submissions made to the Board in connection with the previous application and any new information that emerged since its withdrawal.
It re-affirmed the strategic need for the development and re-evaluated the study area and the rationale for same. One of the principal considerations determining the original study area was the need to connect to the most robust parts of the transmission systems north and south of the border.”
170. The inspector goes on to state that the Woodland substation in Meath and the planned new substation in County Tyrone were identified as the two most robust points, then continues:
“The review process revisited the principal assumptions and recommendations of the various studies previously prepared and concluded that no new environmental consideration or other relevant material had arisen in respect of the original evaluation process....Having established that the previously identified study area remained the most appropriate for the routing of the proposed interconnector, previously identified key environmental and other constraints were re-evaluated. New information was also considered including changes in relation to constraints....Baseline data was updated and while minor variations between current and previous findings were identified...it was established that no new constraints information arose….Once key environmental and other constraints were identified, the next stage in the process was the re-evaluation of the previously identified route corridor.”
171. Given that the two book-ends of the proposed development had been identified, the corridor between them was the next stage in the process. Thus, the inspector continues:
“Addendum reports were prepared to compliment the earlier Route Constraint Reports, providing further analysis of the impacts of each route corridor on the key constraints. It was established that the updated constraints did not have material implications for the locations of the previously identified route corridor options. EirGrid were also satisfied that the process did not result in the emergence of any previously unidentified route corridor of equal or greater merit than those already identified in respect of the previous application….Each corridor option was then evaluated against the identified constraints. The evaluation criteria were reviewed and updated….This route option was evaluated as having the lowest potential for creating long term adverse significant impacts which cannot be mitigated….
Phase I of the re-evaluation process concluded with the identification of a preliminary line route for the proposed interconnector within a preferred route corridor, which was considered a viable and environmentally acceptable preliminary indicative line route. The Preliminary Re-evaluation Report which resulted from the process was then subject to public consultation.”
172. The second phase of the review process resulted in the publication by EirGrid, in April 2013, of the “North-South 400kV Interconnection Development, Final Re-evaluation Report”, which report, like the preliminary report was considered by An Bord Pleanála, as before the court. The inspector continues:
“It [the report] took into consideration the feedback received through the consultation process associated with the Preliminary Re-evaluation report and important documents published in the interim, including the Independent Expert Commission Report….The robustness of the study area was confirmed, following a re-evaluation of the study areas, which included an additional area east of Navan and a straight line option at the request of the Board. No new significant environmental or other constraints were identified and it was concluded that the updated constraints did not have material implications for the previously identified route corridor options. No additional and/or previously unidentified route corridor emerged from the re-evaluation process that was considered of equal or greater merit to those identified route corridors that were considered in respect of the previous application….Corridor Option A in the CMSA [Cavan Monaghan Study Area] and Route Corridor 3B in the MSA [Meath Study Area] emerged as the overall preferred route corridor within which to route the proposed development. This route option was evaluated as having the lowest potential for creating long-term adverse significant impacts which could not be mitigated....Whilst the preferred route...is broadly similar to the 2009 line route, it is not identical. It incorporates localised modifications….Contrary to the suggestion made by the observers...EirGrid did not seek to rely solely on the information presented in the previous application….[I]t conducted a comprehensive re-evaluation….Much of the data contained in the EIS and associated studies remained relevant to the process of identifying and assessing the main effects....This highly iterative process ensured that the public and other stakeholders had the opportunity to engage and feed into this process….I accept that the re-evaluation process conducted by EirGrid is clear, unambiguous and comprehensive.”
173. As to the alleged failure to consider other route options, the inspector observes, inter alia, as follows:
“It is clear that the consideration and evaluation of the various route options is an involved process, which has taken place over a considerable period of time. It is too simplistic to assume that the line can be routed in a particular way, or, away from a particular area, without having due regard to the complexities that surround the evaluation process. The merit of each of the individual route corridors has been assessed in the EIS against a plethora of environmental, technical and other constraints. It is clear that there are environmental constraints associated with each option and the aim of the evaluation process is to find the most appropriate balance (or ‘best fit’) between the various technical, environmental and other evaluation criteria. The geographic positioning of the development is influenced by the strategic need...to connect into robust points on both transmission systems and the desire to seek the shortest environmentally and acceptable route between those connection points. The route alignment put forward for this application has been assessed against viable alternatives and found to be the most acceptable solution.”
174. There has been suggestion by the applicants that not enough consideration was given by EirGrid to an Interconnector route that would go via Srananagh, County Sligo to Turleenan, County Tyrone, instead of by way of the intended Woodland-Turleenan route. This criticism appears to derive from the fact that both Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No. 1391/2013 and the 2015 Regulation refer, when it comes to clusters of electricity projects on the island of Ireland refer to both the Srananagh-Turleenan and the Woodland-Turleenan routes. However, any concern in this regard appears to the court to have been allayed by Mr John Fitzgerald, the previously mentioned Director of Grid Development and Interconnection with EirGrid who avers, inter alia, as follows in his affidavit evidence:
“In respect of the other project referenced [in the European Union legislation]… namely Srananagh (IE) and Turleenan (UK), I say that the Srananagh/Turleenan (via South Donegal) project (also known as RIDP 1) was identified following a set of studies carried out by EirGrid and NIE to identify solutions to facilitate a connection of existing levels of renewable generation in Co. Donegal and the north and northwest of Northern Ireland. PCI status was sought because the project was cross-border in nature and had the potential to bring benefits to both jurisdictions. However, I say that whilst EirGrid was a promoter for the inclusion of Srananagh-Turleenan in the PCI List, that project was never promoted as an alternative to Turleenan-Woodland high capacity inter-connector….
At all events Chapter 5 of Volume 3B of the EIS considered Route alternatives and set out at Section 5.2.1.1 Broad Study Area Alternatives for a Second Interconnector, including Option 3: Western Study Area, based on a new 275kV transmission line between substations at Coolkeeragh, Co. Derry, and the then planned 220kV station at Srananagh, County Sligo. However, as set out in Volume 3B, it was found that the Srananagh node would not facilitate the level of transfer capacity required due to overloads on neighbouring 110kV circuits. Moreover, there were also transient stability limitations associated with the western option. Accordingly, having considered an interconnector interlinking the Northern Ireland transmission system with the EirGrid transmission system at Srananagh, it was concluded that any option terminating in Srananagh would not provide the required transfer capacity to Northern Ireland, including a line from Turleenan. It should be noted as the Srananagh 220kV node has only one high-capacity link (to Flagford 220kV station), issues of the same magnitude would arise with either a line terminating (there) or directly connected into Flagford station…..
The development of the Renewable Integration Development Project is only possible once the North South Interconnector is completed. This is because the North South Interconnector creates a duplicate high-capacity interconnector to the existing interconnector…with the necessary capabilities to commit the Irish and Northern Irish networks to securely connect and benefit from each other. The RIPD 1 does not provide these capabilities and is not alternative to the North South Interconnector.…
The need for the RIPD 1 project is to enable the export of renewable power from Donegal and west of north western Northern Ireland to other parts of the island. The RIPD 1 project was envisaged to achieve this with three elements. A new extra-high capacity circuit from Donegal…and another from western Northern Ireland back to the nearest extra-high capacity network stations in the Irish and Northern Irish networks (Srananagh and Turleenan) formed the first two elements. The third element is a circuit (at 275kV) that links the terminating stations in Donegal and Western Northern Ireland…across the border. This third element is required to provide an alternative path for the renewable power to be exported following the loss of either of the first two elements….
Subsequently, when addressing SEA-related issues in her report, the Inspector stated:
‘It is contended in the submissions that the statutory process is flawed due to the failure to carry out SEA level on the application and various plans and programmes which set out the framework for the project. Reference is made in the submissions to the Renewable Energy Directive [and]…the National Renewable Energy Action Plan. During the oral hearing Mr. Hillis also referred to the regional Integrated Development Plan’….
As outlined above, it is clear that the ‘need’ identified cannot not be realise from the RIDP 1 (Srananagh-Turleenan) project. In short, a circuit developed in a western study area will not provide the necessary capacity to address the identified (and accepted) need. The North- South interconnector project (Woodland - Turleenan) on its own is sufficient to address this need or ‘bottleneck’. The RIPD project will ultimately provide additional capacity in counties Donegal and western counties of Northern Ireland to connect generation into the transmission network - a need which the North South interconnector project cannot achieve. Accordingly, as the needs addressed by the two projects do not ‘address the same bottleneck’ and cannot be competing projects, and the North South interconnector is not dependent on RIPD, the two projects are not placed in either ‘a cluster of interdependent PCIs’ or ‘a cluster of competing PCIs’….
Moreover, as the level of generation in Donegal and western counties of Northern Ireland does create an ‘uncertainty around the extent of the bottleneck’, in this instance, the market…will ultimately determine if RIDP1 is required. In which case, both projects, and not just the second North South Interconnector project may progress.”
175. What is clear from the foregoing is that in no sense was (or indeed is) the Srananagh-Turleenan route an alternative to the Woodland-Turleenan route. That would, with respect, be like saying that the M50 motorway is an alternative to the M6 motorway; of course, they are both motorways, but they are not alternatives to each other in terms of what they can actually achieve. That simple point being so, i.e. the fact that the two interconnector routes are not alternatives, the decision of the High Court in Holohan, when it comes to alternatives, and a decision on which the applicants have sought to place some reliance, is, with respect, of no relevance.
b. Consideration of Technology, including Undergrounding.
176. Any fair review of the abundant material which is before the court and was before the Inspector discloses that EirGrid gave exhaustive consideration to the feasibility of undergrounding in a number of different guises and respects. Consideration was given to the option of an entire AC undergrounded interconnector. That presented acute technical issues. It considered a complete DC option which would have involved interposing into this part of the grid, which is AC, a DC component of significant length. It considered a partial undergrounding solution - a specific report on this question was requested by An Bord Pleanála and provided. It looked at undergrounding along the local road network, along the M3, and along a disused railway line. All of these alternatives were considered by EirGrid not to be suitable on a variety of different grounds, some concerning cost, others being more technical issues. The AC connector was not a feasible alternative because it would not be compatible with good utility practice. Undergrounding using the DC cable was not in accordance with good utility practice but was also costly. And when it came to partial undergrounding solution there were a range of environmental issues presenting. These issues, each of them the subject of comment in varying degrees by observers in the course of the written submissions were addressed by EirGrid in its responses and agitated at the oral hearing also. A useful summary of the issues presenting this regard is to be found in the affidavit evidence of Mr John Fitzgerald, in which he avers, inter alia, as follows:
“As is clear, and contrary to the assertions made [in certain affidavit evidence furnished by the applicants]…EirGrid considered both an entirely undergrounded option and a partial undergrounded option….
By way of summary, [the] consideration of alternatives, including undergrounding options, comprise[d] the following: (a) extensive consideration by EirGrid of the undergrounding option as part of the project re-evaluation process which followed the withdrawal of the previous application in 2010; (b) specifically commissioned reports in respect of undergrounding in particular the PB Power reports and other reports which were included with the planning application in volume 3B of the EIS; (c) the EIS volume 3B which addressed undergrounding and/or partial undergrounding; (d) EirGrid's ‘Response to the Issues Raised in Submissions and Observations’ document dated 19 October 2015 which, inter alia, addressed submissions relating to undergrounding; (e) the partial undergrounding report…which was produced in response to request from the Board; and (f) evidence at the oral hearing as part of the alternatives module and throughout the oral hearing in response to specific submissions relating to undergrounding….
In the latter respect, alternatives were discussed in Module 1.6 (Consideration of Alternatives) on 15 and 16 March. At the oral hearing both Mark Norton and Aidan Geoghegan responded on behalf of EirGrid to the submissions made, refuting any suggestion that EirGrid had not fully assessed the underground option. The issue of alternatives, including undergrounding, was also raised by individual landowners in Part 2 of the oral hearing and EirGrid responded to those submissions. The Inspector's Report deals with Alternatives at section 5.4. Alternative transmission technologies, undergrounding using AC cable, undergrounding using a DC cable, undergrounding under the local road network, the M3, a disused railway and partial undergrounding were all addressed as were alternative tower designs including monopole support structures. The inspector’s report concludes:
‘I accept, following the comprehensive re-evaluation process undertaken by the applicant, that the Board can be satisfied that EirGrid has justified the final line design as the optimum solution to meet the overall objectives of the development, having regard to strategic and environmental constraints and the technical requirements for the proposed development.
Following the consideration of alternative transmission and technology alternatives, I accept that it has been comprehensively demonstrated that the only way to meet the strategic and technical need for the proposed development is to provide and new and physically separate high capacity interconnector.
I accept, having regard to the strategic importance of the proposed interconnector as part of the all-island transmission network, the lack of strong interconnection between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the overwhelming need for reliability and security of supply in terms of the all-island electricity market, that notwithstanding the alternatives considered and the advancements in technology, on balance it would appear that the most appropriate and cost effective technology to satisfy the requirements of the proposed North-South Interconnector development is an overhead high voltage alternating current power line.’”
177. The material that was relied upon by the inspector in this regard and that was before her was extensive. The court seeks briefly to identify that material hereafter.
178. First, in the EIS, under the heading “Specific Studies Commissioned by the Respective Applicants on Alternative Transmission Documents”, the following text appears:
“The respective applicants have worked together over many years to jointly consider and assess the various technological alternatives available for the proposed second interconnector. In order to ensure that the development process was fully and properly informed with respect to the available technological alternatives (notwithstanding the initial presumption that OHL would represent a superior solution and that an acceptable OHL route could be identified for the proposed interconnector) the respective applicants jointly commissioned five studies to evaluate potential transmission alternatives specifically for the proposed interconnector. The main objective of the studies was to inform both companies about the latest available alternative transmission technologies, and also to assist the on-going consultative and planning processes relevant to the overall project as applicable to elements being proposed within each jurisdiction….
Four of these studies were informed by specific data on the actual technical characteristics of the transmission systems within each jurisdiction on the Ireland and by reference to the geographic locations and prospective routes applicable to the required transmission circuits. The studies were:
The PB Power Preliminary Briefing Note (…2008)….
The PB Power Study (…2009)….
The TEPCO study (…2009)….
The TransGrid Study (…2009)….
The PB Power Technology and Costs Update (…2013)”.
179. A five-page table follows, headed “Reports on Alternative Transmission Technologies Commissioned Jointly by the Respective Applicants” and comprising sections headed “Report Title”, “Context of Report” and “Main Findings/Observations of Report”. All of these various documents and others were before the inspector and considered. Indeed, as the court considers the documentation that went before the inspector, it is apparent that any suggestion that the proposed North-South Interconnector Project was assessed solely on a cost basis - although certainly it was assessed, inter alia, on a cost basis - is patently not correct. Technical (including environmental) considerations were to the fore of the proceedings and deliberations of the inspector and hence, subsequently, An Bord Pleanála.
180. When it comes to the issue of alternative transmission technologies, the inspector was informed by a number of reports examining the technology alternatives available for the proposed development, including by reference to the wider European context, the inspector observing in her report, inter alia, as follows, under the heading “European experience”:
“I accept that different projects require different solutions. EirGrid accepts that the DC option is feasible, but rejects it on the grounds of technical and cost considerations. Having regard to the significant technological advances made and which continue to be made in technology, the Board may wish to seek specific expert opinion on the current feasibility of integrating a HVDC system into the existing AC meshed network [something that EirGrid had said was not possible]. However, having taken into considerations all of the arguments made, the strategic importance of the proposed interconnector as part of the all-island transmission network, the lack of existing strong interconnection between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the overwhelming need for reliability and security of supply, on balance it would appear that the technology currently best suited to satisfy the requirements of the proposed North-South Interconnector development is an overhead high voltage alternating current power line.”
181. The court ends where it starts: any fair review of the abundant material which is before the court and was before the Inspector discloses that EirGrid gave exhaustive consideration to the feasibility of undergrounding in a number of different guises and respects and the inspector’s assessment and conclusion, and the order of An Bord Pleanála, were and are founded on this exhaustive analysis.
c. Cost-Benefit Analysis.
182. The alleged failure of EirGrid to conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis of the proposed development is also considered by the inspector. There is discussion as to how much more expensive undergrounding would be than over-grounding, the inspector eventually concluding as follows in this regard:
“I accept, following the comprehensive re-evaluation process undertaken by the applicant, that the Board can be satisfied that EirGrid has justified the final line design as the optimum solution to meet the overall objectives of the development, having regard to strategic and environmental constraints and the technical requirements for the proposed development.
Following the consideration of alternative transmission and technology alternatives, I accept that it has been comprehensively demonstrated that the only way to meet the strategic and technical need for the proposed development is to provide a new and physically separate high capacity interconnector.
(iii) Some Legal Issues Presenting.
183. It is difficult in the confines of a judgment to do justice to the extensive consideration of alternatives that has been undertaken by EirGrid, as assessed thereafter by the inspector. Suffice it for the court to note that in its consideration of alternatives, EirGrid has clearly gone above what the EIA Directive requires. Article 5(3)(d) of the EIA Directive requires a developer to set out “an outline of the main alternatives studied by the developer and an indication of the main reasons for his choice, taking into account the environmental effects.” Nowhere in the EIA Directive is there any language which requires or suggests that the rigours of an EIA have to take place with regard to alternatives that are discounted.
184. Here, the applicants contend that there should be a full assessment (in terms of an environmental impact assessment) of all rejected alternatives. But this is not what the EIA Directive requires. It clearly states that a proposed development should be assessed for its likely significant effects on the environment. It states that to enable the competent authority so to do, information has to be provided. But this information is not required to comprise a statement of the likely significant effects of alternatives that are studied and discounted but rather, as referred to above, “an indication of the main reasons for his choice, taking into account the environmental effects.” If the same assessment was required for alternatives as is required for the proposed development, the EIA Directive would have said this, and it does not. Whether the obligation contended for by the applicants is to be read into the EIA Directive by reference, say, to the precautionary principle or the rules of interpretation of European Union law will be the subject of welcome enlightenment by the CJEU following the reference made to it in Holohan. But for now the court prefers to proceed by reference to the unvarnished wording of the EIA Directive and sees naught in European Union law that requires it to do otherwise. Support, in domestic precedent, for the reading of the EIA directive that is being adopted by the court in this regard is to be found in the decision of MacMahon J. in his, if the court might respectfully observe, customarily helpful judgment in Klohn v. An Bord Pleanála [2009] 1 IR 59, the import of which is that a developer is under no obligation to describe the full range of likely significant effects of options which have been fully discounted on objective and transparent grounds. And there is, it seems to the court, much to recommend such an approach. After all, the choice for a competent authority is not between a development as proposed and a development as not proposed, but rather as to whether or not it should consent to a proposed development in light of an understanding of the likely significant effects of same on the environment. To the extent that the applicants contend, if they contend, that the most environmentally friendly option must be put forward or chosen, this does not appear to be what European law requires. As A-G Kokott observes in her Opinion in Case C-420/11, Leth v. Republik Österreich, para. 42, “[T]he EIA Directive does not preclude the implementation of a project even in the case where the environmental impact assessment establishes that there are significant negative effects on the environment.”
XV. Health Impacts
(i) Electric and electro-magnetic fields.
185. Among the points contended for by the applicants at the hearing of the within application were the alleged deficiencies presenting in terms of the assessment of health impacts. Again, it is necessary to turn to the detail of the inspector’s report to assess the contentions made in this regard. Turning then to that report, one finds under the heading “Health Service Executive” (‘HSE’) the following text:
Based on the weight of research in the field, the HSE is satisfied that as long as the development complies at all times with the international exposure limit guidelines as established by the INCIRP [the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection], there will be adequate protection for the public from any electromagnetic field sources”,
and, later again, after touching on an alleged association between proximity to overhead lines and childhood leukaemia, the inspector observes as follows:
“Following the publication in 1979 of an epidemiology study by Wertheimer and Leeper that suggested an association between childhood cancer and proximity of the children's homes to powerlines, numerous epidemiology studies have been published. These studies investigated many health outcomes, in both adults and children, including cancer and non-cancerous diseases such as heart disease, and reproductive effects.
By the turn of the millennium independent review bodies were carrying out weight of evidence reviews of the ELF EMF [electric and magnetic field] health research literature. These included the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the EU organisations. In 2001, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) carried out such a review. As an agency of the WHO, which is considered the primary organisation for cancer risk assessment, it regularly and systematically reviews various physical and chemical agents and exposure scenarios, to determine their potential for carcinogenicity in humans.
The IARC classification of ELF EMF in the 2B category as ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’ was heavily influenced by two pooled analyses that combined and analysed data from available childhood leukaemia epidemiological studies. Whilst the pooled analyses showed a statistical association, it did not provide any support for a carcinogenic effect. This classification implies that the reported association was considered credible but causality was not established….
The second and most comprehensive weight of evidence review of both cancer and non-cancer health outcomes and ELF EMF exposure has been conducted by the WHO, which published its Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) report on ELF EMF in 2007. The EHC report confirmed the earlier conclusion of IARC about the limited evidence from epidemiological studies of childhood leukaemia and ELF EMF and inadequate evidence from in vivo studies. The EHC report did recognise the statistical association between childhood leukaemia and exposure to high levels of magnetic fields, but could not rule out the possible effect of other factors... on these results. For all other cancers... the evidence does not support an association with ELF EMF.
The third review of note was conducted by the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR). It is the European Union's scientific committee….[Its reports] did not confirm the existence of any adverse health effects.
In Ireland in the same year, the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources…assembled an expert group that also reviewed the evidence on ELF EMF and health effects. The conclusions of this group were consistent with those of the EHC [that being the World Health Organisation report]….
[T]he paper by Draper et al (2005) is one of the reports most commented on by the observers….I note that that Brunch et al., 2014 updated and extended the previous report by Draper and it reported no overall association with residential proximity to 132kV, 275kV and 400kV power lines for leukaemia or any other cancer among children. The statistical association with distance that was report in the earlier study was not apparent in the extended analysis.
There is also frequent reference by the observers to another report which supports an alternative view….the Bio-Initiative Report 2007.
[The Bio-Initiative Report]…has been heavily criticised by heavily independent and governmental research groups for its lack of balance and rigorous evaluation of the scientific evidence. It was not sanctioned by any professional or scientific organisation. The review did not follow the weight of evidence approach and the conclusions were not developed as consensus opinions, but were the opinions of individual authors. The ‘evidence’ is contrary to previously mentioned weight of evidence reviews, such as the WHO (2007) and SCENIHR (2009)…and (2015)….
The conclusions reached in the report are in line with the conclusions of the SCENIHR in its 2015 Opinion and it re-affirms the overall conclusions of the 2007 Expert Group commissioned by the Irish Government. It concludes that based on current findings, the evidence for the various potential long-term health effects of exposure to ELF with strengths below the limits in the European recommendation is limited or inconsistent.
In response to the argument made by Dr. P. O'Reilly... I would point out to the Board that the Council of the European Union has recommended limits on the strength of EMF to which members of the general public may be exposed. These recommendations are based on guidelines [from the ICNIRP]….
The European recommendation is not legally binding but has been adopted by the Commission for Energy Regulation. EirGrid is required to comply with the EU/ICNIRP limits to ensure both the protection of the health, safety and welfare of its staff and the general public. There is no suggestion in the application that the proposed development will be developed other than in compliance with the guidelines. With regard to siting of powerlines, the proposed development is routed away from towns and major centres of population, through rural countries with low population densities”.
186. The inspector's summary conclusion on the above-mentioned issues is as follows:
“[T]he relevant scientific literature has been repeatedly and systematically reviewed by a number of international and national health, scientific and governmental agencies, all of which conclude that the available evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequence from exposure to ELF EMF. The proposed development will be designed and operated to comply with ICNIRP guidelines to ensure protection of public health.”
(ii) Childhood leukaemia.
187. The inspector then moves on to consider the alleged “Increased risk of childhood leukaemia” that the proposed pylon-focused North-South Interconnector project is contended to present, the inspector noting, inter alia, as follows:
“Several…studies are documented in the EIS and in [the] applicant’s response…none of which establish a statistically significant or causal relationship between childhood leukaemia and residential proximity to power lines….
In conclusion, while epidemiological research carried out over an extended period has shown some association between long term exposure to ELF magnetic fields from high voltage overhead power lines and an increased prevalence of childhood leukaemia, the health effects are unproven. The relationship fails to show how long lasting exposure to ELF magnetic fields from power lines actually causes an increase in childhood leukaemia, i.e. causality has not been established. I would point out to the Board that it is the view of the ICNIRP that ‘the currently available existing scientific evidence that prolonged exposure to low frequency magnetic fields is causally related with an increased risk of childhood leukaemia is too weak to form the basis for exposure guidelines. In particular, if the relationship is not causal, then no benefit would accrue from reducing exposure’”.
(iii) Other cancers.
188. The inspector then moves on to consideration of the alleged “Increased risk of other cancers”, observing, inter alia, as follows:
“The potential health effects of ELF EMF fields on various cancers has been researched. To date, there is insufficient evidence for a relationship between exposure to ELF magnetic and electric fields and adult cancers.”
(iv) Non-cancerous diseases.
189. As to the alleged “Increased risk of other non-cancerous diseases”, the inspector makes, inter alia, the following observations:
“Potential links with various reproductive outcomes such as miscarriage and low birth weight have been extensively studied. Research by SCENIHR did not show an effect of ELF EMF on the reproductive function in humans.”
(v) Children with Autism.
190. When it comes to the issue of alleged “Impacts on children with Autism”, the inspector, after noting that particular over-ground cable will be replaced with under-ground cable to allay the concerns arising in respect of a particular family, then continues as follows:
"Dr Hogan (EirGrid) noted that the WHO guidelines are health based and are designed to protect the most vulnerable, which would include individuals with ASD [autism spectrum disorder]. He reiterated that noise levels for the proposed development had been calculated and that not alone is it in compliance, but is significantly below the guideline level. He hoped this would provide some level of comfort to the observers….
The question is whether the OHL [overhead lines] will make the situation significantly worse. He said the WHO guidelines do consider sensitive individuals and for something like noise, one has to consider those with ASD as most sensitive. The WHO levels are set very low and the levels that will be experienced will be below those values.”
(vi) Compliance with the ICNIRP Guidelines.
191. Certain observers at the hearing conducted by An Bord Pleanála raised issues regarding electromagnetic exposures on their property. In this regard, the inspector observes, inter alia, as follows:
“Mr Geoghegan (EirGrid) confirmed two surveys were undertaken by EirGrid in 2010 and 2013. The surveys were carried out at various locations....[T]hese surveys confirmed that the fields measured were extremely low, relative to the levels set down in the INCNIRP and EU Guidelines.”
192. At a later point, under the heading “Other matters”, the inspector notes that among the views urged on her by counsel for one of the objectors at the hearing which preceded her report was the suggestion “that the hearing should be advised independently by experts on the effects of electromagnetic fields”. However, the inspector did not consider this necessary: “Having regard to the substantial information available to the Board on this topic the reviews from scientific agencies including the updated opinion from the SCENIHR and the…report commissioned by the Government and published in 2015, I do not consider that this course of action is warranted”.
193. The inspector then moves to her conclusion regarding the issue of electromagnetic fields, stating as follows:
“Ireland has adopted the ‘precautionary principle’ by adopting the internationally recognised standards and guidelines for both occupational and public exposure to electromagnetic fields.
The proposed development will be designed and operated to comply with international exposure limit guidelines for EMF as established by ICNIRP.
Significant research has been carried out and published opinions consistently find that exposures to EMF does not represent a health risk if the exposure remains below the existing limits set by the European Council’s recommendations.
There are currently no epidemiological studies published on autism to support a link with EMF.
Various studies have been carried out in different scenarios on the impacts on pacemakers and other medical devices and none suggest significant evidence of interference from high voltage lines.
Current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequence from exposure to ELF EMF. Similarly, there is no evidence that proximity to high Voltage power lines on crop production or quality.”
194. The foregoing is a succinct summary of the abundant evidence that was put to An Bord Pleanála through its planning inspector and her report, which evidence itself is itself backed up by even more abundant evidence that includes, in the environmental impact statement, a lengthy section devoted specifically to the analysis of health risks, which chapter is engaged with in detail in the portion of the report touched upon above. The environmental impact statement itself cross-refers to some 250 medical texts that are listed in an appendix to the environmental impact statement. So it is not only difficult for the applicants convincingly to make (and the court does not in any event accept) the contention that appropriate matters were not assessed by An Bord Pleanála, or that An Bord Pleanála did not have adequate material before it to meet a conclusion broadly akin to that which its inspector had previously reached.
XVI. The Whooper Swan
195. In his oral submissions, counsel for the applicants made reference to the Whooper Swan, a large swan that winters in Ireland. The court must admit to some surprise that the issue of the Whooper Swan was raised at all at hearing. This is because there is nothing in the statement of grounds about the Whooper Swan. So, to that extent, its fate is simply not part of the application at hand. Second, insofar as counsel referred to the portions of the inspector’s report which deal with the whooper swan, he did not, with respect, point to any deficiency or alleged deficiency in the manner in which impact on the Whooper Swan was assessed. Third, Condition 6 of the Board Order makes provision as regards whooper swans and provides as follows:
“Prior to commencement of development, the undertaker shall agree a monitoring programme for the Whooper Swan with the relevant planning authority following consultation with the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The monitoring programme shall be based on standard good practice and shall include details in relation to location, frequency, duration and methodology. A copy of the results of the monitoring programme shall be submitted to the relevant planning authority and to the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Reason - To ensure appropriate monitoring of the impact of the development on Whooper Swans.”
196. Insofar as any point was made about this condition, the point appears to be that including a requirement for a monitoring programme must have as a logical premise that the assessment which preceded the imposition of such condition has been deficient in some manner. Perhaps the best way to answer this complaint is by referring to the rationale offered in the inspector’s report (under the heading “Monitoring”) as to the inclusion of such a condition, viz:
“The DAHG [Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht] suggest that in order to confirm the effectiveness or otherwise of the mitigation measures and to provide a greater understanding of the frequency of bird collision events with overhead lines, a targeted monitoring programme should be undertaken.
EirGrid have responded positively to such a proposal. The monitoring programme proposed will include mortality surveys at high risk areas carried out fortnightly to assess the number of fatalities arising from collision….It will also include [inter alia] flight activity monitoring surveys….These will provide information on any spatial or temporal shifts in bird abundance and distribution relative to baseline data. It will also determine whether additional sites require vantage point monitoring for flight activity based on any changes in the distribution of key species and whether additional mitigation is required.
There is no centralised database for collision data and the monitoring proposed by EirGrid will be advantageous in terms of accumulating information on bird movements, collision risk and the effectiveness or otherwise of the bird diverters. Should the Board be minded to grant approval for the development, I recommend that a condition be attached requiring an operational monitoring programme in accordance with the requirements of the DAHG.”
197. When one has regard to the just-quoted text, it is apparent that the reason for including Condition 6 is not because there has been inadequate assessment prior to imposition of Condition 6, but rather with a view to ascertaining the ongoing effectiveness of the mitigation measures, and ascertaining whether or not further surveys might be required or further mitigation measures required.
XVII. Closing Submissions
198. The court turns now to deal with a number of matters that were the subject of especial focus in the closing stages of the hearing of the within application.
(i) Section 182B(10)(f).
199. Section 182B(10) of the Act of 2000 provides, inter alia, as follows:
“In considering under subsection (1), information furnished [under s.182B(1)] relating to the likely consequences for proper planning and sustainable development of a proposed development in the area in which it is proposed to situate such development, the Board shall have regard to…
(f) the provisions of this Act and regulations under this Act where relevant.”
200. Does the above-quoted provision have the effect of importing, inter alia, the requirement as to landowner consent that one finds in Art. 22(2)(g) of the Planning and Development Regulations (S.I. No. 685 of 2006) whereby, a planning application must be accompanied by, inter alia, “where the applicant is not the legal owner of the land or structure concerned, the written consent of the owner to make the application”? Three points might be noted in this respect:
(1) section182B(10) requires the Board merely to “have regard to…”, no more - and certainly not ‘slavishly to adhere to...’;
(2) when referring to “the provisions of this Act and regulations under this Act where relevant”, the Oireachtas presumably intends to refer, inter alia, to regulations that apply to the application, not to regulations that do not apply…and so not, say, to Art.22(2)(g). The court does not read s.182B(10) as rendering applicable that which is not.
(3) section 182B(10) commences “In considering under subsection (1), information furnished [under s.182B(1)]…”. If one returns to s.182B(1), the information required to be considered by An Bord Pleanála is identified there and one simply cannot extrapolate from the provision there made an obligation to provide landowner consent.
(ii) Ordinary and legal intent.
201. The court has touched previously above on the phrase “intends to carry out development” which appears in s.182A of the Act of 2000. But in his closing submissions counsel for the applicants touched upon a point which had not previously been focused, viz. whether there is a distinction between ‘intending to do something’ and ‘legally intending to do something’, with the latter being the intent applicable in the within context, extending only to something which, as a matter of certainty, one can achieve using powers and abilities within one’s own absolute control. The court respectfully does not accept the purported distinction arising between intent and legal intent, a proposition which is not supported by authority. But apart from the absence of authority, it is an interpretation which makes little sense when one has regard to the customary meaning of the word ‘intent’, being a determination to do something. A person may intend to do things which are contingent on a finite or infinite number of potential contingencies, but the existence of those contingencies does not compromise the fact or integrity of that person’s intent. In truth, the court sees in this line of contention as to ordinary and legal intent but a further attempt to carry home the notion that for EirGrid to proceed with the North-South Interconnector, it must first have landowner consent. But that notion has been examined at some length by the court previously above, by reference to the applicable legislative scheme, and respectfully rejected by it.
(iii) ‘Brexit’ as an issue of need.
202. Counsel for the applicants, in his closing submissions, appeared somewhat to re-cast the ‘Brexit’ issue touched upon previously above as an issue pertaining to need. The issue of ‘Brexit’ as originally tended to the court has been addressed comprehensively elsewhere above and the court does not propose to re-visit same. As to need, that is an issue that has been comprehensively touched upon in the planning inspector’s report, and the court understands there to be no issue to be taken with the assessment of need per se, but rather with the alleged fact that ‘Brexit’ is a need issue and that need ought to have been assessed in the context of same. But there is not a jot of evidence before the court by reference to which the court could properly conclude that ‘Brexit’ has impacted on need in any way. The truth is that changes occur in economic and/or political circumstances all the time. Those changes do not mean that there is an obligation on planning or other authorities to re-assess every assessment which has transpired simply because of the possibility, no matter how remote, that there may be an impact on aspects of the matter that they are addressing, notwithstanding that nothing has actually occurred which can be identified as having a concrete impact.
(iv) Vires.
203. Another point touched upon freshly in the closing submissions of counsel for the applicants was a vires point, being that conditions which involve matters being addressed with local authorities, e.g., a condition such as Condition 3(c), are impermissible where approval is sought under Section 182B. To address this it is necessary to return to return to applicable statute and contrast the manner in which conditions are addressed under s.34 of the Act of 2000 with the approach adopted in s.182. Section 34 of the Act of 2000 provides, inter alia, as follows:
“(1) Where -
(a) an application is made to a planning authority in accordance with permission regulations for permission for the development of land, and
(b) all requirements of the regulations are complied with,
the authority may decide to grant the permission subject to or without conditions, or to refuse it….
(4) Conditions under subsection (1) may, without prejudice to the generality of that subsection, include all or any of the following…[a long and wide range of conditions follow]….
(5) The conditions under subsection (1) may provide that points of detail relating to a grant of permission may be agreed between the planning authority and the person carrying out the development; if the planning authority and that person cannot agree on the matter the matter may be referred to the Board for determination.”
204. The position under s.34 falls to be contrasted with that which pertains under s.182B, sub-section (5) of which provides as follows:
“The Board may, in respect of an application under section 182A for approval of proposed development-
(a) approve the proposed development,
(b) make such modifications to the proposed development as it specifies in the approval and approve the proposed development as so modified,
(c) approve, in part only, the proposed development (with or without specified modifications of it of the foregoing kind), or
(d) refuse to approve the proposed development, and may attach to an approval under paragraph (a), (b) or (c) such conditions as it considers appropriate.” [Emphasis added].
205. To borrow a colloquialism, it seems to the court to be ‘comparing apples and oranges’ to say, in effect, ‘Under s.34 there is express facility to impose conditions of the kind now in issue; however, there is not like provision in s.182B and so the imposition of conditions such as Condition 3(c) is not possible’. The generality of the power that An Bord Pleanála enjoys under s.182B(5)(d) to impose conditions must and does encompass a power to enable An Bord Pleanála, subject to the Boland criteria, to impose, as it did, conditions such as Condition 3(c) involving the agreement of points of detail with “the relevant planning authority”.
(v) Which Routes Were Approved?
(The ‘Yellow and Purple’ Issue)
206. Counsel for the applicants, in his closing submissions, advanced the argument that the decision of An Bord Pleanála, by approving “the proposed development” only relates to the (yellow) access routes as originally presented and does not encompass the (purple) routes as modified during the course of the hearing before the inspector. To test that line of argument, the court proposes to return to the inspector's report and trace through exactly what was determined by the inspector and how that is reflected in the impugned decision of An Bord Pleanála.
207. Turning then to the inspector’s report, she concludes her section on the proposed construction methodology with the following observations:
“The key issues arising in this section of the report relate to the ability of the applicant to predict ground conditions and assess the viability of access routes, based on the limited access to lands for survey.
It is considered that the applicant has demonstrated that the use of primarily desktop survey work (which includes LiDAR survey), supplemented by walkover survey, shallow augers and vantage point survey where possible, is consistent with the approach taken by the applicant in respect of other electricity transmission projects in the State and is sufficient to predict ground conditions for the design of foundations.
The remaining technical sections of this report assess the environmental effects of the indicative access routes and the environmental effects of the proposed construction methodology for the use of these.”
208. There follows an “Alterations Table in Respect of Access Routes to Towers, Guarding Locations or Stringing Areas” identifying the changes which have occurred, and there is in the report considerable reference to the modifications. However, it is as well to pause and assess what the inspector is in fact saying in the above text. The historical sequence of events is that the maps furnished by EirGrid had access routes marked in yellow on them; a number of changes occurred and a suite of maps was produced bearing a purple dot which showed the revised access routes. Viewed in that context, what the inspector is saying is that the developer has demonstrated in respect of each tower, a viable access route to same, and that based on the information the inspector has been given in relation to the access routes (original and varied) she is in a position to conduct an environmental impact assessment, which she then does in the ensuing sections of the report. (And in this context it is perhaps worth noting that an environmental impact assessment is an iterative process, i.e. it is a process which includes the environmental impact statement, the submissions made on the strength of same, the responses to those submissions and, of course, and the forum for public participation which is afforded by way of a public hearing and in which, in this case, the alterations (the purple lines) were clearly considered).
209. Later still, in the “Reasons and Considerations” section of her report, the inspector writes as follows:
“Whilst it is recognised that the proposed development will result in a limited number of localised impacts, having regard to the identified strategic need for the development, the routing and detailed design of the alignment to avoid environmental constraints, it is considered that subject to compliance with the mitigation measures set out in the EIS, the NIS and the response document and the conditions set out below, the proposed development would be in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development.”
210. The inspector then makes her recommendation (being “that approval for the development be granted, subject to the conditions set out below”), following which she identifies the range of considerations to which she has had regard arriving at her conclusion and recommendation. In this regard, the inspector refers to all the documentation on file, including, inter alia, the environmental impact statement and the Natura impact statement, “and the submissions and observations made in respect of the application, including at the oral hearing”. One cannot read this text and then properly arrive at the conclusion that the inspector (whatever about An Bord Pleanála) has ignored the routing modifications and has failed to have regard to them in framing her conclusion and her suggested conditions. Among those suggested conditions are a proposed Condition 5, viz:
“Prior to the commencement of development, a construction management plan, a traffic management plan and waste management plan shall be submitted to, and agreed in writing with, the relevant planning authority following consultations with relevant statutory agencies, including Inland Fisheries Ireland and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaelteacht and Irish Water. This plan shall incorporate the mitigation measures indicated in the environmental impact statement, and any others deemed necessary, and shall provide details of intended construction practice for the proposed development, including…
(iv) the phasing of construction works which are accessed by single-lane carriageways,
(v) the arrangements for the transfer and management of concrete, including wash-out facilities.”
211. The temporary access routes to which reference is made in the just-quoted text can only be the varied temporary access routes which the inspector has just assessed.
212. What then of An Bord Pleanála? Despite the planning inspector having assessed, inter alia, the varied temporary access routes, did An Bord Pleanála in its order close its mind to those variations and return to the original proposed temporary access routes? In the “Reasons and Considerations” segment of its order, An Bord Pleanála states as follows under the heading “Matters Considered”:
“In making its decision, the Board had regard to those matters to which, by virtue of the Planning and Development Acts and Regulations made thereunder, it was required to have regard. Such matters included the submissions and observations received by it in accordance with statutory provisions.”
213. The court notes in passing the reference to “included”, rather than ‘included and were limited to…’.
214. Under the heading “Reasons and Considerations”, An Bord Pleanála then moves on to indicate that it had regard, inter alia, to
“all documentation on file including:
(a) the environmental impact statement,
(b) the Natura impact statement,
(c) the joint environmental report,
(d) the submissions and observations made in respect of the application, including at the oral hearing, [and]
(e) the applicant’s response to the submissions received”.
215. So those are the ‘channels of information’ to which regard was had by An Bord Pleanála in reaching its decision and formulating its conditions. Later, under the heading “Environmental Impact Assessment”, An Bord Pleanála indicates that it has considered, inter alia:
“ the submissions from the planning authorities, prescribed bodies and from the observers in the course of the application, including submissions made to the oral hearing;
the applicant’s response to the submissions received; [and]
the Senior Planning Inspector’s report and recommendation dated the 14th day of November, 2016”,
and continues:
“The Board considered that the environmental impact statement supported by the ‘Response to the Issues Raised in the Submissions/Observations’ document, identifies and describes adequately the direct and indirect effects of the proposed development on the environment….
In doing so the Board adopted the report of the Senior Planning Inspector.”
216. Thereafter, the conclusions are recorded, which conclusions, of course, overlap with the conclusions reached by the Inspector. And then, after all these matters are listed, An Bord Pleanála states as follows:
“In conclusion, it is considered that, subject to compliance with the conditions set out below, including compliance with the mitigation measures set out in the environmental impact statement, the Natura impact Statement and the ‘Response to the Issues Raised in the Submissions/Observations’ document, the proposed development would be in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.”
217. Then comes the “Conditions” section, with a Condition 3(c) that precisely replicates the inspector’s proposed Condition 5, as quoted above.
218. Despite all of the foregoing and notwithstanding the assessment by the inspector, notwithstanding the clarity as to the temporary access routes to which she was referring, notwithstanding the fact that An Bord Pleanála adopts, in relation to the environmental impact assessment, the inspector’s report, notwithstanding the fact that An Bord Pleanála refers to and had regard to all documentation on file, notwithstanding that An Bord Pleanála refers to and had regard to the submissions made at the oral hearing, notwithstanding all of the foregoing, the court is asked to believe that the Board addressed its order to temporary access routes frozen in time for no apparent reason, notwithstanding the process of assessment which had been undertaken and notwithstanding the specification by the developer of what the modified routes actually were. That, with respect, is a remarkably difficult construction to place on the decision and not one that the court places upon it.
XVIII. Jus Tertii
219. The thrust of the within judgment, which is not at all favourable to the applicants, is such that the issue of jus tertii (in effect the pleading of the rights of a third party) is not of the significance that it might otherwise have been. Be that as it may, the court considers that (i) while, in broad terms, the applicants have standing to bring the within proceedings, (ii) when the court has regard to the observations as to standing made by Henchy J. in Cahill v. Sutton [1980] I.R. 269, 283, as applied in the context of judicial review applications in Lancefort Ltd. v. An Bord Pleanála (No. 2) [1999] 2 IR 270, it does not see that either of the applicants, neither of them being landowners, has the requisite standing to make such claims as were made in their pleadings and submissions concerning allegedly affected landowners. That, to borrow from the phraseology of Henchy J., seems to the court to be a near-classic example of allowing “one litigant to present and argue what is essentially another person’s case”.
XIX. Closing
220. Few if any of us would welcome the news that a great line of electricity pylons and linking wires was due to be erected on or across property that we chanced to own or otherwise enjoyed. The applicants to these proceedings, living in a beautiful part of Ireland and enjoying some of the best of the Irish countryside, understandably object to the fact that the North-South Interconnector development, as proposed, is to be built upon their properties, by their homesteads, or across their townlands. But when it comes to the decision of An Bord Pleanála, on 19th December last, to grant approval to EirGrid for the proposed North-South Interconnector development, the court, for the reasons identified in the preceding pages, is coerced as a matter of law into concluding that there is no lawful basis presenting that would justify it granting any of the reliefs that the applicants now seek. It follows that all of the reliefs sought by the applicants at this time must be and are respectfully refused by the court.
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> High Court of Ireland Decisions >> Khan & Ors -v- The Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform [2017] IEHC 800 (27 October 2017)
Khan & Ors -v- The Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform
Faherty J.
[2015 No. 676 J.R.]
MOHAMMAD KHAN, MAHNAZ KHAN,
MOHAMMAD SHUMAR KHAN AND
MALKA KHATOON
THE MINISTER FOR JUSTICE, EQUALITY AND LAW REFORM
JUDGMENT of Ms. Justice Faherty delivered on the 27th day of October, 2017
1. This is a telescoped hearing in which the applicants seek judicial review of two decisions of the respondent dated 6th October, 2015, respectively, refusing the applications of a third and fourth named applicants to enter the State. The background to the within application is as follows.
2. The first applicant is a national of the UK and an EU citizen having been approved for naturalisation in the UK 2014. He is married to the second applicant who is also a national of the UK and a Union citizen.
3. The first and second applicants now reside in Ireland and own the residence at which they reside.
4. Since the first applicants arrival in the State he has worked as a taxi driver. He is also a part-time student. Since her arrival in the State the second applicant has worked as an accountant and has been employed as a senior accountant since 2009 in a permanent position.
5. The first and second applicant’s have four children who are all UK nationals and who reside in the family home with them.
6. The third and fourth applicants are nationals of Pakistan and are the parents of the first applicant. The third and fourth applicants are married and were born on 15th October, 1945 and 15th December, 1956, respectively. The third and fourth applicants are said to reside in rental accommodation in Pakistan.
7. In early 2013, an application was made for visas for the third and fourth named applicants to enter the State. On 12th February, 2013, the Visa Section of the respondent’s department wrote to the first and second named applicants requesting certain information in order to process the visa applications. In particular, the respondents sought the following: recent six months bank statements for the third and fourth applicants; evidence of any other family members residing in Pakistan or in any other country; evidence of the third and fourth named applicants’ birth; details of their current residence; evidence of their income including any pension they might be receiving; and evidence of the first and second applicants’ link to the third and fourth applicants. Details of the third and fourth applicants’ health status were also sought.
8. The visa applications were refused by the respondent by letter of 14th May, 2013. The reason given for the refusal was that the evidence provided in respect of finances was deemed insufficient or incomplete and because of inconsistencies/contradictions in the information supplied.
9. On 1st July, 2014, the second applicant submitted a fresh visa application which stated that the third and fourth applicants were dependant on her and on the first applicant. Included with the application were details pertaining to the first and second named applicants’ passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate together with evidence of their employment and recent bank statements in respect of both of them. Details of the first and second applicants medical insurance was also included as was documents evidencing transfers of money to the third and fourth named applicants in Pakistan.
10. These applications were refused on 1st October, 2014. The respondent found, inter alia, that it had not been demonstrated that the third and fourth applicants were totally dependent on the first and second applicants. Reference was made to the third applicant being in receipt of a monthly pension in Pakistan. It was also pointed out that no complete bank statement or other evidence had been provided by either the third or fourth applicants by way of proof that they were totally dependent, or to the extent to which they were dependent on the first and second named applicants. It was also pointed out that no evidence of household finances, bills or day to day expenditure was provided for any of the addresses given by the third and fourth applicants.
11. In 2015, a third application for short stay visas was submitted in respect of the third and fourth applicants with assistance from IK Immigration Consultants based in Dublin.
12. The applicants included with their applications documentary evidence of financial support from the first and second applicants, evidence of their relationship to the first and second applicants, a rental deed in respect of their residence in Pakistan, documentary evidence of the financial position of the first and second applicants and a bank account statement in respect of the fourth named applicant.
13. Included in the bundle of documentation was a medical report from Dr. Atif Abbas stating that the third named applicant had a history of heart disease and which set out details of his medical prescriptions.
14. The application also included an affidavit from a Mr. Qureshi who averred that he was a friend of the first applicant and that he had in the past transferred money to the third applicant on the instructions of the first applicant.
15. The visa applications were refused by letters dated 2nd July, 2015, respectively to the third and fourth applicants.
16. The letter addressed to the third applicant stated that he had not provided documentary evidence that he was a dependent of the first and second applicants. Money transfers were noted by the respondent but it was stated that “money transfers in isolation are not proof of dependency”. It was also noted that the third applicant had not provided bank statements or other evidence as to the extent on which he was dependent on the first and second applicants. It was re-stated that the third applicant was in receipt of a monthly pension in Pakistan and therefore not dependent on the first and second applicants. The Visa Officer was of the opinion that the third applicant had more than one source of income. It was also stated that no explanation had been provided as to the relationship between the third applicant and Mr. Qureshi and that no official explanation had been given for the change of address on a bank statement provided by the fourth applicant. It was also noted that a permanent address given on the first applicant’s birth certificate was the same as that given on the third applicant’s pension book which, it was stated, suggested that he had retained ownership of this property. It was again pointed out that no evidence of household finances, bills or day to day expenditure was provided for any address given in respect of the third and fourth applicants. It was further noted that the medical report which had been submitted was from the third applicant’s son-in-law and that an independent medical report would be required.
17. The letter addressed to the fourth named applicant was in similar terms.
18. Subsequent to these refusals the third and fourth applicants exercised their right of appeal and by letter dated 27th August, 2015, IK Immigration Consultants submitted an appeal on their behalf.
19. It was submitted that the third and fourth applicants fell into the category of “qualified family members” within the meaning of EU Directive 2004/38/EC (“the 2004 Directive”). The case was made that the third and fourth applicants lived alone in rented accommodation and a certified copy of a rent agreement in respect of this accommodation was attached for the respondent’s reference. The respondent was advised that the monthly rent was PKR 30,000. Certified copies of utility bills for the said accommodation in the name of the lessor’s agent were enclosed. It was explained that the applicants were not permitted to add their names on the utility bills. Enclosed also were affidavits from the third and fourth applicants wherein details of their expenditure was explained. The fact of the third applicant’s pension book bearing the same address as that which appeared on the first applicant’s birth certificate was explained on the basis that that was the village from which the third applicant originated. It was further submitted that in light of his affidavit it was clear that the third applicant’s pension was not enough to meet day-to-day expenses and that the details of the applicants’ expenditure, together with the third applicant’s medical condition, showed that the third and fourth applicants could not survive without financial assistance from the first and second applicants. In light of the issue taken with Dr. Abbass’ medical report, a medical report from Dr. Gondal was enclosed with the appeal.
20. Accompanying the appeal were letters from the first and second applicants, together with an affidavit sworn by the third applicant setting out that he was a retired government employee on a monthly pension of PKR 55,328 and that it was impossible for him to sustain himself and the fourth applicant on his pension and that therefore the first and second applicants provided financial support on a regular basis to meet the expenses of the third and fourth applicants. He set out details of the third and fourth applicants’ average monthly expenditure of PKR 120,000 which was said to be the total sum expended by the third and fourth applicants on, rent, utility bills, maintaining a car, medical expenses, cooking and laundry expenses, sanitary expenses, food and grocery and miscellaneous expenses.
21. On 6th October, 2015, the respondent advised IK Immigration Consultants that the appeals had not been successful.
22. The refusal letter in respect of the third applicant stated, inter alia, that he had failed to prove that he qualified as a beneficiary of the 2004 Directive on the basis that insufficient documentary evidence had been submitted to show that he was a dependent of the first and second named applicants. The letter stated that “[t]he degree of dependency must be such as to render independent living, at a subsistence level by the family member in his/her home country impossible if [the financial and social support from the first and second applicants] were not maintained.” While the bank transfers of monies from the first and second applicants were noted, with respect to the submission that monies had also been transferred to the third and fourth applicants via friends of the first and second applicants who travel to Pakistan, the respondent stated that “hand deliveries of cash cannot be verified and therefore, they cannot be accepted.”
23. With regard to the money transfers it was stated that “money transfers in isolation are not proof of dependency. No bank statement or other evidence has been submitted by the applicant by way of proof that the applicant is totally dependent, or to the extent to which he is dependent [on the first and second named applicants]”.
24. It was also stated that as the applicant was in receipt of a monthly pension he was not considered to be dependent on the first and second applicants.
25. The respondent did not accept the averments in Mr. Qureshi’s affidavit that he had transferred money to the third applicant because a copy of his passport bio data had not been submitted to the appeal, with the result that his signature could not be verified. The respondent also found the explanations tendered by the fourth applicant’s bank for the fact of a change of address on her bank statement to be insufficient to explain her change of address. It was also noted that copies of rental agreements in respect of the prior addresses for the third and fourth applicants had not been submitted with the appeal. Equally, the explanation which had been submitted to explain why the third applicant’s birth address had appeared on his pension book was found to be insufficient. The respondent also found the statement of monthly outgoings, which had been provided at appeal stage, insufficient, as “documentary evidence of all household finances, medical expenditure or day to day expenditure was not provided.”
26. While the copies of electricity and gas bills which had been provided were acknowledged, it was noted that water and telephone bills were not provided. Accordingly, the respondent found that insufficient documentary evidence had been submitted to support the monthly expenses referred to in the third applicant’s affidavit.
27. The respondent also noted that while car fuel and maintenance expenses were listed as part of the monthly expenses, a letter from the third applicant’s medical practitioner, Dr. Gondal, which had been submitted with the appeal has stated that it was unsafe for the third applicant to drive.
28. Furthermore, the respondent did not consider the rental agreement which been submitted with the appeal to be sufficient to show the monthly rent being paid by the third and fourth applicants. It was also queried as to why the rent agreement which was dated 16th August, 2015, referred to the lessor having received a sum of PKR 100,000 as a security deposit in circumstances where the third applicant was living at the same address since 2014.
29. With respect to a letter from Dr. Gondal, the respondent noted that the letter was handwritten and undated and that the prescriptions for the third applicant referred to in that letter differed from the prescriptions which had been earlier submitted. It was further noted that Dr. Gondal was a colleague of Dr. Abbas.
30. The refusal letter concluded by stating that INIS had undertaken an extensive examination of the third applicant’s personal circumstances and had found that he had failed to prove that he qualified as a beneficiary of the Directive.
31. The refusal letter in respect of the fourth named applicant was in largely similar terms.
32. The within proceedings issued on 3rd December, 2015.
The applicants’ submissions
33. On behalf of the applicants it is submitted that the incorrect test was applied in determining the third and fourth applicants’ dependency on the first and second applicants. In particular, the applicants take issue with the respondent’s dismissal of money transfers to the third and fourth applicants by dint of the respondent stating that “money transfers in isolation are not proof of dependency” in circumstances where in excess of €19,000 was transferred to the third and fourth applicants via bank transfer, in addition to other sums of money sent via friends of the first applicant. Counsel contends that the respondent did not recognise the extent of the monies transferred, in particular that sent via bank transfer. Yet, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) recognises such transfers as part of the proof that will establish dependency for the purposes of the 2004 Directive, if other factors are also present.
34. It is submitted that the respondent did not give any or any appropriate weight to the monies transferred by the first and second applicants. Counsel submits that €19,054 was a substantial amount of money which required due assessment by the respondent, which was not forthcoming. Furthermore, in the decision, the respondent stated that there was no proof that the third and fourth applicants were “totally dependent” on the first and second applicants. This test is not in conformity with the test set out in the ECJ jurisprudence. In this regard, counsel referred to Case C-316/85 Lebon [1987] ECR 2811, Case C-1/05 Jia [2007] ECR1-1 and Case C-423/12 Reyes [2014] ECR 1-0000.
35. It is further submitted that for the respondent to say that the third applicant was not a dependent family member by dint of the fact that he was in receipt of a monthly pension flies in the face of the jurisprudence of the ECJ.
36. It is also the applicants’ contention that it was only at the appeal stage that the respondent raised a number of queries which could have been raised earlier with the applicants. By way of example, the respondent queried the absence of bio data detail in respect of Mr. Qureshi’s passport when this could have been asked for at an earlier stage. Equally, the respondent waited until the refusal decision to raise queries regarding the letter of explanation which came from the fourth applicant’s bank, when it was open to the respondent to raise this matter with the applicants prior to the refusal decision thereby affording them an opportunity to deal with the observations set out therein.
37. In addition, the respondent formed the view that the evidence provided by the third and fourth applicants as to their monthly outgoings was insufficient evidence of all household finances and day-to-day expenditure, thereby suggesting that every element of such expenditure required to be vouched. Yet, there was no forewarning of this by the respondent.
38. Furthermore, the respondent stated that insufficient information was provided by the third applicant as to why the address given on his birth certificate appears on his pension book. However, an explanation was provided by IK Immigration Consultants in the appeal submissions, but no account was taken of this explanation by the respondent.
39. It is also the applicants’ contention that the issue taken by the respondent with the third and fourth applicants claiming car and fuel expenses, in circumstances where the third named applicant’s medical practitioner had stated that it was unsafe for him to drive, was irrational because no account was taken by the respondent that the fourth applicant would be capable of driving a car.
40. The respondent also raised issues regarding the third and fourth applicants’ rental agreement. Yet, any such query as the respondent might have had in this regard could have been raised in correspondence if considered important in the context of establishing their dependency.
41. It is further contended that the respondent’s reliance on the fact that the medical report of Dr. Gondal was handwritten and undated is irrelevant, as is the fact that different medical prescriptions are alluded in Dr. Gondal’s medical report to those referred to in the earlier medical report. Again, the respondent waited until the decision to query such matters when they could have been raised at an earlier stage.
42. It is submitted that in seeking to establish dependency, the respondent failed to abide by the principles which emerge in the jurisprudence of the ECJ, as follows:
• As a matter of European Law, dependent status is the result of a factual situation categorised by the fact that material support for that family member is provided by the Union citizen;
• The host Member State must assess whether, having regard to his financial and social conditions, the direct relative of a Union citizen is not in a position to support himself;
• There is no need to determine the reasons for that dependency or therefore for the recourse to that support;
• The fact that a Union citizen regularly, for a significant period, pays a sum of money to the family member, necessary in order for him to support himself in the state of origin, is such as to show that the family member is in a real situation of dependence vis-à-vis that Union citizen.
43. Counsel submits that at no point in either appeal refusal decision does the respondent apply the correct test under European law, namely whether material support for the third and fourth applicants is being provided by the first and second applicants to meet the former’s essential needs. In determining whether the third and fourth applicants were dependents, the respondent failed to assess whether the first and second applicants provided material support for them and/or whether regular payments for a significant period were made by the first and second applicants. In the premises, it is submitted that the respondent acted in breach of the 2004 Directive and in breach of the then applicable European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) (No. 2) Regulations 2006 S.I. 656/2006, which transposed the Directive into Irish law.
The respondent’s submissions
44. It is not in dispute between the parties that the first and second applicants are EU citizens and that the third and fourth applicants are candidates for family reunification as qualifying family members, provided that they are proven to be dependent on the first and/or second applicant.
45. It is disputed that the respondent applied the incorrect test for dependency in assessing the visa applications.
46. Counsel for the respondent submits that in an objective sense, it may or may not be the case that the third and fourth applicants are dependent on the first and second applicants, but insofar as the decision under review is concerned, the fact is that the respondent has not been given sufficient information in order for dependency to be established.
47. It is submitted that there are a number of deficits in the applicants’ appeal to the respondent. These arise not because the respondent did not make inquiries or put the applicants on notice as to such deficits, as counsel for the applicants suggests, but rather because the applicants did not provide sufficient evidence to the respondent. Contrary to the applicants’ submissions, it is not the case that the respondent has to advise the applicants on their proofs. It is for the applicants to make their case to the decision maker.
48. It is not correct that the visa applications were rejected without adequate reasons: it was stated in the respective decisions that insufficient documentary evidence had been submitted to establish dependency. The insufficiencies were exhaustively surveyed in the body of the decision.
49. Counsel submits that the respondent correctly determined that details concerning the residence within Pakistan of the third and fourth applicants had not been established. While a tenancy agreement was provided to prove their address, it dates from 2015 and refers to a security deposit paid at that time notwithstanding that the tenancy was supposed to begin on 15th January, 2015, and that the third and fourth applicants have claimed to have lived there prior to that time. Furthermore, as noted in the decision, the situation is also confused by a statement from the fourth applicant’s bank that she was living at one of two other addresses possibly prior to January 2014. Additionally, the third applicant’s pension book gave another address, as noted by the respondent.
50. Again, as noted by the respondent, no vouching documentation such as would show the actual rent being paid was submitted by the third and fourth named applicants.
51. While the third named applicant furnished an affidavit setting out average monthly expenditure for, inter alia, rent, utility bills, food and groceries and other expenditure, vouching information was not included, as would have been expected. The averments in the third applicant’s affidavit, although evidence, are not of themselves sufficient, in the absence of vouching documentation.
52. Moreover, the third and fourth applicants have not supplied bank statements such as would evidence their income and expenditure, save a bank statement in the name of the fourth applicant which refers only to the monies transferred by the first and second applicants. Accordingly, the respondent was entitled to query the context in which such transfers were made, where the third and fourth applicants’ own expenditure and income was not vouched.
53. It is submitted that a continuing theme of all the visa applications submitted in this case is the deficiency in the information contained therein, which was not addressed by the applicants on any occasion despite their having been alerted to the deficiencies by the respondent. It is those deficiencies which has prevented the respondent in making a decision in the applicants’ favour.
54. It is submitted that on more than one occasion, by reason of the matters highlighted by the respondent in earlier refusals, the applicants were given sufficient opportunity to prove their dependency, which was not availed of. Yet, the applicants’ counsel deigns to suggest that it was incumbent on the respondent, prior to making the appeal decision, to raise such queries as she might have with the applicants. This is not the law.
55. The respondent does not dispute the fact of money transfers to the third and fourth named applicants. What is in issue is whether same proves dependency. It is the respondent’s contention, as set out in the refusal decisions, that money transfers per se are not proof of dependency. This must be the case, otherwise family members who are in a position to meet their own essential needs in their foreign state of origin could be designated “dependent” merely by receipt of remittances from a Union citizen. The essential question is whether the family member said to be dependent needs such material support as is made by the Union citizen in order to meet his or her essential needs. It is submitted that this threshold has not been reached in the applicants’ case, largely owing to the evidential gaps and inconsistencies in the documentation which was provided.
56. Contrary to the applicants’ submissions, the respondent did not dismiss the first and second applicants’ money transfers – the respondent accepted the level of the transfers but was not satisfied from the other documentation supplied that the third and fourth named applicants were in fact dependent.
57. While it is agreed that the respondent does not, as per the ECJ jurisprudence, inquire why someone is dependent, the respondent is still entitled to examine whether in fact they are dependent. As set out in Case C-1/05 Jia, the test is whether the third and fourth applicants need material support of the first and second applicants to meet their “essential needs”.
58. There is no merit in the applicants’ contention that the respondent applied an incorrect test. Any such criticism on the part of the applicants is simply elevating form over substance. The precise form of words for assessing dependency that the respondent adopted in the refusal decisions was that the degree of dependency must be such as to render independent living, at a subsistence level by the family member in his home country, impossible if the financial and social support of the EU citizen was not maintained.
59. In this case, there was no procedural unfairness given the control the applicants themselves had over the process, in that it was open to them to submit the respondent whatever proofs they had.
60. Equally, there is no basis for finding that the respondent misdirected herself in law as to the applicable test or otherwise erred in law, in circumstances where the proofs expected by the respondent were not provided by the applicants. In all of those circumstances, the decisions were not irrational or unfair.
61. The proceedings raise the following legal issues:
1. Did the respondent apply the correct test of dependency under European Union law and, in particular, under Article 2(2) of Council Directive 2004/38/EC? and
2. Was the respondent correct to conclude that no evidence of dependency or the extent of dependency had been submitted?
62. Article 2 of the 2004 Directive defines family member in the following terms:
For the purposes of this Directive:
1)“Union citizen” means any person having the nationality of a Member State;
2) “Family member” means:
(a) the spouse;
(b) the partner with whom the Union citizen has contracted a registered partnership, on the basis of the legislation of a Member State, if the legislation of the host Member State treats registered partnerships as equivalent to marriage and in accordance with the conditions laid down in the relevant legislation of the host Member State;
(c) the direct descendants who are under the age of 21 or are dependants and those of the spouse or partner as defined in point (b);
(d) the dependent direct relatives in the ascending line and those of the spouse or partner as defined in point (b);
3) “Host Member State” means the Member State to which a Union citizen moves in order to exercise his/her right of free movement and residence.
Right of entry
1. Without prejudice to the provisions on travel documents applicable to national border controls, Member States shall grant Union citizens leave to enter their territory with a valid identity card or passport and shall grant family members who are not nationals of a Member State leave to enter their territory with a valid passport.
No entry visa or equivalent formality may be imposed on Union citizens.
2. Family members who are not nationals of a Member State shall only be required to have an entry visa in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 or, where appropriate, with national law. For the purposes of this Directive, possession of the valid residence card referred to in
Article 10 shall exempt such family members from the visa requirement.
Member States shall grant such persons every facility to obtain the necessary visas. Such visas shall be issued free of charge as soon as possible and on the basis of an accelerated procedure.
3. The host Member State shall not place an entry or exit stamp in the passport of family members who are not nationals of a Member State provided that they present the residence card provided for in Article 10.
4. Where a Union citizen, or a family member who is not a national of a Member State, does not have the necessary travel documents or, if required, the necessary visas, the Member State concerned shall, before turning them back, give such persons every reasonable opportunity to obtain the necessary documents or have them brought to them within a reasonable period of time or to corroborate or prove by other means that they are covered by the right of free movement and residence.
5. The Member State may require the person concerned to report his/her presence within its territory within a reasonable and non-discriminatory period of time. Failure to comply with this requirement may make the person concerned liable to proportionate and non-discriminatory sanctions.”
63. As the third and fourth applicants are relatives in the ascending line, in principle, they fall within the definition of family members entitled to enter and reside in the State under the 2004 Directive.
64. In Case C-316/85 Lebon, the ECJ considered the concept of dependency under Regulation 1612/68 (an earlier incarnation of the 2004 Directive). In that case the ECJ stated:
“21. It must be pointed out, secondly, that the status of dependent member of a worker’s family does not presuppose the existence of a right to maintenance either. If that were the case, the composition of the family would depend on national legislation, which varies from one state to another, and that would lead to the application of community law in a manner that is not uniform.
22. Article 10(1) and (2) of regulation no 1612/68 must be interpreted as meaning that the status of dependent member of a worker’s family is the result of a factual situation. The person having that status is a member of the family who is supported by the worker and there is no need to determine the reasons for recourse to the worker’s support or to raise the question whether the person concerned is able to support himself by taking up paid employment.
23. That interpretation is dictated by the principle according to which the provisions establishing the free movement of workers, which constitute one of the foundations of the community, must be construed broadly (see, most recently, the judgment of 3 June 1986 in Case 133/75 Kempf [1986]ECR 1741 at p.1746 ). Moreover, it corresponds to the wording of the provision in question, whose German language version (“unterhalt gewaehren”) and Greek language version (“efoson synthreitai”) are particularly clear in that respect.
24. The answer to the third question must therefore be that the status of dependent member of a worker’s family, to which article 10(1) and (2) of Regulation no 1612/68 refers, is the result of a factual situation, namely the provision of support by the worker, without there being any need to determine the reasons for recourse to the worker’s support.”
65. In Case C-1/05 Jia, the ECJ, in the context of considering Directive 73/148/EEC (which was ultimately replaced by the 2004 Directive) referred to its jurisprudence in Lebon and went on to state:
“34 Article 1(1)(d) of Directive 73/148 applies only to ‘dependent’ relatives in the ascending line of the spouse of a national of a Member State established in another Member State in order to pursue activities as a self-employed person.
35 According to the case-law of the Court, the status of ‘dependent’ family member is the result of a factual situation characterised by the fact that material support for that family member is provided by the Community national who has exercised his right of free movement or by his spouse (see, in relation to Article 10 of Regulation No 1612/68 and Article 1 of Council Directive 90/364/EEC of 28 June 1990 on the right of residence (OJ 1990 L 180, p. 26), Lebon, paragraph 22, and Case C 200/02 Zhu and Chen [2004] ECR I 9925, paragraph 43, respectively).
36 The Court has also held that the status of dependent family member does not presuppose the existence of a right to maintenance, otherwise that status would depend on national legislation, which varies from one State to another (Lebon, paragraph 21). According to the Court, there is no need to determine the reasons for recourse to that support or to raise the question whether the person concerned is able to support himself by taking up paid employment. That interpretation is dictated in particular by the principle according to which the provisions establishing the free movement of workers, which constitute one of the foundations of the Community, must be construed broadly (Lebon, paragraphs 22 and 23).
37 In order to determine whether the relatives in the ascending line of the spouse of a Community national are dependent on the latter, the host Member State must assess whether, having regard to their financial and social conditions, they are not in a position to support themselves. The need for material support must exist in the State of origin of those relatives or the State whence they came at the time when they apply to join the Community national.
38 That is the conclusion that must be drawn having regard to Article 4(3) of Council Directive 68/360/EEC of 15 October 1968 on the abolition of restrictions on movement and residence within the Community for workers of Member States and their families (OJ, English Special Edition, 1968(II), p. 485), according to which proof of the status of dependent relative in the ascending line of a worker or his spouse within the meaning of Article 10 of Regulation No 1612/68 is to be provided by a document issued by the competent authority of the ‘State of origin or the State whence they came’, testifying that the relative concerned is dependent on the worker or his spouse. Despite the lack of precision as to the means of acceptable proof by which the individual concerned can establish that he falls within one of the classes of persons referred to in Articles 1 and 4 of Directive 73/148, there is nothing to justify the status of dependent relative in the ascending line being assessed differently according to whether the relative is a member of the family of a worker or of a self-employed worker.
39 In accordance with Article 6(b) of Directive 73/148, the host Member State may require proof that the applicant comes within one of the classes of person referred to in particular in Article 1 of that directive.
40 When exercising their powers in this area Member States must ensure both the basic freedoms guaranteed by the EC Treaty and the effectiveness of directives containing measures to abolish obstacles to the free movement of persons between those States, so that the exercise by citizens of the European Union and members of their family of the right to reside in the territory of any Member State may be facilitated (see, by analogy, Case C 424/98 Commission v Italy [2000] ECR I 4001, paragraph 35).
41 With regard to Article 6 of Directive 73/148, the Court has held that, given the lack of precision as to the means of acceptable proof by which the person concerned can establish that he or she comes within one of the classes of persons referred to in Articles 1 and 4 of that directive, it must be concluded that evidence may be adduced by any appropriate means (see, inter alia, Case C 363/89 Roux [1991] ECR I 1273, paragraph 16, and Case C 215/03 Oulane [2005] ECR I 1215, paragraph 53).
42 Consequently, a document of the competent authority of the State of origin or the State from which the applicant came attesting to the existence of a situation of dependence, albeit appearing particularly appropriate for that purpose, cannot constitute a condition for the issue of a residence permit, while a mere undertaking from a Community national or his spouse to support the family member concerned need not be regarded as establishing the existence of that family member’s situation of real dependence.
43 In those circumstances, the answer to Question 2(a) and (b) must be that Article 1(1)(d) of Directive 73/148 is to be interpreted to the effect that ‘dependent on them’ means that members of the family of a Community national established in another Member State within the meaning of Article 43 EC need the material support of that Community national or his or her spouse in order to meet their essential needs in the State of origin of those family members or the State from which they have come at the time when they apply to join the Community national. Article 6(b) of that directive must be interpreted as meaning that proof of the need for material support may be adduced by any appropriate means, while a mere undertaking from the Community national or his or her spouse to support the family members concerned need not be regarded as establishing the existence of the family members’ situation of real dependence.”
66. In essence, the ECJ held that dependency for the purposes of Directive 73/148/EEC was established if the family member “needs the material support of [the] Community national or his or her spouse in order to meet their essential needs in the State of origin”.
67. In Case C-423/12 Reyes, the ECJ expanded on the concept of dependency. In Reyes, the applicant was an adult child who sought a right of residence as a family member on the basis that, although an adult, she was nevertheless dependent upon her mother. The Swedish Administrative Court found that the mere fact that Ms. Reyes’ mother and stepfather had taken it upon themselves to support her did not establish that there was a relationship of dependence which could confer on Ms. Reyes a right of residence in Sweden.
68. In dealing with the question which the Swedish Court referred to it, the ECJ observed as follows:
“20. In that regard, it must be noted that, in order for a direct descendant, who is 21 years old or older, of a Union citizen to be regarded as being a ‘dependant’ of that citizen within the meaning of Article 2(2)(c) of Directive 2004/38, the existence of a situation of real dependence must be established (see, to that effect, Jia, paragraph 42).
21. That dependent status is the result of a factual situation characterised by the fact that material support for that family member is provided by the Union citizen who has exercised his right of free movement or by his spouse (see, to that effect, Jia, paragraph 35).
22. In order to determine the existence of such dependence, the host Member State must assess whether, having regard to his financial and social conditions, the direct descendant, who is 21 years old or older, of a Union citizen, is not in a position to support himself. The need for material support must exist in the State of origin of that descendant or the State whence he came at the time when he applies to join that citizen (see, to that effect, Jia, paragraph 37).
23. However, there is no need to determine the reasons for that dependence or therefore for the recourse to that support. That interpretation is dictated in particular by the principle according to which the provisions, such as Directive 2004/38, establishing the free movement of Union citizens, which constitute one of the foundations of the European Union, must be construed broadly (see, to that effect, Jia, paragraph 36 and the case-law cited).
24. The fact that, in circumstances such as those in question in the main proceedings, a Union citizen regularly, for a significant period, pays a sum of money to that descendant, necessary in order for him to support himself in the State of origin, is such as to show that the descendant is in a real situation of dependence vis-à-vis that citizen.
25. In those circumstances, that descendant cannot be required, in addition, to establish that he has tried without success to find work or obtain subsistence support from the authorities of his country of origin and/or otherwise tried to support himself.
26. The requirement for such additional evidence, which is not easy to provide in practice, as the Advocate General noted in point 60 of his Opinion, is likely to make it excessively difficult for that descendant to obtain the right of residence in the host Member State, while the facts described in paragraph 24 of this judgment already show that a real dependence exists. Accordingly, that requirement is likely to deprive Articles 2(2)(c) and 7 of Directive 2004/38 of their proper effect.
27. Furthermore, it is not excluded that that requirement obliges that descendant to take more complicated steps, such as trying to obtain various certificates stating that he has not found any work or obtained any social allowance, than that of obtaining a document of the competent authority of the State of origin or the State from which the applicant came attesting to the existence of a situation of dependence. The Court has already held that such a document cannot constitute a condition for the issue of a residence permit (Jia, paragraph 42).
28. Accordingly, the answer to the first question is therefore that Article 2(2)(c) of Directive 2004/38 must be interpreted as meaning that a Member State cannot require a direct descendant who is 21 years old or older, in circumstances such as those in the main proceedings, in order to be regarded as dependent and thus come within the definition of a family member under Article 2(2)(c) of that provision, to have tried unsuccessfully to obtain employment or to obtain subsistence support from the authorities of his country of origin and/or otherwise to support himself.”
69. The Lebon and Jia decisions were considered by Mac Eochaidh J. in Kuhn v. Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform [2013] IEHC 424. The learned Mac Eochaidh J. observed as follows:
“18. In the German language version of Jia, the verb deployed for “to meet their essential needs” is “urn seine Grundbedürfnisse … zu decken”. The verb “zu decken” translates as “to cover”. Thus, the German language version of the test suggests that the financial assistance is needed to cover or to meet all of the costs of essential needs. The French language version of Jia suggests a slightly different meaning and its text is “de necessiter le soutien materiel. ..afin de subvenir a ses besoins essentiels …” The sense of the words “de subvenir a” is more suggestive of supporting or making a subvention or a contribution to the essential needs. If I interpreted the test as meaning that dependence requires that assistance be given for all of a person's essential needs, this would greatly restrict the category of persons entitled to claim to be dependants. Only persons who could prove that they were reliant for all of their food and shelter and any other essentials would ever qualify and this, in my view, could not have been the intended effect of the test announced in Jia . Such a restrictive test could only be designed by the European legislator and it has not given any indication of such an extreme restriction on the concept of dependence.
19. In my view, the Jia decision marks a shift from dependence which was found to exist merely where support is given, to dependence being based upon the need for assistance with the provision of the essentials of life. Neither the European Court of Justice nor the European legislator nor the Irish legislator has ever identified exactly how much support is required to be given to the recipient in order for that person to be said to be dependant on the European based donor. My view is that where outside help is needed for the essentials of life (for example, enough food and shelter to sustain life) then regardless of how small that assistance is, if it is needed to attain the minimum level to obtain the essentials, then that is enough to establish that the recipient is dependent. (The essentials of life will vary from case to case: expensive drugs maybe an essential for someone who is ill, for example.)
20. In these proceedings, the parties agree that the correct test for dependence is to be found in Jia. Thus, in accordance with paras. 37 and 43 of Jia, my task is to see if the various officials processing the many applications and appeals assessed whether the Egyptian based family require the material support of the Irish based family “in order to meet their essential needs” in Egypt. At the heart of these proceedings is the allegation that the test in Jia was misapplied by the respondents.
32. Notwithstanding that the applicants in the clearest terms stated that they were dependent on the Irish family for their basic living conditions, this claim is not analysed. In my view, the appeal decision maker was, at a minimum, required to identify the definition, such as it is, of the concept of dependence as identified in the Jia case. Further, the official was required to apply that test to the assertions and facts advanced on behalf of the applicants. Any lawful analysis of a claim of dependence arising under the Citizens Directive must ask a fundamental question: is financial assistance given by a Union citizen and/or his spouse to a qualifying person to meet their essential needs? Nothing short of that analysis will suffice.
33. The case made by the applicant is that the test in Jia was misapplied. My view is that there is no evidence that the test was applied in this decision just quoted. The analysis of the concept of dependence made at first instance by Mr. Hargadon is expressly adopted by the decision maker on appeal such that any error which was contained in Mr. Hargadon’s analysis infected the appeal.”
70. It is submitted by the applicants that the test in Jia, as analysed in Kuhn, is not applied by the respondent in the instant case. Rather, the test applied was whether proof of the degree of dependency was such as to render independent living at a subsistence level not viable if the third and fourth applicants were not maintained by the first and second applicants. The applicants contend that that at no point in either of the decisions does the respondent apply the correct test under European law, namely whether the material support being provided by the first and second applicants is for the third and fourth applicants to be able to meet their essential needs.
The applicants’ complaint is that the test applied by the respondent was far more onerous than that set out in Jia. They submit that their complaint is borne out by reference to the respondent’s Policy Document on Non-EEA Family Reunification (“the Policy Document”).
71. The test for dependency for the purpose of non-EEA family reunification is set out in the policy Document as follows:
“14.1 For the purposes of this Policy Document, “Dependency” means that the family member is (i) supported financially by the sponsor on a continuous basis and (ii) that there is evidence of social dependency in the two parties. The degree of dependency must be such as to render independent living at a subsistence level by the family member in his/her home country impossible if that financial and social support were not maintained …
14.2 Adult persons who claim dependency are not persons of independent means, and vice versa. This is an important distinction from the points of view of both lodging and examining applications. Persons who claim dependency are saying they rely for their subsistence from a family member who is resident in Ireland. Officials examining such applications must be satisfied – by the applicant – that the family member is actually dependent on the sponsor.”
72. I am satisfied that this is in effect the test applied to the applicants in this case. Proof of this is evident from the statement in the decision that “the degree of dependency must be such as to render independent living, at a subsistence level by the family member in his/her home country impossible if that financial and social support were not maintained.”
73. In Jia, there is no reference to it being a requirement of dependency that it was impossible to live at a “subsistence” level if financial support from the EU citizen or his or her spouse was not maintained. The Jia test does not require that the family members have to be totally dependent on the EU citizen.
74. Furthermore, I am satisfied that it is not the law that a family member cannot qualify as a dependent simply because he or she is in receipt of a pension – yet that seems to be the thrust of the respondent’s decision in respect of the third named applicant. Accordingly, in this regard, the respondent fell into legal error.
75. To my mind, the prism through which the decision-maker considered the question of the third and fourth applicants’ dependency is sufficiently removed from the more nuanced test, as set out in Jia, to persuade the Court that the wrong test was applied. The test used by the decision-maker is too closely aligned with the Policy Document test.
76. Counsel for the respondent submits that there was no prejudice to the applicants in the form of words used in the decision. Nor, it is said, have the applicants said how they were prejudiced by the wording used by the respondent. Insofar as the applicants take issue with reference in the decision to “total dependency”, the respondent is not saying that the third and fourth applicants have to be totally dependent in order to qualify as dependent family members. It is contended that the respondent is merely acknowledging that there are shades of dependency – that does not affect the question as to whether a person is, in fact, dependent. The respondent argues that much of the applicants’ complaint in the present proceedings relate to alleged infelicities in the wording of the decision which, counsel for the respondent submits, the Court should ignore. Accordingly, counsel submits that the criticism levelled by the applicants as to the wording used in the decisions is an insufficient basis to vitiate decisions which are sound in substance. It is also submitted that the form of words used by the respondent accords with the test as formulated by Mac Eochaidh J. in Kuhn, albeit counsel acknowledges that it would have been preferable if the form of words used in Jia had been replicated in the refusal decisions. I am not convinced that the decision-maker’s test in fact accords with either Kuhn or Jia, for the reasons I have already stated.
77. Counsel for the respondent also contends that it is not the case, unlike the situation in Kuhn, that no test was applied. This is certainly the case, but in my view it remains the position that the wrong test was identified by which to ascertain the third and forth applicants’ dependency on the first and second applicants. Counsel for the respondent also makes the point that in Kuhn, the decision was impugned because the respondent had deemed vouching documentation, which had been submitted, insufficient. It is submitted that the insufficiency in Kuhn, however, was marginal compared with the dearth of information in the applicants’ case.
78. Essentially, the respondent’s position is that irrespective of any frailty in the test applied to establish dependency, there were sufficient deficiencies in the information supplied by the applicants to justify the refusal of the visas. However, I am not persuaded that the deficiencies in the applicants’ proofs, as identified in the decisions, are sufficient reason to sustain the refusal decisions made in this case. My reasons are as follows: first, as a matter of law, the third and fourth applicants’ claimed dependency was required to be examined according to the letter and spirit of the 2004 Directive, as that has been interpreted by the ECJ. Secondly, it seems to me that, irrespective of what information might be furnished by the applicants, the door would appear to be closed to the third named applicant in any event, given that it is categorically stated in his refusal decision that as the third applicant “is in receipt of a monthly pension of PKR 55, 328 (approx €454.00) [he] is not considered to be dependent on [the first and second applicants]”. Thirdly, the third and fourth applicants’ personal circumstances were subjected to “an extensive examination”, as explained in their respective decisions. Again, this raises the spectre that the third and fourth applicants’ personal circumstances were viewed through the wrong prism. In the 2004 Directive, for the purpose of free movement, “an extensive examination” is reserved to the host Member State in respect of the personal circumstances of permitted family members, a category the third and fourth applicants did not fall into, being qualified family members for the purpose of the 2004 Directive, subject to establishing dependency.
79. In this regard, I note the opinion of Advocate General Mengozzi, in Reyes:
“Although, as such, the concept of dependent member of the family of a Union citizen is an independent concept of Union law which must, on that basis, be given a uniform interpretation, it is in terms of the proof required of applicants that the distinction intended by the Union legislature between dependent members of the nuclear family and other dependent family members will be able to take on its full meaning.” (at para. 55)
“The applicant may thus provide the authorities of the host Member State with both subjective evidence connected with his own economic and social situation and any other relevant evidence that may illustrate, in a manner helpful to those authorities, the objective background to the application. At all events, the authorities of the host Member State have a duty to ensure that the effectiveness of the rights indirectly conferred on the members of the nuclear family by Directive 2004/38 is maintained and that access to the territory of the Union is not made excessively difficult by, in particular, placing too heavy a burden of proof on applicants.” (at para. 58)
80. It is the applicants’ contention that it is clear from the overall thrust of the decisions that the respondent was intent on raising myriad small queries. Accordingly, they submit that the question arises as to whether the respondent was making it excessively difficult for the applicants such that their EU rights will be deprived of their effectiveness. By virtue of the reference to “an extensive examination” having been conducted into the third and fourth applicants’ personal circumstances, the applicants’ apprehension of being subjected to myriad small queries is not unreasonable. In coming to this conclusion, I note the applicants’ submission that the respondent’s finding that the third and fourth applicants’ expenses for car maintenance was inconsistent with the medical evidence that he was unable to drive, did not appear to countenance that perhaps the fourth applicant could be the person in the family who drives the car.
81. I note that the respondent states in the decisions that the applicants can make a fresh application for a visa. The applicants’ apprehension is that any such application will not succeed if the test applied by the respondent in the present decisions is maintained in any future decision. I am satisfied that this is a reasonable apprehension on the part of the applicants.
82. That being said, as set out in Jia, the respondent is entitled to “proof of the need for material support”. Thus, I find no basis to impugn the respondent’s expectation as set out in the respective decisions that documentary evidence of the claim of dependency would be provided by the applicants.
83. Much of the criticism levelled at the respondent in the course of this application centred around the failure of the respondent to give advance warning to the applicants of perceived deficiencies or contradictions in the documents submitted with visa applications prior to the respondent reaching a decision on the respective appeals. Counsel for the applicant maintained that had the applicants been forewarned they would have been able to address the perceived deficiencies or contradictions.
84. Counsel for the respondent submits that it was incumbent on the applicants to put their best foot forward and to present such relevant facts and evidence as might be necessary to support their applications, including facts and evidence which would tend to prove dependency. Accordingly, the respondent cannot be criticised, in these proceedings, for the condition of the applicants’ own proofs, because the respondent was not willing accede to their application while in receipt of insufficient proof of dependency.
85. I agree with the respondent’s submissions in this regard. As stated in A.M.Y. v. Minister for Justice [2008] IEHC 306, “there is no onus on the Minister to make inquiries seeking to bolster an applicant’s claim; it is for the applicant to present the relevant facts”. However, the fact that the Court has upheld the respondent’s position in this regard is not sufficient to sustain the decision, given the frailties which the Court has identified earlier in this judgment.
86. In the course of the hearing, counsel for the applicants also made the case that the money transfers made by the first and second named applicants to Pakistan should have been weighed in the balance by the respondent as in and of themselves indicative of dependency, and that the respondent should then have gone on to see if other factors were present which combined with the money transfers indicated dependency for the purposes of the 2004 Directive. Counsel for the respondent disputes the applicants’ contention that there are two separate stages to the test which the respondent should have applied, namely an acknowledgment of the transfer of monies which then should have been followed by an analysis of the circumstances said to give rise to the dependency. Counsel contends that the test is not a two pronged test. Rather, it is whether the sum of money transferred is necessary for essential needs – “necessary” being a predicate of “a sum of money”. I am more inclined to agree with the respondent in this regard. In Reyes, the ECJ refers to “dependent status” as a “factual situation characterized by the fact that material support for [a] family member is provided by the Union citizen”. However, “in order to determine the existence of such dependence, the host Member State must assess whether, having regard to his financial and social conditions, [the family member] is not in a position to support himself.” (Emphasis added) Accordingly, this particular complaint, which, as I understand it, is that the respondent should have found that the amount of money actually transferred should have tipped the balance in the applicants’ favour even if there were deficiencies in other aspects of the applicants’ proofs, is not made out.
87. In this case, I have found that the respondent applied the wrong test to establish the third and fourth applicants’ dependency. I am satisfied that the wording used in the decisions was not a mere infelicity in language in the decisions, but rather that the decision-maker in fact applied the wrong test for the purpose of ascertaining whether dependency was established. Accordingly, the application of the incorrect test has infected the substantive finding that the third and fourth applicants have failed to qualify as beneficiaries of the 2004 Directive. This is sufficient to vitiate the decisions. Accordingly, I grant leave to seek judicial review, and, this being a telescoped application, I will grant certiorari of the two decisions dated 6th October, 2015, respectively.
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Taiwan’s Bioimaging Core Facility Boots Hi-Res Medical Image Technology
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Under the subsidy of the MOST, Bioimaging Core Facility integrated eight high-level optical imaging systems belonged to the National Cheng Kung University Medical College and National Cheng Kung University Hospital.
MOST Calls for Startups for CES 2020
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) is going to lead 80 startups to CES 2020, and hope to catch attentions from international by having its national pavilion...
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Through long-term support provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC)...
The high-level optical imaging systems cover the range of biomedical imaging research from molecular to individual. And based on special function of each imaging systems, there are five subprojects been organized: "Applied high-resolution and high-content imaging technology to biomedical research and drug development", "Cellular and tissue animal-level molecular imaging", "Application of imaging technology in translational medicine", "Fast dynamic analysis of fluorescent molecules", "Nano-grade imaging of cellular Super-resolution", and held by five principal investigators.
Dedicated to integrating resources, manpower, technology and knowledge in Bioimaging Core Facility, and provide users with advantages of the best using environment, professional consultation and outsourcing operation (JDM) and centralized administrative and financial support, as well as provide service level from molecular to individual range level. That brings the function and value of the instruments to maximization, and provide high-quality biomedical optical imaging instruments and services for biomedical researchers in Taiwan.
Because of the sophisticated high-level bioimaging instrument is a necessary implement for the pursuit of excellence in biomedical research. Which provides researchers to carry out qualitative and quantitative investigation of cells and molecularly-targeted in real, non-destructive, and complete in vivo.
Furthermore, the image shows the physiological and pathological phenomena of cells or molecules directly, and convert the complex processes such as gene expression and biosignal transmission into images. Also, with the help of specific molecular probes, it is possible to achieve the goal of early diagnosis by discover disease symptoms under the molecular level. Therefore, it is necessary to possess a variety of biomedical optical imaging instruments with a variety of specific and special features for pursuing excellent biomedical research.
But not every academic institution or industry has a complete high-level optical imaging system at present. By delivering outsourcing operation (JDM) and professional technical assistance, Bioimaging Core Facility provides high-quality technology and high-level biological imaging to researchers from clinical medical field, medical materials field, biotechnology industry field, etc. Successfully formed a cooperative relationship with industry, academic circle and research circle, and accelerate the development process and efficiency.
Currently, Bioimaging Core Facility has delivered services to units located in North, Central and South Taiwan, including universities, research institutes and science parks in Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. There is more than 38 academic, research and medical units are under service. And providing cutting-edge optical technology to promote the development for more than 13 biotechnology companies in the industry.
Among them, the development of emerging biotechnology technique includes fluorescence-based high-throughput screening system platform, super-resolution optical imaging platform, light regulatable gene expression platform, tissue FAXs system to quantify tissue immune fluorescence staining platform, etc. Provide neuroprotection medicine and antihistamine filter platform as core laboratories for early clinical trials and clinical drug development; molecular observation of cell endocytosis, high-resolution cytoskeletal protein distribution; correlation of light-operated intracellular calcium ion fluctuations cell cycle function and gene expression; differentiation and analysis after neural stem cell transplantation, development of ischemic stroke neuroprotective reagent, as the core laboratory to assist clinical trials and clinical molecular diagnosis..., applying the cutting-edge technology of Bioimaging Core Facilities to clinical diagnosis, clinical applications such as treatment and personalized medicine.
In the future, the establishment of a science service company is also the goal that Bioimaging Core Facility makes efforts to. In 2017 and 2018, under the support of MOST for NT$30 million grant at the "Biomedical Imaging Core Platform Project", this Bioimaging Core Facility has established complete fluorescence-based high-throughput screening system and tissue FAXs system. Which has provided services for rapid drug screening and tissue cell quantitative analysis to those main users, include National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) and numerous biotechnology companies.
With the novel drug development and testing of fluorescence-based high-throughput screening system has fast and heavy duty characteristics, as well as the digital pathological characteristics of the image and artificial intelligence integration of tissue FAXs system, Bioimaging Core Facility provide complete one-stop services including sample preparation consultation, outsourcing operation (JDM), image analysis and acquisition, and integrate professional optical imaging knowledge and technical support to establish a "science service company" to expand service energy.
Taiwan and France Collaborate to Bring Eiffel Tower Monitoring Technology to the Shezi
Covestro Pushing the Boundaries for a Sustainable and Digital World
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Season: Career2019/20202018/2019
Total 32 11 6 15 40.6% 2422 9 4 13 52 19 17.3% 38 52.6% 37 9 1 0
Home 18 10 2 6 59.3% 1424 7 2 9 32 12 21.9% 22 50.0% 22 8 1 0
Away 14 1 4 9 16.7% 998 2 2 4 20 7 10.0% 16 56.3% 15 1 0 0
BOH 2 0 1 1 16.7% 135 0 0 0 4 0 0 3 66.7% 1 0 0 0
DUK 3 2 0 1 66.7% 259 1 1 2 12 3 8.3% 9 55.6% 3 1 0 0
JAB 2 1 1 0 66.7% 158 1 1 2 2 2 50.0% 3 33.3% 5 0 0 0
KAR 3 1 1 1 44.4% 224 1 0 1 5 2 20.0% 1 0 7 1 0 0
LIB 2 0 1 1 16.7% 114 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 100.0% 1 1 0 0
MBL 2 1 0 1 50.0% 127 1 1 2 2 2 50.0% 4 75.0% 1 1 0 0
OLO 2 1 1 0 66.7% 162 2 0 2 5 3 40.0% 0 0 1 1 0 0
OVA 2 1 0 1 50.0% 179 1 0 1 3 1 33.3% 3 33.3% 9 0 0 0
PLZ 2 0 0 2 0 180 0 0 0 4 1 0 3 0 2 0 0 0
PRI 2 2 0 0 100.0% 176 0 0 0 3 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
SLA 2 0 0 2 0 115 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 66.7% 1 1 1 0
SLO 3 1 1 1 44.4% 245 1 0 1 7 2 14.3% 2 50.0% 4 0 0 0
SPA 2 0 0 2 0 103 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
TEP 2 1 0 1 50.0% 155 1 1 2 3 2 33.3% 3 66.7% 0 1 0 0
ZLN 1 0 0 1 0 90 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
P%
DC%
February 3 0 2 1 22.2% 269 1 1 2 83 59.0% 11 5 45.5% 0 0 0 0
March 4 1 2 1 41.7% 304 2 1 3 89 62.9% 13 7 53.8% 0 2 0 0
April 3 1 0 2 33.3% 270 1 0 1 73 64.4% 8 3 37.5% 1 2 0 0
May 4 3 0 1 75.0% 344 0 1 1 111 64.9% 6 3 50.0% 1 2 0 0
July 2 0 0 2 0 103 0 0 0 20 50.0% 5 2 40.0% 0 1 0 0
August 4 0 1 3 8.3% 153 1 0 1 44 68.2% 7 3 42.9% 0 0 0 0
September 4 3 0 1 75.0% 304 1 0 1 79 73.4% 17 5 29.4% 0 0 0 0
October 3 1 0 2 33.3% 266 0 0 0 68 69.1% 8 1 12.5% 0 0 0 0
November 3 1 1 1 44.4% 251 2 0 2 57 59.6% 10 4 40.0% 1 0 0 0
December 2 1 0 1 50.0% 158 1 1 2 35 77.1% 0 0 0 0 2 1 0
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Britain’s Ocean City
The project on Drake's Island offers a tremendous opportunity for the Island to become a flagship for the regeneration of Plymouth’s waterfront, at a time of economic austerity so being a powerful message that Plymouth is open for business.
The proposals combine a new luxury hotel, spa and restaurant with a visitor experience and ability for people to access the Island and to learn more about its layered history and role in Plymouth’s rich maritime past. An unusually rich palimpsest of Plymouth’s naval and war-time history lie waiting to be discovered on the island alongside an equally rich and diverse range of habitat and species. The plans have been developed in liaison with officers at Plymouth City Council, Natural England and English Heritage.
The historic buildings on the Island are in a parlous state of repair. The project would restore these with sensitivity and at once offer new uses which will ensure their continued care and repair into the future. Rotolok (Holdings) Ltd would be making a significant investment in the development that would have impact and implication on the viability, future, and maintenance of the Island. The plans also include dynamic contemporary architecture which will complement the historic fabric and offer a new life to mark a new tourism role for the Island – a new attraction that captures the imagination and which will add to Plymouth’s increasing network of fabulous waterfront destinations.
Britain's Ocean City
Copyright © 2017 Rotolok Ltd
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Water Wags
History of the Water Wags
A member of The Shankill Corinthian Sailing Club while in Scotland saw a boat which employed a boiler plate instead of the stones which had been the norm for ballast in small boats in the mid nineteenth century, and in 1878 he built a boat called ‘Cemiostomia’ using this new technology which was found to sail very efficiently to windward.
In response to this development, Thomas Middleton a member of the Club, decided that it would be a wonderful idea to build a number of punts of the same design and specification as this would test the skill of the yachtsmen and not that of their designers or boatbuilders. In 1886, he inserted a notice in the ‘Irish Times’ inviting interested people to contact him with a view to setting up a new Club in Kingstown ( now Dún Laoghaire ) Harbour dedicated to the idea of ‘One Design Racing’. There being no responses to this notice, he circulated flyers among the yachtsmen in the Royal Yacht Clubs in Kingstown ( Dún Laoghaire ).
The yachtsmen attended a meeting in October 1886 and agreed the specifications for the proposed new boat which was to be based on the Shankill boiler plate design. Thirteen of these new ‘One design’ boats were built in 1887 at a cost of £13.00 each.
The New Club, managed by a King, Queen, King’s Bishop, Queen’s Bishop, Knights and Rooks, was called’The Water Wags.’ Entry fees for races were paid to the Officer of the Day in his launch, and racing was started on the stroke of the Kingstown Town Hall clock. The entry ‘takings’ were then presented to the winner of the race.
All the boats were required to fly distinguishing racing flags as they started between the lamp-post to the right of the large crane on the Victoria Wharf, and the Hauling Buoy off the wharf, and raced around three permanent buoys moored within the harbour, The Melampus Buoy, The Navy Buoy and the Coal Harbour Mark. Within a few years, dozens Water Wags were racing in the Harbour.
In 1900 ‘The Water Wags’ adopted a modified design with a transom stern. However all the boats were to be of the same design and specification in compliance with Middleton’s original ‘One-Design’ idea.
The Water Wags still maintain most of the traditions of their earlier membersand sail these lovely old boats in Dún Laoghaire harbour every Wednesday evening from 6.30pm to 8.00 pm. from May to September.
The oldest boats racing today are about 97 years old and the newest boats were launched this season.
The Water Wags are easily recognised with their distinctive silver spruce planking, straight stem, raked transom.The Water Wag sailsconsist of a low centre of effort gaff rig, with the main boom extending the sail area aft of the hull. Today, the sails carry a number ( between 1 and 40 ) and no other distinguishing symbol.The spinnaker is a colourful flat triangular sail which is only to be flown on its long pole when the wind is astern.
‘By kind permission – Vincent Delaney 2003’
The Gannet
The ship on No 4 berth is the Lightvessel Gannet, which is owned by The Commissioners of Irish Lights.
This is the last of three automated Lightships, (officially referred to as lightfloats since they are automated), which were rotated between two lightfloat stations South Rock and Coningbeg while the third was a spare awaiting or undergoing refit.
The other two vessels were Kittiwake and Skua which have since been retired.
Gannet was last placed on the South Rock station; which is why the name of that station is painted on the vessel’s side. She has now been permanently withdrawn and has been replaced with a Superbuoy.
In the 1960s The Commissioners of Irish Lights had a fleet of 15 lightvessels. Each vessel had to be dry-docked, refitted and overhauled every two years so they were rotated between stations as refitting was due. This means a succession of different lightvessels would have been placed on each station.
You will find more details on the Commissioners of Irish Lights Service on their website.
South Rock Lightfloat
The South Rock Lightfloat was permanently withdrawn from station and replaced by a port-hand lateral superbuoy at 1130 today, 25 February 2009. A lightship was first established at the South Rock on the 1st April 1877, replacing the lighthouse which had been established in 1797. The lightship was automated and redesignated as a lightfloat, and the crew was withdrawn on 31 March 1982. The South Rock Lightfloat is the last lightfloat in the Service. You can read about the South Rock Lighthouse at the website.
RMS Leinster
10th October 2005 New plaque at the RMS Leinster Memorial site
Preparations in place for new plaque at the RMS Leinster Memorial site. This plaque is to be unveiled on Sunday 9 October at 12 noon
R.M.S. Leinster
The biggest sea tragedy in Irish history was commemorated in January 1996 when the then Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Eamon Gilmore TD, unveiled a special memorial in Dún Laoghaire Harbour. The memorial was to the 501 people who lost their lives in 1918, when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed just outside Dún Laoghaire Harbour.
On October 10, 1918 the Mailboat, “The RMS Leinster” sailed out of Dún Laoghaire with 685 people on board. 22 were post office workers sorting the mail, 70 were crew and the vast majority of the passengers were soldiers returning to the battlefields of World War I.
Twelve miles out from Dún Laoghaire Harbour, “The Leinster” was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-boat U-132. 501 people lost their lives and the 184 survivors were rescued by the British destroyer RMS Mallard and RMS Lively and taken ashore in Dún Laoghaire. This was the greatest loss ever of Irish life at sea. More Irish people lost their lives on the “Leinster” than on the Titanic or the Lusitania.
In the years leading up to 1996, local divers, Noel Brien, Brian Whelan, Billy Owens and Fred Hick began exploring the sunken wreck of “The Leinster”. They recovered the anchor of the vessel and Minister Gilmore unveiled it as a memorial to those who lost their lives.
An Article by Jack Higgins
See attachment of a series of pictures of all the postal workers who died and my grandfather. I believe it was made around 1945 when my grandfather retired from the Post Office. I have a photographic copy of the original which was made in February 1956. I believe it is unique as it was the only one made as a parting gift by the Post Office workers.
Also attached, (see below), is a copy of a reprint in the 1955 “Postal Worker” of my grandfather’s original first hand account of the sinking and his rescue. My grand father was named John Joseph Higgins and it was a tradition in our family that a John Joseph had a son John Anthony and that was my father’s name. I of course became a John Joseph but in the typical fashion of the times we were all known as “Jack” to our family and friends.
The description is very matter of fact and belies the obvious drama he endured. He recalls grabbing some cables and using them to haul himself out of the sorting cabin. I recall him telling me that the generators were still running so the wires were live and he was in water with the result that he was severely shocked. This contributed to an early onset of blindness shortly after he retired. I used to read the ‘Evening Herald’ to him each night so he could keep up with the news. I remember him telling me that the military lorry took him to Westland Row Station where his ‘bike was stored and he then cycled home to Glasnevin. My grandmother had heard the news on the radio and in a panic had all the children praying and she thought she saw a ghost when he walked in the door. His first words were “woman will you get off your knees and get me some tea I’m starving and frozen cold”
The related information above was supplied by the grandfather of Jack Higgins, Mr. John Joseph Higgins, the single survivor from the Post Office crew.
RMS Leinster Log
‘Leinster Log’ Page 1
Remembering those who died on the R.M.S. Leinster, Dún Laoghaire October 2002
Recalling a great Dún Laoghaire tragedy
In the dying days of World War 1, a German submarine torpedoed the Dún Laoghaire (then Kingstown) to Holyhead mail boat R.M.S. Leinster. 501 people died in the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea. The crew were drawn from the towns of Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead. Twenty-two postal sorters from Dublin Post Office worked on an onboard mail sorting room. The majority of passengers on the ship that day were military personnel, many going on or returning from leave. Among them were many Irish men and women. In October 2003 the 85th anniversary of the sinking will be marked by joint memorial services in Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead. The Dún Laoghaire service will be held on Friday 10 Octover 2003, the date of the 85th anniversary. Details are yet to be finalised. The Holyhead service will be held at St. Cybi’s Church at 14.30 hrs on Sunday 12 October 2003.
City of Dublin Steam Packet Company
The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company (CDSDCo) was founded in dublin 1822 by Charles Wye Williams. Originally called Charles Wye Williams and Co., the name was later changed to the CDSPCo. From 24 January 1839 the Post Office contracted the CDSPco to run a night mail service. The Admiralty were,
Leinster Log Page 2
contracted to operate a day service. On 1 August 1848 the first train to link with the mail packet ran from Euston, London to Holyhead. The Irish Mail was the world’s first named train. From 1 January 1850 the CDSPCo secured the contract to run both the day and night mail service. In 1859, to update their fleet, the company placed orders for the construction of four paddle steamers. They were named after Ireland’s provinces Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. They used the prefix R.M.S., which stood for Royal Mail Steamer. They operated from the Carlisle Pier at Dún Laoghaire and the Admiralty pier at Holyhead. The CDSPCo workshops were at Salt Island, Holyhead, where engineers carried out repairs to vessels and fabricated replacement parts. The mail ships carried passengers from the early days. Eventually passenger traffic became the company’s main source of revenue.
In 1895 the CDSPCo placed an order with Laird Brothers of Birkenhead for four identical twin-screw steamers. Like their predecessors, the ships were named after the four provinces of Ireland.
On the outbreak of war the Admiralty were legally allowed to take over any British or Irish merchant ships they required. In 1915 they requistioned the Connaught. On 5 May 1915 she left Holyhead for Southampton. For almost two years dhe was used to trasport troops from Southampton to France. On 3 March 1917 she was torpedoed in the English Channel returning from Le Harve. Three of her crew, a Welshman, an Irishman and a Channel Islander, were lost.
In the meantime the CDSPCo operated the Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead route with the three remaining ships. These had a number of close escapes from U-boats. But it seemed as if their luck would hold. Then on Thursday morning 10 October 1918 disaster struck.
Leinster Torpedoed
Leinster left the Carlisle Pier in Dún Laoghaire just before 9 a.m. On board were 77 crew, including Captain William Birch, a Dubliner who lived in Holyhead, twenty-two postal sorters from Dublin’s Post Office, three members of the Royal Navy, to man a twelve pounder gun that had been installed on the back of the ship, 180 civillian passengers and 489 military passengers. The military passengers came from the army, navy and air force. They came from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Canada, United States, New Zealand and Australia. There were also military and volunteer nurses among the crew.
Shortly before 10 a.m. the German submarine UB-123 fired a torpedo at the Leinster. It missed the ship passing across the bow. A secxond torpedo struck the ship on the port side in the vicinity of the ship’s mail room. Only one of the postal sorters survived the sinking. On orders from Captain Birch the ship turned in an attempt to return to Dún Laoghaire. Shortley afterwards a final torpedo struck the Leinster on the starboard side practically blowing it to pieces.
The survivors then faced a terrib;e struggle in the rough sea before rescue ships arrived. It was a struggle that many of them lost. The final toll was 501. It was the greatest loss of life in the Irish Sea. It was also one of the worst tradgedies ever to befall Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead.
Dún Laoghaire casualties from Leinster’s crew:
William Brennan, Seaman. Husband of Anne, 135 Lower Georges St.
Thomas Coady, Fireman. Husband of Mary, 13 Clarinda Park North.
Michael Harvey (24), Fireman. Son of Cornelius and Julia, 30 Tivoli Terrace East.
James Hickey (28), Greaser. Husband of Alice, 29 Tivoli Terrace East. His next door neighbour Michael Harvey was also a casualty.
Arthur Jeffries (27), Wireless Operator. Husband of Margaret and step-father to Charlie, Monastir Lodge, Glenageary.
Frank Kehoe (25), Seaman, Son of John and Catherine, 2 Eden Terrace
Henry Longmore (32), Seaman. Husband of Mary, 50 Convent Road.
John Loughlin (45), Able Seaman, Husband of Mary, 105 Patrick Street.
Bernard Murphy (23), Fireman. Son of Bernard and Margaret, 1 Adelaide Cottages.
Patrick O’Toole (22), Fireman. Son of James and Catherine, 1 Summerhill Avenue.
John William Smith (49) Greaser. Husband of Mary, 17 Desmond Avenue.
May they rest in peace.
First Wren to die on active service.
The Women’s Royal Naval Service, known as the Wrens, was first established in 1917. Nineteen year old Josephine Carr was one of the three Wrens from Cork who wre travelling together on the R.M.S. Leinster. On 10 October 1918 Josephine became the first Wren to die on active service when she was lost on the Leinster. Her body was never recovered.
Photo shows Leinster’s Assistant Purser Bill Sweeney (tall man on the left) with, it is believed, Leinster’s Purser Hugh Rowlands. Dubliner Sweeney survived the sinking and lived until 1979. Holyhead resident Hugh Rowlands was a teacher at Park School Holyhead, before leaving to follow the call of the sea. He was lost on the Leinster.
Anchor recovered.
One of the leinster’s anchors was recovered from the sea in the early 1990’s. In January 1995 it was placed on the seafront in Dún Laoghaire. It is located in front of the Carlisle Pier, from where Leinster set out on her final voyage.
The Leinster commemorations are being arranged by a small group of voluteers from Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead, working as part of the Holyhead-Dún Laoghaire Link. Information on the commemoratotion may ne obtained from:
56 Willow Vale,
Ballybrack,
Co. Dublin.
Phillip Lecane,
77 Windsor Drive,
Monkstown,
RMS Leinster Leaflet
The Fate of the Mailboat RMS Leinster 10 October 1918
The Mailboat Service During World War 1
The Mailboat Service during World War One continued to sail across the U-boat infested Irish Sea. Post Office officials worked the journey sorting the mail, ready for delivery upon arrival in Holyhead. Throughout the war the City of Dublin Steampacket Company had pleaded with the Admiralty, the Board of Trade and the Post Office to provide protection. Their petitions were ignored and the Company was forced either to continue or have its contract annulled. Due to the great speed of the mailboat vessels, they managed to avoid the U-boats almost up to the end of the war.
On 10 October 1918, just a month before the close of World War 1, the full horror of the conflict was brought home to the people of Kingstown. The mailboat R.M.S. Leinster with seven hundred passangers on board as well as seventy crew members and twenty-two post office officials was torpedoed by German U-boat 132. She was just twelve miles outside Kingstown when the first torpedo struct, hitting the post office room at the front of the ship. Several minutes later a second torpedo struck the engine room.
Within fifteen minutes she sank taking the lives of five hundred including the Captain. Captain Birch, whose excellent seamanship had successfully steered the Leinster to safety on three previous occasions.
Mail Sorting Room Struck by Torpedo
Mr JJ Higgins was the only one of twenty-two Post Office staff to survive. Later in an article Mr Higgins recounted his experience:
“In the Post Office on the vessel work was going on as usual. As it was the fourth year of alarms the staff had become somehow hardened to the danger of submarines especially in the rough sea….
….The torpedo exploded in the middle of the Post Office, destroying the floor and the stairs (the only means of escape), which fell down into the storerrom underneath and all the men working in the fore-part of the office were either killed instantly by the explosion or were engulfed by the falling structure and drowned by tons of water pouring in through the hole in the side of the ship……
…..When I pulled myself together I found that I was alone in the dark and judging by the noise of rushing water I thought that the ship was going straight to the bottom and that it was up to me to get out of the office before she went too far down”
Mr Higgins was later shocked to realise that he was the only one of the Post Office Staff to make it to safety. Apart from two, the rest were all married men and all were resident in Dublin. Three men had been assigned to replace three others at the last moment, due to illness.
For those passengers who were lucky enough to make their own way to a lifboat, survival was not certain. There was tremendous difficulty in the lifeboats getting away safly. The first lifeboat to be lowered was blown up with its passengers as the second torpedo hit the Leinster. Other lifboats were smashed against the ship, or capsized due to overcrowding. Although there seems to have been sufficient lifebelts for passengers, these were only put on when the explosion occured. Moreover as they were often put on incorrectly they fell off if the passengers fell into the sea.
One survivor told of nine persons clinging on the one plank. Two men were complaining of cramp and both became too weak to hold on, until eventually they disappeared under the water. Others began to disappear one by one, so that in the end only two were left. Survivors of the disaster were brought to Kingstwon. There were only two vacant beds in St. Michael’s hospital as 1918 saw the outbreak of a massive influenza epidemic. However space was quickly found and survivors were also brought to hospitals in Dublin. part of the railway station was converted into a morgue for the bodies. In the following days relatives of the victims poured into Kingstown to identify the bodies or search for news of loved ones. Throughout October newspapers were filled harrowing stories of survivors, of their own fortunate escape and how they watched their fellow travellers meet their death. Lists of the dead, missing and survivors were published daily.
Relief Fund
In the aftermath of the disaster the Lord Mayor of Dublin established a relief fund for the relatives of the victims. By 26 October, just sixteen days after the disaster, the Mansion House Relief Fund had raised IR118,675. 4s. 11d. Donations had been made by individuals and companies such as Guiness, Bewleys and the City of Dublin Steampacket Company itself.
An inquiry into the disaster was called for, however it was refused by the authorities. Only two inquests into victims’ deaths were held. Following legal representation an inquest was held in Kingstown on the death of Ms Georgina O’Brien of London. Speaking at the inquest Mr E Watson, Managing Director od the City of Dublin Steampacket Company, said the Post Office had changed the time of the sailings from night to day. He said that no lives would have been saved only for the change of schedule as the risk of travelling at night was ninety percent more dangerous than travelling during the day. He slao stated that he had been requesting protection from 15 January 1915 without success. The jury returned a verdict of death by drowning, but stated that the Admiralty should bear some of the blame as they had been negligent in not providing an escort.
The Fate of U-Boat 132
It emerged after the War that U-boat 132 never did return home, but was lost by striking a mine in the North Sea on the way back.
This leaflet is dedicated to the memory of the Post Office Workers who died on the R/M.S. Leinster on 10 October 1918:
Richard Patterson, Superintendent in charge, PP Murphy, J Attwooll, J Blake, JA Warbrook, JH Bradley, J Dolan, P Forbes, PP Daly, M Brophy, M Hogan, T Bolster, W Maxwell, AT Mac Donnell, J Dewar, CJ Archer, J Robinson, WH Wakefield, WJ Parker, A Smith, J Ledwidge.
Published by Dún Laoghaire harbour, Rathdown Heritage Society, a FAS Community Response Training Programme, sponsored by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
Bay Shipwrecks
Bay Shipwrecks remembered
IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE WHO SIT SNUGLY IN BERTH BEHIND DUN LAOGHAIRE’S SAFE HARBOUR WALLS, YOU SHOULD SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THOSE WHO PERISHED 200 YEARS AGO.
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council organised a commemoration ceremony at the Martello Tower in Seapoint on November 19 last to mark the 200th anniversary of the loss of 400 lives when the Prince of Wales and Rochdale ran aground in severe weather at Seapoint and Blackrock respectively.
The wreckage was strewn along the shore from Ringsend to Dalkey and many of those who died were buried in the graveyards at Carrickbrennan in Monkstown and at Merrion.
The tragedy led to a petition in 1808 calling for an asylum harbour in Dublin Bay which ultimately led to the construction of Dun Laoghaire Harbour a few years later.
Above: A contemporary drawing by Brocas showing the wreck of the Rochdale under Seapoint’s Martello tower. Even given some artistic license, the location is probably quite accurate, as this is where an unpowered vessel would have been thrown up during an easterly gale. The shoreline has been very much altered here but the rocks were located on the level platform where the current lifeguard hut/toilets/ changing area is now.
The ‘Prince of Wales’ struck the granite outcrop to the west of Seapoint Station, most likely on the east/north-eastern face (given the easterly storm) either below or to the east of the little brick tea house seen from the DART. This stretch of rocky coastline is one of the few in the county that has not been quarried, and the jagged granite foreshore seen today is probably that which tore the bottom out of the ‘Prince of Wales’.
As the ceremony concluded, a rainbow appeared, as if to mark the spot of the tragedy.
A Double Distaster
Weston St. John Joyce, writing in 1920, recounted the double disaster:
“On the 18th November, two transport vessels, The Prince of Wales and The Rochdale, sailed in the company of some others from the Pigeonhouse harbour with volunteers for foreign service drawn from Irish militia regiments. A snowstorm set in soon after their departure, accompanied by a violent easterly gale, and on the following morning they were observed labouring in the heavy sea outside the Bay to the southward, endeavouring, as it was believed, to return to the harbour. As the day advanced the snow fell so thickly that it was impossible for them to see their way, while the sea was so violent that they could not come to anchor. After a long and futile struggle, The Prince of Wales was driven onto the rocks behind Sir John Lees’ residence, Blackrock House. The long boat was launched, and Captain Jones, the crew, two soldiers and the steward’s wife and child jumped into it and rowed off as speedily as possible. In the darkness of the night they seem to have rowed for some distance along the shore, of the proximity of which they were ignorant, until one of the sailors, falling overboard, found that he was in shallow water. Upon this the whole party walked ashore and made their way to Blackrock, where they found shelter. Extraordinary to relate they made no effort whatsoever to rescue the passengers on board (about 120 in number), who were left to their fate and perished without exception.
The fate of The Rochdale was even worse. On the day after her departure she was observed from Blackrock, labouring heavily in the offing, burning blue lights and firing guns as signals of distress, but the weather was such that no succour could be afforded. She threw out several anchors, but they dragged and snapped their cables, and she then drove with bare poles before the storm. Driven gradually towards the shore in the direction of Sandy cove, she swept in the darkness past the old pier at Dunleary, and struck on the rocks under the Martello Tower at Seapoint, half a mile from where The Prince of Wales struck. Of the troops on board, their families, and the ship’s officers and crew (some 265 in all), not one escaped, and their mutilated bodies were found in great numbers next morning strewn along the shore”.
SHIPWRECKS of Dún Laoghaire Harbour and Dublin Bay
A Short History compiled by Marc Zimmermann
Remembering lives lost through the centuries
1760: first (single) Dún Laoghaire pier built which unfortunately silted up quickly
1780: American pirate The Black Prince captures two mail ships and holds them for ransom
1797-1800: 58 vessels were recorded as wrecked, stranded or damaged in Dublin Bay entry into the Liffey became increasingly difficult ships had to wait days before they could berth amount of shipwrecks became unacceptable: up to 100 boats and ships per year wrecked off the coast of Blackrock and Monkstown with thousands of lives lost
1817-1831: building of Dún Laoghaire’s current piers
Earl of Whitworth insists that entrance to the harbour be widened to accommodate the Admiral’s fleet widening allowed more silt to be washed in and made it impossible for larger ships to enter safely as planned
1960s: upgrade of lighthouses and lightships
ships’ crews of the old days were usually unable to swim
lifesaving equipment was rare and rudimentary at best (e.g. canvas vests filled with cork blocks)
cold water of the Irish Sea soon leads to hypothermia
lifeboat systems were introduced rather late around the world
1803: Dún Laoghaire operates first lifeboat system in Europe
Shipwrecks:
RMS Leinster [ 1918 ]
served as Kingstown – Holyhead mail boat during WWI
carrying passengers and mail between Ireland and Wales
Irish Sea saw much enemy U-boat activity in 1918
RMS Leinster was attacked by German submarine UB 123 on 10 Oct. 1918 off the Kish Bank
carrying over 700 passengers (ca. 300 of which soldiers)
was torpedoed twice, just three minutes apart
only 256 passengers rescued, while almost 500 drowned
one of Dún Laoghaire’s and Ireland’s greatest tragedies
model, documents and artefacts are on display in
Dún Laoghaire’s Maritime Museum (to be reopened) wreck lies at 25-33 m depth, has badly deteriorated
was bought for £100 by a diver
UB 124 [ 1918 ]
UBIII type submarine (U-boat)
classified as coastal torpedo attack boat
55 m long, max. dive depth 75 m
went on one patrol only: 1-20 July 1918
19 July: UB 124 torpedoes and sinks British troop ship Justicia en route from Belfast to New York
20 July: UB 124 hit in retaliation by depth charges from three destroyers
sub was forced to resurface, then abandoned by its crew and scuttled (sunk) off Dublin
2 crew dead, 32 crew taken prisoners of war
RNLI Lifeboat [ 1895 ]
a ship was wrecked in Dublin Bay during heavy storm
RNLI lifeboat with 15 crew rowed out to the rescue from east pier station house boat overturned and all 15 men perished
today granite plaque memorial near station house
Gainsboro [ 1838 ]
the brig ran aground and broke up cargo was washed ashore and had to be protected by the police from looters
(not an uncommon occurrence)
Unknown Vessel [ 1800s ]
mystery wreckage found off Muglins Island, Dalkey but no records of any losses in this location exist
Aid [ 1803 ]
sailing vessel, sunk south of Dalkey Island
cargo of marble statues lost
sight of bodies washed ashore was not uncommon
was regularly washed ashore and often had to be protected from plundering by: Police Constables, Custom & Excise Officers, Coastguards
Salvage:
Lost Cargo
included perishables such as:
potatoes, vegetables, fruit, malt
fish, salt, furniture but also valuables worth salvaging:
casks of wine, brandy and gin
coal, iron ingots, limestone
marble statues, guns, cannons
Diving Bells
ancient diving device (possibly used BC)
pressurised underwater work environment
work radius fairly restricted
surface dependent
sometimes underwater base for divers
surviving example at Rogerson’s Quay
used for harbour works
Hard-Hat Suits
most popular: Mark V helmet
surface air-supply from boat or shore through
bellows (later steam pumps) and hoses
slow and strenuous work but
more flexible than diving bells
successfully used all over the world until today
SCUBA = self contained underwater breathing apparatus
discover wrecks through recreational diving
a wealth of wrecks and artefacts to be investigated
unique opportunity to explore maritime history first hand
visibility can be rather poor
water temperatures fairly low (dry-suit recommended)
Dive responsibly!
Basic rules of Wreck Diving
A torch is essential (preferably 2nd for back-up)
Avoid swim-throughs if unknown/restricted/silted up
Beware of currents and tides
Dive around low water slack (min. depth and currents)
Don’t dive unknown wrecks
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles
Edward J. Bourke: Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast
Richard & Bridget Larn: Shipwreck Index of Ireland
www.irishwrecksonline.net
Queries & Comments
For comments or queries regarding the above you can contact the author at:
heritage_events@yahoo.com
Hobblers
Although hobbling is described in the Oxford Dictionary as “unlicensed pilotage” the hobblers of the East Coast were only involved in tying up the ships at their moorings in Dublin and other Ports. However, on occasions they did pilot some ships into harbour. Many of the hobblers got the approximate time of arrival of the ships from Lloyds Gazette, while others went out in the bay in the hope of sighting a ship.
On the morning of the 6th December 1934 the people of Dún Laoghaire and Ringsend were shocked to learn of the drowning of three young Dún Laoghaire hobblers in Dublin Bay on the previous evening. The three young men were the brothers Richard (18) and Henry (20 Shortall and their companion John Hughes. A fourth member of the crew owes his life to the fact that he remained behind in Dublin Port to collect money owed to them for piloting and mooring a ship at the North Wall. He was Gareth Hughes, a brother of John.
The Shortall brothers came from a family of twelve and resided in Clarence Street. They were on their way home when their skiff ran into an East/South-East wind. It was a situation they had encountered on many previous occasions and they were strong, able and experienced boatmen. Their boat, ‘The Jealous of Me’, was last seen by the lighthouse men as it sailed past the Poolbeg at dusk. What went wrong on that fateful night will never be known. On the morning of the 6th of December it was found washed ashore at the Irishtown Gate at Ringsend Park. The local people realised that a terrible disaster had occurred. A few days later the bodies of the Shortall brothers were recovered from the sea and later laid to rest in Dean’s Grange Cemetery. Unfortunately, the body of John Hughes was never found.
Only six years previous to this accident another triple drowning took place on the 22nd February 1928 near the Baily Lighthouse. Three hobblers from Monkstown and Dún Laoghaire lost their lives when their boat was cut in two by the Dutch Steamer “Hesbaye”. They were Thomas Miller (60) and Richard Brennan (19) of Barrett Street and James Pluck of Lower George’s Street. The accident occurred between 4.30am and 5am. It was a very dark night and the hobblers had no light on their skiff. Captain Celis of the “Hesbaye”, a mariner of 42 years experience, said that he had heard cries of men at the side of his ship and had immediately launched the longboat, meanwhile, more Dún Laoghaire hobblers arrived on the scene in a boat owned by Patrick Shortall and joined in the search but all in vain. When the search proved fruitless Shortall and his crew sailed to another steamer at anchor off Dún Laoghaire and its crew informed him that they had sighted wreckage inside the Burford Bank. He made a search of the area and found an oar and a seat, which he recognized as belonging to Thomas Miller’s boat. Two other local men were lost at sea while hobbling; their names were Harry Shortall and “Rover” Ward, and they were drowned on 23rd January 1916; the third member of the crew; Richard Shortall, was saved. Harry Shortall was an uncle of the two young boys drowned in 1934; his body was never recovered.
One wonders why these brave men ventured out to sea in their open skiffs, often in adverse weather conditions and at great risk to their lives. But as Mrs. Kavanagh (a sister of the Shortall brothers) put it “sure it was the only living they had”. There was also a certain amount of rivalry among the hobblers and it was often a question of who got there first. Consequently, some of them would spend a day and a night at sea in the hope of locating a ship. It was not unknown for them to sail out as far as Bray. Depending on the size of the ship the hobblers were paid anything from £1.50 up to £5.00. When a ship was located a hook was cast over its side from a standing position. This was hazardous and any mistake could mean loss of life. Moreover most of the hobblers were non-swimmers and seldom carried life-saving equipment.
The boats carried four oars and a lugsail and was known as a two-ended open hobbling skiff. The modern racing skiff we see in Dún Laoghaire and Bullock Harbours today are a development of the latter.
Hobbling is an old occupation and in all probability goes back to the early decades of the 19th Century when Hutchinson was made Harbour Master of the New Royal Harbour of Kingstown. By the 1940’s it had died out as an occupation. This short article was written to the memory of those brave hobblers who lost their lives at sea. May they rest in peace.
V. Quilter C.C.
Beyond the Seas 1791-1853
Convict Ships
Following the American War of Independence, a new destination was sought for the transportation of convicts from Britain and Ireland ‘beyond the seas’. On 13 May 1787, the first fleet bound for Sydney Cove with a complement of convicts, sailed from Portsmouth in England. Its arrival on 26 January 1788 marks the foundation of the colony of New South Wales. The first ship to sail directly from Ireland carrying convicts under sentence of transportation was the Queen, which arrived in Port Jackson on 26 September 1791.
Transportation from Ireland to Australia effectively came to an end in 1853. The last ship to carry convicts directly from Ireland to Australia was the Phoebe Dunbar, which sailed from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) near Dublin and arrived in Western Australia on 30 August 1853. During the 62 years of transportation from Ireland to Australia, some 30,000 men and 9,000 women were sent as convicts to Australia for a minimum period of seven years – many more followed their loved ones as free settlers to a new life in the colony.
Additional on-line resources:
The article Sources in the National Archives for research into the transportation of Irish convicts to Australia (1791-1853) by Rena Lohan
The online transportation records database
Convicts to Australia – A Guide to researching your convict ancestors
Phoebe Dunbar
The Essex 1824-1837
The Essex Hulk
The Essex in Ireland 1824 – 1837
The Essex had been a distinguished American 32 gun frigate built in Salem, Massachusetts in 1799 for the then young American navy. After fighting against the British in the Pacific, and also against British whalers there, it was captured in 1814 off Valparaiso in Chile and towed to Plymouth in England where it lay until being moved to Dún Laoghaire in 1824 as a convict hulk where she remained until 1837. Almost 300 prisoners were held on the Essex while awaiting transportation to Australia.
During the resurfacing work on the East Pier an anchor was uncovered under the old Pier surface, close to the place where the prison hulk Essex was moored in the Harbour from 1824 to 1837. The Essex lay about 50 yards off the East Pier and 100 yards from the shore opposite what is now the National Yacht Club. The anchor that was found had been adapted in a way that would suggest it was used for a permanent mooring.
Donal O’Sullivan, Hon. Secretary of Dublin Bay Sailing Club has kindly provided Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company with two lectures about the USS Essex in Ireland.
The Convict Hulk Essex
The USS Essex in Ireland: A Dún Laoghaire Connection with a Forgotten War
Slideshow for the USS Essex in Ireland: A Dún Laoghaire Connection with a Forgotten War
Harbour History
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Home/ASIA/Druzhba III: A positive trajectory in Pak-Russia bilateral relations
ASIAOPINIONPOLITICS
Druzhba III: A positive trajectory in Pak-Russia bilateral relations
Sadia Kazmi October 31, 2018
Senior military officials and Defence Attaché of Pakistan and Russia, jointly working together at the communications tent at a Nigerian Air Force Base. (Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
By Sadia Kazmi
October 21 witnesses the beginning of joint Anti-Terror Military Training Exercise between Russia and Pakistan namely Druzhba, a Slavic word translated into “Friendship”. This 15-day training is third in the series of anti-terror exercises between the two countries since 2016. Lasting till November 4, the location is the National Counter Terrorism Center in Pabbi, a Tehsil of Khyber Pakhtoonkhuwa, Nowshera District at the altitude of 1.4 thousand meters above sea level. It is believed that the exercises aim at the destruction of terrorists being termed as conditional fighters. These exercises are part of Pak-Russia bilateral training cooperation. This trend of joint exercises began after the two countries inked a defence agreement regarding the training of Pakistani troops in Russia. The “friendship” drills are indicative of the fact that the relations between the two countries have transcended beyond the Cold War frictional phase. Turn in the relations owes a to a number of factors specifically the deteriorating relations between the US and Pakistan, which caused Pakistan to move further closer to China and explore an option in Russia too.
While China has always remained Pakistan’s most time tested friend covering all spheres of bilateral relations: security, defence, economic, as well as diplomatic sectors, Russia is fast becoming a dependable country for Pakistan in the economic and defence sectors. Pakistan is specifically keen to build defence ties with Russia wherein the latter has over the past three years provided four Mi-35M combat and cargo helicopters to Pakistan. Last year also marked the success of 70 year diplomatic ties between the two states. Today the converging geopolitical and geostrategic interests are a driving force in bringing the two closer. Another reason for the thaw in relations is the growing strategic India-US partnership and converging interests regarding the peace process in Afghanistan.
Traditionally, Russia has enjoyed strong relations with India but on the heels of its diminishing strategic trade ties, opening came for Pak-Russia strategic relations in 2014 when Defence Cooperation Agreement was signed during the visit of the Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. The agreement provided the exchange of information on politico-military issues; cooperation for promoting international security; intensification of counter terrorism and arms control activities; strengthening collaboration in various military fields, including education, medicine, history, topography, hydrography, culture; and sharing experiences in peacekeeping operations. Next year in 2015 Russia lifted self-imposed embargo on Pakistan and agreed to sell Mi-35M attack helicopters to Pakistan, and J-F 17 Thunder fighter planes. Pakistan has also shown interest in buying S-400 missile defense system. In addition, both states are also negotiating a deal on Su-35 and Su-37 fighter jets. Probable defence cooperation for procurement of sophisticated arms by Pakistan including T90 Tanks, air defence systems and fighter planes is also under pipeline. If these proposals are materialized, there is a hope that acquisition of military gear from Russia will open up new military avenues between the two states. Last year in February, Russian navy’s largest anti-submarine warfare ship Severomorsk also arrived in Pakistan to take part in the Aman 2017 international naval exercises. In the wake of common views on countering threat of terrorism and extremism in the region both countries are specifically keen to enhance military to military relations and have now been conducting regular military exercises codenamed “Druzhba” for last three consecutive years.
The starting point for the joint military drills came about in the wake of terrorist activities by a branch of Islamic State (IS) known as Khorasan Province (ISK-P) in 2016. It was found to be operating from bases along the border districts of Afghanistan. Hence it became the much needed imperative for both Russia and Pakistan to collectively take measures against the common threat of ISK-P. Not only Pakistan has been facing terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan on its western border, but Russia also feels threatened with the volatile situation in Afghanistan and hence is especially interested in contributing to the Afghan Peace Process. Middle Eastern based terrorist groups are able to exploit the situation in Afghanistan, carrying out their terrorist activities in the adjacent countries including Central Asia, making Russia feel increasingly wary of its regional security interests. Hence Afghanistan offers a lot of common grounds for both Russia and Pakistan where they could join hands for mutual as well as larger regional and global interests.
Similarly the SCO is another platform through which both states can improve bi-lateral security and strategic ties, with special focus on terrorism, drug-trafficking and cyber security.According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, linking the SCO with the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could “build the foundation for a larger Eurasian partnership.” In addition to this, Russia being friends both with India and Pakistan can employ the platform of the SCO to act as a mediator between the two. Pakistan is also interested in signing a free trade agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). There is a huge untapped potential for bilateral cooperation in all spheres between Russia and Pakistan. The countries have a shared interest in collectively addressing some of these important challenges, including countering terrorism, drug trade and bringing stability in Afghanistan.
Although Pakistan-Russia strategic, military, and defence relations are in the nascent stage, in the wake of changing geopolitical environment, both countries can work out their past for greater cooperation, collaboration, security and peace. Specifically in this context, the joint military drills and Druzhba exercises hold great significance for both Pakistan and Moscow in enhancing cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, hostage liberation, and search and rescue operations.
From Gujral doctrine to Modi doctrine
Isolationism is not the answer
Al-Qaida is stronger today than it was on 9/11
Sadia Kazmi
Sadia Kazmi works as a Senior Research Associate at the Strategic Vision Institute in Islamabad. She is a PhD candidate at the National Defense University
The U.S.-India nuclear deal: Tale of ten years
CPEC and cultural convergence
Javier Mancuello Benitez: South America’s contraband top dog
The US economy likely just entered its longest ever expansion – here’s who’s benefiting in 3 charts
Political Science 101: Prosperity does lead to peace
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Francis Xavier Kroot (1854-1900)
Msgr. Francis Xavier Kroot, a Mill Hill Missionary and the Founder of the Fatima Sisters. He was outstanding in priestly piety, and robust pastoral and missionary zeal. Born on 7 Dec. 1854 at Zwolle, Holland, young Francis, felt a call to the missionary life and joined the Mill Hill Missionary Society, London, wherein his older brother Anthony Kroot was already studying. He was ordained on 9 June 1878.
Landed in India at the age of 24, he served as a pastor with outstanding zeal at Madras, Poonamallee, Bellary, Kurnool and Nellore. Moved by the plight of the poor women and children, he founded an Indian congregation of Fatima Sisters. Later he served as Seminary Rector at Nellore and in 1897 he was made the Chaplain of Fort St. George, Madras, and the Editor of Catholic Watchman (currently, The New Leader). Due to his weak health, he was forced to go to Europe for treatment, accompanied by his brother, Fr Anthony Kroot. But on the way, he was admitted at the St. Mary of the Angels' Hospital, at Hyeres, France, where he died on 5 January 1900. In June 1988, his mortal remains were brought to Pune and interred at Fatima Sisters Generalate chapel, in 1988. May God soon grant him the honours of the altar.
Servant of God
Francis Xavier Kroot
A Visionary
A missionary
of the Sisters of Our Lady of Fatima
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The film opens in war torn Sri Lanka with rebel soldiers walking through an area infected with potential enemies everywhere. An IUD explodes killing and maiming soldiers. There is gunfire, which frequently erupts. Among the tattered troops walking through this dangerous war zone is a woman without a helmet holding only a pad and pen. This is Marie Colvin, a war correspondent from England. Another explosive device goes off causing this woman to be injured and to lose an eye. For the rest of the film, we see her with a patch over one eye.
This amazing story is a well-documented true account with a screenplay by Arash Amel who we met at the conclusion of the screening of this movie. This film, while an apparently true representation of this amazing woman, in our opinion, was somewhat disjointed. While we jump around from place to place, we did learn about her need to send back the story, the true story, behind the wars that she covered. This included a face-to-face interview with Muammar Gaddafi, as well as heart-wrenching interviews with the victims of war including refugees who were mostly women and children. We also see the impact on Marie Colvin herself, which included alcohol, affairs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. In one dramatic moment in very arduous circumstances, we see this war correspondent switch from print reporting to making a live broadcast back to CNN in the U.S., during which we get a glimpse of her desire to make a difference in the tragic and dangerous events in which she embedded herself. Perhaps what was missing however, was that we never came to understand how she got to be the way she was and where her motivation came from.
The movie was mostly filmed in Jordan although it was representing the wars in Syria and Iraq. Rosamund Pike deserves kudos for her depiction of the real-life Marie Colvin. There were also good supporting performances by Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, and Stanley Tucci. Also, director Matthew Heineman deserves praise as does the behind the scenes staff, who created the terrible war environment and the depiction of many injured and frightened people struggling through it. (2018)
Category: 3 Stars, Drama, War | Tags: 2018, A Private War, Arash Amel, Iraq, Jamie Dornan, Jordan, Marie Colvin, Matthew Heinman, Muammar Gaddafi, PTSD, Rosamund Pike, Sri Lanka, Stanley Tucci, Syria, Tom Hollander, war, war correspondent Comment »
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Tue, 29 October 2013
New Blu-rays from John Wayne and Orson Welles! It's like the best podcast of 1949! Plus, the cult comedy The Big Bus comes to DVD!
Digigods Podcast, 10/29/13 (MP3) -- 29.2 MB
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In this episode, the Gods discuss:
Across the Bridge (DVD)
Ain't In it For My Health - A Film About Levon Helm (Blu-ray)
Ain't In it For My Health - A Film About Levon Helm (DVD)
Ambush at Cimarron Pass (Blu-ray)
An American Hippie in Israel (Blu-ray/DVD)
The Americano (Blu-ray)
The Beast with Five Fingers (DVD-R)
The Best of Jack Hanna (DVD)
The Big Bus (DVD-R)
The Big Combo (Blu-ray)
Call Me Kuchu (DVD)
Chasing Ice (Blu-ray)
Climbing High (DVD)
Dear Mr. Prohack (The Rank Collection) (DVD)
Deep Purple: Perfect Strangers (DVD)
Family Tree: The Complete First Season (DVD)
Far Out isn't Far Enough (DVD)
A Fierce Green Fire (DVD)
The Fighting Kentuckian (Blu-ray)
The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert (DVD)
Guest Wife (Blu-ray)
Hanging for Django (Blu-ray)
High Plains Drifter - 40th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)
Hunted (The Rank Collection) (DVD)
Idle Hands (Blu-ray)
In a Town this Size (DVD)
The JFK Collection (DVD)
Jumper 3D (Blu-ray 3D)
Kindred: The Embraced - The Complete Series (DVD)
La Notte (Blu-ray)
The Lady Vanishes (The Rank Collection) (DVD)
The Mentalist - The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)
Morrissey 25 Live (Blu-ray)
National Parks Exploration Series: Death Valley (Blu-ray)
Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comic (Blu-ray)
Nikita: The Complete Third Season (Blu-ray)
No Time for Comedy (DVD-R)
Once a Jolly Swagman (DVD)
Playing for Time (Blu-ray)
Plunder Road (Blu-ray)
Shack Out on 101 (Blu-ray)
Shrek the Musical (Blu-ray/DVD)
The Stranger (Blu-ray)
The Stranger (DVD)
Superheroes: A Never-ending Battle (DVD)
Superheroes: A Never-ending Battle (Blu-ray)
Tabu (DVD)
There Goes the Bride (The Rank Collection) (DVD)
Vivacious Lady (DVD-R)
WWII 3-Film Collection (DVD)
Please also visit CineGods.com.
Direct download: 2013_-_10_29_IGN_DigiGods.mp3
Category:TV & Film -- posted at: 2:01pm EDT
This week…HALLOWEEN! Also, comedies featuring Sandra Bullock and Vince Vaughn, plus, Pacific Rim, listener mail and the difference between crumb cake and coffee cake!
4 Dead Girls: The Soul Taker (DVD)
Abducted (DVD)
Aberration (DVD)
Adam Chaplin: Violent Avenger (DVD)
All Hallow's Eve (DVD)
All Night Horror Marathon (What's the Matter with Helen?, The Godsend, The Vagrant, The Outing) (DVD)
Before Midnight (Blu-ray)
Bloody Homecoming (DVD)
The Conjuring (Blu-ray/DVD)
Corruption (Blu-ray/DVD)
Creepshow 2 (Blu-ray)
Dead Before Dawn (Blu-ray)
Dracula: The Dark Prince (DVD)
Duress (DVD)
Eyes of the Woods (DVD)
Eyes Without a Face (Blu-ray)
Frankenstein's Army (Blu-ray)
Fright Night 2: New Blood (Blu-ray)
The Halloween Stories Collection, Vol. 2 (DVD)
The Heat (Blu-ray)
The Hitch-Hiker (Blu-ray)
The Hitch-Hiker (DVD)
Horror Stories (DVD)
I Married a Witch (Blu-ray)
The Internship (Blu-ray/DVD)
John Cassavetes: Five Films - 5 BD Disc Edition (Shadows, Faces, Opening Night, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie) (Blu-ray)
Jug Face (DVD)
Jug Face (Blu-ray)
Just Like a Woman (Blu-ray)
The Little Mermaid Diamond Edition (Blu-ray/DVD)
Maniac (Blu-ray)
A Monsterous Holiday (DVD)
Monsters University (Blu-ray 3D/DVD)
Monsters vs Aliens: Cloning Around (DVD)
Murder University (DVD)
Night Tide (Blu-ray)
Night Tide (DVD)
Nothing Left to Fear (Blu-ray/DVD)
Only God Forgives (Blu-ray)
Pacific Rim (Blu-ray 3D/DVD)
Pacific Rim (Blu-ray/DVD)
The Purge (Blu-ray/DVD)
R.I.P.D. (Blu-ray/DVD)
Red Clover (DVD)
Resolution (Blu-ray)
Self Storage (DVD)
Shiver (DVD)
Snuff (Blu-ray)
Stalker (DVD)
Static 3D (Blu-ray 3D)
Tam Lin aka The Devil's Widow (Blu-ray)
The Uninvited (Blu-ray)
Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway (Blu-ray)
Zombie Hunter (Blu-ray)
Category:TV & Film -- posted at: 11:56am EDT
The Gods discuss new seasons of Family Guy and Modern Family. Plus, new Blu-rays featuring Julia Roberts, Kevin Hart and Charlie Sheen.
3 Films By Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman (Stromboli, Europe '51, Journey to Italy) (Blu-ray)
Aliyah (DVD)
American Horror Story: Asylum (Blu-ray)
Anger Management: Volume Two (Blu-ray)
Anything is Possible (DVD)
The Beverly Hillbillies - The Official Fourth Season (DVD)
Bones - Season 8 (Blu-ray)
Code Name Ruby (DVD)
The Colony (Blu-ray)
Dark Girls (DVD)
Defiance: Season 1 (Blu-ray)
Drug War (Blu-ray)
The East (Blu-ray)
Embrace of the Vampire (Blu-ray/DVD)
Embrace of the Vampire (Blu-ray)
Family Guy - Volume 11 - Season 12 (DVD)
Gentle Ben: Season One (DVD)
Gimme the Loot (DVD)
Glee Season Four (Blu-ray)
Hart of Dixie - The Complete Second Season (DVD)
He's Way More Famous than You (DVD)
A Hijacking (Blu-ray)
How I Met Your Mother - Season 8 (DVD)
Ingenious (DVD)
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (Blu-ray/DVD)
Laurence Anyways (Blu-ray)
Modern Family - Season Four (Blu-ray)
The Neighbors: Season One (DVD)
New Girl Season 2 (DVD)
Nichols: The Complete Series (DVD-R)
Notting Hill (Blu-ray)
Petticoat Junction - The Official Third Season (DVD)
Plush (DVD)
Psych: The Complete Seventh Season (DVD)
Robot Chicken: Season Six (Blu-ray)
The Thick of It - Seasons 1-4 (DVD)
White Collar - Season 4 (DVD)
With Love... From the Age of Reason (DVD)
Category:TV & Film -- posted at: 12:12pm EDT
Tue, 8 October 2013
New Blu-rays featuring Joss Whedon, Bradley Cooper and Jonah Hill. Plus, Wade sits down with Mama's Family and Carol Burnett Show legend, Vicki Lawrence!
1984 Detroit Tigers World Series Collector's Edition (DVD)
2000 Yankees World Series Collector's Edition (DVD)
After Earth (Blu-ray/DVD)
And Then There Were None (Blu-ray)
And Then There Were None (DVD)
The Big Parade (Blu-ray)
Blood (Blu-ray)
Bryan Ferry - Live in Lyon (Blu-ray)
Caro Emerald in Concert (Blu-ray)
Chucky: The Complete Collection - Limited Edition (Blu-ray/DVD)
The Croods (Blu-ray)
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History Of Friday The 13th (Blu-ray/DVD)
Curse of Chucky (Blu-ray/DVD)
Detroit Tigers: Hometown Heroics (DVD)
Europa Report (Blu-ray)
The Exorcist 40th Anniversary Extended Director's Cut Blu-ray (Blu-ray)
Fantastic Voyage (Fox Studio Classics) (Blu-ray)
The Hangover Part III (Blu-ray/DVD)
House of Wax 3D (Remastered) (Blu-ray 3D/DVD)
L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz - The Lost Original Versions
Mama's Family: The Complete Collection (DVD)
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life 30th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)
Much Ado About Nothing (Blu-ray)
On the Riviera (Blu-ray)
Room 237 (DVD)
St. Louis Cardinals - Championship Collection (DVD)
Stuck in Love (Blu-ray/DVD)
This is the End (Blu-ray/DVD)
Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz (Blu-ray)
Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz (DVD)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Fox Studio Classics) (Blu-ray)
William Powell at Warner Bros. (1931-34) (DVD-R)
The Wizard of Oz - 75th Anniversary Collector's Edition (Blu-ray 3D)
The Wizard of Oz - 75th Anniversary Collector's Edition (Blu-ray)
The Wizard of Oz - 75th Anniversary Collector's Edition (DVD)
The Wizard of Oz (1925)
Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Collection (Blu-ray)
The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition (DVD)
The Wizard of Oz: 3-Disc Collector's Edition
Wizard Of Oz: Deluxe Edition
The Wizard Of Oz: Emerald Edition (DVD)
The Wizard Of Oz: Emerald Edition (Blu-ray)
It's bad TV week on the Digigods! Two Broke Girls, Two and a Half Men, Hawaii Five-0 and CW's Beauty and the Beast? Time to play Grand Theft Auto V!
60th Anniversary Concert (Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) (Blu-ray)
Arrow: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray/DVD)
Beauty & The Beast: The First Season (DVD)
Britten: Death in Venice (Pizzi; Bartoletti) (Blu-ray)
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 - Wolf Lieder (Blu-ray)
China Beach: The Complete Season 1 (DVD)
The Col—n Ring, Wagner in Buenos Aires (Teatro Col—n Orchestra and Chorus; Paternostro) (Blu-ray)
David Copperfield (DVD-R)
Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka (Animated) (DVD)
Doctor Who: The Complete Seventh Series (Blu-ray)
Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors (DVD)
Don Matteo: Set 1 (DVD)
Downton Abbey Seasons 1, 2 & 3 - Limited Edition Box Set (Blu-ray)
Frank Riva: The Complete Series (DVD)
From Here to Eternity 60th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)
From the New World (Blu-ray)
Frozen Ground (Blu-ray)
Gene Simmons Family Jewels - The Final Season (DVD)
Grimm: Season Two (Blu-ray)
Hallelujah! (DVD-R)
Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season (Blu-ray)
The Hollow Crown: The Complete Series (DVD)
Homeland: The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray)
The Inspector Vivaldi Mysteries (DVD)
Le Nozze Di Figaro (Blu-ray)
Leverage Season 5 (DVD)
Luther 3 (DVD)
The Mentalist: The Complete Fifth Season (DVD)
Mozart: Don Giovanni (Skovhus; Ketelsen; Balzer; Petersen; Opolais; Avemo; Freiburger Barockorchester; Langree; Tcherniakov( (Blu-ray)
Mozart: Requiem (Prohaska; Mingardo; Schmitt; Pape; Abbado; Lucerne Festival Orchestra; Bavarian Radio Choir; Swedish Radio Choir; Dijkstra) (Blu-ray)
Pink Floyd Classic Albums - The Making Of Dark Side Of The Moon (DVD)
Puccini: La Fanciulla Del West (Stemme; Lundgren; Antonenko) (Blu-ray)
Rossini: Ciro Di Babilonia (Podles; Pratt; Spyres; Palazzi; Romeu; Mcpherson; Costantini; Orchestra And Chorus Of The Teatro Comunale Di Bologna; Crutchfield; Livermore) (Blu-ray)
Smiley's People (Blu-ray)
South Park: The Complete Sixteenth Season (Blu-ray)
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps (DVD)
Targets (DVD-R)
Top Gear: The Worst Car in the History of the World (DVD)
Two and a Half Men: The Complete Tenth Season (DVD)
Two Broke Girls: The Complete Second Season (DVD)
Verdi: Un Ballo In Maschera (Chailly; Pisapia; Vassallo; Taigi; Leipziger Ballett; Chor der Oper Leipzig; Gandolfi; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) (Blu-ray)
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (DVD)
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Pittsburgh Steelers Logo - Design and History
The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1933, the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC. Pittsburgh has won more Super Bowl titles (six), won more AFC Championship Games (eight) and played in (fifteen) and hosted more (eleven) conference championship games than any other AFC or NFC team. The Steelers won their most recent championship, Super Bowl XLIII, on February 1, 2009. Have you ever wondered what their logo stood for?
The Pittsburgh Steelers were not always the Steelers, they were originally called the Pittsburgh Pirates by the founder Arthur (Art) Joseph Rooney. In 1933, fans were encouraged to send their suggestions to the team and several nominated the winning name Steelers, after steel, which was the main source of employment in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is also referred to as the Steel City.
The logo was born in 1962 when the Republic Steel of Cleveland approached the Steelers and suggested that they consider the Steelmark, the insignia used by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), as a helmet logo to honor Pittsburgh's steel heritage. The Steelmark logo, a circle enclosing three diamonds with inward-curving edges (see image on left) and the word 'Steel', was created by U.S. Steel Corp to educate consumers about the importance of steel in their daily lives.
The colors were chosen to promote the attributes for steel:
yellow lightens your work
orange brightens your leisure
blue widens your world
The logo's meaning was later amended to represent the three materials used to produce steel:
yellow for coal
orange for iron ore
and blue for steel scrap
More NFL Logos
More Sports Logos
More Football Logos
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The Bad Joke Thread
[ 2994 posts ] Go to page Previous 1 ... 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120 Next
Post subject: Re: The Bad Joke Thread
A man in his 40's bought a new BMW convertible and was out for a nice evening drive. The top was down, the breeze was blowing through what was left of his hair, and he decided to open her up. As the needle jumped up to 90 mph, he suddenly saw flashing red and blue lights behind him. "There's no way they can catch a BMW," he thought to himself and opened her up further. The needle hit 100, 120.... then the reality of the situation hit him. "What the hell am I doing?" he thought and pulled over. The cop came up to him, took his license without a word, and examined it and the car. "It's been a long day, this is the end of my shift, and it's Friday the 13th. I don't feel like more paperwork, so if you can give me an excuse for your driving that I haven't heard before, you can go." The guy thinks for a second and says, "Last week my wife ran off with a cop. I was afraid you were trying to give her back." "Have a nice weekend," said the officer
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"
"Certainly," I replied.
"My wife's best friend on Monday and Tuesday, my secretary Wednesdays and Thursdays, the cleaner on Friday night and the babysitter over the weekend."
"Very nice," said the doctor...
"But when I asked if your affairs were in order...."
n the 1980's we were all shitting ourselves at the threat of an imminent Nuclear winter.
Nowadays it's Global warming, for pitty's sake, is there no pleasing some people!
A tourist entered a Welsh village, looking for a place to stay for a night. While checking in at local pub, the innkeeper mentioned:
"And of course the price includes sex with one of our sheep."
The tourist was shocked and offended, stating he would never do such a thing. The innkeeper calmed him down, explaining that it's completely natural and everyone in the village does that. Little by little the tourist started to hesitate, as he didn't want to offend the locals and he always tried new things during his travels.
Finally he went to the barn, chose a sheep and spent a night with it. As he was about to sneak from the barn next morning, he noticed to his horror almost the whole village - nearly 300 people had gathered outside by the door of the barn. They were all pointing at him and roaring with laughter.
Completely embarrassed, humiliated and enraged, he stormed into the office of the innkeeper and shouted:
"You fucking told me everyone here does that!."
"We do," the innkeeper said chuckling...
"But you picked up the ugly one!"
Damn! I've been diagnosed with a disease that keeps transforming me in to Capital cities....
It's really starting to Hanoi me now.
Transgender powerlifter Mary Gregory has vowed to come back after being stripped of 4 titles...
"I just need more work done on my Snatch" - she went on to to say.
"Doc, I can't stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home."'
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well, 'It's Not Unusual.'"
An inspecting Brigadier decides to visit the psychiatric ward of an army hospital. He wants to show an interest in the unit and asks the nurse how they decide if a soldier needs to be admitted as a patient or just seen in out patients.
"Well," says the QA psychiatric nurse, "we fill the bath with water and give the squaddie a mess tin and a spoon. He or she is then asked to empty the bath."
"Ah I see!" exclaims the Brigadier, "A normal person would use the mess tin because it is larger and will take less time to empty the bath."
"No Sir" sighs the psychiatric nurse, "A sane person would pull the bath plug. I'll get your bed ready Sir!"
When the 'C' and the 'S' falls off in the wash!
On the local news today...
Police reported a man was entering local craft stores & dipping his testicles in glitter.
It's pretty nuts!
A man doing market research for the Vaseline Company knocked at the door of a married quarter and was greeted by a young woman with three small children running around at her feet. "Im doing some research for Vaseline. Have you ever used the product?"
She said, "Yes. My husband and I use it all the time."
"If you dont mind my asking," he said, "what do you use it for?"
"We use it for sex," she said.
The researcher was a little taken aback. "Usually people lie to me and say they use it on a childs bicycle chain or to help with a gate hinge. But, in fact, I know that most people do use it for sex. I admire you for your honesty. Since youve been so frank so far, can you tell me exactly HOW you use it for sex?"
The woman said, "I dont mind telling you at all.
My husband and I put it on the doorknob and it keeps the kids out."
SHAME ON YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE
Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly.
"I was artificially inseminated this morning."
"I don't believe you," says Dolly.
"It's true, no bull!“ exclaims Daisy.
Yeah, and now I'm coming home to your nagging ass!
An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
AGuyWithAWrench
Location: Kissimmee, FL
A guy calls a company and orders their 5-day, 5lbs weight loss program.
The next day, there's a knock on the door and there stands before him a voluptuous, athletic, 19 year old babe dressed in nothing but a pair of Nike running shoes and a sign around her neck..
She introduces herself as a representative of the weight loss company. The sign reads, "If you can catch me, you can have me."
Without a second thought, he takes off after her. A few miles later puffing and puffing, he finally gives up. The same girl shows up for the next four days and the same thing happens. On the fifth day, he weighs himself and is delighted to find he has lost 5lbs as promised.
He calls the company and orders their 5-day/10lbs program. The next day there's a knock at the door and there stands the most stunning, beautiful, sexy woman he has ever seen in his life. She is wearing nothing but Reebok running shoes and a sign around her neck that reads, "If you catch me you can have me".
Well, he's out the door after her like a shot. This girl is in excellent shape and he does his best, but no such luck. So for the next four days, the same routine happens with him gradually getting in better and better shape.
Much to his delight on the fifth day when he weighs himself, he discovers that he has lost another 10lbs as promised. He decides to go for broke and calls the company to order the 7-day/25 lbs program.
"Are you sure?" asks the representative on the phone. "This is our most rigorous program." "Absolutely," he replies, "I haven't felt this good in years."
The next day there's a knock at the door; and when he opens it he finds a huge muscular guy standing there wearing nothing but pink running shoes and a sign around his neck that reads, "If I catch you, you are mine."
He lost 33 lbs that week.
"Why do people say "Grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive! If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina! Those things take a pounding"! -- Sheng Wang
And the Lord said unto John "COME FORTH AND YE SHALL RECEIVE ETERNAL LIFE".
But John came fifth and only won a toaster........
Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Vuja Day - The feeling that none of this has happened before.
I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.
A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted.
"Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!"
The doctor replied, "I know you can't, I've cut off your arms!"
Posted: Mon May 27, 2019 2:50 am
As the coffin was being lowered into the ground at a Parking Officers funeral a voice was heard yelling - "I'm not dead! I'm not dead yet, let me out!"
It was at that moment that the Priest leant forward, sucking air through his teeth and muttered...
"Too fudging late pal, I've already done the paperwork!"
What's the difference between a well dressed man on a bike and a scruffily dressed man on a unicycle?
Attire!
I went to a seafood disco last week... and pulled a mussel.
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How Do Religions Modernize?
Publication Date : June 29, 2013
Related Categories: Christianity, History, Ideologies, Islam, Judaism, Op Ed, Religion, values
Religions can modernize. When we explore the history of how human beings coped with fear, disasters both natural and man-made, fertility, and death, we see great changes to the religions of our most ancient ancestors.
• Pantheism. Our ancestors invented systems for coping with existential fears. They saw the divine all around them: initially as forces to be placated, but also to be honored and celebrated. The ancient Greeks, for example, modernized their earlier pantheism (the divine living in each stream, tree, animal) by imagining polytheism, an entire panoply of gods and goddesses who conducted their lives like Greek aristocracy, except that they did not die. These deities also had favorites among human beings, whom they helped at times of crisis. Think of Odysseus and his patroness Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom.
• Polytheism. Polytheism lost its appeal during the collapse of the Roman Empire, replaced by the offspring of an ancient Jewish cult, which, itself, had evolved from primitive beginnings.
• Henotheism to Monotheism. Judaism began as henotheism, believing in one god for themselves, but forbidding worship of any other gods (considered real). Monotheism came during the Babylonian captivity, when the Jews had contact with Persian Zoroastrianism, and the Jewish God became the Western World’s “God of the universe.” Christianity, the offspring of Judaism, took the one-god idea beyond Judaism by adopting some of the ancient world’s mythology: the virgin mother of a hero; angels, devils, and saints; and a trinity of power father, son, holy spirit. These changes enabled primitive polytheists (barbarian hordes) to come comfortably into the new cult.
• Islam. Islam, which began as an offshoot of its fellow Semitic Jewish faith, became a major force of its own, and immediately embraced imperial ambitions modeled on their first conquest, Persia. A relatively brief age of enlightenment (80 years in Baghdad and the same in Spain) was snuffed out by events they could not control: the Mongol invasions, Ottoman Turkish conquest, the Black Death, and finally the revival of learning and power in the Christian world.
For the next five centuries (1200 to 1700), Islam was on a trajectory of failure. The golden age was gone, the Turks kept order but added nothing culturally or intellectually, and the West was not only developing light years beyond them, but was eating pieces of the Muslim world in a sweep of colonialism. Although modern Islamists complain bitterly about European colonialism, they forget what monstrous colonizers they themselves had been during the initial spread of Islam and then under the Ottoman Turks.
• Islamo-Fascism. Today, Islam has begun the process of modernizing. Quietly and with little publicity, educated Muslims in the West are beginning to model after the values of their new homes. Muslim women are protesting being forced to worship at the back of the Mosque (problems resolved when Judaism and Christianity modernized). Some erudite “Muslim Atheists” (See Ali A. Rizvi’s blog) want to celebrate the community aspects of Islam without the belief system, as do many Jews and Christians today in their lives. But there is one bad fairy at the party: a strain of militant Islam that has old grandiose dreams of violently retaking empire. This movement arose from the Nazi influence over early 20th century Islam that fell on fertile ground.
Thomas Jefferson, when Ambassador to France, spoke with Tripoli’s envoy to London in 1786 and was given this view of Islam: “..it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
There is nothing new in hearing the same from Al Qaeda and the Taliban; their grievance was not caused by Israel or the United States, by drones, or by any other excuse. It was the internalization of a religio-political ideology. This is old poisonous stuff must be discarded if they are to modernize and survive.
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of Ten Inventions that Changed Everything. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.
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No Public Events
Augsburg News
July commencement focuses on global peace
Augsburg's commencement ceremonies this academic year are organized around the theme of global peace. Augsburg will welcome peacemakers and leaders to challenge and encourage graduates as they continue their lives beyond Augsburg.
The July 1 commencement honors undergraduate Weekend/Evening College students from the Minneapolis and Rochester campuses as well as graduate students in business, leadership, social work, nursing, and education. The Richard Thoni Award, recognizing a graduating student who has demonstrated a dedication to community service, will be presented. This year's student speaker representing the Class of 2012 will be special education major Rebecca Hamlin.
The Commencement speaker is David Mathews, president and chief executive officer of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Under former President Gerald Ford, Mathews served as secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. From 1965 to 1980, Mathews taught history at the University of Alabama, where he also served as president from 1969 to 1980, an era of significant change and innovation, which included the integration of the institution. At age 33, he was the youngest president of a major university.
Both Mathews and Martin Henker, the superintendent of the Evangelical Lutheran Church District of Leipzig, will receive honorary degrees. During the 1989 revolution in East Germany, Henker was instrumental in promoting peaceful protests, and he also counseled families of protestors who were imprisoned by the government and collected eyewitness accounts which were later used as evidence by an independent investigative commission to examine the acts of violence committed by state agencies against the demonstrators. In 2000, Henker became the senior pastor of the newly formed St. John Congregation in the Johannstadt-Striesen neighborhood of Dresden.
July 1 schedule:
8:45-9:30 a.m. Commencement Convocation in Hoversten Chapel
11 a.m. Commencement Ceremony in Si Melby Hall
12:30-2 p.m. Department and Program Receptions
See the July Commencement website for additional information.
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Posts Tagged ‘Dance’
Student Dance Choreography This Week
Adrianna (center) will be among those showcasing her choreographic dance talents this week
This week, the junior and senior dancers at Idyllwild Arts Academy will showcase their choreography talents. The same shows will run Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights at 7:30 p.m.
For me, choreography has always been the “brains” behind the physical side of dance. You could have beautiful, talented dancers, but if the piece wasn’t interesting, then it didn’t work. Lucky for all of us who attend the dance performances at Idyllwild Arts, the choreography has always been top notch.
However, I took it for granted, until just recently. Eight dancers from Idyllwild Arts were invited to perform a modern dance piece at The Colburn Shcool’s Spring Dance Concert on May 7. The students included: Adrianna, Gina, Giovanna, Madison, Michelle, Gerard, Annalise and Morgan.
Maybe it was the fact that the program was heavily laden with ballet numbers (eight suites from “Coppelia” started the show). But when the eight dancers from Idyllwild Arts took the stage, it was a like a breath of fresh air.
“Here come the professionals!” the other driver whispered to me.
“Episodica,” choreographed by Stephanie Gilliand and dancers, opened with a bold, red backlight. In silhouette, three dancers began pulling, twisting and contorting their T-shirts in many ways as they moved across the stage. The backbeat of the music was strong. There was a hushed silence from the audience, just like the start of many Circus de Soleil events.
The T-shirts took many forms, from pregnancy to a shroud. Did “Episodica” have political undertones? Was it about transitions? Transformations? No one knew for sure.
Throughout the next 10 minutes, each of the dancers ran from the sidelines, leaped into the air, and pulled and pushed each other. Some looked like physical struggles, while others personal agonies. At one time, all of them were lying down on the stage, while one pulled herself up from the carnage.
Each of the dancers were physically fit. Some performed handstands, while others leaped off the backs of other dancers. All I could think of was, “Yikes, they’ll all be feeling the bruises tomorrow!”
During intermission, the students all got into the van, talking enthusiastically about the experience. It was good for them to perform on another stage and before a new audience. Instead of being tired, they were elated. Many of them had started the day taking the four-hour-long SAT test.
No one knew what “Episodica” was about, but said that they had performed it once before at their own Spring Dance Concert. I longed to ask Stephanie what her motivations were for the wonderful choreography. How long did it take to create it? And did it change after it was performed? Was it a challenge to create such a fast-paced piece?
Some of the dancers began talking about the Student Choreography dances that will be showcased starting Wednesday, May 11.
“Sorelle’s piece is so fast,” exclaimed Adrianna. “You’re only off stage for a tenth of a second, and then back on again!”
“But that’s so like Sorelle,” another said. “She likes everything to be so physical.”
Each of the juniors and seniors who created the dances got to hand select their dancers. Most will create a piece and dance in two more.
If last year’s student choreography was any indication, audience members are in for a real treat. Each piece was as diverse as the dancers who created them. Some showcased traditional tango, while others were moody dream sequences. One paid tribute to a friend who was recently expelled, while another featured inmates in an insane asylum. (See “The Brains Behind 13 Dances” blog entry dated May 16, 2010).
The beauty of living in a creative environment like Idyllwild Arts is that students can draw upon the talents of their peers.
For Olivia’s piece, Ryturo and Mitch, both theater majors, will be dancing hip hop.
“I choreographed the hip hop part, while Olivia choreographed the other dancers,” Ryturo said, before going to Tuesday’s technical rehearsal.
Ryturo was excited about dancing hip hop again on stage. He started when he was about six years old in Singapore. Mitch just started a couple of years ago, Ryturo said, but he’s pretty good. The two will add an edgy element to Olivia’s choreography.
For Wills piece, he asked his friend Kai, a film major, to mix his music.
“We took about five Lady Gaga songs and made them sound like one,” Kai said.
Will, who has dressed as Lady Gaga for Halloween before, will showcase her again in his choreographed piece.
Student Choreography will be held Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Fischer-Lewitsky Dance Studio (across from Bowman) on the Idyllwild Arts campus. The event is free and open to the public. But seating is limited, so you may want to arrive early. For more information, visit www.idyllwildarts.org or call (951) 659-2171.
Published on: May 10, 2011 @ 16:40
Tags: ballet, Dance, Idyllwild Arts, Idyllwild Me, Lady Gaga, modern dances, Self expression, student choreography
Posted in Dance, Idyllwild Arts Academy | Comments Off on Student Dance Choreography This Week
Si Ji: A Night of Chinese Dance
Gina (front) and Geneva (behind) along with Macarena and Allison, dance to native Taiwanese and African dances
At the Idyllwild Arts Dance Department, they study mostly modern, ballet and jazz dance techniques–all Western styles of dance. However, for one night on Wednesday, May 19, a senior dance student introduced traditional Chinese dance–with all its history, drama, props and costumes.
“Si Ji,” which means “Four Seasons” in Chinese, was the name of the program that was directed and choreographed by Shih-Ching or “Cyndi.”
Cyndi got a grant from the Transatlantic Arts Consortium, which is a collaboration between CalArts, The Dartington Hall Trust and the Idyllwild Arts Academy.
At Idyllwild Arts (Academy), we have a big international population, and sometimes language is not an effective way for different cultures to communicate,” Cyndi wrote in the program. “I want to bring the community closer together by mixing traditional Chinese dances with those I’m learning at Idyllwild Arts.
“Six weeks ago, these dancers knew nothing about traditional Chinese dance,” Cyndi said to the audience of family, faculty and friends. “Now, they look like they’ve been doing it for years.”
She went on to say that all the dancers in the show had to practice for her show, in addition to the dance choreography show that was presented last week.
“What they’ve done here is nothing short of amazing,” Cyndi said. “They have learned a brand new style of dance and they are just beautiful.”
All of the dancers included: Adrianna, Dakota, Macarena, Kayla, Ellen, Anna, Mariana, Giovanna, Gina, Paulina, Hailey, Madison, leva, Justin, Olivia, Geneva, Alison, Sorelle and Ariann.
There were eight pieces in all to match the four seasons. Naturally, the first two dances focused on summer, including “Beautiful Sky and “Riverside.” For these two, Cyndi mixed the Double Fans dance with modern, and the Dai dance with jazz.
For “Maple Rain,” the third dance about fall, included ballet, modern and classical Chinese dance. The whole thing reminded me of the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Naturally, the costume colors were muted orange, yellow and cream. The dancers began by lifting up large strips of sheer fabric. The dancers ran with it, did cartwheels with it, threw it up and then twirled it around and around. One of the dancers (leva), even got wrapped up in it, and was carried away by Justin.
The music, by David Karagianis, was frenetic, yet matched the pace of the dancers.
The other standout piece for fall was “A La Ke,” which mixed native Taiwanese, African and modern dance. The costumes for this piece were simple, shredded or torn white oversized shirts, with black tap pants underneath and no shoes. Yet, it was the music that moved this piece. It was by Indian Tribal Spirit, and gave the impression of traditional “bird songs,” or chanting.
The four dancers danced together in a circle, holding hands. Then they’d break away, and lean down with their arms folded, getting closer to Mother Earth.
For “Adagio Sorrow,” the first winter, the pace was slower, and the costumes were white, trimmed in pale lavender. The piece opened with the dancers’ backs to the audience, and their hands over their faces.
Dakota wore the most ornate Chinese costume, with oversized sleeves that hung about six feet beyond her hands. It was called the “sleeve dance.” She threw them out like a slinky, and drew them back to her almost immediately. They transformed her into another being, a spynx, or a spider, with arms or legs with extraordinary reach. And all around her, with elegant ballet steps, were Adrianna, Giovanna and Paulina.
Spring Swings mixed traditional Chinese folk with the fan dance
For the second winter dance entitled, “Ullr,” or the “ribbons dance,” we were hypnotized. Ariann and Sorelle, the two dancers, moved their ribbons like an expert Chinese dancer. The approximately 40-foot ribbons of sheer material were draped around their necks, and handled with their hands.
Several times throughout the piece, Ariann made dramatic circular motions with the ribbon, creating a moon or world around her. Most of the time, they flipped them high into the air, in perfect synchronicity. They looked a lot like Circus d’ Sole dancers.
“It looks like there are sticks in the material by their hands,” said Simone Huls, an ESL teacher at Idyllwild Arts. “Otherwise, they’d be wiped out by all that movement.”
The spring dance, “A Girl from Tian Shan, was an Uyghur dance style, and featured only leva. It looked like a folk dance from eastern Europe or India. leva’s costume was colorful, in bright yellow, green and pink. It looked like something a belly dancer would wear, with a beaded top and bare midriff. To accentuate the beat, leva played a tamborine.
As a senior, leva knew how to dance and command the audience’s attention. Jim Bum, who was seated with friends in the audience, noticed the dramatic shadows leva was casting on the wall. It was as if there were two performances going on.
For the final number, “Spring Swings,” all of the dancers took to the stage with white outfits and colorful fans. The upbeat, flute music by Teresa Wong, was perfect. In essence, there was beauty in the uniformity of the piece.
Afterwards, the dancers received a standing ovation, along with whoops and hollars from the audience. Ellen Rosa, the head of the Dance Department at Idyllwild Arts, who was standing by the door, said that Cyndi did a great job.
Tags: Cal Arts, Chinese dance, Dance, Dance Department, Dartington Hall Trust, Ellen Rosa, idyllwild, Idyllwild Arts, Si Ji, sleeve dance, Transatlantic Arts Consortium
Posted in Dance, Idyllwild Arts Academy | Comments Off on Si Ji: A Night of Chinese Dance
The Brains Behind 13 Dances
leva portrays an inmate in a piece choreographed by Ariann
Whenever, I’d see a dance performance, whether it be at Idyllwild Arts, RedCat or somewhere else, I would always focus on the dancers. Can you blame me? They were strong, attractive, and created “poetry in motion.”
But, I never thought of the message, or the brains behind the piece. I was only looking at the end result. But someone had to come up with the concept, with the ideas, and the dance steps.
It’s like when we see a movie, or a play, or an article, we don’t think of the originator, only the message. Well, it’s time that we thought about the dance choreographer. He or she is the one who starts with a blank page, or an empty dance floor, and fills the space with movement, sound and beauty.
Kayla dances to leva's piece
Tonight, Saturday, May 15, Idyllwild Arts celebrated its student choreography night. Each of the juniors and seniors in the Dance Department had to create one piece. Generally, it lasted three to 10 minutes. They had to come up with everything from start to finish, including the message, dance steps, costumes, lighting and music.
As if that wasn’t enough, then they had to dance in two or three other pieces that their classmates choreographed. There were 13 pieces in all, and each was unique in their own right.
Only Ellen Rosa, head of the Dance Department, knew the message behind each of these pieces.
Tonight was the last night of a three-night run that began on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Most of the parents came that night. There was so many people in the Fisher Dance Studio that they had to turn some away, one student said.
Tonight, there was an enthusiastic crowd of 150 friends, classmates, family members and folks from Idyllwild who like dance. Some, like Tucker McIntyle, head of the Transportation Department, had never been to a dance performance before.
“We take these kids in vans everywhere, but I never saw what they could do–until tonight,” McIntyre said. “I was really surprised and pleased with what I saw.”
Of the 13 pieces, I was only able to see six of them–only those that came after the intermission.
But, just because I wasn’t there, doesn’t mean that those first seven pieces didn’t count. They meant a lot to those who were there. They included: “Hypnotic,” choreographed by Dakota Bailey; “Stamina Break,” by Kayla Tuggle; “XOXO,” by Olivia Jones; “Irritated,” by Geneva Winters; “Balletic Randomness,” by Tramayne Pauillac Johnson; “Between the Folds,” by David Strong and Kayla Tuggle; and “Maple Rain” by Cyndi Huang.
Like searching through the channels on a radio dial, some of the choreographed pieces were techno, others classical, and still others rock n’ roll. And I’m not talking just about the music, but the mood.
It began with “All I Want,” choreographed by David “DJ” Strong, one of the few male dancers at Idyllwild Arts. He’s here on scholarship, and plans to go to college in the fall. His piece was surprisingly sentimental and romantic. The music by Ahn Trio, set the tone. Dancers included himself, Kayla, Allison, Macarena, Ellen and leva, all in black sports bras and tap pants.
The dancers moved back and forth across the stage, in a cat-and-mouse approach of chasing, then letting go. It reflected a male-female courtship, and DJ did a nice job of keeping our interest.
The second piece was created by Ellen entitled, “Empty Soul. ‘Be Good to Yourself-ASM.'” With that title, one can’t help but think there’s a secret message there. Who is ASM? Anyway, it was a wonderful piece in its simplicity. It showcased the ballet talents of twins Gina and Giovanna. One was dressed in a gown, while the other in babydoll pajamas.
Although it was ballet, and beautiful to watch, you couldn’t help but see the turmoil, the trauma, and finally, the resolution between the two. Who were they? Lovers? Brothers and sisters? They would come together, break apart, hug each other, hurt each other, chase one another, then finally come to some resolution of sorts.
It reminded me of the start of “Peter Pan,” when the children, all innocent and dressed in their night clothes, were looking outside. You just knew that something was going to happen, and they would never be the same again.
“Who Cares What They Think?” was choreographed by leva Navickaite with music by Yann Tiersen and Apocalyptica. The dancers were Anna, Kayla, Allison, Adrianna and Dakota. The lighting was red, which, like the glib title, set the tone. Each of the dancers formed a line, and performed robotic movements. As props, leva used three boxes, that were used as stands, and crawl spaces by the dancers. At the end, they were stacked on top of each other.
In the beginning the music was rhythmic, and gave the impression that everything and everyone was the same. There were no individuals, only robots doing what they were told. One couldn’t help but think this piece may have been a commentary on life as a teenager, with too much uniformity, and not enough freedom. Or it could have been a sharp look at student classes at Idyllwild Arts, maybe even dance classes?
The lyrics resounded of someone fed up with the responsibility of always doing the right thing and “cleaning up.”
“Why, Nancy?” was choreographed by Ella, with music by Why. The cast included DJ, Giovanna, Gina, Ella, Macarena and Kayla.
It was a frenetic, frenzied piece in which the originator was frustrated, mad, and spinning around. It was her reaction to a decision beyond her control. Earlier in the week, she confided that the dance was about the expulsion of her best friend, Ben.
The title, “Why, Nancy?” is not about a woman as you’d might think, but about a guy.
“Nancy was Ben’s nickname,” Ella said.
“I’m lucky to have dance as another form of self expression,” Ella said. “The irony is that Ben had never seen me dance. And now he’s got a piece named after him.”
Like most art, dance can be a haven, a sanctuary, a place to heal from the outside world. And to say something without using conventional words.
“Te Anuncio” was choreographed by Sofia to a Shakir music piece. It had red lighting, and tango dancers. It reminded me of Argentina, and the bold dance that started with men dancing with other men in the docks.
Dakota and DJ were the tango dancing pair, while Geneva, Tramayne and Paulina were the dancers. They were all dressed in black and red, with signature flowers in their hair. The couple continued front and center with their seduction for each other.
After all, tango is a very sensual, physical dance.
The final piece by Ariann was entitled, “Out of My Mind, Back in Five Minutes,” with music by Marc Kets, Associate Dean of Students. Before coming to Idyllwild Arts, Kets worked with many DJs.
The costumes, which were created by Jacob, a student from the Theater Department, were torn and tattered. Some crossed in the front, resembling straight jackets from an insane asylum.
In fact, the sign as backdrop behind the dancers read: “Idyllwild Pychiatric Hosptial.” Of course, there is no hospital here. Was she saying that going here was driving her nuts? As one might expect, the dancers were uniform at first, then others broke away and showed their individuality.
Adriann brought in the spoken word into dance. Some of the dancers spoke of why they ended up there. Some were accidents, others were traumas that never healed.
Like “Cookoo’s Nest set to music, “Out of My Mind” was a definite crowd pleaser, with over-the-top crazy sterotypes, with inmates with sunken eyes, straight jackets, sad stories with no hope and no place to go.
Ironically, Idyllwild housed a sanitarium at one time, where nice people cane to rest their nerves. It was also the summer resting place of the Cahuilla Indians, who came up from the desert to the San Jacinto mountains for the cooler weather. Legend has it that even the mountain lions laid with the deer up in Idyllwild. Wait, now that’s crazy!
Tags: ballet, choreography, Dance, idyllwild, Idyllwild Arts, Nancy?, Self expression, Why
Posted in Dance, Idyllwild Arts Academy | Comments Off on The Brains Behind 13 Dances
Posted in Dance, Idyllwild Arts Academy
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Feds Spent $100 Billion on Food Assistance Last Year
May 21, 2015 /3 Comments/in Featured, News /by Elizabeth Harrington
Photo Credit: AP ImagesThe federal government spent $100 billion providing food assistance to Americans last year, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The lion’s share of spending comes from the food stamp program, which gave benefits to an average 46 million Americans in 2014, at a cost of $74.6 billion, according to a testimony from the GAO’s Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Kay E. Brown before the House Subcommittee on Nutrition Wednesday.
The national school lunch program was second, costing $11.3 billion, followed by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at $7.1 billion . . .
Brown said there is a potential for overlap and “inefficient use of federal funds” due to the government’s “complex network of 18 food assistance programs, administered by three federal agencies,” which are unsure how effective the programs are.
“In 2010, research GAO reviewed suggested that participation in seven of these programs was associated with positive outcomes, such as improving nutrition among low-income households,” Brown said. “Little was known about the effectiveness of the remaining 11.” (Read more from “Feds Spent $100 Billion on Food Assistance Last Year” HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
Tags: feds
http://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png 0 0 Joe Miller http://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png Joe Miller2015-05-21 00:53:002016-04-11 11:00:55Feds Spent $100 Billion on Food Assistance Last Year
The Feds Have Approved Palcohol, Powdered Alcohol [+video]
Where is this in the Constitution?! Feds to Weigh Children in Daycare
Feds Spend $149,890 on "Mindful Eating Intervention" for Third Graders
Where is this in the Constitution?! Feds Spend over $100,000 to Autodetect Cyberbullying
Mind Your Own Business! Federal Reserve Chair Warns Congress
Feds Spend Nearly $10M to Develop App That Predicts 'Psychological Status' of Americans
Investigators Check Amtrak Engineer’s Cellphone Records The Mystery Behind the Air Force’s Classified Space Plane
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The Measles Vaccines (MMR and MMRV) Protect Against Measles
Photo: http://imgbuddy.com/measles-virus-picture.asp
A new anti-vaxx myth has surfaced which seems to have been developed as a result of my recent blogpost Disneyland Measles Outbreak is Due to Measles which discussed the measles genotype responsible (hint: it wasn't the vaccine strain). Some, with no knowledge of virology nor immunology are spreading the myth that since the measles strain in the MMR vaccine is genotype A that it couldn't possibly protect against measles genotype B3 which is the genotype responsible for the latest U.S. outbreak and has spread to Mexico and Canada. I will discuss how and why MMR vaccines are cross-protective for wild-type measles strains.
First there is some terminology which must be understood to follow along:
Serotype: Microorganisms of the same species can be further divided into serotypes, serovars or sub-groups based upon their surface antigens.
Antigen: A structural protein on the surface of a pathogen that is able to recognise cell receptors on the surface of a host cell. The antigen is also the part of the pathogen which provokes the host adaptive immune response that generates antibodies.
Epitope: The very specific part of the antigen which antibodies attach to.
Genotype: The nucleotide sequence of certain regions of a viral genome which classifies differences.
The measles virus has only one serotype and causes measles unlike Human Papillomavirus which has dozens of serotypes and can cause different diseases. This is why we see multiple serotypes included in the HPV vaccine and only one strain in each of the available measles vaccines which are all genotype A.
Many of the attenuated strains in use are derived from the Edmonston strain isolated in 1954, including the Schwartz, the Edmonston-Zagreb, and the Moraten strains. Other strains which are not derived from Edmonston strain include the CAM-70, TD 97, Leningrad-16, and Shanghai 191 (Ji-191) strains.
Measles virus genotypes are based upon their nucleotide sequences at the least conserved regions of the viral genome:
Wild-type measles viruses have been divided into distinct genetic groups, referred to as genotypes, based on the nucleotide sequences of their hemagglutinin (H) and nucleoprotein (N) genes, which are the most variable genes on the viral genome.
The 450 nucleotides encoding the carboxy-terminal 150 amino acids of the nucleoprotein has up to 12% nucleotide variation between genotypes. The 450 nucleotides that encode the carboxy-terminal region of the nucleoprotein (N–450) are required for determination of the genotype. The measles genotyping protocol is available from CDC.
Photo: http://download.thelancet.com/images/journalimages/0140-6736/PIIS0140673610623525.gr3.lrg.jpg
What this means is that whenever a measles case occurs, a sample (throat or nasal swab) is taken from the patient, submitted to RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) and PCR (polymerase chain reaction) which are molecular techniques to essentially isolate amplify the number of DNA copies so that they can be sequenced. DNA sequencing determines the nucleotide sequences of specific genome regions and then compared to other isolates to see where the measles virus came from and also mutations that may have accumulated.
Recovered measles viruses are constantly monitored, tested and characterised to identify areas of the genome which may antigenically-drift. Circulating measles viruses have also been tested against vaccine-derived antibodies to ensure vaccines will cross-protect against the numerous genotypes that are imported. This is achieved through virus neutralisation assays for example. This is a test that combines measles genotypes with serum samples of people either vaccinated or previously infected with wild-type measles to determine if antibody binding occurs. A fluorescent tag is added and then the antibody-antigen complex is measured. Results of various assays demonstrate that vaccine-derived antibodies protect against many different measles genotypes:
The serum samples from recently vaccinated persons neutralized both the Moraten and Chicago-I viruses equally well (table 1): There was a less than 2-fold difference in neutralization titers. In contrast, serum samples from persons with a recent wild type infection were able to detect antigenic differences between the viruses. Sera in this set had neutralization titers against Chicago-l that were 4-8 times higher (average, 5.1) than the titers against the vaccine strain.
Very specific antibodies called monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) are also developed and tested against measles viruses including the vaccine strains to monitor vaccine efficacy and antigenic drift of measles genotypes:
Overall, the antigenic data indicated that some epitopes have been conserved between the vaccine strain and the recent wild type viruses, while others are unique to the recent wild type virus. The H and F proteins are responsible for the induction of a neutralizing antibody response to measles virus. Therefore, the antigenic differences were most likely due to variation in these surface glycoproteins.
Protection against the current circulation measles genotype, B3 has been elucidated. In other words, studies have been and are conducted to test antibodies derived from vaccination against numerous wild-type measles viruses. Measles genotype B3 which is the currently circulating strain in the U.S., is neutralised by vaccine-derived antibodies. That, in turn, means that the virus can't bind to host (human) cell receptors and cause disease.
On the basis of the sequences of their N and H genes, MeVs can be assigned to 1 of 23 genotypes and 1 provisional genotype [11, 12]. All vaccine strains and their wild-type progenitors are assigned to genotype A. Experiments with monoclonal antibodies have defined antigenic differences between the H proteins of genotype A vaccines and the H proteins of wild-type viruses grouped in other genotypes [62, 188, 189]. However, there is only 1 serotype for measles, and serum samples from vaccinees neutralize viruses from a wide range of genotypes, albeit with different neutralization titers [188, 190] More importantly, despite the presence of different endemic genotypes, vaccination programs with standard measles vaccines have been successful in every country where they were performed adequately [191–193]. Suboptimal seroconversion after vaccination is likely the result of inadequate coverage; improper administration, transport, or storage of vaccine; or age of the vaccine recipients [194–196].
It's a bit of a complex issue to digest but some key points are that measles vaccines induce many different antibodies against measles antigens. There is some antigenic drift that renders a single antibody insufficient binding to a single antigen from some wild-type measles viruses but over all, vaccines protect us from many different genotypes including the currently circulating B3 genotype. The epidemiology of the measles outbreak also demonstrates the effectiveness of the MMR vaccine. To date there have been 141 cases confirmed (dozens more reported) by the CDC. Measles is one of the most infectious diseases known and this interactive graphic demonstrates how measles can spread in variable susceptible populations. If the vaccine did not proffer cross-protection, there would be tens of thousands of cases to date. Obviously this is not the case as the majority of cases are unvaccinated.
A more easily-digestible version of this has been posted at The Scientific Parent.
Labels: Disneyland, measles, Measles vaccine, Myths
Catherina February 17, 2015 at 4:54 PM
141 now http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Science Mom February 17, 2015 at 5:19 PM
I'll update. Thanks.
Anirudh Krishna March 13, 2015 at 8:43 AM
Sir, Im a student of Community Medicine from India. My doubt is whether the components in the MMR vaccine, i.e. the measles, mumps and rubella are cross-protective, all the three being members of the Myxoviridae group.
Science Mom March 13, 2015 at 8:24 PM
If I understand correctly you are questioning whether measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are cross-protective for one another. The answer is no, not only are they of different families (measles and mumps belong to Myxoviridae while rubella is in the Togaviridae family) but are different genus and species.
Lawrence March 13, 2015 at 2:00 PM
I believe the answer to your question is no - the three vaccines protect separately for each illness.
Jan Toff April 4, 2015 at 12:08 AM
Finally one death from measles in the "Western world" Don't quote third world figures. You don't ever mention the downside of measles vaccine. There are over 20 infant deaths every year from the mmr vaccine every year in just the U.S. and thousands of neurological problems and much more. And U.S. gov pays compensation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vaccines-autism-and-brain-damage-whats-in-a-name/
For all the real science against vaccines see.
www.vaccinesaftey.blogspot.com
Chris April 4, 2015 at 11:19 AM
You should stop parroting the nonsense you read on anti-vaccine websites. Those "deaths" were not verified.
Again, the reason there is very low measles mortality in the USA is because of very low measles morbidity... you can't die of a disease you don't get because the MMR vaccine works for you!
If you have real evidence the MMR vaccine, which was introduced in the USA in 1971, causes more harm than measles, mumps and rubella, then provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers. Not some random website from someone who does not know the difference between mortality and morbidity. It just makes you look foolish, especially after it has been explained to you.
Typical Pharmaceutical pusher response. My Data is from the CDC's own VAERS site. Yes I know it is not cause and effect, But doctors who put ( 86%of entrys are by doctors)in the data would not put in a adverse event unless he believed event was caused by a vaccine. So you can't just ignore the data, though that is what you people do.
http://www.medalerts.org/analysis/archives/561
I can tell by your response you are a Big Pharma paid troll, you did not look at the links I supplied. You just knock everything, don't care about the kids, just money. For others out there this site explains everything. When vaccines supposedly saved millions we had 4 vaccines to take. In 1995 we had 5 in in kids schedule. in 2005 we had 8, now we have 14!! Do we nee the last 9?? See
http://www.vaccinesaftey.blogspot.ca
You don't even know the difference between morbidity and mortality, and why it is important. You are both close minded and clueless.
"I can tell by your response you are a Big Pharma paid troll"
How so? By telling you that your website has several problems? By the way the MMR vaccine has been on the American pediatric schedule since 1971, so it is not a new vaccine.
Instead of learning and correcting your errors you pulled out the old and boring Pharma Shill Gambit.
Now just go away until you learn what are and are not valid science sources (not most of your links, especially "childhealthsafety), and why it is important to learn the difference between mortality and morbidity. Hint: the paper titled "Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century" does not show the decline of disease incidence.
Science Mom April 5, 2015 at 8:46 PM
My Data is from the CDC's own VAERS site. Yes I know it is not cause and effect, But doctors who put ( 86%of entrys are by doctors)in the data would not put in a adverse event unless he believed event was caused by a vaccine. So you can't just ignore the data, though that is what you people do.
No Ms. Toff, Anyone can make a VAERS entry and they aren't believed to be vaccine-derived by the majority of physicians. Add to that duplicate and triplicate entries along with second and third hand reports and VAERS is useless to use to claim deaths from a vaccine.
By the way, who pays you? Big Stupid Vaccine Conspiracy Nutters?
Jan Toff April 5, 2015 at 9:12 PM
Ah I thought so. Thanks Science Mom. Obviously this whole site is a Big Pharma sponsored site pushing there agenda.
Also by the above responses I can tell no one read all the links I presented. Good by, I am sure you will be happy to know you won't here from me again.
"Also by the above responses I can tell no one read all the links I presented"
Actually I am familiar with many of them. It was quite clear you had not read the JAMA article you claimed showed the diseases went down, it it was only about mortality. Even though I explained to you on the other thread, and mentioned it a couple times over... you still don't understand why mortality and morbidity are two completely different things.
Seriously, why do you think an article discussing the reduction of disease mortality due to improved medical care is about the reduction of the number of disease cases?
Lawrence April 6, 2015 at 9:50 AM
Very good that we won't "hear" back from you again....since you are definitely incapable of recognizing the difference between incidence rates and mortality rates.
Moreover, the "shill gambit" is old and tired. I am always amazed that Anti-Vaxers are incapable of understanding that people can look at all of the available evidence and come to a conclusion that is different for their own - so instead, they claim that those people are somehow "paid" to hold those opinions.
Because it makes just as much sense to claim that anti-vaxers are paid minions of the Health Industry - since it is abundantly clear that it is much more profitable to treat diseases than it is to prevent them via vaccines.
taken April 17, 2015 at 10:53 AM
"So you can't just ignore the data, though that is what you people do."
of course VAERS reported death are NOT ignored!!!
VAERS reports, especially those of death, are thorougly investigated by the CDC. They will contact the attending doctors, and the family, make a case study, look for common patterns and statistically significant occurences of common reactions. Thats the whole point.
This is not, of course, something that you or I or even a doctor can do on his own. But thats OK, its only done once, and the conclusion of the investigation are made public.
"In 1995 we had 5 in in kids schedule. in 2005 we had 8, now we have 14!! Do we nee the last 9??"
That's a triumph! Each vaccine is a another desease we don't get. We have a ton of things now we didn't have 50 years ago that make our lifes better. But none as much as vaccines.
Lawrence April 17, 2015 at 11:31 AM
Nobody develops a vaccine "just because."
These diseases afflicted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people...
And yes, there are a lot of vaccines in the pipeline, but given the rigorous FDA clinical trial and approval process, maybe 1 out of 50 or even 1 out of 100 will actually make it to market.
"There is some antigenic drift that renders a single antibody insufficient binding to a single antigen from some wild-type measles viruses but over all, vaccines protect us from many different genotypes including the currently circulating B3 genotype."
-- So the MMR vaccine does not protect against ALL strains.
Why doesn't the article say that in simple plain English?
Science Mom July 6, 2018 at 12:44 AM
You misunderstood the statement. The measles vaccine does protect against all circulating strains because there are multiple antigens in the vaccine which allow us to produce multiple antibodies, not to mention cell-mediated immunity. So while there may be some drift in a single antigen, there are many more which we develop immunity to.
18 month old, unvaccinated, previously healthy tod...
The Measles Vaccines (MMR and MMRV) Protect Agains...
Your freedom of choice - somebody else's baby
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Prev Article 1. - LEGAL PUBLICATIONS Next
64-103. Publication of acts of legislature, official documents, and constitutional amendments. (a) All acts of the legislature which shall provide for their taking effect on publication in any newspaper or in the Kansas register shall be published in the Kansas register, which shall be deemed the official publication. Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, all proclamations, orders, notices and advertisements authorized by any state officer shall be printed and published in the Kansas register. Payment for such publication shall be made by the state at the rates prescribed by law. The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to: (1) Resolutions making propositions to amend the constitution; or (2) proclamations issued by the governor which are not required by law to be issued by the governor. All proclamations issued by the governor which are not published in the Kansas register shall be published on the official Kansas internet website.
(b) For the purpose of informing the electors of the propositions to be voted on at the election thereon, the secretary of state shall cause resolutions making propositions to amend the constitution to be published in one newspaper in each county of the state where a newspaper is published, once each week for three consecutive weeks immediately preceding the election at which the proposition is to be submitted.
History: L. 1879, ch. 166, § 105; R.S. 1923, 64-103; L. 1933, ch. 221, § 1; L. 1981, ch. 166, § 3; L. 1981, ch. 324, §18; L. 1982, ch. 346, § 4; L. 2001, ch. 99, § 1; July 1.
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Logistics firm gains ISO certification to strengthen medical device offering
SEKO Logistics has gained ISO 13485 quality management certification for its facility in Amsterdam, as it aims to strengthen its service offering for medical device manufacturers and distributors. Spearheaded by numerous ISO 13485 facilities across the United States, SEKO’s MedTec business has grown 20% annually in each of the last five years and now represents 13% of the company’s global revenue. SEKO MedTec supports medical device manufacturers that have products ranging from large laboratory equipment to small homecare devices.
NHS to face legal action if mesh restrictions are ignored
We have taken advice from Thompsons Solicitors and to make sure that no more patients are put at risk letters are going to NHS England and every hospital Trust making clear that the new guidelines are not a green light to restart the use of mesh, and that the July 2018 restrictions remain in place.
The scope of the ISO 13485 certification qualifies SEKO to provide light contract manufacturing services, including assembly and inspection of medical devices, non-sterile product kitting and third-party logistics support, including inventory control, warehousing and order fulfilment. In the Netherlands and at all of its other certified facilities, SEKO is now qualified to carry out technical services for customer products, such as surgical kitting, medical device re-working, device quality inspection, testing and decontamination.
SEKO’s logistics centre in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Logistics Park opened at the beginning of 2018 and is the company’s second largest operation in Europe. It will now be a major MedTec hub for SEKO on the continent and play a key role in managing any growing demand for the company’s international transportation and fulfilment solutions, cross-border eCommerce, Omni-Channel, White Glove and Final Mile services. SEKO invested in this bigger location in the Netherlands to meet demand from its core industry verticals; aerospace, automotive, energy, government, industrial, medical, retail, technology, trade shows and events.
Study links insurance coverage to access to hospital care
Robert Shearer, managing director of SEKO MedTec, said: “ISO 13485 is the quality standard that meets the regulatory requirements of the medical device industry, so it is a valuable qualification for us as a logistics service provider and will differentiate SEKO’s offering in this fast-growing market. The Netherlands remains the premier 3PL and distribution location in Europe, and this latest investment in our service quality and clean room capabilities reflects our dedication and commitment to this market. The ISO Standard confirms that SEKO MedTec has the same high-level Quality Management System as our medical device manufacturer clients. This is especially important in the Netherlands because many of our biggest MedTec clients use it as the center of their European distribution programs due to the VAT deferral opportunities and the significant cashflow benefits this delivers.”
Real-time diagnostics. The intelligent surgical knife (iKnife) was developed by Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London and works by using an old technology where an electrical current heats tissue to make incisions with minimal blood loss. With the iKnife, the vaporized smoke is analyzed by a mass spectrometer to detect the chemicals in the biological sample. This means it can identify whether the tissue is malignant real-time. Surgeons will love this surgical Jedi knife which can significantly reduce the length of operations.
Many of SEKO MecTec’s customers manufacture medical devices and technology equipment such as ultrasound, x-ray, mammography, anesthesia, ventilators, personal health and rehabilitation devices, incubators, surgical robots and hospital beds.
Tags: seko, quality, service, device, company, equipment, certification, technology, inspection, industry,
The article source: www.med-technews.com
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Setting his sights on further improvement
Zachary Araki, Assistant Editor|February 5, 2019
Rick Fremin, softball head coach, brought the Lady Lions from 12th place in the Southland Conference to tied for second place between his first season as the head coach and last season. He coaches his players to be tough and aggressive on the field.
File Photo/The Lion’s Roar
Entering his fourth year as the softball head coach, Rick Fremin aims to continue the Lady Lions’ upward trajectory after setting school records for wins.
Though Fremin initially aspired to be a college football coach, he started his softball coaching career at his former high school, Belle Chasse High School.
“The athletic director came to me and asked me to be the softball coach ‘cause it had an opening, and I told him, ‘No,’ twice, and he told me to go home and pray about it for two days, which I did,” shared Fremin. “So, I wound up taking over four weeks before the first game, and then they hadn’t been to the state championships in 10 years, so we made it our first year, and the softball bug bit me.”
After earning district titles in his two seasons with Belle Chasse, Fremin coached for five seasons at Jackson State University before starting to coach the Lady Lions in 2015. Fremin discussed the transition from coaching at the high school level to the collegiate level.
“I enjoyed it because I was no longer in the classroom having to teach, so it was just 100 percent softball focused on the student-athletes, the development of a program,” explained Fremin. “I even enjoyed the fieldwork, the maintenance, building the program, so that was a great experience ‘cause I’m very competitive.”
In the search for a softball coach, Jay Artigues, director of athletics, appreciated finding Fremin to fill the role.
“We had many quality applicants, but coach Fremin’s track record of successful recruiting as well as his success on and off the field quickly separated him from the other candidates,” said Artigues.
Artigues discussed how Fremin developed the softball program.
“He has brought a sense of pride and accountability to the program,” stated Artigues. “Last season, our softball team set a new school record for wins in a season.”
When coaching, Fremin promotes the saying of “iron teeth” to signify mental and physical toughness as well as being more aggressive than the opposing team.
“We show that through our style of play,” explained Fremin. “We try to play fast while we’re playing free and enjoying the game and trying to not just compete but dominate and just have that mindset along with the physical and mental toughness I mentioned before, having the iron teeth to take a punch from the other team and be able to return it, stay in the fight.”
Jaquelyn Ramon, senior outfielder, described Fremin as “probably one of the best coaches I’ve ever played for.”
“He definitely changed the program around,” shared Ramon. “Everything he does, he helps us on the field and off the field and just to reach another side, not just softball. There’s life after softball. He definitely tries to tap into that with us and help us out in any way.”
In Fremin’s first year with the university, the Lady Lions finished in 12th place of the Southland Conference. In 2017, the Lady Lions tied for sixth, and last season, the team tied for second place.
“Three years, we made a lot of headway, a lot of progress, which has been recognized both in and out of the classroom,” said Fremin. “Our team GPA is now a 3.4. Our team service hours are higher than they’ve ever been, and last year, we won more games ever in program history. Things have been headed in the right direction. We’re not where we want to be. We’ll continuously compete for championships in the Southland Conference and advance postseason play.”
Tags: Jaquelyn Ramon, Jay Artigues, Lady Lions, Rick Fremin, softball
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Kentucker Audley April 10, 2018
*Online Premiere* Bearing the weight of social obligation, Mel attends her baby shower. Directed by Mimi Jeffries, “Lily” is an exploration of gender roles and emotional suppression, a heavy drama led by a powerful lead performance by Olivia Gilliatt.
We never get a clean view of the party guests — they are shown out of focus or at the edges of the frame. The technique works to keep us in the mental state of Mel. Her husband, the rest of her family, friends, they’re all there to help, to fuss over where to place the flowers, when to open gifts. But they are all too focused on how Mel should be feeling to notice how she is feeling. The truth is, she’s a wreck. The signature scene takes place downstairs as Mel escapes to calm down and is joined by a young boy, the son of a friend. And the film, which has established an effective strategy of restraint, finally unleashes a flood of emotion.
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InFilms, Premieres, Short Films, Drama TagsLily, Mimi Jeffries, Olivia Gilliatt, Allison Anderson, Female Filmmakers, April, 2018, All, 1113
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LEAH - Queen of Fantasy
In a time that you find less and less melody in music, comes Leah and her ethereal music to bring everything upside down. Leah lies there, where metal and chill out music meet. Please welcome the "metal Enya" and listen to her Celtic fantasy metal songs! Her latest album, "The Quest", is a masterpiece and Myth of Rock is here to spread the news. We spoke with her and you can read all her sayings right below. The "Leah" chapter is a very interesting, an exciting part of the book of contemporary heavy metal. Enjoy!
by Dimitris Zacharopoulos - Sylvia Crystal
How did you decide to begin your career as a solo artist?
It's a bit of a backwards story as I didn't record my first album until after I was married and settled down with kids. Not very typical of me! I've been a songwriter since I was about 13-14 years old, though.
Your music is described as “Celtic Fantasy Metal”. Do you agree with this definition?
Yes, I think that describes it generally. Sometimes it's less metal, but even hardcore metal fans tell me they still want to listen to it when they're in more of a chill mood.
Why people should listen to your music?
If someone is looking to feel like they're in an otherworldly place, transported to another era full of magic, ethereal beings, and beautiful landscapes, I think they'll like this music.
How do you react, when people say that you are “the metal Enya” and your music is “chill out music for metalheads”?
I think it's cool! I usually embrace the terms fans come up with - it gives me insight into the music I didn't objectively have.
What does inspire you to compose your songs? Which artists/bands are your “music heroes”?
Inspiration often comes from places I've been, photos, and fantasy films and TV shows. I tend to bank it all up and then it comes out one day while I'm doing something mundane like doing the dishes. I have many music heroes, spanning across different genres, from The Doors, to The Tea Party, Sarah McLauchlan, Loreena McKennitt, to Symphony X, Dream Theater, Within Temptation, and many more.
Your unique voice is so warm and ethereal but also with a rock color at the same time. What do you feel every time you sing?
Thank you. I'm usually focused on the emotion of the song and lyric. I try to stop thinking about technique when I record and let it flow.
Give us all the details about “The Quest” album: when did you compose the songs, where did you record them, who did the production, who did the mixing and the mastering?
I composed the songs over 2 years, basically writing and recording them one by one, and adding all the final vocals at the very end. I composed and did all the pre-production from my home studio, and Oliver Philipps was the producer. He also did all the orchestration and we collaborated on the arrangements. Jacob Hansen did the mixing and mastering.
You have an impressive amount of great musicians contributing in your new album – Troy Donockley, Barend Courbois, Timo Somers, Sander Zoer and Chen Balbus. How did it come and you collaborated with them?
I asked! :) Most of all these introductions came by way of mutual friends or acquaintances.
Where would you trace the differences between “The Quest” and your previous recordings?
"The Quest" became its own animal and I decided to not try and fit into any mold. That meant accepting that it may not be as heavy as my previous album and just be ok with that. The recording process was really different in that Oliver and I worked very closely and he's much more picky than I am, which is a good thing in many ways, but it made for a much longer process.
Which is your favorite song from your new album and why?
It changes depending on my mood, but I do love "The Quest"! Also "Ghost Upon a Throne" has nostalgic ties for me.
I believe that “The Quest” is such a good album that you will surely have a big success. Do you agree with me?
I hope so! We will see.
Why are you not a touring artist? Are you planning to tour one day or do you prefer to be a studio musician?
Mainly because I have a big family and the logistics never made sense for me. For now I'm a recording artist, but definitely, have the itch to tour one day. I'm also doing things backwards in that many artists tour when they're first getting started as a way to promote and get their name out there. Instead, I'm building my following online around the world first, so there will hopefully be demand for a tour.
How are you in your personal life? Are you the romantic fairy or the badass rock woman?
I'm more like a romantic fairy badass businesswoman.
You are the composer of your songs. How do you feel when you are composing your songs and which are your feelings, when you listen to them, after the mixing/mastering is done?
It's always magical when I get mixes back - it sounds so different! Always better. Mastering takes it to a whole new level once again. It's like waxing a sports car. It's good without it, but it doesn't really shine until after the treatment.
What about the lyrics? Do you write the words of your songs? Where do they refer to?
Yes, I write all the lyrics. Sometimes I have no idea what they are about, as some of my songs "write themselves" - so maybe they come from my subconscious. Other times, I do research in Wikipedia on a topic, like in the song Heir - I was researching Scotland's national animal in Wikipedia, which happens to be a unicorn. So that's where that song got its inspiration.
Are you a person who is always inspired or do you sometimes need a boost to get inspiration?
Inspiration is something you have to tap into. It's there but is easily ignored. I find when I am open all kinds of ideas are already there, lying dormant. So I keep my phone nearby and sing into my voice memo app as soon as something comes to me.
Which are your hobbies? I am sure that you read fantasy books and watch fantasy movies!
I don't have a lot of time for novels these days, but I do love fantasy TV series and movies like Outlander, The Hobbit, and so forth. I'm often working on my music, so I consider that my hobby, and when I have time, I do like crafty things like chainmaille and sewing.
You had collaborated with Eric Peterson in the past. Describe to us how this collaboration was. Is there any chance of collaborating with Eric in the future?
Yes, that song was quite spontaneous and we often talk of doing more. I recently sang on his new Dragonlord record, you'll find my voice on several tracks including choirs and solo parts, such as in the song "Love of The Damned".
You are in Inner Wound Records. Are you satisfied with your record label?
Yes, we've been working together for the past several years. It's a different kind of partnership than most, in that I retain my independent status, which I love. It's great to have people on your side that truly care about you in this business.
Which are your plans for the future?
Definitely more music! I'd like to do a non-metal fantasy album, and then another heavier album again. Let's see what happens!
Leah, thank you very much!
SEYMINHOL - Beauties Behind the Mask
A historic band from France, Seyminhol is one of melodic metal's most enjoyable sensations. But the band's music isn't only melodic, since you can find several elements in its songs, for example progressive metal and symphonic music elements. Without a doubt, Seyminhol's latest album, "Ophelian Fields" (2018), was an impressive piece of art, which shows that the French guys are in perfect shape. Some months after the record release, Myth of Rock came in contact with the band and Nico (guitars,keyboards) answered our questions. Below you can read this interesting chat, but don't miss listening to Seyminhol music, in any case - they really deserve it!
Dimitris Zacharopoulos
Give us a short biography of Seyminhol.
Well, a short biography isn’t really possible because the band is very old! At the beginning, at the end of the darkened days of the eighties, Chris and Eric (our fist guitarist) decides to make a group. And, three years later, I became the new singer of the crew. During three years again we played music, band cover and we worked on our instruments. At the end of 1995, we decided to make our first MCD. It was “Thunder in the dark”. Two short albums have been created in the nineties. And our first album was born in 2002. After that, a second opus arrived and our style was a mixture of power, epic, progressive and symphonic metal. It was the time of “Viking theme”. I think the change of atmosphere on “Ov Asylum” has been the arrival of another conception of our music. At the end of this offering – it was really a kind of musical sacrifice – we decided to stop the machine. It was important for us, for the creation, the evolution and the future of the band. Five years later, our new album “The wayward son” gave the sense of our new vision. It was a good example of traditions, bombastic inspiration and progressive views we had of the band. Now “Ophelian Fields” is a mix of all our influences. A sane and profitable reflexion about the road that we wanted to use. And, of course, it isn’t the end of our evolution. It’s just a step, a new level in our particular career.
What does “Seyminhol” mean and why did you decide to have this band name?
It’s not a fictive name. The base of this choice was our interest for the culture, arts and traditions of the Indians. The true orthography is “SEMINOLE”, the name of tribe from Florida in the south of America. You can find the link with this name on our MCD « Indian spirit ». We will propose a special song about that in few months. It will be the roots of our band, a return to the genuine seed. We will sing in French and we’ll use traditional instruments and strange noises.
I didn’t know Seyminhol, until I listened to the song “Behind the Mask”. Do you believe that with “Ophelian Fields” and your next albums you will manage to get more known outside France?
I don’t’ know. It’s not my aim! It’s very important to have the opportunity to offer his music all around the world but we aren’t professional musicians. We work, we have family and we aren’t enough young to realize the conquest of new territories. Maybe in another life or after death when our albums will become famous!
How do you see now your latest album, “Ophelian Fields”, some months after its official release?
I’m always plenty satisfied with this album. It’s a new face of the band. But I hope it wasn’t too complicated for the fans. We like to have a different approach of the music and sometimes this manner to proceed isn’t evident.
Although your sound is progressive and complex, I liked your songs pretty soon, after the first listen. How difficult is it for you to have a complex but catchy sound at the same time?
We don’t create the music with an established idea. We just search the emotion and a kind of color. After that, two or three listen are the norm to understand our universe. The progressive rock must be listenable if the inner sense is pure. When the creation is guided by a true meaning. It’s just a question of sensitive perception.
Can you give us the details behind the concept of “Ophelian Fields”?
"Ophelian Fields" is the rest of the “Wayward son” album. It is based on Hamlet of Shakespeare but he is more different because we speak about the character of Ophelia. It’s the lover of Hamlet, a kind of lunar figure that appears as a sensitive person. I wanted to work about it and to propose a new vision of the tragedy. I think that the music and the entire atmosphere will be perceived like an evolution. Ophelia is a Mother Nature, a sort of good sorceress, the girl of the river. She can explain the own folly of Hamlet. She is a tutelary figure, maybe the true hero of this dramatic story. This new album describes all the state of this young person: the drama that she incarnates, the tensions that she creates.
How would you describe the music style of Seyminhol?
We don’t play always the same style. Our influences are very large. It’s a specter that is defined by our own story, our personal way and choices. Of course, the base of the music is the power metal and the progressive rock but the black metal, the gothic rock, the hard rock are important too in the process of creation. Actually, we play a strange progressive rock with a touch of anger and distress.
Who is responsible for Seyminhol music and lyrics?
The lyrics are my job ; the music, the vision of Nico. Although, we work together on the atmosphere, the upper theme of the concept and the sounds.
Did you play live shows for the promotion of “Ophelian Fields”? What do you remember from these live shows?
Of course but I want to be honest with you. I dislike the shows. It’s a question of time, of preparation. We cannot be on the top because we make music inside a strange movement. This movement is split between our professional work and our work of musician. Often, we discover some band during these shows and often the members are very special. It’s a business attitude or maybe just the attitude of the human race.
Have you started composing for your next album? If yes, how does this material sound, until now? Do you know if this is going to be a concept album again?
Yes, we are working on the new material. It will be a concept, a very ambitious concept based on the history of the second part of the twentieth century. The point of this story takes her source during the Second World War in Germany. We will follow the step of an adopted child called Tessmann. We will lulled by the amazing adventures of this guy.
Have you decided, at which studio you will record the new album, who will be the producer and who will do the mixing and the mastering?
We work on our home studio. The production is our matter. No big name, no big project because money is the key. And, of course, we don’t have money.
Where do you get inspiration from? Which are your music influences?
The history and the literary are the two legs of our corps. And our heads can eat all the music of the world. It’s just a question of taste and of beauty. The rock music and its by-products are not the Holy Grail! We adore the movies music, the tribal music, the classical tender and the soul music.
Which is your favorite concept album of all times and why?
It’s a difficult question. As for me I think the theme of the Carmina Burana is the most sober, dark and reflective creation of the twentieth century. It’s really grand and grandiloquent. An excellent vision of the human being, of the seasons of the life, of the time that goes by and of the idea of disappearance. I like the bones because the bones are all the same: there are no kings, there are no beggars. Just a pile of skulls, of ulna and of humeruses! And if I can speak about a modern concept, without hesitation I will say “Metropolis part II”, Dream Theater or, maybe, “666” by the Aphrodite’s Child. “The Four Horsemen” Is an incredible song.
Who is your favorite author and why?
Shakespeare, for all the ideas that I developed higher in this interview and E. Cioran for his skepticism, his capacity to speak about the ephemeral characters of the life and the poignant of the existence. It’s an amazing mind, very biting and with the hard-hitting humor.
How are things for heavy metal in France?
Nothing. An awful pile of disillusion and shit.
Seyminhol is signed to Lion Music Records. Are you satisfied with Lion Music’s work until now?
Yes, the head manager of this label is a true realistic person. The results are positive for the band and for the fans.
Send your message to our readers!
Be trusting! Listen to the good vibrations of the hope. THANX.
VIRGIN STEELE - Still Barbaric, Still Romantic!
It is been quite a time since Virgin Steele has released a very successful full-length album, commercially speaking, but the legendary American band is always here with us, alive, releasing new music and playing live! Virgin Steele belongs to the classic metal groups and its every move is great news for all of us. David DeFeis and company are in the spotlight again, as they are re-issuing their first two studio albums, "Virgin Steele I" (1982) and "Virgin Steele 2/Guardians of the Flame" (1983), and are releasing a 35th-Anniversary box set ("Seven Devils Moonshine", which will contain three new albums!) on November 23, 2018. Myth of Rock immediately thought it was a great opportunity to speak with the band's singer and mastermind, David DeFeis, who accepted our invitation and answered all our questions - we talked about the past, the present, the future, and everything related to Virgin Steele. So, ladies and gentlemen, hats off to David DeFeis and Virgin Steele!
by Dimitris Zacharopoulos
The first two albums of Virgin Steele are being reissued by No Remorse Records. Why did you decide to re-release these albums? How did you come in contact with No Remorse Records?
In truth I actually had no intention of re-issuing those two albums at this time. It was not at all on my mind because I have been so involved and still am involved in lots of new music. I was approached by No Remorse Records who inquired if it might be possible to re-issue them…I was at first not that interested because as I stated I already had so much on my plate, but we started to speak and had several very nice conversations and fairly quickly came to an agreement and now…here we are…all is ready to go and they have done a beautiful job!
Are you the one who decided about the remixes and the bonus tracks of these two re-releases?
Yes, I handled all of that as I always do.
What do you recall from the first days of Virgin Steele?
Everything! My memory is intact. I recall how we all met, the first rehearsals, the recording sessions…the first concerts…all of it. It was quite an amazing time. We were very inspired and we exploded and we went for it and quickly became very well known in our immediate area and then in what seemed like no time at all we had serious interest from people all around the world. We pressed up the first album and I sold it from the trunk of my car and before that first pressing was sold out we had two record deals, one with Mongol Horde in the States and one in England with Music For Nations. In fact we were MFN 1 the very first release on this new label that soon acquired W.A.S.P., Mercyful Fate, Ratt, Manowar and tons of other wonderful metal bands.
Please describe us how you became the singer of Virgin Steele.
A long curly haired drummer named Joey Ayvazian, and a guitarist named Jack Starr were rehearsing together and trying to get something serious going, while at the same time I was playing in various groups with a bass player named Joe O’Reilly, when one day I saw an advertisement in a local music paper stating that some metal musicians were searching for a singer and there was some kind of tour planned. Excited and intrigued … I answered the ad … met with Joey and we arranged to meet up for a jam at a nearby rehearsal studio the next day. I arrived on time ready to rip, but there was nothing scheduled for us as Jack had forgotten to book the time. I was still very gung-ho, so I suggested that he and Jack come back to my house where I had all my gear set up, to afford them the opportunity to hear my singing and keyboard playing. I played three songs for them, “No Quarter', by Led Zeppelin, “Child In Time”, by Deep Purple and “Catch the Rainbow”, by Rainbow. They liked what they heard and asked me to join the band then and there. While I was flattered and interested, remember … I had not yet had the opportunity to hear them play. So … I suggested that we actually all jam together first to see if we could spark, and Jack did set up a jam … but when I arrived at the studio for this second attempt … Joey the drummer I had met and kind of bonded with, wasn’t on the kit! I thought … hmmm … ”strange” … Some other guy was there on drums and there was also another guitar player present who sang … We played and it was sort of nice … but I wasn’t really into the drummer or the bass player, or having another singer around, plus I wanted to hear Joey play because we had clicked and I liked him very much as a person … I said to Jack, “hey I like what you’re doing but I want to hear the drummer I met and I have a great bass player who would be perfect for this” … he said, “OK great, let’s arrange for another jam”, and finally Jack, Joey, Joe “O”, and I all did jam together a day or so later. And so the two factions finally assembled and we clicked musically right away. We rehearsed for about three weeks and entered the studio to record what became “Virgin Steele I”. The album was recorded mostly live in the studio, and the entire production cost about $ 1,000 dollars and took maybe about a week to record and mix.
How was your cooperation with guitarist Jack Starr?
Back in those days it was fine. We all got along pretty well most of the time. Now and then we had the usual occasional disagreements but nothing major.
How do you see now the first two Virgin Steele albums? Do you like them? How much have you progressed since then, as a band and as a musician?
I see them as essays in the craft before it was fully sown…wild, passionate raw performances with some very cool songs. I love them…I love all the albums for different reasons. The group has progressed enormously since those days in so many areas, and I as a musician, composer, etc. have added many more strings to my bow. Especially as a writer/composer that is where my main strengths are.
How would you define the music of “Virgin Steele I” and “Virgin Steele II”?
At the time we called it metal, power metal, crazy metal … it was also called progressive metal … some of it was bluesy metal or hard rock … some of it was on the epic side … some had early “symphonic” touches.
Which is your favorite track of “Virgin Steele I” and your favorite track of “Virgin Steele II”?
On “Virgin Steele I” I think I enjoy “Danger Zone”, “Living in Sin”, “Children of the Storm” and the song “Virgin Steele”. On “Virgin Steele II” … I enjoy “Don’t Say Goodbye”, “A Cry in the Night”, and perhaps also “Guardians of the Flame” the most. I remember listening to the playback of the final mixes in the studio and being completely amazed at the sound and the fact that we had captured this grandiose epic quality and distilled all of our various personalities into these tracks.
If you could turn back time, what would you do differently as far as these first two albums are concerned?
I might want to spend more time recording and mixing because I always want that!
How much different were things for heavy metal music back in the beginning of the 80s? Are you satisfied with the current condition of Virgin Steele?
It was a more wide-open time…the scene was actively more engaging and alive. There actually was a music business, a photography business and all the peripheral things that go along with making music, making records … etc. If you are asking me “am I satisfied with where Virgin Steele is at creatively and musically speaking”, then the answer is a most resounding “yes I am”. I think the songs have gotten stronger and stronger over the years and the core chemistry is more intuitive than ever before, and we have managed to capture more and more of the passion, the raw emotion of our lives in sound … The albums we make reflect the sound of our living world if you will…
Three years have passed since the release of your latest studio album (“Nocturnes of Hellfire & Damnation”). Have you written any new material? If yes, how does it sound? When should we expect your new full-length studio album?
Always … I continually have numerous albums in the works and in various stages of completion. I am always writing and we are always recording. We will be releasing a box set in November that in addition to containing the last two re-issues, will feature three discs of new material in various styles from aggressive barbaric-romantic metal to epic gothic bluesy metal to stripped down orchestral type recordings … all sorts of stuff, because it is a box set and for such an item I think one should go deep and occasionally provide some left hand path type material. Our last album contained twenty nine songs, and every re-issue we have unleashed has contained new music, therefore we weren’t in too great a rush to release something immediately following that last album. We wanted people to get to know the material we had already put out first, before releasing more new material.
Give us the details about the two videos you recently released for the songs “When Dusk Fell” and “Black Light On Black”.
What do you wish to know? They are both from the re-mixed version of our “Visions of Eden” album and they were both filmed on Long Island where we live. A lot of footage was done in the cold, cold winter and some of it was filmed in a nearby cemetery. We tried to infuse the clips with the emotions of the songs and show something of our beliefs, our personalities, and what our life is like here.
If you had to choose between being a romantic and being a barbarian, what would you prefer to be, and why?
Some days some nights … some moments I feel more barbaric than romantic and at other times quite the opposite … it all depends on how I am motivated by the stimuli around me. In my day-to-day life in dealing with people, places and things that I would prefer to not have to deal with, I tend to push the barbaric side of my nature to the fore … but among friends and people I care about deeply I try to more … “romantic”…
If you could travel in time, which period of history would you choose?
I do have a special affinity for 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, but I don’t think I would want to remain there too long as I would probably be condemned as a witch … Perhaps the earliest recorded days of the human race would be interesting … Ancient Babylon … Sumeria … or certainly Ancient Greece … when the Gods & Goddesses were all quite young or not yet born … when the Titans still reigned …
What do you think of modern metal? Do you like any modern metal bands?
There are some wonderful musicians out there doing metal these days, but to be honest I don’t really follow too much of it. Occasionally certain bands get brought to my attention and I always listen and I usually enjoy it … there is always so much to discover or re-discover as the case may be.
If Jack Starr asked you to come back to the band, which would be your reaction?
I have a very strong special chemistry with Edward Pursino that is still inspiring and we barely have enough time to do all the things we want to do together. That’s not to say that I have any issues with Jack. I wish him well in all that he is doing and who knows, as far as maybe a track or something like that happening down the road I suppose that is always possible, but nothing like that is on my mind at this time. We are already working on the next two new “concept type” albums and have been tracking guitars for days now … and there is still much to do in order to complete them for release sometime next year.
Which are your plans for the future? What about a tour?
The immediate future will bring forth the five disc box set in November and then work on these two new full-length “concept” type albums that we have already begun and of which I started speaking about above, and yes … live shows.
A message to your Greek fans!
Certainly!!! CHEERS FRIENDS!!! BY THE GODS & GODDESSES to you ALL!!! We have missed you! We do hope to visit the Home Of The Gods & Goddesses once again very soon. You will always hold a hugely special place in our Hearts…ETHARISTO POLI to YOU ALL!
Thank you very much, Mr. DeFeis.
Hail and all the very best to you and to your readers always.
7HE 7OUCH - Touched by the hand of Rock!
As a result of the financial crisis in Greece, many young people are seeking something better in foreign lands. This may also happen in the world of music - there are Greek bands which are moving abroad, in order to have a better luck and more chances in their career. One of these bands is 7he 7ouch, who moved to London, England, to pursue their dreams. I incidentally came across the band's music video for the song "Solution" and I was really blown away! So, it was a matter of time to conduct an interview with 7he 7ouch, who announced these days the official release of their debut EP, "SEVENTYSEVEN". The band answered gladly all Myth of Rock's questions and I am sure you will find the following chat very interesting. Let's go!
When and how were 7he 7ouch formed?
Everything first started back in 2012 when two different childhood friendships; [Constantine (vocals), Stelios (guitar) and John (guitar), Toni (bass), Apostolis (drums)] got together for a jam in the studio as John and Constantine were working on some new ideas and needed to jam on then in the studio. We really enjoyed ourselves being together and this is how 7he 7ouch were formed. It was the need to escape from our daily routines and the lust to create new music/sounds. Later the same year and due to the financial crisis in our country, Apostolis decided to take another direction in his life and moved to Canada in 2013. After several years of seeking for the right fit to fill for Apostolis shoes, we met Dave and we officially reformed 7he 7ouch.
Why did you decide to move to London?
It was back in the fall of 2014. Greece wasn’t at the best place back in the day and music in Greece as well. We decided that we wanted to take a leap and start a career in London and then we did it.
How much difficult was it for you to leave Greece and settle down in England?
Every new beginning has its difficulties and obstacles to overcome. The first days were tough but we learned from it. The most important thing was that we had each other.
How are things for rock bands in England nowadays? Which are the differences between the situation in England and the situation in Greece?
Rock is the SOUND in England. Let’s not forget that UK is the mainland of rock music, see The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Motörhead and you know the list goes on and on. There is a lot of activity here, everybody is a music enthusiast and rock music is a big part of the English culture. The competition (always talking about a friendly competition) is very high and this can only make you be better every day. We think Greece has some great bands and musicians, even though the music industry is focused on different genres there are some great bands starting coming to prominence and tour globally. It is very much harder for a band based in Greece to succeed and have an international career in comparison to many English based bands, as the industry here is very much developed and focuses and invests on the artists.
If a young Greek musician asked you if he/she should leave Greece and move to England in order to become a professional musician, what would you suggest to him?
We would suggest them to follow their heart and do what they love. Focus on your goals and never let it slide away.
Which are your releases until now? Give us all the details about your upcoming EP release.
We have just announced the release of our debut EP for October 29th. It will be called “SEVENTYSEVEN”. “Solution” is the first single we released on the 9th of July. All we can say is that we are very proud of it. It sounds BIG, it is melodic and heavy at the same time. We can’t wait to share it with you.
How would you describe your music? Can we define it as alternative hard rock?
We are not big fans of putting titles to our music. It can be alternative and it can be hard-hitting rock ‘n roll at times but 7he 7ouch is something more than this. You can definitely say that we are a rock band but at the same time, there are a lot more elements that can be put into the mix. We all have different influences and this sometimes can work great and bring something refreshing to the sound.
You have played a lot of live shows until now. How much and in which way have these live gigs helped the band?
You can only improve and get better by playing live. We‘ve had a lot of shows over the years and this made each of us better at their instrument and of course, it made the band sound tighter. The more a band can play live the better. At the end of the day, this is what it is all about. Playing live music.
Who are the main composers in 7he 7ouch? Which are your music influences?
Mainly most of our ideas are usually coming from Constantine and John and then we are all gathering and working on the development of them. Regarding our influences, we all differ in taste and preferences but we definitely complete each other. Everyone in the band is, of course, listening any piece of music and artist that is sounding right but we all have our favorite eras like most of the people. John and Toni are more excited about the beginning of rock n’ roll and how the sound of it gradually became harder and harder. John is a 60's and 70's rock, blues and heavy metal admirer. Toni is absolutely an 80's freak. Constantine and Stelios are definitely kids of the 90's and 2000's with many nu-metal influences and still exploring the newest genres for new sounds. Dave is the only one that actually studied music so he has a greater opinion of the music genre spectrum and also loves hip-hop and rap music.
Which elements are the most significant for you: melody, energy, passion, feeling?
It all comes together. You can’t have a melody without the energy to deliver it. You can’t have energy if you are not feeling passionate about something. And to be able to do all the above that requires from your inner self be able to have feelings.
Who is the lyrics writer? Where do the lyrics refer to?
Constantine and John are the main lyricists and the theme can vary. We are considering ourselves as very concerned and sensitive humans about the world and the people surrounding us. It can be political, it can be love, it can be everything. Everything that we see and go through our everyday life it all reflects to us.
Do you prefer to produce your own songs or to cooperate with a person outside the band?
We love working with other people outside the band. You get to learn things from them and always helps having a second opinion from someone you know that truly cares for you and is outside the band.
Do you have a record deal with a record label yet? If not, are you in negotiations with any record labels?
At the moment we are moving on independently.
Why did you decide to name the band “7he 7ouch”?
It just happened when we were trying to figure out a name for our band and then Toni came up with “Touch” we thought it sounded cool and added the “the“ to it. We realized that there’s another band with the same name in America, so we came up with the idea of adding the 7’s instead of T’s.
Which are your dreams/ambitions for 7he 7ouch?
We would like to be seen as the type of artists that want to contribute to the shaping of rock music in the future, while respecting and acknowledging all the phases rock n' roll went through in the past and in that way our desire is to be at the front line of the new era of rock n' roll.
Which are your future plans, apart from releasing your EP?
Play as many live shows as we can, potential tour in the fall and record some new music.
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MONUMENT - Filthy Hounds of Hell
Monument are one the best and most promising traditional heavy metal bands of our times. Their albums are full of powerful, storming songs with great melodies and soaring vocals, and their live shows meet the highest expectations. Greek fans had the chance to enjoy Monument in Rockwave Festival 2018, where the British band really rocked big time. After Monument’s performance, Myth of Rock talked with the frontman of the band, Peter Ellis, who gladly answered our questions and said very interesting things. Read the following lines and keep in mind that Monument are here to stay!
by Sylvia Crystal
You played live in Rockwave Festival, Greece, the day that Iron Maiden were the headliners. How do you recall this live gig?
Really warm, haha! It was the most challenging gig of the summer so far due to the hot temperatures but at the same time the crowd was the loudest of all the festivals we have played so far. Of course for me, on a personal level, it is always special when we play Greece as I was born and raised in Athens.
This concert wasn’t the first Monument live gig in Greece, since you had played with Iced Earth in 2016. How much has the band progressed since 2016?
Things are a lot busier now and the band is now one of the rising forces in European metal across the continent, which is really cool. Our management team and us have put a lot of time and effort into this, so it is great to see the band getting bigger and bigger.
In your opinion, which was the best moment and which was the worst moment in your tour until now?
Rockwave was actually both, the best and worst moment for us, haha! It was the worst because of the extreme heat on stage, but also the best due to the amazing Greek audience that sent us so much energy and positive vibes during our set.
How do you feel, when you enter the stage? Do you have any stress? Do you think of something certain?
I never get stressed before going on stage, regardless of whether we are playing for 200 people or 20.000. I was born into a show business family, so live performance is in my blood.
Your latest album, “Hellhound”, was praised by both journalists and fans. How do you see that album now, some months after its official release? Are you satisfied with it, artistically and commercially?
I could not be happier with the album and how good it’s doing. We knew we had a really strong album going in, so it is nice to see that our good feeling was right.
Could you please describe the relationship between Monument and the fans? Are you satisfied with this relationship or it can get even better?
I think we have a very special bond with our fans, we always take the time to interact with them either at shows or online and we feel we have a responsibility to keep making our fans proud by delivering the best new music we can in every album and putting 100% into every live performance.
Could you please select three adjectives to describe what “Hellhound” album is and three adjectives to describe what “Hellhound” album is not?
Hellhound is: British, Heavy, Metal. Hellhound is NOT: Fake, Boring, Pretentious.
If you had to pick three songs off “Hellhound” album as your favorite songs, which ones would you pick and why?
“The Chalice”, because I feel it has added a whole new dimension to our sound, “Death Avenue”, because I just really like the vibe of that song and “Attila”, because of how full of power it is as a song.
Is there a specific track from Monument’s discography that you aren’t proud of? Why?
There’s a couple of songs on the first two albums where I was trying too hard to please everyone and were included just for that reason. But that doesn’t mean they are bad songs, they just don’t really represent what this band is.
What kind of music do you listen to, when you are at home? Is it only heavy metal music or do you like also other music genres? Which music genre don’t you like at all?
I listen to heavy metal a lot, obviously, but I also listen to 80’s pop as well as more obscure stuff. I absolutely can not listen to black metal, with the exception of Rotting Christ, who are one of my favourite bands, or hip hop/rap.
Is there a musician, with whom you would like to co-operate in studio or on stage? And why?
I always enjoy working with Bob Katsionis, as we have done a few times in the past. We have also worked with Richie Faulkner from Judas Priest, who is an old friend of mine and played a guest solo in the title track of the first Monument EP and he is another person that I would love to work with again. As far as people I have never worked with, it would probably be someone like Matt Barlow (Ashes of Ares, Sentinels, ex – Iced Earth, Pyramaze), I think doing a duet with Matt would be pretty cool.
When and how did you decide to become a singer?
At the age of 18, when I could not find a singer that could actually sing, haha! I was a guitar player at the time.
Monument are described as a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band. Very few bands play in that style nowadays. First of all, do you accept this definition? And if yes, why did you decide to play in that style? Why didn’t you select a different, more popular music style?
If you are real to yourself, you don’t select the style you want to play, it selects you. We never sat down and said “ok lads, let’s pretend to be NWOBHM”, we ARE a British heavy metal band with two lead guitars, lead bass, drums and vocals, I think the surprising thing would be to sound like Pantera or something, haha! We just play what comes natural to us and the results are what you hear on our albums. We don’t care if it is popular or not, we will keep being true to ourselves and try our hardest to make sure that true British metal survives, no matter what.
Many fans believe that Monument is a continuation of the classic 80s heavy metal bands (Iron Maiden, Saxon, Running Wild etc.). Do you believe that you are continuing this legacy?
100%, that is partly why the band is called Monument in the first place. We feel that, since no one else is doing it, we must assure that this, distinctively British, style of music doesn’t fade away once the great bands that came before us stop doing it.
Is Monument a band which likes to follow a certain music “path” or do you like to experiment with your sound?
I always try to expand our sound and I am certainly not afraid to experiment, but I think at the end of the day what I write will always sound NWOBHM in its core as this is what comes naturally to me.
Some doubters accuse you of copying the music style of these classic metal bands. Which is your answer to them? And generally speaking, how do you react to negative criticism?
I never pay attention to critics, the majority of critics are failed musicians, that is just a fact, they are not there to enjoy themselves with some great music, they are there to spread vitriol in order to help their self esteem and feel better about being a failure. I only care about the opinions of people who are real fans of heavy metal and are looking for a band they can be proud of and will be there for them to offer them what they need (great music and live shows) on a consistent basis. Those are the people I listen to. Now regarding us copying a certain musical style, like I mentioned earlier, Monument is the real deal, we don’t try to sound like a British metal band, we ARE a British metal band and what you hear when you play a Monument album is what a bunch of guys from the UK who grew up listening to Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest sounds like, when they are put in a room together.
Can you give us some info about the mascot of the band, Jack? How did you decide to have this mascot? Does Jack symbolize something for you and the band?
Not many people know this but Jack is the product of some advice I got directly from Bruce Dickinson on the subject of mascots. In my opinion, Jack is the best heavy metal mascot since Eddie, I truly believe that. Most bands when they decide to create a mascot they just end up copying Eddie or just use a generic skull etc. With Jack, he is a brand new character and tell you absolutely everything you need to know about the band the moment you see him, and that is what a great mascot does.
Which are your future plans?
We are currently adding more dates to our touring schedule for winter so we will be busy touring and promoting the album for the next year or so and then we are heading in to the studio to record the next studio album.
Thank you very much for your time and answers, Peter!
Thanks a lot for having me, I appreciate your support!
OPEN BURN - Statues of Steel
Open Burn is a new prog/power metal band from the United States, which features three members of the legendary US metal band, Lethal [Dell Hull (guitars), Glen Cook (bass) and Jerry Hartman (drums)]. All US metal maniacs have warmly welcomed the band and its first full-length album, “Divine Intermission”, a disc that should be appreciated for its genuine feeling of power and progress. Myth of Rock magazine couldn’t resist the possibility of an Open Burn interview and the band’s guitarist, Dell Hull, answered our questions. Read the following lines and let the metal flow!
How was Open Burn formed?
Jerry and I first got together with Eric in the late summer of 2015 to play cover songs for a friend’s benefit. Things seemed to gel so we started working on original material soon afterwards. Glen joined us in 2016 after we got back from Greece with Lethal.
Why did you pick the name Open Burn for the band?
We were looking for a name for a while and couldn’t find anything that fit. One day on my way to the studio I saw a painted sign in a field that said “open burn”. I sort of jokingly mentioned it to the guys as a band name. Glen said he liked it so it stuck.
Open Burn features three members of Lethal. Would you say that Open Burn is the reincarnation of Lethal?
Definitely not. Open Burn is a completely different thing. Like I said, Glen joined us later so that was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with Lethal. Of course, since we have played together since the early 80’s he was a perfect fit.
How would you define the music of Open Burn?
That’s a tough one. We’re just playing what we like, not what we think people want to hear so I see it from a different perspective. I’ve heard people say it is like “traditional” heavy metal so I guess that seems to sum it up pretty well? Traditional heavy metal with a modern sound I guess?
One of the strong elements of your music is the voice of Eric Johns. Do you agree with me?
Of course. Eric is a great vocalist. He doesn’t sound like any other single vocalist but has many influences so as a result, he sounds like himself. In my opinion, he still has a lot of untapped potential. Actually, I think we all do. Hopefully, our new music will help unlock some of that potential.
Listening to the songs of “Divine Intermission”, I get a nostalgic feeling. Would you say that your sound is nostalgic?
I guess you could say that but it doesn’t really feel that way to me. The songs and parts are coming from old influences that each of us in the band has so I guess the songs do reflect those old influences. I guess that gives it that “nostalgic” sound?
Describe the composing process of “Divine Intermission”.
The songs we have written so far have mostly started from either nearly complete songs or musical ideas that I’ve come up with. Eric adds melodic lines and lyrics really quickly so we shape the songs around that as a starting point. As everyone adds their parts that also shapes it further and can even give it a totally different feel. It’s very much a collaborative effort.
Where was the album recorded? Who did the production?
We recorded the songs mainly through two different sessions, except for the acoustic version of “Statues”. Both sessions were done at The Den Recording Company near us here in Kentucky. It was engineered, mixed and co-produced with Dave Swart and ourselves. Dave is also an excellent bass player and has also played with Eric in Simple Aggression among several other bands. They’ve known each other for years. We actually recorded the acoustic version of “Statues”, before Glen joined us, at Justin Newton Audio in Cincinnati. Glen added his parts later.
Where do your lyrics refer to?
You’ll have to ask Eric that one. He keeps it a secret. Lol. Lyrics can mean different things to different people so each person might hear them in a different way? Each song has its own meaning.
What do you recall from the Lethal days?
Long hours of rehearsing in the Cook’s basement. Haha. It was lots of fun of course! We just loved playing. Recording and playing live was fun too but we really didn’t play live much.
“Programmed” is a distinguished US prog/power metal album. How do you see this album now?
It’s hard for me to see it that way because we were just playing what we liked. Even though we recorded the album in one month of straight sessions some things still felt rushed to me. I still remember some of the studio sessions and thinking at the time, we can do this better. Lol. Some of the songs, including Immune, were even written in preproduction. That album came out a few years before the internet and/or social media so we had no idea of any kind of impact it may have been having. I think we’ve just been realizing that in recent years with social media becoming so prominent. The same goes for our ep/demo The Arrival.
How are things now in the States for classic heavy/power metal?
Not great. Large bands like Maiden, Priest, Metallica, etc. are still selling out shows but on a local level, the scene is a lot different. We just play what we like so hopefully our past fans will enjoy what we do now and maybe we will pick up a lot of new fans in the process?
“Divine Intermission” is released by a Greek label, No Remorse Records. How did you come in contact with No Remorse?
We came in contact with No Remorse through our friend and promoter from the Up The Hammers festival Manolis Karazeris. He liked our ep and played it for Chris.
Are you planning to make a tour? If yes, when and where?
We would love to tour but don’t have any immediate plans yet. Like I said the heavy/power metal scene in the U.S. is not great right now so I think Europe, Japan and South America would be the best places for us to take our music. It’s just a matter of us finding the right connections to be able to do it.
Your message to the Greek fans!
The Greek metal fans are great and very enthusiastic! So far we have been getting great response to Divine Intermission so we hope more Greek fans will get a chance to hear it. It is a beautiful country so hopefully, we can bring our new music there to a live venue soon!
CRYSTAL VIPER - WITCHES ON THE EDGE OF TIME
You can't include Crystal Viper in the mainstream metal bands, you can't even say that this Polish band is well known in the true metal circles, but that doesn't mean a thing. Crystal Viper's heavy metal music is well-crafted, inspired and imaginative, no one can doubt the band's musical quality and amazing musicianship. “Queen of the Witches” was a fantastic metal album and should not be missed by any classic metal fan! Marta Gabriel, vocalist and frontwoman of the band, and the rest of the guys visited again Athens, Greece, since they would participate in the Up The Hammers Festival 2018. A day after their live performance, Myth of Rock was honored to meet Marta and have a talk with her. What was discussed was very interesting – after all, any interview with Crystal Viper, a band which was formed in 2003 and has released six great traditional metal albums, until now, is an overwhelming experience. So let's cut to the chase and see what Marta answered to Dimitris Zacharopoulos questions!
Crystal Viper began as a project. How did you decide to make it a full band, Marta?
Yes, it all started in 2003 and I can say that Crystal Viper turned to a full band in 2007, when the band was complete, when I met the right people, the people I became friends with, the people with the same passion for heavy metal, for music. Finally, we were able to prepare our first album, to record it and so on. I think that the real beginning of the band was in 2007, after we did the first album together. Before that Crystal Viper was a project, since I just recorded some cover songs with different people, so in the first four years I tried to find the right people with whom I would be able to create the heavy metal band of my dreams.
Would you say that the current line-up of Crystal Viper is the best line-up until now?
Well, the current line-up of the band changed two years ago … Crystal Viper was on a break, we didn’ t rehearse, we didn’ t play or record anything for four years, because I had some health issues and I couldn’t do all that. After the break, our recording bass player told us that he wouldn’t play music any longer, that he would end up everything. We asked him if he maybe knew someone that he could recommend, someone who could take his place. He said that his best friend, Błażej (Grygiel), plays the bass. We met with Błażej and he is right now with us in the band. We also have a new, second guitarist in the band, because I am not playing the guitar in Crystal Viper any longer. Yesterday it was my last live show with a guitar in my hands – I want to have more freedom on stage, to run, to jump ... So we have a new member in the band, Erik (Juris), and I think that the line-up is perfect right now! The important thing is that we aren’ t just a bunch of musicians who play together, we are also very good friends. You can always ask for help from someone from the band, if you need it. We spend a lot of time together, not only while touring. I confirm that this is the best line-up!
How would you define Crystal Viper’s music? Is it true metal, is it traditional metal, is it just metal?
People usually say it is classic heavy metal. It is surely classic heavy metal … I personally listen to different genres, not only metal genres, but all genres of music in general. When I create music, I get inspired by many, many things. But in general, yes, I can say it is heavy metal.
You are from Poland. Is it difficult for a Polish musician to have a heavy metal career?
It is very difficult in Poland. Here we have a very strong death and black metal scene, we have Vader and Behemoth, I am sure you know them, they are great bands! So when I created Crystal Viper, it was a bit weird for people in Poland to see a classic heavy metal band on stage, a metal band being so melodic. But we were lucky enough, because we had the opportunity to play our music behind the border, to have our albums released by a record company from Germany, we have a very very good manager who helps us arrange everything. We still don’t play a lot in Poland, we play mostly in countries like Germany, Spain, Greece etc. This year we have scheduled two live shows in Poland, we are looking forward to it.
In 2017 you released your sixth album, “Queen of the Witches”. How do you see now this album?
To be honest with you, I love it. This album has a lot of positive energy, coming from all of the members of the band. As I mentioned before, we had a three-year break, so for us this album was like a comeback album. We began working the album in the studio, we were so enthusiastic, we were so happy that we were able to play music again, to spend time together, to tour together and so on. Musically to me, “Queen of the Witches” it isn’t so much different from the previous albums, it is still Crystal Viper, it is the music I listen to, the music I would like to listen to. However, as far as the feelings are concerned, this latest album is a little bit different. It is the most important album for us.
During this break, was there any moment that you thought that Crystal Viper is over and won’t play again?
Well, I had some thoughts, because I didn’t know if I would be able to sing again, you know, I was thinking that I could focus on the guitar and try to find another vocalist, but people were saying that my voice is so much recognizable and that they couldn’t imagine how Crystal Viper would sound with another singer. Yes, I was thinking of ending Crystal Viper, but not stop playing music, since I play the piano, the guitar, the bass guitar. There are many things I could do musically, not only singing and so on. Thankfully I am able to sing and play again!
You are going to release a new EP the following days in June.
In the beginning, we were planning to release it as a seven inch single, which would include only two songs, the title song, “At the Edge of Time” and the polish version (“Zwiastun Burzy”), as the b side. We found out though, that we had more music material to put on this release, so we switched to the ten inch. In this EP you can find, apart from the two versions of the title track, another new song, called “When Are You”. These new songs are inspired lyrically by Michael Moorcock’s works, “Stormbringer” and “Eternal Warrior” – the cover artist (the one and only Andreas Marschall) is also inspired by Moorcock.
We see you holding the Black Sword in the EP’s cover!
Yes, yes! … You can also find a new version of our song, “When the Sun Goes Does”, we call it the Giallo version, because of the keyboards I recorded for this song, they are in the style of old horror movies …
….Italian horror movies!
Yes, I recorded only a few keyboard parts, but the song sounds now completely different!! It is a cool version, that’s why we decided to put it in this release. Finally, we recorded a Quartz cover for this EP, “Tell Me Why”.
How do you select the songs you are going to cover?
Trust me, it is never easy to choose the cover song! I mean, which one?! The list is very, very long! When we are picking a song to cover, it is a cool thing, because we are fans of music, we are fans of metal, and we are also musicians, so we are able to play our favorite songs, not only listen to them! There are so many great songs that we would like to play live, not only to record them, it is a lot of fun for us, you know, not to sing them only under the shower! It is also a way of showing to our fans which our roots are, musically, to show our fans which is the connection of Crystal Viper music with other bands. It is a tribute to musicians that we respect, that we love. We will keep on doing that in the future – the only problem will be which song we will choose as our next cover (laughs)!
One of the things I admire in Crystal Viper is your way of singing. Which are your vocal influences?
There are many, many great vocalists I am influenced by. I love Tony Martin, David DeFeis from Virgin Steele, Rob Halford, Doro, Leather Leone …
What’s your opinion about the female fronted symphonic/gothic metal bands? Have you ever thought of introducing some symphonic/gothic metal elements to Crystal Viper?
Maybe not in Crystal Viper, because I would like to keep Crystal Viper as a classic metal band. But personally, I listen to several genres of music and from the genre you just mentioned I like Delain, Within Temptation … There are some things I like in this genre and not only in this genre, in gothic rock/metal. I also listen to death metal, black metal, I also like some pop music, there are so many things, classical music, thrash metal …
Any possibility to add some pop elements to your sound? For example like Battle Beast, who are very popular nowadays?
No, no in Crystal Viper, I don’t think so (laughs) … Crystal Viper is inspired by classic metal bands. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying something bad, Battle Beast is a great band, I am a huge fan of Noora’s vocals, her voice is amazing, their music is very powerful and they kick ass on stage, however, Crystal Viper is Crystal Viper. If we bring pop elements to our music, we wouldn’t be as heavy as we want to be. It isn’t something we would like to do. Also, our fans would be kind of disappointed. I wouldn’t have a problem to do some of this stuff with another band in the future, a band which would play something completely different from Crystal Viper.
As we said before, you used to sing and play the guitar in Crystal Viper. How is it to combine singing with playing the guitar?
In the very beginning, it was kind of challenging … we had a problem some years ago, in finding another one guitarist for Crystal Viper. And you know, heavy metal with only one guitar, hmmm … I was already learning to play the guitar, since I was composing the music … One day at the studio I brought my guitar and tried to play, to see how it sounds. The guys in the band saw me playing the guitar for the first time and said to me: “OK, we already have a second guitarist, we don’t have to look for another guy!”. For me, in the beginning, it was challenging, because I was only singing or only playing the guitar during the composing process. So, I had to learn to do both things the same time, but I rehearsed a lot, I learned it and by now it comes out naturally, I go on stage, I sing and play, I don’t think about it, I just focus on what I have to do.
Marta, are you the main composer of Crystal Viper?
And lyrics writer?
Your lyrics have fantasy and horror themes. Why is that?
Well, life sometimes is gray and sad, you know, politics, war, religion, all this kind of bullshit is around us, it surrounds us, I want to get away with music from all that stuff. Writing music and concept albums based on fantasy themes is like making a movie, like writing a book, you do something that can take you away from all these things that aren’t so much pleasant. You can get away with music to a totally different place.
In your latest album, “Queen of the Witches” you have some famous guests: Ross The Boss, Mantas and Saracen’s Steve Bettney. How did it come and you collaborated with these well-known musicians?
For us, inviting a special guest to our albums is like … it is the same situation with cover songs: we want to pay a tribute to our favorite artists and to show people where we are musically, where our musical roots come from, what kind of music we like and so on. And of course, for us it is something totally fantastic, to be able to work with all these fantastic musicians! Steve Bettney is one of my favorite vocalists, Ross The Boss … well, I don’t have to mention anything!!! … And Mantas! …Well, they are great! It is a huge honor for us that they agreed to take their part in our songs.
At the production helm, you have Bart Gabriel. How much important is it to have Bart with you?
Actually, it is the best thing that happened to Crystal Viper, because in personal life, Bart is my husband. So, we know each other very, very well, we like the same kind of music. He knows me, not only as a person, but also as an artist, he knows the band very, very well, he knows our music. Working with such a person in the studio, with a person who is also your life partner, is a perfect combination. There is a fantastic understanding in the studio. Apart from that, he is a great producer who doesn’t want to change the sound of the band, he doesn’t say “You have to sound like this …”. He only wants us to sound like Crystal Viper.
Let’s talk about decision-making in Crystal Viper. Are you the one who makes the decision or do you discuss things with the other guys?
When you play in a band, it is not like that you are the only person who decides about everything. You have to co-operate with different people. You have to co-operate with the guys from the record label, when you play live, you have to co-operate with the sound engineers. There isn’t only one person who says to the others what to do. There is a huge team of persons who co-operate and want the best thing for the band.
Your record label is the German AFM Records. Are you satisfied with the guys?
Yes, of course! And I hope that we will co-operate for many more years in the future!
Yesterday you played in front of the Greek audience. How was it?
It was fantastic as usual! A few years ago we played in the Up The Hammers Festival and played some other shows here in Greece. It is always, always great to be back to Greece, because you guys are so enthusiastic. It is fantastic to share your energy with all these metal maniacs in front of the stage. Greek fans are so supportive of heavy metal, it is beautiful.
Any similarities or differences between Polish and Greek fans?
There are more heavy metal fans in Greece in Poland … but in general, in all places, heavy metal fans try to enjoy the live show as much as they can. Yesterday it was amazing, I felt all this energy coming from the people!
Future plans? Apart from the upcoming EP!
Very soon, in the summer we will release a new video clip. And I will also be recording the album of my other band, Moonchamber, it is the band I created with Rob Bendelow from Saracen. We have some plans to play some more live shows with Crystal Viper, to promote our new EP and to start working on our next album.
Finally, your message to the Greek fans!
Stay as great as you are! Go to live shows, support your favorite bands, buy CDs and stay metal!
The Quill - "Fire On High"
The new The Quill album, “Born From Fire”, amazed us! We are so excited that the Sweds returned with such a good album, where you can listen to Magnus Ekwall’s vocals again. Myth of Rock was obliged to get in contact with the band for a nice chat, so Antonis Mantzavinos spoke with Roger Nilsson (The Quill’s bassist). Continue reading, you will find everything very interesting!
Hello Roger, we would like to welcome you to our online music magazine, Myth of Rock! We are very pleased with the new The Quill record and we believe it is a really good album which will hopefully be appreciated by hard rock fans. Based on the new release, we would kindly like to ask you a few questions, so that our online readers could get more easily informed about you, the band, and of course the new record. First of all, we would like to ask a few things about the conception of this new record, the recordings, where/when was it recorded etc.
The album was recorded in two different sessions about six months apart. We recorded it in the same studio as the last time, a place called 491 Studios. It’s located just where we live so it’s really convenient and cost-effective. It’s also really nice to be able to go home and sleep in your own bed after a full day in the studio. In the earlier days we usually recorded far from home and stayed in the studio for weeks. Recording away from home is good in that it keeps you focused on the recording but you tend to lose some healthy distance from it all.
Give us some hints about the album title and the awesome cover.
Album titles are always tricky. Usually we start looking at the song-titles trying to find something there. This time we didn’t find anything that felt really good. So the next step was looking at the lyrics. There’s a line in Electrical Son – “Born from the fire – I am the Electrical son”. Somehow Born from fire made sense to us, sort of Phoenix rising from the ashes. So that’s how it all came about. The cover-art more or less was born the same way. I’ve been a fan of Sebastian Jerke who did the artwork and I really loved his cover for Rise about the meadow by Greenleaf – so he was really our first choice. He was up for doing it and we sent him some songs and all the lyrics. He then had the idea to incorporate different parts of the lyrics into the painting. So the music, lyrics and artwork are all connected.
What do you think about the comeback of Magnus Ekwall (vocals) to the band and how did that happen?
I think is a real blessing to be able to still work together 22 years after our first album. Not many bands last for so many years. We were more or less kids when we stared out so we’ve grown up together going thru various stages of life. And it all came together very naturally. A mutual friend of ours where having a private party and wanted a band to play some Kiss-covers. He asked the four of us to do it but unfortunately Jolle was booked elsewhere. But we decided to do the gig anyway with Magnus’ son playing the drums just for the fun of it. Once we did that show it was a natural step to just meet up and see if there might be some spark left between us. Me, Christian and Jolle had been more or less drifting along doing nothing for a year or so it seemed like a good idea to just start jamming together. And from there on it all came together very quick. In fact it felt like the 12 years apart never happened.
What was your contribution on writing this record?
Some small bits and pieces here and there, but Jolle and Christian are the two main writers when it comes to the music. They usually bring in an idea and then we all work on it together adding a part here and there ‘til we’re all satisfied. Magnus writes most of the melodies and all of the lyrics. But it’s really a group-effort. Everything is arranged in the rehearsal-room as a real band sweating it out.
I would musically place the album, in regards to its sound and feeling, in between “Voodoo Caravan” and “Hooray! It's a Death Trip” Do you think this record is a step back or a new effort, with new elements, new approach and the beginning of a new ear for the band?
We just wrote whatever came to us, so there really wasn’t any conscious effort to sound like in the old days. But with that being said Silver Haze was the album we talked about as the bar. Maybe not so much for its sound or songwriting but more for the energy and the state we were in when we recorded it back in '98.
Will the band tour for the promotion of the record? Any shows already planned?
We’ll certainly try to play as much as possible, we just have to plan it really well since we’re all involved in other bands, have family and daytime jobs. Performing songs on stage is really were they come alive and take on a second life.
And a few personal questions! We know that you Roger have played and toured also with Spiritual Beggars, Arch Enemy, Firebird. What other musical projects/bands are you involved with?
During my years away from The Quill I played a lot as a guns-for-hire type of guy doing just about everything with everyone. I played covers, doing sessions and also where involved with a few bands playing original material. I did two albums in Swedish with a band called Henrik Björkman & Paj Malaj. The idea when I left The Quill in 2005 was to play a little bit less than the previous years but in the end I played even more…:D Me and a drummer I played a lot with during these years counted that we performed 140 unique songs on stage together in one month. Crazy!
How you could describe a regular day or week in Roger Nilsson’s day, apart from touring, recording and album and being active with a band?
Just regular everyday-Joe things. I work as assistant principal living in a small town in Sweden so my days are full. I have a wife and two daughters 12 and 16 years old. I live in a nice old house which needs a lot of care. I also try to work out 3 times a week either running or mountain-biking. Not so rock n’ roll at all :D
Who are the artists that have shaped you musically and been your primary inspirational figures as a musician?
It all started with ABBA, when I was really young. You couldn’t really avoid them growing up in Sweden in the 70’s. Then when I was about 8 or 9 a friend introduced me to Kiss and that was the big game-changer for me. It’s a band I still follow and listen to a lot. Next big thing was discovering the big three - Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. My father had lots and lots of tapes and from time to time I would sit down and discover new music thru these tapes. Remember finding "Gallows Pole" and "Black Night" on one tape and immediately there was something about the sound that I loved.
Please name your top 5 bands and records!
Kiss, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Crowes. Narrowing it down to 5 records is almost impossible, so I’ll add a few extra ones! Kiss – "Dressed to Kill" and "Alive", Captain Beyond – "Captain Beyond", Deep Purple – "Made in Japan" and "Come Taste the Band", Joe Cocker – "Mad Dogs & Englishmen", Grand Funk Railroad – "Caught In The Act", Led Zeppelin – "I", "II", "III" and 'IV", Black Sabbath – "Black Sabbath", "Sabotage" and "Mob Rules", Black Crowes – "Amorica" and "Before The Frost ... Until the Freeze", John Coltrane – "Olé", Bob Dylan – "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde", Bruce Springsteen – "The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle", Pink Floyd - "Wish You Were Here", Mountain – "Climbing!", UFO – "Strangers In The Night", Mastodon – "Crack the Skye", Miles Davis – "On The Corner" and "In A Silent Way", The Beatles – "Revolver" and "Abbey Road", The Rolling Stones – "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile On Main Street". To name but a few…:D
If you were not a bass player, which other instrument you would like to play in a band?
I think everyone have a dream being a drummer – except when it comes to carrying all the equipment ... !
Name the most pleasant but also unpleasant experience you have ever had while on tour with a band.
Most pleasant experience is always getting somewhere far away from home and meeting people who are into the band, there’s nothing better with being in a band than that. Hearing that the music you’ve created matters to people. Worst experience was definitely being food-poisoned on tour with Arch Enemy. Me and Daniel decided one day to spend our buy-out dinner money at a fancier restaurant than the usual McDonalds. So we found this place where I had some really nice Catfish a couple of hours before the show. As we were heading back to the venue my stomach started to act up. And by the time we got back I became really sick. Cancelling the show wasn’t an option so I had to do it with a bucket behind the stage. How I got thru that show I’ll never know ...
What kind of music do you listen during your free time? Do you buy any new records? And if yes, which were your recent purchases?
I’ve been a record collector for all my life, so I’m always listening to music, buying records online, at record fairs and record stores. A few weeks ago I went record hunting in Gothenburg and bought among others Jo Jo Gunne – "Where’s the show?" Mastodon – "Leviathan", Luther Dickinson – "Rock N’ Roll Blues", Strawbs – "Burning for you", Billy Squier – 'The Tale of the Tape", Israel Nash – 'Barn Doors and Concrete Floors".
Thank you very much for your time and we hope to meet you soon!
You' re welcome!
ΑΠΟΚΛΕΙΣΤΙΚΗ ΣΥΝΕΝΤΕΥΞΗ: MIKE LIVAS
And Then She Came - Adrenalized!
My Regime - New Regimes, New Dogmas!
Spiritual Beggars - From Dusk 'til Dawn
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Winter 2019 Q&A
Field Hockey coach Katharine DeLorenzo reflects on another championship season and a life-altering trip to India.
Photo by Paul DahmFebruary 14, 2019
In November, Middlebury’s field hockey team captured its second consecutive national title and its third in four years. The magazine recently sat down with head coach Katharine DeLorenzo to discuss, among other things, the state of the program and a life-changing trip to India.
We need to start with the obvious: back-to-back national titles, three in four years . . .
Are we ready to start talking about a dynasty?
Well, others can decide if the program should be defined that way. What I enjoy right now is the manner in which our teams have approached the game, their training, each other. And this process, I think, is well represented by their achievements, which are national championships these last couple of years.
So those outside the program are witnessing what you’ve known all along?
Right. And it’s not just these past two or three teams. There was no dramatic change, where all of a sudden we’re a championship-caliber team. There’s a legacy here, a culture of young women competing for each other. You can look back at Julia Bergofsky McPhee ’02 and Heidi Howard Allen ’99 and their teams and see that these championships are a continuation of the work they put in.
So even though they weren’t literally on the field in 2017 and 2018, they were on the field in some way.
Exactly. I would guess that they don’t feel like it was someone else winning these championships; I feel like 200-plus young Middlebury women won a championship in November.
For just about anyone, a championship season would be the highlight of the year, or a career, even, but less than a week after receiving the NCAA trophy, you, your coaching staff, and four alumnae were getting on a plane and flying halfway around the world to conduct a weeklong field hockey clinic in India.
[Laughs] Yeah.
Was there any time during the past six or seven months when you thought about what it would be like to go from one intense, thrilling moment to the other?
Well, we were prepping for the trip while we were also in-season, but our main focus during the fall was always on the student-athletes. For a while the actual trip was always—[gestures with a waving motion]—out there.
Until it wasn’t.
[Laughs] Exactly.
I’d like to hit on some of the highlights here, and then we can present a deeper look elsewhere in this issue.
You traveled to eastern India to conduct a clinic for 106 girls. Why there?
We were part of a humanitarian outreach program organized by the U.S. State Department, specifically the consulate in Kolkata, in their efforts to assist a populace that is extremely poor and vulnerable. Human trafficking there is high, specifically among girls aged 13 to 17. It’s estimated that six out of 10 are either sold into slavery as sex workers or laborers or entered into forced marriages. Sixty percent of this populace.
But there’s another fact about this demographic. They love hockey. In every village, the consulate discovered young girls playing hockey on dirt patches, grabbing stick branches, using whatever type of ball they could.
Since we can go into greater detail in the feature story, let’s use this moment to deliver a sort of teaser to describe your time there.
We were all out of our element. Our group had never been to India before; we spoke only English. And this region of India, particularly, was far different than any place any of us had ever experienced. And for these girls, they spoke only Hindi, and for this clinic they had been brought to the capital city, which may have been as foreign an experience for them (many coming from remote villages) as it was for us. The commonality, the equalizer, was hockey.
Perfect. Folks can now turn to the story and read more about the experience.
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Create an Obituary
Jacob Stanley Stevens
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A limb has fallen from the family tree, that says grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter, the music I played and the fishing trips. The good life I lived while I was strong.
Jacob Stanley Stevens, 94, passed away Aug. 28, 2016. He was born in Wapanucka to his parents, Samuel H. and Kate (Fambrough) Stevens. Jacob was the seventh of nine children.
He went to school in Atoka County, at Pleasant Hill. Jacob lived on the farm until he was 19 years old, and did farm work. In March 1942, Jacob went to California and worked in Richmond Shipyard No. 2 until he enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1942. He went to Toccoa, Georgia, for parachute training and qualified as a paratrooper Jan. 1, 1943. He was in the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborn Division, also known as the Screaming Eagles.
In 1943, he went first to England, then Normandy, France, where he took part in the D-Day Invasion, June 6, 1944. June 13, 1944, he was wounded in combat and returned to the states in August. He was discharged in 1945. Jacob was awarded the Purple Heart, Victory Ribbon, American Theater Campaign Medal, EAME Campaign Medal, a Bronze Star and the Good Conduct Medal.
In 1946, Jacob went to work in the oil field and worked in drilling until 1968. He worked in eight different states and countries, including Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey and Libya.
Jacob married Ola Faye Claunch in 1947, one child was born to this union, Anthony Wayne Stevens. Jacob was baptized and joined Wapanucka Baptist Church in 1956. In 1968, Jacob married Hettie (Cain) Stevens and moved to a farm in Non. Jacob raised cattle for many years and raised dogs for 18 years in the American Kennel Club. Jacob played music for many dances in the area. He enjoyed playing the fiddle.
He is survived by his wife, Hettie of the home; two sons, Tony Stevens and wife, Dana, of Tupelo, Charles Coram and wife, Nina, of Vici; a daughter, Trva Hendrix of Las Cruces, New Mexico; a brother, Richard Stevens of Wapanucka; six grandchildren, Jennifer Sliger and husband, Dean, of Tupelo, Jessica Sliger and husband, Chris, of Tupelo, Jacob Babb and wife, Savannah, of Calvin, Angelina of Woodward, and Stephanie Loyd and Melissa Pastrama, both of Las Cruces, New Mexico; 15 great-grandchildren; and a host of nieces, nephews, longtime friends and family.
Jacob was preceded in death by his parents, Samuel and Kate (Fambrough) Stevens; two brothers, Clarence and Jack Stevens; five sisters, Chessie Green, May Gibson, Ruth Gaddis, Gladys McCurry and Mary Taylor.
Graveside Services will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday at Sunnyside Cemetery in Vici. Family visitation will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. today at Brown's Funeral Service in Coalgate.
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Gas sensors ‘see’ through soil to analyze microbial interactions
– July 19, 2016Posted in: News Releases
Rice University technique could aid agriculture, wastewater, greenhouse gas studies
HOUSTON – (July 18, 2016) – Rice University researchers have developed gas biosensors to “see” into soil and allow them to follow the behavior of the microbial communities within.
In a study in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology, the Rice team described using genetically engineered bacteria that release methyl halide gases to monitor microbial gene expression in soil samples in the lab.
The bacteria are programmed using synthetic biology to release gas to report when they exchange DNA through horizontal gene transfer, the process by which organisms share genetic traits without a parent-to-child relationship. The biosensors allow researchers to monitor such processes in real time without having to actually see into or disturb a lab soil sample.
The Rice researchers expect their technique will serve the same purpose for environmental scientists that fluorescent reporter proteins serve for biochemists who track protein expression and other processes in biological systems.
The work by the Rice labs of biogeochemist Caroline Masiello, biochemist Jonathan Silberg, microbiologist George Bennett and lead author Hsiao-Ying (Shelly) Cheng, a Rice graduate student, is the first product of a $1 million grant by the W.M. Keck Foundation to develop gas-releasing microbial sensors.
“This paper describes a new tool to study how microbes trade genetic material in the environment,” said Masiello, a professor of Earth science.
“We care about this because the process of horizontal gene transfer controls a lot of things that are important to humans either because they’re good — it’s how rhizobia trade the genes they need to fix nitrogen and support plant growth — or they’re bad — it’s how bacteria trade antibiotic resistance in soils,” she said. “It’s been much more challenging in the past to construct models of this dynamic process in real soils and to study how horizontal gene exchange varies across soil types. We’ve created a new set of tools that makes that possible.”
The researchers expect scientists will use gas biosensors in the lab to study nitrogen fixing in agriculture, antibiotic exchange in wastewater treatment, gene transfer in conditions where nutrients are scarce and the relationship between gene expression in soil and the release of greenhouse gases.
“There are other technologies that will build on this,” said Silberg, an associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology. “The idea of using gases opens up most anything that’s genetically encoded. However, we do need to improve technologies for some of the subtler kinds of questions.”
He said releasing and sensing methyl halide gas represented an easy proof of concept. “Now we want higher-resolution information about other types of biological events by creating more sophisticated genetic programs using synthetic biology,” Silberg said.
They expect they will soon be able to test agricultural soil samples to help fine-tune crop growth through more efficient watering and fertilizer use. “How can agriculture get this extra level of efficiency without the waste? Lots of people are coming to that, and there are lots of ways to do it,” he said. “We’re trying to build high-tech tools that allow us to understand mechanisms to make reliable predictions. That’s the long game with these tools.”
The researchers emphasized that these are tools for soil studies within lab environments. The synthetic microbes are destroyed once the results are obtained.
The Rice lab tested soil samples from the National Science Foundation’s Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research Site in Michigan after adding Escherichia coli bacteria programmed to release gas upon transfer of their DNA to another microbe. Signals from the gas were up to 10,000 times the lab’s detection limit.
The gas sensors were effective in anoxic — or oxygen-depleted — conditions, unlike green fluorescent protein, which requires oxygen to work. It is anticipated the reporter proteins can be used in many kinds of soil microbes, and some are currently being tested, Bennett said.
Along with the Keck Foundation, the Rice Faculty Initiative Fund and the Taiwan Ministry of Education Scholarship supported the research. Bennett is the E. Dell Butcher Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.
Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b01415
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Gas sensors promise advances in Earth science: http://news.rice.edu/2015/07/06/gas-sensors-promise-advances-in-earth-science-2/
Rice University Biochar Group (Masiello lab): http://biochar.rice.edu/Rice_Biochar_Group_/members.html
The Silberg Research Group: http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~joff/
Microbial Biotechnology Laboratory (George Bennett): http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~gbennett/
Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://naturalsciences.rice.edu
http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/07/0718_GAS-1-WEB-187ga43.jpg
Rice University graduate student Shelly Cheng prepares soil samples for testing. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/07/0718_GAS-2-WEB-1nbq7zx.jpg
Prepared soil samples used to test bioengineered tools that will allow researchers to study Earth’s microbes from micro- to macroscales. Rice University researchers have developed microbial sensors that release gas to report on specific biochemical reactions. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/07/0718_GAS-3-WEB-1hhneun.jpg
Rice University scientists have created programmed bacteria that serve as gas sensors to help them “see” into soil and learn about the behavior of the microbial communities within. When the engineered bacterium receives genetic information from another bacterium, it releases a gas to “report” the transaction. (Credit: Jonathan Silberg and Shelly Cheng/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for best quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.
Tags: Engineering, Natural Sciences
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Russia has paid at least $10 million since
Russia has paid at least $10 million since 2006 to U.S. public relations agencies hired to improve its image on the global stage, a Russian magazine said on Monday.
The New Times said Russia had sought PR advice ahead of its debut as a Group of Eight summit host in 2006 and had signed a $2 million contract with a respected U.S. public relations and marketing firm, Ketchum.
Foreign media said at the time that the agency would find it difficult to reverse Western public opinion about Russia. Just before the summit in St. Petersburg, then-U.S. vice president Dick Cheney accused Russia of backsliding on democracy and using its energy resources to blackmail its neighbors, and Senator John McCain called on world leaders to boycott the summit.
The services of the PR firms are believed to have been paid for by bankers loyal to the Kremlin, the weekly said.
The United States' PR Watch said Ketchum had lobbied vigorously to have then-Russian President Vladimir Putin named Time Magazine's 2007 Person of the Year, Moscow's radio station Echo Moskvy earlier said.
Foreign media also suggested that a kiss that Putin planted on the stomach of a five-year-old boy was a clumsy attempt to follow PR experts' advice about being friendly to children in order to soften his image in the run-up to the G8 summit.
The Kremlin spent $2.8 million on PR services in 2007 and has increased spending fivefold by the start of 2009 as analysts have noted that the Kremlin has become more open, the weekly said.
Many of the Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter planes grounded after
A man who had been holding several people hostage
A policeman was wounded in a drive-by shooting in Russia's southern
Five people were killed on Friday when a truck crashed
International financial organizations should be more fair in their treatment
Nine Russian holidaymakers have died in a bus crash in Vietnam
Russian special armed police forces in Vladivostok killed three
The Kazakh president's idea for a unified currency for payments between
A Russian plane carrying 40 metric tons of humanitarian aid arrived
Over 40 members of a pro-Kremlin youth group were detained Saturday
The G20 countries pledge to make a "sustained effort" to restore
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il believes his communist regime is strong
A 7-year-old boy in southwest China has survived a 10,000-volt electric
A Palestinian human rights organization has issued a report confirming
Russia's budget expenditures could grow by 600 billion rubles ($17 billion)
The 2009 Russian Premier League gets underway this weekend,
Russia's WBA Heavyweight World Champion Nikolai Valuev has begun practicing
At least one person has died and at least
At least 40 shops and several cars were damaged in Friday's
The main suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder case, Russian
Feb March 2009 Apr
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Finds Fresh Crater on Red Planet
Mars is home to dust storms, several robots, and as of today, a new crater. Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show a fresh impact crater on the surface. Conditions on Mars may eventually sweep the details away, but the reliable probe has spotted the crater while it’s still sharp.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been checking out the red planet for more than a decade, allowing it to track changes on the surface over time. In the past, it has seen dust storms, dead rovers, and crashed landers. In March of 2019, it saw something a bit more distinctive: a new crater roughly 49 feet to 53 feet (15 to 16 meters) wide in the Valles Marineris region not far from the equator.
MRO is constantly orbiting the planet, updating its map in vertical strips. Over the years, the orbiter has spotted small dark smudges indicating small impacts, but this is the first time it’s caught sight of a large crater. Based on the dates of previous photos, the object smacked into Mars between February 18, 2017 and March 20, 2019. So, the crater could be as young as several months.
This image comes from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the MRO. It shows a black impact point in the center with a radiating aura of gray and blue terrain. The HiRISE camera can capture color images, but only in a strip down the middle of its field of view. Luckily, the new crater was inside the color strip. The gray tones are probably basaltic rock that’s usually covered by dust. The areas with bluish tint could indicate traces of ice. Yes, even near the equator that’s a possibility.
KABOOM! Before and after images of a meteorite forming a brand new impact crater on Mars. Sometime between 18 Feb 2017 and 20 March 2019. pic.twitter.com/TWXtUoP5NA
— Peter Grindrod (@Peter_Grindrod) June 12, 2019
The team estimates the object that gouged this hole in Mars was no more than five feet (1.5m) wide. Mars doesn’t have much of an atmosphere, so the object wouldn’t have slowed down much before plowing into the surface. Unfortunately, it will be hard to learn much more about the crater. The spectrograph on MRO known as the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) ran out of coolant years ago and can’t operate in as many wavelengths without it.
NASA only expected the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to work for about two years, but the spacecraft is still going strong. NASA has no plans to retire the MRO at this time.
Tagged crater, finds, fresh, Mars, Orbiter, planet, reconnaissance
Previous Post: Very Large Telescope Gears Up to Hunt Exoplanets in Alpha Centauri
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ST. JOHN OF KRONSTADT AND THE RENOVATIONISTS
The traditional mainstays of Tsarist Russia had been the peasantry and the Church. And the Church in turn gained much from the support of the State. However, it was increasingly accepted that while the Church should be supported by the State, she should not depend on it, financially and administratively, to the degree imposed on her by Peter the Great’s Spiritual Regulation, which had abolished the patriarchate and made the Church almost a department of the State.Indeed, by the turn of the century it had become almost an article of faith among the Church and near-Church intelligentsia that Church-State relations needed a thorough overhaul in order to bring them closer to the “symphonic” ideal inherited from Byzantium.
However, this movement was opposed by Pobedonostsev, who feared that a reform of Church-State relations, even if desirable in itself from a canonical point of view, might lead to Church-State separation and the gradual dechristianisation of society. Sergei Firsov writes: “Pobedonostsev saw and understood better than many that the demolishing of the Petrine Synodal system in Russian conditions would not lead to the recreation of correct mutual relations between the Church and the State, but would only strengthen anti-government forces. To represent the Church and the kingdom as existing in isolation from each other was psychologically impossible, while any changes in the ecclesiastical structure could be understood by ‘the simple people’ only as the abolition of the previous Church-State relationship [because ‘for our peasant form is everything’]. It was not by chance that Pobedonostsev, while talking with General A.A. Kireev about Church problems and ‘about learning’, declared that what he feared above all was a new schism: ‘It’s fine for you, but where shall we go with our darkness, with the peasant. I fear a schism, that’s what I fear!’”[1]
It is not clear whether he meant a Church schism, or a schism between the peasants and the State. In either case, the peasant uprisings of 1905 showed that the venerable old man had a point… However, there was a contradiction in Pobedonostev’s position. On the one hand, he sincerely believed that the Church was the soul of the State and the people, and should be its teacher, corrector and inspirer. On the other hand, he acted as if he did not believe this, but rather that the Church should be tutored and disciplined by the State, and that he himself, as the representative of the State, should act as the task-master of the Church hierarchy…
Tsar Nicholas, with his deep love of pre-Petrine Russia, took a close interest in this question. He believed in giving the Church more freedom, and that that freeing the Church from the dead hand of the State would ultimately be to the benefit of both Church and State. But, perhaps under the influence of his former tutor, Pobedonostsev, he acted cautiously. Nevertheless, one of the most important measures of his reign was his removal from the Constitution in 1901 of the phrase describing him as “Supreme Judge” of the Church. And, as we shall see, if political events had not intervened, it is likely that this would have been only the first step in a far-ranging reform of Church-State relations, bringing them back to true “symphony”.
The movement for Church reform first manifested itself publicly in 1901, when, somewhat reluctantly, Pobedonostsev allowed the convening of a series of religio-philosophical meetings between the “God-searching” intelligentsia and the clergy in St. Petersburg. These meetings - the idea of D.S. Merezhkovsky, V.V. Rozanov and a Synodal official, V.A. Ternavtsev - were an attempt to respond to a definite turning away of a part of the intelligentsia from sixties-style positivism to some kind of religion. Unfortunately, however, the conversion was, as often as not, not to Orthodoxy but to some vague kind of mysticism or theosophy. For Russia at that time was teeming with false teachers and prophets: revolutionaries such as Lenin and Trotsky, freethinkers and heretics such as the novelist Lev Tolstoy or the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, theosophists such as Blavatsky and the “silver age” poets, and a huge army of masons, liberals, nihilists, anti-monarchists and ecumenists who were busy undermining the foundations of Church and State.[2]
Thus M. Rodzianko writes that “among the intelligentsia, especially of St. Petersburg, all kinds of groups began to organize, often infected by sectarianism. Simultaneously the enthusiasm for the teaching of Redstock, the passion for theosophy, occultism, spiritism and other teachings condemned by the Church was considerable. During the period after 1901 the society of ‘Argonauts’ was formed, which met at the home of Andrew Bely, an author of that period. This is how he describes those times: ‘Among the “unseeing”, “seers” appeared, who recognized each other; they were drawn to share incomprehensible knowledge with each other; their interest in everything appeared new to them, encompassed with rays of cosmic and historical importance. The “seers” differed in their conjectures: one was an atheist, another a theosophist, one was drawn to piety, another was pulled away from it, but all agreed one with the other as to the imminence of a dawning: “something is shining forth”, and from this “something” the future will unfold its destinies’ (Epopee, vol. 1, pp. 136-137). This dawn was disclosed as the goddess Sophia and this in fact became the beginning, the ‘disclosure’ by the Russian progressive society of the object of its worship, tearing it away from Orthodoxy, i.e. from the Church, in order to begin a ‘philosophical’ combat with it. Numbered among the ‘Argonauts’ we meet the following widely known people: the poet Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Baltushaytis, S.I. Taneyev, N.A. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, later a priest, D.V. Filosofov, prof. Kadlukov, D.N. Merezhkovsky, Igor Kistyakovsky, Z.N. Hippius, A.V. Kartashev, Theodore Sologub and others (Epopee, vols. 1,2 and 3; pp. 179, 191, 181, 144). The Russian intelligentsia of that time, knowingly or not, was undermining the age-old foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church. The guiding center was the ‘Religious-Philosophical Society’, created during this period [in 1901]. In this society were: V. Ivanov, D.V. Filosofov, S. Kablukov, Merezhkovsky, Rozanov, Kartashev, Bulgakov, Berdyaev and others (Epopee, vol. 1, pp. 61, 130, 156). This society held closed as well as open meetings, having as its goal the wide propaganda of the spirit of the revolution, reformation and sophianism…”[3]
These meetings were permitted, somewhat reluctantly, by Pobedonostsev between the “God-searching” intelligentsia and the clergy in St. Petersburg. They were the idea of D.S. Merezhkovsky, V.V. Rozanov and a Synodal official, V.A. Ternavtsev, and were an attempt to respond to a definite turning away of a part of the intelligentsia from sixties-style positivism to some kind of religion. Unfortunately, however, the conversion was, as often as not, not to Orthodoxy but to some vague kind of mysticism or theosophy. For Russia at that time was teeming with false teachers and prophets: revolutionaries such as Lenin and Trotsky, freethinkers and heretics such as the novelist Lev Tolstoy or the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, theosophists such as Blavatsky and the “silver age” poets, and a huge army of masons, liberals, nihilists, anti-monarchists and ecumenists who were busy undermining the foundations of Church and State.[4] Even when the intelligenty did convert to Orthodoxy, as when the philosophers Bulgakov, Berdiaev, Frank and Struve converted from Marxism, it was not to a pure, patristic Orthodoxy, as is proved by the “renovationist Orthodoxy” of Bulgakov and Berdiaev after the revolution.
Nevertheless, if these “God-seekers” were ever to acquire true Orthodoxy, they needed to encounter the Church in her more learned representatives. Hence the significance of the religio-philosophical meetings, which were chaired by a rising star of the Russian Church, Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky, the future first patriarch of the Sovietized Moscow Patriarchate.
“Sergius,” writes G.M. Soldatov, “was popular in circles waiting for the introduction of ‘democratic’ reforms in the State. In his sermons and speeches he criticized the relationship between the ecclesiastical and state authorities in the Russian Empire.”[5] This would have been a risky subject to raise only ten years earlier; but times were changing rapidly, and Sergius, as his future career proved, was always sensitive to how the times were changing, and accommodated himself to them accordingly…
At the same time he did make a fair point in the eighth of the religio-philosophical meetings, arguing that only if the State ceased to use the Church as a weapon would it become possible “to raise the question of freedom of conscience. Otherwise it will be only by virtue of indifferentism that the State can give freedom to the sects along with the Church”. But “Russian State power cannot be indifferent or atheist if it does not want to renounce itself”.[6] In other words: if the State was truly the defender of Orthodoxy, as it claimed, it should free the Church from political tasks and bondage that were alien to her nature. Otherwise, freedom would simply help the sectarians and atheists to fight against the Church, while she remained unable to defend herself freely. Thus the questions of Church reform and freedom of conscience were inescapably linked.
It was not only liberals like Sergius who favoured Church reform. The former revolutionary-turned-monarchist L.A. Tikhomirov published an article arguing that the State should “give the Church independence and the possibility of being the kind of organization she must be in accordance with her own laws, while remaining in union with her”.[7] The problem was that both conservatives and liberals could argue for Church reform, but for completely different motives. Tikhomirov wrote as one who had seen the revolution from within, and turned away from it with all his heart, acknowledging the only true defence against it to be the strengthening of Church consciousness among the people. The liberals, on the other hand, were motivated, not by a desire to see the Church free and therefore able to exert a more powerful influence on society, but rather the opposite: a desire to humble the State and destroy the Church’s influence once and for all. As for the liberal bishops such as Sergius, they leapt onto the band-wagon of the reform of Church-State relations, and of what later came to be called renovationism, in order to further their own careers…
Another liberal-renovationist cause that Bishop Sergius espoused during the religio-philosophical meetings was that of the novelist Leo Tolstoy. As we have seen, Tolstoy was in essence a radical Protestant, who stood for a Christianity reduced to “pure” morality without the Church, dogmas, miracles or sacraments. His teaching became very popular both at home and abroad (especially in England), both among the educated and the peasants. Soon his followers, although not organized into any “Church”, were rivalling other sects such as the Baptists, the Stundists, the Molokans and the Dukhobors in numbers and influence.
L. Solonevich points out that for centuries the Russian Empire had lived out of necessity in the conditions of a military camp. Such conditions required obedience and discipline, but “this obedience and this discipline were not particularly sweet. In the last one hundred years Russia has experienced, so to speak, a permanent revolution. A permanent rebellion against the authorities and against discipline. This rebellion took the most various forms – from Pugachevschina to Tolstoyism. And if we take our greatest writer as an example, we can now, after our ‘great and bloodless’ [revolution of 1917], value his deeds more or less in accordance with their merits. The Tolstoyan rebellion did very much both for the undermining of the Russian monarchy (‘I cannot keep silent’) and for the undermining of Russian Orthodoxy (‘The Gospel of Tolstoy’) and for the undermining of the Russian family (‘The Kreutzer Sonata’), and even for the undermining of the Russian courts, which in Resurrection are portrayed as a talentless and feelingless machine – while the Russian courts were the most merciful and conscientious in the world.” [8]
Indeed, it was the publishing of Resurrection in 1899 that was the last straw for the Church. The novel, which sold more copies than any of his earlier works,portrayed a society so rotten and oppressive that revolution was inevitable.It also subjected the teaching and sacraments of the Orthodox Church to ridicule. If the government felt that it could not censor Tolstoy and thereby make a political martyr out of him, the Church, spurred on by Pobedonostsev, felt otherwise…
On February 24, 1901 the Holy Synod anathematised him, declaring: “Well known to the world as a writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and education, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, seduced by intellectual pride, has arrogantly risen against the Lord and His Christ and His Holy heritage, and has plainly in the sight of all repudiated his Orthodox Mother Church which reared and educated him and has dedicated his literary activity and the talent given to him by God to disseminating among the people teachings opposed to Christand the Church, and to destroying in the minds and hearts of people their national faith, that Orthodox faith which has been confirmed by the Universe and in which our forefathers lived and were saved, and to which Holy Russia until now has clung and in which it has been strong...
“In his writings Count Lev Tolstoy has blasphemed against the holy sacraments, denying their grace-filled character, has not venerated the Orthodox Church as his Church, has spoken evil of the clergy, has said that he considers that to venerate Christ and worship Him as God is blasphemy, while saying of himself, by contrast: ‘I am in God, and God in me’. It is not the Church that has rejected him, casting him off from herself, but he himself has rejected the Church: Lev himself has of his own will fallen away from the Church and is no longer a son of the Church, but is hostile to her. All attempts of the clergy to admonish the prodigal have failed to produce the desired fruits: in his pride he has considered himself cleverer than all, less fallible than all and the judge of all, and the Church has made a declaration about the falling away of Count Lev Tolstoy from the Russian Orthodox Church.” [9]
Tolstoy was opposed especially by the extraordinary priest St. John of Kronstadt, who demonstrated by his wonderful life abounding in good works and extraordinary miracles, that Christianity “does not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (I Corinthians 2.5). He wrote of Tolstoy that he had “made himself into a complete savage with regards to the faith and the Church.” He called him not only a heretic, but also an antichrist, and refused to receive honorary membership of Yuriev university if Tolstoy was to receive the same honour.[10] St. John lamented that “the Church of God on earth, the beloved bride, is impoverished, she suffers from the savage attacks on her from the atheist Leo Tolstoy…”
For Tolstoy, wrote St. John, “there is no supreme spiritual perfection in the sense of the achievements of Christian virtues – simplicity, humility, purity of heart, chastity, repentance, faith, hope, love in the Christian sense; he does not recognize Christian endeavours; he laughs at holiness and sacred things – it is himself he adores, and he bows down before himself, like an idol, like a superman; I, and no one else but me, muses Tolstoy. You are all wrong; I have revealed the truth and am teaching everyone the truth! The Gospel according to Tolstoy is an invention and a fairy tale. So, Orthodox people, who is Lev Tolstoy? He is a lion roaring [Lev rykayushchy], looking for someone to devour [I Peter 5.8]. And how many he has devoured with his flattering pages! Watch out for him.”[11]
St. John was a fervent monarchist. “With all our heart,” he said, “we shall thank God that He gave and up to the present day still gives us autocratic and monarchical tsars in accordance with His heart, preserving the succession of the Romanov dynasty and the spirit of Orthodox in them, for the magnification of the Faith and the Church of the Orthodoxy and of the Russian state. Our Tsar [Nicholas II] is a righteous man of pious life. God has sent him a heavy cross of sufferings as to His chosen one and beloved child. Remember: if there will be no monarchy, there will be no Russia. Only the monarchical order gives stability to Russia; under a constitution it will all split up into pieces.”
And he foretold cruel overseers and terrible sufferings for the people if the autocracy were to be overthrown…
St. John was opposed not only to Tolstoy, but also to the whole “proto-renovationist” current in the Church led by Bishop Sergius. “These people,” he wrote, “are rejecting the Church, the sacraments, the authority of the clergy and they have even thought up a journal The New Way [which published published reports on the religio-philosophical meetings in St. Petersburg]. This journal has undertaken to search for God, as if the Lord had not appeared to people and had not revealed the true way. They will find no other way than in Christ Jesus, our Lord. […] It is Satan who reveals all of these new ways and stupid people who don’t understand what they are doing and are driving themselves and their nation to ruin by spreading their satanic ideas among the nation.”[12]
St. John especially bemoaned Tolstoy’s influence on youth: “Our intelligenty youths have subverted the social and educational order, they have taken politics and the law-courts upon themselves without being called to do so by anyone; they have taken to judging their masters, their teachers, the government and all but kings themselves; together with their head, Leo Tolstoy, they have judged and condemned the universal and fearful Judge Himself… Verily, the day of the dread Judgement is near, for the deviation from God which was foretold has already occurred and the forerunner of the antichrist has already revealed himself, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.”[13]
Fr. John was supported by the better clergy, such as the future metropolitan and hieromartyr (and opponent of Sergius) Fr. Joseph (Petrovykh), who wrote: “Lack of faith, impiety and all kinds of harmful tendencies are now pouring over Holy Rus’ in a still more swollen river. They were restrained by this powerful personality [Fr. John], who was put forward by the Providence of God to oppose the heretic Tolstoy.”[14]Fr. John had great influence with the royal family, and the tsar visited him secretly. This influence was noted and feared by a new player in church and court circles – the false elder Gregory Rasputin. As Archbishop Theophan (Bystrov), at that time inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, witnessed: “Rasputin indicated with unusual skill that he had reservations [about Fr. John]… Rasputin… said of Fr. John of Kronstadt… that he was a saint but, like a child, lacked experience and judgement… As a result Fr. John’s influence at court began to wane…”
Nevertheless, Fr. John continued to speak out boldly against the liberals, “those monsters of cruelty, those people whose aim is to live for themselves and for their own pleasure, not for the cause – those egotists, who do not empathize with their brethren… The mind works in them without the heart. Their hearts are not warmed by love for God and man, and they deny the existence of God, the foundations and bases of our common holy life, the rules of morality. Here is your education, students! This is because of your stupid education, Messrs. Pedagogues!”[15]
May 21 / June 3, 2017.
[1] Firsov, Russkaia Tserkov’ nakanune peremen (konets 1890-kh – 1918 g.) (The Russian Church on the Eve of the Changes (the end of the 1890s to 1918), Moscow, 2002, p. 47.
[2] Madame Blavatsky wrote that “that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion – pre-eminently the Christian – points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is in reality, the highest divine Spirit – (occult Wisdom on Earth) – in its naturally antagonistic character to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included.” (The Secret Doctrine, London, 1888, vol. 2, p. 377; quoted in Maria Carlson, ”No Religion Higher than Truth”, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 124). Theosophy influenced many Russian intelligentsy, as was recognised by such philosophers as Vladimir Soloviev and Nicholas Berdiaev (L. Perepelkina, Ecumenism: A Path to Perdition, St. Petersburg, 1999, chapter 9).
[3] Rodzianko, The Truth about the Russian Church Abroad, Jordanville, 1975, pp. 5-6.
[5] Soldatov, “Tolstoj i Sergij: Iude Podobnie” (Tolstoy and Sergius: Images of Judas), Nasha Strana (Our Country),N 2786; Vernost’ (Fidelity),N 32, January 1/14, 2006
[6] Firsov, op. cit., p. 117.
[7] Tikhomirov, “Gosudarstvennost’ i religia” (Statehood and religion), Moskovskie Vedomosti (Moscow Gazette),March, 1903, p. 3; in Firsov, op. cit., p. 137.
[8] Solonevich, “Etiudy Optimizma” (Studies in Optimism), in Rossia i Revoliutsia (Russia and the Revolution), Moscow, 2007, p. 59.
[9] Gubanov, op. cit., p. 701; Wilson, op. cit., p. 460.
[10] V.F. Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia i Masonstvo ot Petra I do nashikh dnej (The Russian Intelligentstia from Peter I to our days), Moscow, 1997, p. 379.
[11] St. John, in Rosamund Bartlett, Tolstoy. A Russian Life, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, p. 397.
[12] Robert Bird, “Metropolitan Philaret and the Secular Culture of His Age”, in Vladimir Tsurikov (ed.), Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow 1782-1867, The Variable Press, USA, 2003, p. 25.
[13] Soldatov, op. cit.; Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, p. 249.
[14] St. Joseph of Petrograd, In the Father’s Bosom: A Monk’s Diary, 3864; in M.S. Sakharov and L.E. Sikorskaia, Sviaschennomuchenik Iosif Mitropolit Petrogradskij (Hieromartyr Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd), St. Petersburg, 2006, p. 254.
[15] Kizenko, op. cit., p. 88.
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Pythia Reads
Review: Snakeskins by Tim Major
May 7, 2019 Pythia Comments 0 Comment
‘Caitlin Hext’s first shedding ceremony is imminent, but she’s far from prepared to produce a Snakeskin clone. When her Skin fails to turn to dust as expected, she must decide whether she wishes the newcomer alive or dead.
Worse still, it transpires that the Hext family may be of central importance to the survival of Charmers, a group of people with the inexplicable power to produce duplicates every seven years and, in the process, rejuvenate. In parallel with reporter Gerry Chafik and government aide Russell Handler, Caitlin must prevent the Great British Prosperity Party from establishing a corrupt new world order.’
Snakeskins is an excellently crafted and often horrifying look at identity and what it means to be human. In the Britain of Caitlin’s world, there are – ostensibly – two types of people: humans and Charmers, the latter of which have the ability to produce a copy of themselves every seven years from their seventeenth year onward, rejuvenating their body and gaining a longer than expected lifespan in the process. Understandably, she is apprehensive about her first shedding, but when her first Skin does not turn to dust and ‘ash’ as she expects her to, her beliefs and her attitude towards having a duplicate Caitlin around are severely challenged. In the opening pages of the novel, she seems to have a tolerant attitude towards the idea of creating a copy of herself, knowing that she will not have to live with them for more than a couple of minutes, but, when faced with the reality of another version of Caitlin around, with her memories and experiences intact, it turns out that she is not immediately as tolerant or as welcoming as she would have liked.
There are echoes of Never Let Me Go in the Snakeskins narrative, particularly in the use of care homes for the Skins who don’t immediately turn to dust. The reality of how the Skins are treated, compared to what is presented to the outside world, is one of the more disturbing facets of the story, especially when what exactly the care homes are geared towards is revealed. With the exception of the main antagonists, not one of the other characters, Charmer or human, appears to be completely able to decide how they feel about the existence of Charmers and what is the appropriate course of action when ‘dealing with’ the matter of Skins. Some tend towards a more open and pro-rights view, yet cannot help but be repulsed and unsettled when actually faced with a Skin, unable to completely see them as human, despite wishing that their moral compass would read how they want it to. In a world where we appear to be becoming less and less concerned about the ethics of cloning, with more frequent stories of animals being cloned seeming to ‘normalise’ the process, just how we would react to human cloning, compared to how we like to think we could respond, is just one of the ideas explored in the story. It’s all well and good to think that we would want equal rights for copies of humans, but the fact remains that none of us has ever been faced with a copy of ourselves and forced to confront our individuality, mortality and instinct versus morality on such an immediate level – which is one of the reasons why we may never have to do so.
The scenes involving Caitlin and her Snakeskin clone are some of the most powerful in the narrative, especially as regards the behaviour of her copy and her response to her. By turn, Caitlin is reassured by their similarities and horrified by them, just as she is when her Skin displays knowledge and understanding guided by her experiences since their separation. She initially seems unable to decide whether she wishes them to maintain their similarities or become different people, primarily focused on what this means for her once she realises that her Skin has not yet ashed into non-existence. When safe in the knowledge that her Skin will not survive, she is a much more generous and thoughtful soul, yet she turns vindictive and much more narrow-minded when she knows that the matter will continue to affect her, rather disturbingly highlighting one of the more depressing features of human nature: it is much easier to be good and kind and open-minded when an issue does not directly affect us, but we are far less apt to be so if a situation is likely to impact us in any negative fashion.
A keen look at human nature and the workings of a corrupt government, Snakeskins is out today, May 7th! Thank you to the publisher, Titan Books, for gifting me a copy!
Snakeskins
Review: The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad
Review: Sing Like No One’s Listening by Vanessa Jones
Blog Tour: The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg
Review: Last Bus to Everland by Sophie Cameron
Review: Lady Smoke by Laura Sebastian
Review: The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Review: Wicked Fox by Kat Cho
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Dads have never been so valued, or under so much pressure, experts say
Home › News › ABC News › Health News
Courtesy Warren Flood
(DETROIT) — For Warren Flood, having his son, Malcolm, changed the course of his life.
Prior to becoming a dad, Flood, who is 43, worked in consulting and described the business model as “trading hours for dollars.”
“My friends told me, ‘Don’t worry about it. You have all the time in the world. They’re not even cool until they turn 2 or 3,’” he said.
But once Malcolm, who is now 23 months old, came into the picture, the “father genes kicked in right away,” and Flood decided that he wanted to be as present as possible.
“It’s a cliché that kids change your life but they really do,” said Flood, who now works as the corporate affairs manager for Microsoft in Detroit. “So, he broke my business model.”
“I did not want to travel. I did not want to be away,” he said. “I wanted to have that level of stability, and change our lifestyle.”
The face of fatherhood has changed
There are roughly 75 million fathers in the U.S., and according to experts, the institution of fatherhood has never looked more different. Blended families are common, extended family members might share a household and there is a significant number of single dads as well — about 1.8 million.
“When we think of the classic dad’s model, it tends to look very 1950s simple households,” Lindsay Monte, a family demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a phone interview.
“In this data, we see much more diversity of households in terms of the men and the children with whom they live,” she added.
Molly Martin, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State University, says the idea of family that comes from the 1950s represented more of an anomaly than a long-term trend.
“While we kind of think of it as the good old days, it’s a really weird historical point in American family history,” Martin said.
But while less traditional family models are no longer outside the norm, that can complicate daily life too.
It’s “more complicated in the sense that you may have children with more than one woman, you may not be co-residential with your children, and so making meaning and making those relationships work for everybody is more complicated,” Martin said.
Parenting has changed, and with it, fatherhood has too
Rather than relying on their own parents for advice, there are now endless troves of data online, advice columns and parenting books that offer “best practices” to modern fathers.
One piece of advice that’s commonly offered? Eat dinner with your kids. Studies have shown that kids benefit from eating dinner with their parents.
According to Census data released earlier this week, about 75 percent of men who live with kids under 18 years of age eat dinner with the children 5 to 7 nights a week.
“Research has found that parents eating dinner with their children is associated with a range of benefits for children, including expanded vocabulary, fewer behavior problems, and lower likelihood of substance abuse among teenagers,” Monte said in a news release from the Census Bureau.
And while all that advice can be helpful, it can also translate into pressure to be perfect.
“The overwhelming part, the part that I struggle with the most, is still trying to find that balance between providing a stable financial, financially successful life and household with the tradeoff of spending time away,” Flood said.
But Flood said the feeling of being prepared as a father is elusive.
“It never feels as if you’re fully prepared, but had I known just how much fun and enjoyment the hard times and the good times, and just how fulfilling being a father was, I wouldn’t have waited as long as I did,” he said.
“I think often times men feel the pressure or the need to have everything in life sorted out, you know the good job, the finances sorted out and all that, that we often put up false pressures on ourselves or false expectations that we think we need to meet before we’re fully prepared to be a parent,” Flood said. “But I definitely wouldn’t have waited as long had I known what I know now.”
More pressure, but more valued
Ronald Levant, the former president of the American Psychological Association and a professor emeritus at the University of Akron’s department of psychology, said that the role of the dad has changed significantly over the years.
He said he has noticed a greater closeness with children in younger fathers.
Levant said this is apparent in the “intimacy of care,” and said that children now see “their dads as someone they can talk to.”
“What I am seeing is that this greater involvement and hands on parenting and greater emotional intimacy with their kids,” he said.
Flood said, in his experience, it’s relatively easy these days to talk about being a father and he thinks today’s world is more accepting and open about fatherhood, which leads it to be seen in a more positive light.
Marc Taylor is the director for the federally funded program TRUE Dads, an organization that works with younger fathers who have young children.
“The one thing that is encouraging to me is that… people are understanding how valuable fathers are now,” Taylor said.
Ground bison meat responsible for E. coli outbreak in 7 states: CDC
Child gun deaths lower in states with stricter gun laws
Pita Pal Foods hummus products recalled over possible Listeria contamination
Cow cuddling is a thing and it costs $75 an hour
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Posted by RCCAtl on February 4, 2010 at 8:00pm
A list of reliable relief and charitable organizations at work in Haiti, many are faith-based. The underlined names are live links.
To assist in the saving of lives, the protection of the survivors, and the rebuilding of a safe environment for all the people of Haiti, making financial contributions to the groups with strong track records seems the best avenue to take.
Aid Organizations
American Red Cross has pledged an initial $10 million to Haiti relief... read more and find out how to send a $10 donation by texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999. A local volunteer from Marietta is part of the International Response Team. She is on the ground right now and will be featured on Channel 2 at 5 PM or 6 PM today. She will also air live tonight on WXIA Channel 11 during the Red Cross Haiti Relief Phone-a-thon between the hours of 5:30 PM and 8 PM.
AmeriCares
For more than two decades, the success of AmeriCares has been characterized by timely response, meaningful impact, high integrity and intense passion for the work. To deliver medicine, relief supplies and health care to the needy, AmeriCares has developed a platform based on strategic partnerships, high-efficiency and tight auditing procedures.
Baptist World Aid
BWA is working through its member bodies in Haiti and with international rescue teams. Haitian Baptists are in country, know the situation, have a local network of churches and can respond. Rescue teams are enroute to Haiti on Wednesday morning and will coordinate with relief efforts on the ground.
AtlantaCare
CARE has deployed emergency team members to the devastated city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. CARE has launched an international appeal for funds for Haiti that will support immediate emergency operations. CARE plans to start food distribution using stocks of high-protein biscuits from its warehouses in Haiti. CARE is coordinating with other U.N. agencies and aid organizations to assess damage and on-the-ground needs.
Catholic Relief Services staff in Haiti is responding immediately to the earthquake that rocked Port -au- Prince, the capital of Haiti. Tuesday night the agency made an immediate commitment of $ 5 million for emergency supplies. That committment has been raised to $25 million.
Church of the Brethren
All gifts will be used for emergency disaster response in Haiti and will be coordinated through Brethren Disaster Ministries.
Church World Services
Humanitarian agency Church World Service reports it is sending initial funding to its local partners in the country and is prepared to provide CWS Kits and CWS Blankets to people in need.
Direct Relief International $2 million in aid being airlifted via FedEx this week, in addition to the two shipping containers of medical material aid previously sent to Port-au-Prince.
Doctors Without BordersYour gift will support emergency medical care for the men, women, and children affected by the earthquake in Haiti.
Episcopal Relief & Development is on the ground in Haiti where there is a large Episcopal presence and providing critical support in the aftermath of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Latest news release.
Haitian Timoun Foundation
HTF is a non-profit organization grass-roots movement whose mission is to create a future of hope, sustainability, and dignity for the children of Haiti through visionary Haitian-led organizations in the areas of Education, Poverty Eradication, and Leadership Development.
Hosea Feed the Hungry
A special message is up about helping a Georgia pastor in Haiti now.
International Rescue Committee
One of the first to respond, one of the last to leave. For 75 years, the International Rescue Committee has been a leader in humanitarian relief. The IRC is responding to the major earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital on January 12. Your donation will help the IRC work with partners on the ground in Haiti to rescue lives.
Islamic Relief USA Islamic Relief USA initially launched a $1 million appeal to help the victims, but raised it to $2.5 milion in the wake of the tragedy. Islamic Relief USA is also preparing a shipment of $1 million worth of much-needed supplies.
International relief and development charity, which aims to alleviate the suffering of the world’s poorest people. It is an independent Non-Governmental Organisation founded in the UK in 1984.
Jewish World Service
AJWS is collecting donations in response to Tuesday's massive earthquake in Haiti, which registered a 7.0 on the Richter scale. Donations to AJWS's "Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund" will enable AJWS's network of grantees in Haiti to meet the urgent needs of the population based on real-time, on-the-ground assessments.
Lutheran World Relief is responding to the affected communities through its partners on the ground in Haiti.
Oxfam has a staff of about 200 people on the ground in Haiti and a team of 15 highly-experienced emergency specialists based in the capital will be responding with public health, water and sanitation services to prevent the spread of waterborne disease.
Partners in Health and its partner organization Zanmi Lasante has worked in Haiti for nearly twenty-five years, and today is one of the largest non-governmental health care providers in the country. More than 120 doctors and nearly 500 nurses and nursing assistants.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
PCUSA is responding to this earthquake through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and its partners. Funds from One Great Hour of Sharing are already helping with the initial response. Your help is needed.
The Salvation Army’s initial assessment team landed in Haiti at Cape Haitian Thursday and is on their way to the capital city Port-au-Prince! One million meals are on the way.
UNICEF's disaster relief response, coordinated with other UN agencies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, is aimed at the children and women, who are the most vulnerable in times of crisis. Children under 18 make up nearly 50 percent of the 10 million population of Haiti.
The United Church of Christ has launched an emergency appeal for Haiti after a major earthquake struck the country. Thousands of people are feared dead and countless have been left homeless.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief
UMCOR has close ties with the Methodist Church in Haiti and is responding to the devastating earthquake with funding, material resources and prayers. ifts to support UMCOR's Haiti Relief efforts can be made to Haiti Emergency, UMCOR Advance #418325. Checks can be made to UMCOR with Advance #418325 Haiti Emergency in the memo line. Checks can be put in the church's offering plate or mailed to UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087
UMCOR is also seeking assembled personal health kits to provide individuals with basic necessarities. Instructions for assembling and shipping health kits are available at this link. Once health kits are assembled call 770-739-9537 for pickup from your church or delivery to Austell Disaster Warehouse. Next shipment is Monday. For more info, NGDisasterResponse
Week of Compassion
Week of Compassion is the relief, refugee and development mission fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada. We seek to equip and empower disciples to alleviate the suffering of others through disaster response, humanitarian aid, sustainable development and the promotion of mission opportunities.
The people of Haiti need food assistance as quickly as possible to prevent hunger worsening the misery already caused by the disaster.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
- Psalm 46
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Effective Communication By Bandwidth
Tweet 1 Comment
Choose your communication channel wisely.
Cerner Corp. CEO Neal Patterson probably wished he had when he fired off a message to senior managers at his medical software maker berating them for their work habits.
Cerner CEO Neal Patterson's Slip on Netiquette
Excerpts of the email include:
“The parking lot is sparsely used at 8 a.m.; likewise at 5 p.m….
…As managers — you either do not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing; or YOU do not CARE.”
“You have a problem and you will fix it or I will replace you…
…What you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK.”
The e-mail promptly leaked out onto the Web. Two weeks after Mr. Patterson sent the message, Cerner stock lost more than a quarter of its value (tens of millions of dollars) after investors became concerned about the company’s prospects and employee morale.
That story reminded me that when you are communicating in business (or for any reason), that you should pick your communication medium based on the sensitivity of the topic. The higher the sensitivity, the higher the bandwidth of communication.
Here are four examples of channels of communication and their relative bandwidth
In-Person (highest bandwidth) — Use this for your most sensitive topics.
Telephone (medium bandwidth) — Use this as a backup for sensitive topics in the event you can not meet in-person with your audience.
Instant Message (lower bandwidth) — Use this for lower-sensitivty topics
Email (lowest bandwidth) — Reserve this for your lowest-sensitivity topics (unless it’s accompanied by a higher bandwidth in-person meeting)
Amazingly, Mr. Patterson is still CEO of Cerner today (8 years after the slip-up) — my hat is off to him for surviving such a firestorm.
What a survivor! — And Cerner generated $188 million in pre-tax profit in its most recent year on sales of $1.67 billion so I imagine he is doing something right!
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CEO Kobe Bryant
I love basketball and I love business.
So I got enormous pleasure from watching the Spike Lee Documentary “Kobe Doin’ Work” on ESPN the other night (good for ESPN to make it advertising-free!).
As much basketball as I watch, I was amazed at how excellent a leader Kobe is…I think he’d make a great CEO.
Below are video clips of the entire documentary along with bullets that I think we can all borrow from Kobe to make us better leaders.
Being Nervous is Good!
Kobe: “I still get goose bumps every time I go out (on the court)”
When I heard Kobe say this, I was reminded of a mentor of mine who once asked me if I was nervous before a big speech. I said I was. She said: “Good, if you weren’t a little nervous I’d be worried about you. Nervous energy can be good energy.”
Respect the Competition
Kobe on San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili: ” That’s a bad boy right there. I have so much respect for his game. He’s an incredible competitor. I enjoy playing against him. He’s a fantastic tw0-guard”
“I enjoy playing against Tony…He’s so quick.”
Preparation & Execution
“You’re thinking about all the execution, all the things you gotta do, the preparations you’ve made.’”
Kobe says he knows where his teammates will be on plays from watching film of his own players. “You don’t want to be guessing,” Kobe says.
“You don’t build a house without blueprints…you gotta know what you’re doing coming in.”
Acknowledge Competition
Kobe on Tim Duncan: What can you say about Tim…He’s the best power forward to ever play the game. Period.”
Kobe later mentioned that he stole a jump shot in which he banks it off the backboard from Tim Duncan when he played him one-on-one before an All-Star game weekend.
Kobe on Playing Other Great Players: “A lot of guys when they match up against other great players, there’s a fear of embarassment. Fear that they might make you look bad. I really don’t care. It’s just fun going up against them. If you’re playing a great player, of course he’s going to make you look bad sometimes. It’s just part of the game.”
Kobe on who’s the best at the two-step move: “Nobody does (the two-step) better than D-Wade (Dwayne Wade) and Manu Ginoboli…and then probably Tony Parker.”
“I don’t think a lot of fans understand the amount of communication, execution that goes on in a game.”
“You have to emotionally be invested in the game, play hard, play with a lot of energy. But you gotta execute. We talk about execution all the time. We can’t stress that enough.”
Self-Honesty
On a blown layup: “That was doing too much…That was just a dumb play by me.”
A lot of times when my shot is off, it’s cuz my shot is flat. When I put arc on my ball, I’m a much better shooter.”
On watching himself in the documentary: “This is funny watching cuz I didn’t think I talked that damn much.”
Kobe on Kobe causing an offensive foul: “You idiot (about himself)…you know that’s what he (Kurt Thomas) is gonna do…and, then, I blew it.”
Take the High-Percentage Opportunities
That’s all you an ask for…you just want…high-percentage opportunities.”
Be Positive About Your Teamates
When Sasha Vucajic pushed Ime Udoka of the Spurs, Kobe said “That’s my man, Sasha, doing what he does. Feisty kid.”
Kobe on Derek Fisher: “I love that guy. What a warrior.”
“We’ve got some great passers on our ballclub.”
Kobe on Lamar Odom: “Lamar is just an incredible player…his versatility is what makes us go.”
Kobe on Luke Walton: “Luke is a much better shooter than he gives himself credit for.”
Kobe to Teammate Pao Gasol: “I’ve never played with a center who can pass like that!”
In fact, I didn’t hear Kobe say a negative thing about any teammate or opponent.
Kobe on Great Competition
“A lot of guys when they match up against other great players, there’s a fear of embarassment. Fear that they might make you look bad. I really don’t care.”
“It’s just fun going up against them. If you’re playing a great player, of course he’s going to make you look bad sometimes. It’s just part of the game.”
Kobe About Recharging (at Half-Time)
“Now’s the time to collect ourselves, and talk about what we’re doing and what we’re not doing.”
Kobe on Coach Phil Jackson
“We both love basketball…Phil and I can talk about the game, non-stop, all the time. That’s made me such a better player.”
“Phil doesn’t call plays. He draws up sequences of options and then it’s up to us a team to figure out what’s the best option at that moment in time.” “He [Phil] doesn’t want to hold your hand and walk you through it…he wants you to figure it out. That’s when you become a great team.”
Kobe on Finding his Role on the Lakers Team
“In the past I would have to score 35 or 40 points just to keep us competitive. Now I don’t have to do that. You see me directing more. I’m more of a compass, making sure we’re going in the right direction. Making sure we’re executing. Because I have the personnel [now] to do that.”
Speak The Other Guy’s Language
It was cool to watch Kobe speak Italian to teammate Sasha Vucajic to make some points…it both kept the information a bit more confidential from the opponent and also seemed to form a bond between Kobe and Sasha.
Kobe on Failure (i.e. Missing his Shots)
“You gotta forget about it…move on to the next play. I don’t dwell on missed shots at all. I don’t think about that stuff. I’m very optimistic.”
“If I miss 5 in a row, that means I’m good for the 6th one. If I miss the 6th one, that means that I’m definitely good on that 7th one…If I miss that 7th one, that means that 8th one is going in.”
Kobe on Making Sure to Love What You Do & Have Fun
“It’s such an intense game, you have to have fun. Tease one another. This is the stuff we were doing when we were kids. ”
“You rib each other, you tease each other. It makes things fun.”
“This game is such a beautiful game.”
Be Thankful
“You have to give your thanks…We’re all blessed to be in this position to do what we do.”
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Home » General » 2nd Annual DC Family Afternoon of Service
2nd Annual DC Family Afternoon of Service
Contributed by Benjamin Marks, Shinnyo-en DC Youth Association Member
On August 30th, for the second year in a row, members of Shinnyo-en Washington DC and their families and friends gathered for the Family Afternoon of Service in historic Old Town Alexandria. Shinnyo-en Foundation, in partnership with United Way Worldwide, sponsored the event at the Mary M. Gates Learning Center for the second straight year. Several local charitable organizations were invited to participate, including some that came last year.
The event began with opening remarks from the Foundation’s Program Director, Ineko Tsuchida, followed by a brief introduction of the participating organizations and their representatives who were attending the event. Then the participants broke out to different stations to participate in crafts and other activities.
Each organization had its own station for volunteers to participate in. Ronald McDonald House decorated and packed brown bags filled with breakfast items for families staying at the House to quickly grab on the way to visit their child in the hospital. Carpenter’s Shelter made no-sew fleece blankets for the homeless: “This is great! You can buy a blanket at Wal-Mart, but this hand-made blanket will give people the feeling that someone cares about them. That is priceless,” said Marion Brunken of Volunteer Alexandria. Friends of Guest House made welcome tote bags with small toiletries for women at the house. Well of Hope wrote letters for widows and orphans in Kenya, Africa and volunteers also collected shoes, which were donated to the organization, providing capital to purchase land and build houses for the women. Wright to Read made bookmarks, and play dough which are used for a literacy tutoring and mentoring program for elementary school children in Alexandria. Friendship bracelets were made for the children at the Cancer Center for Mongolian Children, while Senior Services of Alexandria decorated picture frames for their Friendly Visitors Program.
Mary Lee Anderson of Senior Services of Alexandria said, “this year, the picture frames will be a tangible reminder for our seniors that there are people who care about them.” Kelly McDermott of Carpenter’s Shelter shared how great it was that there were so many young kids participating and that “we can’t really have young kids [volunteering] at the shelter so it’s nice to have young kids participate in off-site events like this.” All of the recipient organizations agreed that, if Shinnyo-en Foundation were to have another event next year, they would all like to comeback again.
This year Shinnyo-en members came all the way from Philadelphia and Delaware to participate in the event. The event was a great opportunity for children. Many members brought their children to expose them to community service in a very fun way. One of our Shinnyo-en DC members brought his 14-year-old son. The father and son really enjoyed the event and wrote a thank-you note to one of the event support volunteers. Other volunteers were returnees from last year’s event, which included a past Shinnyo Fellow, Vigny, from George Mason University. While a majority of volunteers rotated through the various stations, Vigny gave all his time writing cards for Well of Hope widows in Swahili! Participants also received the new Infinite Paths to Peace t-shirts made by Shinnyo-en Foundation.
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Confusion is mounting over real estate’s most buzzed-about federal program, but there still may be an excess of players trying to get in on the action
Central Harlem
It was a telling moment for those fixated on Opportunity Zones.
“Who the hell is EJF and their expertise as it relates to real estate?” Anthony Scaramucci asked on a December conference call to promote his $3 billion Opportunity Zone fund.
The rhetorical question seemed to be an attempt to reassure potential investors that EJF Capital would be a qualified partner for Scaramucci’s firm, SkyBridge Capital. But the former White House communications director’s swagger wasn’t enough to move the needle — and the two hedge funds parted ways a month later.
SkyBridge attributed the split to concerns from its distribution partners that EJF didn’t have enough experience managing real estate funds. “It’s a difficult investment environment,” the firm’s president, Brett Messing, told The Real Deal. “People get more risk-averse. And being risk-averse means bringing your clients a track record and someone who might be a little more known for being associated with real estate.”
The quest for another OZ partner was short-lived: SkyBridge announced in late January that it had teamed up with the property investment firm Westport Capital Partners. But its split with EJF was one several signs that OZs are a less straightforward investment opportunity than originally thought.
Companies that launched funds in New York are still figuring out the best ways to raise capital and when and where to deploy it. And despite the program’s goal of revitalizing downtrodden parts of the country by providing tax breaks for those who pour money into new developments, some of the city’s OZs are located in relatively posh neighborhoods with projects from sponsors better known for luxury skyscrapers than affordable housing.
Since being shoehorned into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, OZs have faced multiple challenges — from a fragmented fundraising landscape to the record-long government shutdown. The political standoff has slowed the overall process, delaying several key guidelines and canceling an Internal Revenue Service hearing last month intended to focus on tax breaks and proposed regulations.
That has created an environment where a growing number of people are realizing how much they still don’t know about OZs. Roughly half a dozen New York real estate players have announced plans within the past year to set up related funds, with most looking to raise between $100 million and $500 million. But while firms across the board are thrilled about the program’s potential, virtually none can say exactly how it will all work out.
“There are still a lot of questions,” said Bryan Woo of Manhattan-based developer Youngwoo Associates, whose firm launched a $500 million OZ fund with the real estate crowdfunding startup EquityMultiple. “It just becomes that much harder to have a serious conversation with an investor, because that investor is going to want some kind of legal guidance.”
Many are scrambling to fill that information vacuum — dozens of law firms with tax or real estate practices have issued white papers detailing potential regulations, commercial brokers are frantically searching for opportune sites, and fund managers are seeking out investors by the thousands.
“There’s lots of speculation out there, a lot of which is not fully accurate,” said Steve Glickman, a former senior economic 上海龙凤论坛sh1f
adviser to President Barack Obama and one of the architects of the OZ program. “Some of those voices are well-informed. But many are not and are just trying to create a brand for themselves in the space.”
The New York route
A total of 8,762 census tracts across the country have been designated as OZs. That includes 514 in New York State — 306 of which are located in the five boroughs, per data from the Urban Institute and New York’s Empire State Development Corporation.
The process of identifying what parts of the city could be classified as OZs began in February 2018, when the federal government gave Empire State Development more than 2,000 tracts it had identified as “low-income.”
New York officials then had just 90 days to cull through those areas and recommend about 25 percent to be included in the program, according to sources familiar 新爱上海同城对对碰论坛
with the rollout. They quickly removed areas that appeared to have been accidentally included — one encompassed Central Park — and went to Regional Economic Development Councils to get more local expertise on which tracts would be an ideal fit for the program.
State officials tried to include areas where they were looking to increase investment and where they projected the most investment interest would arrive. These areas included the South Bronx, East Harlem, the Rockaways and Crown Heights — along with tracts in less-expected neighborhoods like the Far West Side and the Lower East Side.
Helping select the census tracts should put an end to the state’s involvement, as the IRS will run the remainder of the federal program, sources said. But the agency was facing delays implementing rules and regulations even prior to the prolonged government shutdown, and interruptions seem likely to continue. As a result, many federal requirements for the OZ program are still not finalized, hampering the amount of momentum that can build up in the market.
“A lot of people are interested, but no one knows how the mechanics are going to work,” one source in New York state government said on condition of anonymity. “It’s very difficult because they keep saying they don’t want to put in too many regulations.”
Census tracts designated as OZs in Bushwick and Far Rockaway saw the most activity across new building permits in 2018, with plans for 51 projects filed in each neighborhood, according to a TRD analysis of city records. Projects in Long Island City and the surrounding area came next with 45, followed by Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant with 36 and Ocean Hill with 33.
OZs in Willets Point, Queens, saw the most activity by total square feet among permits filed last year at about 2.6 million, followed by Downtown Brooklyn (2.5 million), the LIC area (2.4 million), Manhattan’s 125th Street corridor (1.7 million) and Greenpoint (1.6 million).
Queens-based developer F T Group has the highest concentration of square feet being built in OZs, roughly 1.4 million, thanks to its massive Tangram project in Flushing. F T was followed by the Durst Organization (1.2 million) and TF Cornerstone (998,000).
Durst made that list largely due to its Queens Plaza Park project on Northern Boulevard. But company spokesman Jordan Barowitz said the 63-story mixed-use rental tower had been in the works long before the OZ program came to light and that the project was never altered.
The family-run real estate firm examined the OZ program when it launched and ultimately decided it was not a good fit for the way the company does business, Barowitz noted.
“We don’t put together funds to purchase our development sites, nor do we sell our projects,” he said.
Queens Plaza Park was the second-largest project in a New York OZ, behind TF Cornerstone’s mixed-use rental tower the Max at 606 West 57th Street. The development firm, which declined to comment, also began its project before the program was announced, and the 44-story tower near Billionaires’ Row is far from one that most would associate with a struggling part of the city — rental prices run as high as $8,000-plus a month.
The Max is located in Census Tract 135, which runs from 10th Avenue to the Hudson River and from West 50th to West 58th streets. The U.S. Treasury Department, led by native New Yorker and former investment banker Steven Mnuchin, identified the area as a low-income tract, and the New York City Regional Economic Development Council recommended it as an OZ based on city investments, sources said.
Jim Costello, senior vice president at the real estate data provider Real Capital Analytics, said states were given flexibility in how they define OZs and that time will tell whether the strategy of including a mix of higher-income and lower-income areas makes sense.
He said RCA has seen the largest increases in sales volumes in areas showing signs of gentrification.
TRD’s data analysis in New York supported that, with the most active OZ neighborhoods by total dollar volume of sales in 2018 including Gowanus, Washington Heights and Mott Haven. The total dollar volume of property sales in the top 20 OZ neighborhoods in the city was about $10.7 billion last year.
“I think 10 years from now, we’ll see which approach worked best,” Costello said. “Did it work best to focus on only the poorest areas of one state or concentrate it all on one city? Or to include some high-income areas in between low-income areas in places like New York? There’s rationales for all of them.”
Brett Theodos, a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, was more skeptical that designating areas already seeing signs of improvement is worthwhile.
“I’m confident those areas will attract investment,” he said. “But first, will that investment benefit low- and moderate-income residents, and second, will it be worth our public money to do so, or would those areas have gotten plenty of investment on their own?”
An Urban Institute analysis found that 21 percent of tracts designated as OZs in New York City had already experienced “sizable socioeconomic change,” which it defined using factors such as rising family income and an increased number of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher between 2000 and 2016. This percentage of change was even higher in cities like Seattle (40 percent), Oakland (37 percent) and Washington, D.C. (32 percent).
Costello described the overall process of identifying OZs as “very rushed.” “The implem爱上海龙凤419桑拿
entation was pushed to the states with little head start for them to figure that out,” he said.
One government source attributed the program’s bumpy debut to its inclusion in the 2017 tax law. “Everybody was surprised this was in the tax bill — including the IRS and the Treasury,” the source said. “They did not know about it.”
Despite lingering uncertainties surrounding the program, fundraising for OZs has already begun in earnest in New York.
Developers are mainly targeting high-net-worth individuals, and the investments need to be finalized by the end of the year in order to take full advantage of the 15 percent discount the program includes on capital gains taxes. That deferment ends on Dec. 31, 2026, and investors need to have property in an OZ for at least seven years to get the full discount.
In addition to OZ fu上海千花网论坛
nds from SkyBridge and Youngwoo, other planned investments in the city include a $500 million fund from RXR Realty, a $250 million fund from Normandy Real Estate and a $100 million fund from Toby Moskovits’ Heritage Equity Partners.
Woo said his team is mainly focused on acquiring assets in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx. One of the recent challenges, he said, is that all the hype around OZs has caused some prospective sellers to view their properties as more valuable than they actually are.
Sellers seeking higher prices are not entirely out of line, as RCA found that sales of development sites in OZs across the country spiked 80 percent during the first three quarters of 2018. Woo acknowledged there can be a premium on assets in some designated areas but stressed that the same standard should not apply to every property.
“It’s not the same within neighborhoods [or] within zones,” he said. “It’s not the same building to building.”
Heritage Equity has some of its most notable projects in neighborhoods like Crown Heights and Sunset Park, which Moskovits pointed to as evidence that her fund is “a quintessential Opportunity Zone developer.” The fund is also focused on acquiring sites and making sure they are ready to start building on them as quickly as possible.
Moskovits maintained that all of the city’s outer boroughs have room for more housing and views the OZ program as a great way to take advantage of that. “We started with the piece we think is most critical,” she said. “And that’s identifying the transaction, getting sites under contract and getting them shovel-ready.”
RXR is mostly focused on raising capital from high-net-worth individuals via wealth management firms and alternative investment arms at major banks, its President and CFO Michael Maturo said.
He noted that RXR already has a pipeline of assets in areas that have been designated as OZs, so it does not need to focus as much on acquiring properties. The firm had been working on a similar initiative before the federal program launched, so Maturo said RXR was ready to take advantage once it did. “We formed a fund in 2015 called the emerging submarket fund,” he recalled. “Its purpose was to invest in areas outside Manhattan.”
RXR now plans to use the OZ program to further develop its projects in areas outside the city, including Yonkers and New Rochelle. “Those are areas that have good connectivity to transit but have been underinvested for many years,” Maturo said. “This is going to be a natural segue to extend development in those areas.”
Fundraising is also the top priority at Normandy, according to its founder and partner Jeff Gronning. The company is actively marketing its investment fund, which so far has had the most interest come from high-net-worth individuals.
“We are spending most of our time speaking with investors that have the ability to control the timing of their gains,” Gronning said. “We’re anticipating creating a portfolio of Opportunity Zone investments that will be identified and closed over a two- to three-year period.”
Woo cited three main factors for qualified OZ investors: a track record of investing in real estate, development experience and familiarity with local markets where funds are looking to invest.
“Some of the Opportunity Zones are emerging neighborhoods,” he said. “You have to understand how to speak with local stakeholders within the neighborhood and make sure ultimately that you’re building something that people locally want.”
Pies in the sky?
Messing insisted that SkyBridge is still on track to raise $3 billion — a stratospheric sum compared to how much other OZ funds are looking to raise. “I’ve never been associated with a product that is so easy to generate interest in,” he said.
In a recent Bloomberg interview, however, Scaramucci said his firm had raised $10 million for its fund so far and expects to raise between $500 million and $1 billion this year.
Troy Merkel, a senior real estate analyst at the consulting firm RSM, said he was skeptical about SkyBridge’s investment target.
“I just think it’s hard to deploy that much capital in what’s going to be a relatively tight timeline by one group,” he said. “That’s why I think you’re seeing more of the $250 to $500 million fund levels. I think those are more realistic capital outlays for groups to deploy.”
A number of OZ fund managers, meanwhile, are going to have to reach outside their comfort zones to fill their coffers. Many of their institutional partners — including pension funds and endowments — are already exempt from capital gains taxes, which explains the turn to wealthy families and individuals.
“We have historically raised a very small percentage of our equity from high-net-worth investors, who are likely the biggest beneficiaries of the Opportunity Zone program,” said one anonymous executive at a major real estate private equity firm.
“Like a lot of our peers, it’s our view that the best way to tap into that world is through one of the big Wall Street brokerages: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Bank of America,” the executive added. “We are having conversations with those groups in hopes of basically pushing our offerings to their high-net-worth clients.”
Those middlemen with access to ultra-rich private investors are key figures in the fundraising ecosystem.
The conference organizer Information Management Network is hosting an OZ forum in March at the Union League Club in Manhattan. The list of registered attendees includes executives from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley’s wealth management divisions, as well as several family offices.
One registered attendee, the Hayman Family Office, manages the wealth of late retail magnate Fred Hayman, who founded Giorgio Beverly Hills — the firs上海贵族宝贝
t luxury boutique on Rodeo Drive. DJ Van Keuren, a vice president at the office, said families that spent generations building wealth from businesses that had nothing to do with real estate could be reluctant to write big checks to OZ fund managers they’re meeting for the first time.
“Families like control,” he told TRD, adding that he gets about five emails a day for potential OZ investments. “When family offices are going to invest, they’re going to start with a small check size. Because unlike institutional investors — which are not emotional, because it’s not their money — this is their money.”
In an effort to find the right fit, many OZ fund managers are working with brokers, according to several sources familiar with the matter.
“The high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth investors are just less easy to access and less transparent,” said Glickman, who recently launched his own OZ consulting firm, Develop Advisors. “You have to have a pretty good network or work with wealth managers that have a large network of high-net-worth investors that can put money into the program.”
The general lack of experience with these types of investments among high-net-worth individuals can be one of the biggest challenges for OZ fund managers, RSM’s Merkel said.
“They have to educate a lot of the investors about real estate investing in general, because those investors are coming to it with a tax strategy and what they believe is a solid investment plan,” he said. “But they may not have been real estate people.”
Scattered fundraising
There’s another reason that some of the biggest names in private equity may be steering clear of Opportunity Zones: Firms like the Blackstone Group, Apollo Global Management and KKR typically look for deals on a much larger scale than OZs can offer.
Blackstone recently raised a record $20 billion real estate fund that would be extremely difficult to put to work at a scale of a few hundred million dollars or less at a time. Many of the big buyout giants eyeing deals on that scale are usually looking for the kinds of returns that come from developing a property and selling it off once complete. Those timelines may be incompatible with OZ investments of roughly five to 10 years.
Craig Bernstein, co-founder of OPZ Capital, a private equity firm solely focused on OZs, said the market remains fragmented when it comes to fundraising. Bernstein, who previously spent more than a decade at the Maryland-based real estate firm White Star Investments, said he’s targeting investments in New York, Florida, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., focused primarily on multifamily, student housing and self-storage projects.
He said that as things shake out with the OZ program, there will only be enough room for a few big winners. “I think the top 10 percent of [fund] managers are going to be raising the top 90 percent of capital,” Bernstein said.
Some have compared investing in OZs to the problem-plagued EB-5 program, both of which are heavily focused on property development. The Urban Institute’s Theodos said he sees similarities between the two programs — including the lack of a cap and little transparency about where investments will go. There is, however, one notable difference.
“EB-5, for all of its flaws, isn’t actually costing us any money,” he said. “It is bringing new investment, whereas Opportunity Zones are going to cost us a lot of money.”
One of the biggest questions for real estate players is whether OZs will ultimately prove as beneficial as advertised. Several sources familiar with the program cautioned that despite seemingly sound fundamentals, firms shouldn’t view the program as a panacea for all the challenges the industry faces.
“This program is not all of a sudden making infeasible real estate deals feasible,” said Michael Alperin, acquisitions director at the residential development firm Beacon Communities. “It’s taking deals that were close to being developed or about to be developed and making them work. I think there’s probably been a little bit of overhype in the marketplace.”
John Balboni, a real estate partner at the Boston-based law firm Sullivan Worcester, echoed that point. “Not every real estate deal is a winner just because you’re in an Opportunity Zone,” he said.
The D.C. slowdown
While it seemed investors would burst full steam ahead on OZ projects heading into 2019, developments have been slow. That’s partly due to the U.S. government shutdown that began on Dec. 22 and ended — for at least three weeks — on Jan. 25.
Following the shutdown, “it will take the government probably six weeks to [reach] its full capability,” said Marcus Mason, a senior partner at the Madison Group, a D.C.-based public affairs firm that has lobbied on OZs for Los Angeles County.
The dysfunction in the nation’s capital has thrown cold water on the program’s progress, according to multiple sources.
As of December 2018, CoStar tracked the formation of more than 180 OZ funds targeting a combined $19.97 billion in investments. About a third of those funds were announced in the last few months of the year, when interested parties began reaching out to the IRS and Treasury Department regarding proposed regulations.
A handful of real estate trade groups have weighed in with suggestions on how to tweak the program for their members’ benefit. The industry is looking for clarity on several issues such as the IRS’ 31-month working capital safe harbor rule for funds that are set aside for projects but not technically invested.
Groups like the National Association of Homebuilders and the Shopping Center Group want the IRS to relax the 31-month timeline to allow for factors such as unexpected construction delays.
Others, including the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, want flexibility on the fixed period that investors have to defer gains into a qualified fund.
As the rules are currently written, investors have to defer their gains within 180 days after the gain would be recognized for federal tax purposes. But NAREIT and others argue that investors often don’t know how their gains will be treated until the tax year ends. The group wants the IRS to delay the start of the 180-day period to the end of each taxable year.
Investors looking to maximize the economic benefits aren’t the only ones pushing their agenda. Others are calling for more regulations. The National Housing Conference submitted comments seeking more reporting requirements “to avoid the potential for fraud and displacement that would ultimately increase the cost of the initiative and turn [OZs] into a costly
tax shelter.”
Glickman noted that the delayed regulations have affected fundraising.
“I think that capital raising has gone slower than some people anticipated,” he said, adding that he expects more momentum once the final round of regulations comes out. “The intermediaries — the wealth managers, accountants, lawyers and others — have put heavier brakes on getting their money into the marketplace awaiting more regulatory clarities.”
RCA’s Costello said investors getting locked into lengthy deals in neighborhoods that may not be as stable as they’re used to means pouring money into OZs could be a risky endeavor.
“There’s a potential capital gain,” he said. “You have to change your behavior to be able to access that gain in terms of not being able to trade out for a certain period of time. There’s extra uncertainty that goes with that, but that’s part of the deal.”
—Additional reporting by David Jeans
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CD Review: Chris Potter Underground Orchestra - Imaginary Cities
Chris Potter Underground Orchestra
Imaginary Cities
(ECM) www.ecmrecords.com
Chris Potter didn't set out to do a concept album about the state of the urban landscape. But in some ways the music on Imaginary Cities does come off like a musical assessment of it. Any given piece of real estate, be it rural or urban, comes with many layers to it, geologically and historically speaking. The suburban sprawl that we see while driving, crammed to the gills with billboards, fast food establishments and the occasional Mom and Pop store - what did it look like half a century ago? Inner city communities still have buildings that was constructed in a period prior, with storefronts commingling with houses, in various states of repair, still echoing a time when neighborhoods were self-sufficient and there was no need to hop on a bus or get in a car to go and do your shopping.
Where does it go from here? Was it better back then, or is it better to keep move forward? Maybe it's neither of the above, and better to just stare out at the vast sky and soak in the scope of it.
These visuals spring to mind on the tenor saxophonist's new album, which takes his Underground quartet (pianist Craig Taborn, guitarist Adam Rogers, drummer Nate Smith) and adds two bassists (upright player Scott Colley and bass guitarist Fima Ephron), a string quartet and vibraphonist/marimbaist Steve Nelson to it. They create a rich sound, especially during the different sections of the four-part "Imaginary Cities" suite, "Compassion," "Dualities," "Disintegration" and "Rebuilding."
The names, when taken together with the music, conjure up images of various aspects of city life. "Dualities" seems to depict the contrast between the minor strings and the bright sounding marimba. "Distintegration" is especially telling, where Potter's soprano and the strings move rather freely over a mix of acoustic guitar and basses, creating some eerie tension. Some of it sounds completely composed, while other sections give everyone space to move freely. Finally, to read more into the whole concept, Potter aptly ends by proposing solutions, not merely bringing up issues. "Rebulding" begins with Smith laying down a odd-time groove that Potter (back on tenor) and Nelson use to great advantage. The 11-minute piece goes through various shapes, holding down the groove before switching in the final quarter into a more midtempo section.
But that's only half of the album. "Lament," which precedes the title suite, features Potter's tenor playing over a yearning two-chord vamp towards the end which still has plenty of fire brewing, the strings giving the music a more expansive sound, never acting as a sweetener. The quartet gets as much frontline room as Potter on "Shadow Self," which is inspired by Bela Bartok. The closing "Sky" acts something like a final statement to the whole city concept of the album. The music is vast and expansive, as if trying to encompass the surroundings, again bolstered by the arrangement of 11-piece group.
Strings and jazz can make strange bedfellows. Even the way the strings are recorded can impact the impact of the music. Potter uses them in his music to alternately create tension and reinforce the beauty of his music. In doing so, new things are discovered with each listen, from the shape of melodies to subtle colors that Craig Taborn uses to add drama. It's a work that gets more meaningful with time.
Posted by shanleymusic at 6:34 AM No comments: Links to this post
RIP Bernard Stollman, ESP-Disk's founder
One of the most dramatic scenes in It's a Wonderful Life comes in the part where George Bailey has no identity and he sees his widowed mother running a boarding house. Frank Capra really plays up the pathos, filming half of Jimmy Stewart's shocked face at close view. Behind him, Clarence the angel says, "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
I thought about Clarence's observation when I heard that Bernard Stollman, the eccentric found of ESP-Disk records passed away yesterday at the age of 85. He lost a battle with colon cancer that had spread to his spine.
ESP was the first American label to give Albert Ayler due recognition. Even though Broadside initially issued the Fugs' debut album, ESP later reissued it and brought it to more people, and released their self-titled second album (which is arguably their best one). Pearls Before Swine. The Godz. Paul Bley. Patty Waters. The list goes on and on. And on. And it includes albums that maybe should not have been released. But they were. The world is a little stranger for it, in a good way. Who knows how many outsider artists were motivated to make music based on what they heard on that label?
It all comes back to Stollman's eccentric vision. He started the label because of his commitment to promoting the Esperanto language. (That's what the label's name represented.) The first album was Ni Kantu en Esperanto, an album of insipid traditional songs sung in Esperanto. I once talked to an ESP act and expressed a desire to hear it. He responded, "No, you don't."
It could have stopped there. But Stollman heard Ayler and put his support behind him, thus providing the first serious platform for what would be called free jazz. He released what was Henry Grimes' only solo album for decades. Giuseppi Logan. Marion Brown. Sunny Murray. Oh wait - I'm getting carried away again.
Stollman might not have been the best businessman, but I'm not here to discuss that. I'm here to give thanks to one man's crazy idea that inspired countless others in its wake. And to encourage others to do the same. You never know how many people you're going to reach when you put a piece of art out there. No, that's not the point, but it can be a significant side effect. So, thanks, Bernard, wherever you are. Ripozi en paco.
Rob Mazurek, Geri Allen, Kathryn Calder, Vanilla Fudge
Right now I'm listening to music that I have to review so I can't post anything new. But I have written things in other places to let you know what I've been up to.
Here's a review of both the Rob Mazurek & Black Cube SP show at the Andy Warhol Museum, and Geri Allen & TimeLine at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. You might need to scroll down through a few stories to read it.
Today, Kathryn Calder - keyboardist and vocalist of the New Pornographers - releases her third solo album under her own name. It's self-titled too. My review of it appears on the Blurt website right here.
Finally, weeks after the fact, here's my Vanilla Fudge piece, also on Blurt.
Posted by shanleymusic at 10:24 PM No comments: Links to this post
Mary Halvorson & Stephan Crump - aka Secret Keeper - Slay Pittsburgh
Funny how these things work. Sometimes top-notch, adventurous jazz types come to Pittsburgh and a baker's dozen of listeners show up. Then last night, a guitarist who is arguably one of the most innovative in her field (definitely the most unique voice) and a dynamic, prolific bassist - whose regular gigs include a spot in the Vijay Iyer Trio - come to town, totally flying under the p.r. radar, and they pack a loft, essentially selling it out, at least a week in advance. It's a tad ironic that the duo goes by the name Secret Keeper. But I'm here to celebrate, not castigate.
I found out that Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Stephan Crump (bass) - aka Secret Keeper - were coming here almost by accident, told by a friend/publicist a while ago. The evening after I interviewed Mary for a Pittsburgh City Paper article, I heard that it was sold out. Luckily, Mary ensured that I got in. Which is good because if I hadn't, I would have had a five-alarm meltdown. ("Standing in the rain/ with his head hung low/ couldn't get a ticket/ it was a sold-out show...")
The only reason I'm editorializing is because it would have been cool if the folks who attend things like the Sound Exchange weekly events at the Thunderbird Cafe had known about it, so audiences could cross-pollinate. Mary is coming back for a residency in June/July with the band Thumbscrew. Hopefully everyone can come in contact then. We can be a welcoming people, us Pittsburghers.
So, yeah, I suppose I was sort of geeking out at the show. I really like Mary's music with her own bands, and love Stephan's many projects. But getting to see Secret Keeper in person, just a few feet away from me, was awesome. Halvorson's big, hollow body Guild guitar has a distinct, crisp tone to begin with, but she has a signature sound, built on a skillful use of pitch-bending pedals, delay and the occasional stomp of the Rat distortion box. Crump plays his bass viscerally, hugging it, singing along with it, generally working up a sweat as he did last night. (It got pretty warm in the room as the set proceeded.)
Emerge, Secret Keeper's second album, isn't officially out yet, but the duo has been touring in support of it for the past week, and last night's set was predominantly drawn from that album's tracks. It was fascinating to watch Halvorson play long, extended melody lines that kept flowing. In the coda of "Bridge Loss Sequence, she switched to chords that almost sounded like Freddie Green's riffing in a Count Basie piece - although the context was way different, and this was only a passing moment. But it shows how much contour can be found in their work.
Crump often sounding like he was operating on a different rhythmic plain than his partner, but it was easy to see that they were moving together even if they were playing parallel melodies (or to extend that metaphor, maybe it was more perpendicular). He bowed some deep harmonics and some rich double (and possibly triple) stops. Then the climax to a piece like "Disproportionate Endings" both of them pulled out some outer space harmonics. "Mirrors," originally an improvisation on their Super 8 album, had Crump playing his bass's frame percussively before Halvorson looped a bunch of guitar effects that sounded like sped-up piano noodlings.
The audience seemed to stay with the duo through the whole set, sitting in quiet, rapt attention (from what little I could pick up in the second row) and showing their enthusiasm with applause. Here's hoping we'll all see each other again soon at another show.
CD Review: Anthony Braxton - Trio and Duet
Anthony Braxton
Trio and Duet
(Sackville) www.delmark.com
Delmark continues their reissue series of albums on the Sackville label with a 1974 session that could have just as easily been called Two Sides of Anthony Braxton, due to the contrast between what appeared on Side One and Side Two. The side-length "Composition 36" finds him with his Creative Construction Company partner (Wadada) Leo Smith (trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion, small instruments) and Richard Teitelbaum (Moog synthesizer, percussion). Conversely, Side Two consists of Braxton and bassist Dave Holland tearing through standards like "The Song Is You" and "Embraceable You," never forsaking the chord changes but also maintaining their own musical identities.
"Composition 36" also blends elements of abstract, sometimes pointillistic playing with recurring melodic elements. It begins with Teitelbaum oozing out some metallic drones from his keyboard before a muted Smith and Braxton (playing only B-flat, and later bass, clarinet) state a long-toned theme that will reappear a few more times. The 18-minute piece never really falls into a full group improvisation nor do the players take typical solo spots. Overlap and support are key. Smith wrings life out from upper register squeals, the clarinet squeaks and grumbles through different registers. Teitelbaum creates noisy soundscapes but he also turns them into pedal notes that sound like a melodic vacuum cleaner, and he also unleashes some fast keyboard runs in a more conventional voice.
After hearing this on vinyl, one has the chance to ruminate on the contours of "Composition 36" while flipping the record over. With the reissue, we're propelled right into an upbeat, nearly 12-minute version of "The Song Is You" without much more than a chance to exhale. Holland's steady walking bassline keeps the structure in place, still leaving him time to solo. Braxton's alto has a delightfully gruff tone to it that treats the standards well. "You Go To My Head" is played a little more uptempo than normal, and not quite as legato; "Embraceable You" also sounds a little wilder and not quite as much like a ballad. "I Remember You" - one of two bonus tracks - takes liberties with the melody from the first measure, perhaps in homage to Lennie Tristano and his acolytes. As he continues, Braxton adds a few squonks to the tune, which might explain why this track was left off the original album (though length was also probably a major factor). In total, Trio and Duet offers a vast picture of the complexities that fueled Braxton's work.
shanleyonmusic
I'm what you'd call a music enthusiast. Not one of those obsessive people, but definitely fanatical about it. This blog began as a forum for whatever I am listening to throughout the day but I'm also trying to include full-blown CD reviews too.
4 Pounds of Trouble:Life with Donovan
And Awaaaaay We Go!
Stony Brook People
CD Review: Chris Potter Underground Orchestra - Im...
Rob Mazurek, Geri Allen, Kathryn Calder, Vanilla F...
Mary Halvorson & Stephan Crump - aka Secret Keeper...
shanleymusic
UPDATED - 9/15/2018. Over the past couple years, most of the entries here have been focused on jazz, with fewer on indie rock or albums from my past that I've dug up. I'm not limiting myself to one style. But most of the music I receive is jazz and since there aren't a whole lot of jazz writers out there, I try to provide a forum for it. Regarding me, I've lived in Pittsburgh all my life and despise the people who live here who put it down because it says less about the town than it does about them. Until recently, I played bass and sang in a band called the Love Letters, who released a double 7" single. (Something else is sort of in the works but I'll keep you posted.) Prior to that, I played in Amoeba Knievel, the Fearnots and the Mofones. Previously I played in Bone of Contention (ever heard "Barbie Likes to Die"? People on the interweb have!), the Pundits, Paul Lynde 451 and Mystery Date. After several years of freelancing for Pittsburgh City Paper, I now write for the new Pittsburgh Current, which everyone should check out online or in print. Nationally I contribute to JazzTimes magazine.
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Earthquake swarm hits Santa Cruz Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault in California
A cluster of earthquakes shook the Santa Cruz Mountains on Thursday afternoon. Less than 20 seconds separated the two largest quakes, which hit about 2:35 p.m. near Boulder Creek.
A cluster of earthquakes shook the Santa Cruz Mountains on Thursday afternoon, April 18, 2019. Map via USGS
The first, a magnitude 2.8, was centered about 12.5 miles west-northwest of the town and the second, a magnitude 2.5, was centered about 13 miles in the same direction.
According to the USGS, four smaller earthquakes ranging from magnitude 1.4 to magnitude 1.9 were reported in the area between about 2:10 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. Thursday afternoon.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The San Andreas fault runs through the region. In 1906, the fault produced a magnitude 7.9 earthquake that killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed 28,000 buildings.
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[Mercury News]
Terrifying clone tick swarms are killing US cattle by draining their blood, now chasing after humans
New York needs a ratcatcher to get rid of huge hordes of giant rats
Seattle earthquakes – Surviving Cascadia M9.0 and worse video
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Makar shines in NHL debut, Avs beat Flames 6-2 for 2-1 lead
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
By PAT GRAHAM
DENVER (AP) A wide-open Cale Makar screamed toward Nathan MacKinnon to deliver him the puck.
That made an instant impression with MacKinnon on a night when Makar made an immediate impact. This newly signed rookie isn't intimidated by the stage or his surroundings.
MacKinnon scored twice in the first period and set up Makar's first NHL goal in his debut as the Colorado Avalanche routed the Calgary Flames 6-2 on Monday to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series.
"It's pretty weird. Pretty special, though," Makar said of his first game. "Obviously, it's a cool moment."
Matt Nieto added a short-handed goal, and Mikko Rantanen and Erik Johnson also scored for the wild-card Avalanche, who built a 6-1 lead early in the third period and finished with 56 shots. Philipp Grubauer was credited with 27 saves.
MacKinnon had two power-play goals. But the goal of the night was turned in by Makar, the 20-year-old defenseman who was signed Sunday and jumped into Colorado's postseason lineup two days after his college season ended when Massachusetts lost in the Frozen Four championship game.
Makar, who grew up a Flames fan in Calgary, was the fourth overall pick by the Avalanche in 2017.
It didn't take long for Makar to make a big contribution as he took a drop pass from MacKinnon, fought off a Flames defender and beat goalie Mike Smith with a wrist shot - on his first NHL shot on net, too. Makar was immediately mobbed by teammates as his parents celebrated in the stands.
"I heard him, too. He was calling for it," MacKinnon said. "First game ever and he screamed at me. That's great. You want a player to be aggressive, assertive, and I was really impressed by that."
Sam Bennett and TJ Brodie scored for the Flames, the top seed in the Western Conference.
Game 4 is Wednesday night in Denver.
"We've got to regroup here, and stick together as a team," Calgary defenseman Mark Giordano said. "There wasn't much good, honestly, throughout the night. We made that team look and feel good all night."
There was talk of pulling Smith after the second period, just to save some energy. He didn't want to surrender the net.
"As a goalie in this league, you want to battle no matter how many goals have gone in," Smith said.
Things got physical in the third period with the game out of hand. First, Bennett was given a misconduct penalty for a fight with Matt Calvert. Later, Matthew Tkachuk received a misconduct penalty for mixing it up with Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog, who had a cut under his eye. Finally, Garnet Hathaway and Nikita Zadorov were sent to the dressing room for their skirmish.
"I thought it got away from us early and obviously we chased the game the rest of the game," Flames coach Bill Peters said.
The first period was a debacle for Calgary in falling behind 3-0. The team took two penalties on one play - hooking and too many men - to give Colorado an early 5-on-3 power play. MacKinnon sent in a high wrist shot over Smith.
Later in the first, the Flames were called for another penalty and MacKinnon added another power-play goal.
Still, it might be MacKinnon's pass that is best remembered. He set up Makar at 16:02 of the first period. The NHL communications department said on Twitter that Makar became the seventh player in NHL history and first defenseman to make his debut in the Stanley Cup playoffs and score a goal.
Wearing No. 8, Makar jumped on the ice early in the game and was given a loud cheer by the capacity crowd. About the only hiccup was in the second period when he lost control of the puck with no one around near his own goal. But he gained control just before it hit the post, with Grubauer looking back.
It's certainly been a whirlwind week for Makar: He won the Hobey Baker Award on Friday as college hockey's top player before losing to Minnesota Duluth on Saturday in the title game. He signed a three-year deal with Colorado on Sunday and arrived in town later that night.
Now, he's donning an Avs sweater against the team he grew up rooting for. He practiced with Colorado for the first time Monday morning.
While in college, he caught his fair share of Avalanche games.
"When I wasn't doing homework and other stuff," Makar said. "I like the way they play. They're very fast."
NOTES: Tkachuk slid into the boards in the second period and lost a blade on his skate. ... Avalanche D Samuel Girard was out with an upper-body injury. ... Avalanche D Ian Cole had two assists. ... The 56 shots were the most by Colorado in a playoff game since June 10, 1996, at Florida. That total was also 56, in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Calgary will try to tie the series in Game 4 on Wednesday night in Denver.
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Waterloo 3D Sundial Arches
Published: Monday, 17 June 2019 00:07 | Print | Hits: 208
Students at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge, Ontario are experimenting with the benefits of 3D design and printing. In particular Joanne Yau created a set of hexagonal hollow bricks called sundial arches that lets in sunlight from different portions of the arch as the sun travels across the sky. We expect that the length to width ratio of the bricks can tailor sunlight for specific times of the year (summer, spring/fall, or winter).
Joanne Yau was one of three teams challenged to learn how to operate a new industrial 3D printer capable of squirting out clay. Professor Correa, interviewed by 3Dprint.com said “There is no other way to make these kinds of façades without enormous cost and time,” said Correa, who has been involved in 3D printed research on an even more advanced level, studying how such objects respond when exposed to varying degrees of moisture and temperature. “They are completely unique.” “The printer allows us to make much more complex geometry,” said Joanne Yau, part of the team that 3D printed bricks for the ambitious arch/sundial. “To make this by hand or to extrude it would be virtually impossible.”
See a video of how the 3D clay bricks are created in an article by Bridget O'Neal June 5, 2019: https://3dprint.com/245698/whistling-walls-sundial-arches-ontario-architecture-students-3d-print-clay/
Mobius "Infinity Possibility" Dedicated at Brown University
Published: Thursday, 09 May 2019 00:35 | Print | Hits: 825
"Infinity Possibility" was dedicated this week [May 5th, 2019] at Brown University in Providence R.I. thanks to a grand design challenge to the university's School of Engineering by 1979 alum Charlie Giancarlo. Giancarlo wanted something "that would represent the rigor of engineering work, but have artistic beauty as well". According to Brown news, "A student group called Brown STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics) took up the challengte, and the result of more than two years work is a stainless steel noon mark sundial measuring 15 feet long and 4 feet high. STEAM’s then-president tapped Austin and David Schurman, both first year students at the time, as project managers. The pair assembled a team of around 20 students to start brainstorming ideas and getting input from the broader Brown community.
David Shurman and his team worked with a sundial expert, Bill Gottesman, a member of the North American Sundial Socity, Shurman said, "We wanted to explore the interplay of the mobius strip's shape with that of Brown's unique analemma path to make a sculpture personalized to the location it will inhabit for, hopefully, up to a century." In the end section of the "lazy eight" mobius strip is a hole allowing the noonday sun to fall on the northward piece of the strip below. The lower mobius band has an etched analemma showing civil noon in front of Brown's Engineering Research Center.
Read more: https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-05-08/sundial and https://www.davidschurman.com/copy-of-project-page-template
Louis B. Toomer and Sundial Remembered
Published: Saturday, 13 April 2019 17:03 | Print | Hits: 641
In June 2018 the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a historical marker in Chatham Square to Louis B. Toomer, which read in part "Louis Burke Toomer, African-American leader, local bank founder, and realtor, was born in Savannah in 1897. Raised and educated locally, Toomer established the Georgia Savings and Realty Corporation on February 23, 1927, in the historic black business district on West Broad Street. During segregation, the company provided banking, investment, and insurance services for blacks who were not always allowed access to white banking establishments...." [1]
But before the historical marker was the Louis B. Toomer sundial in Chatham Square. As Georgia Wright Benton (past president of the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists) recalled:
"The sundial was dedicted in the spring of 1963 by the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists ... an organization comprised of black students throughout Chatham County along with their art teachers. West Broad Street School for black students was closed in 1962 and the pupils were transferred to Barnard Street School. Members of the National Conference of Artists visited the new school and one of our members observed that the park in front of the school, Chatham Square, needed improvement. Beautification of Chatham Square became a project for the organization, and the group decided to place a sundial in the square. We wanted something permanent that represented the black community in front of the Barnard Street school."
"The organization held several fundraisers to pay for the sundial. The primary fundraiser was a concert held in the Beach High School auditorium during the fall of 1962. Our concert artist was Kiah’s sister, a soprano singer. The fundraiser was a success and the sundial was purchased with help from Carver State Bank and Toomer’s wife, Janie. ... This sundial was the first dedication to an African-American in a Savannah square contributed by black students of a black organization." [2]
Over the years vandals have attacked and damaged the sundial. Each time, members of the Savannah-Chatham Historic Site and Monument Commission restored the sundial, " [making] a public plea for help and a reminder to the monument marauder that destruction of public property is a felony..." [3] You can see more of this dial in the NASS Sundial Registry (Georgia/Savannah #942).
[1] https://georgiahistory.com/events/historical-marker-dedication-louis-b-toomer-founder-of-carver-state-bank/
[2] https://www.savannahnow.com/opinion/20181129/letters-to-editor-friday-recalling-history-of-chatham-square-sundial
[3] https://www.savannahnow.com/news/2012-01-18/vandals-target-chatham-square-marker
Mystery of 1733 Sundial
It started simply enough. Keith, a "treasure hunter" reported finding a 1733 sundial "in the Carolinas". (http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/my-best-finds/603181-1733-colonial-sundial-found-restored.html). The brass sundial about 5 or 6 inches in size was found crumpled and apparently had a number of modern attempts to solder a gnomon back onto the dial plate. Kieth reported, "When I found the piece it had been bent and damaged so I sent it to an expert in restoring metal objects....It has been the best find of my relic hunting career. I hope to get some detailed info from people who know about sundials."
The dial is done in the English style of the period, that is to say, the dial is cut as an octogon with a circular chapter ring with Roman numerals and delineated on the outside to the quarter hour. In the center is an 8-point compass rose with the cardinal points labelled "N,S,E,W". Four crude and somewhat modern screw holes held the dial to some modern base. The maker's initials D.D.M. are berlow the engraving of the original owner "William * Lane" with the date 1733.
As Kieth notes, "[The dial] is one of the earliest from southern colonial America". But the problem is where? The engraved latitude is "Latt: 34:30". Using Serle's ruler confirms that the delineated hour lines are between 34 and 35 degrees. That should allow a quick check of southern cities to identify the home of this dial. The center of population in the 1750's was Willmington, NC at 34:14. If we assume that William Lane was a farmer a person of means, then two possibilities arise: Blenheim SC and Laurens SC both at 34:30. Laurens County, in particular, was in the area where thousands of immigrants, mainly Scottish and Irish, settled in the pre-revolution Carolinas. Then there is Kershaw SC at 34:32 which was settled around 1732 by English traders and farmers who moved inland from Charleston. What was the provinance of this dial? We may never know, but you can search the below 1755 map from University of North Carolina library of historic maps for towns and river portsat: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/123
World's Oldest Mariner's Astrolabe
Published: Friday, 22 March 2019 22:25 | Print | Hits: 809
A team led by David Mearns reported on the oldest Mariner's Astrolabe in a recent article of the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. During a 2013-2014 series of diving expeditions off the coast of Oman they discovered a Portugues solid leaded-gunmetal disk astrolabe. As the authors put it, "A well-documented and dramatic story from one of the earliest Portuguese foyages to India ... involves the loss off two naus [sailing vessels], the Esmeralda and Sao Pedro, which sank in shallow waters off the coase of a remote Omani Island in the Arabian Sea." What has made this legend is that these ships were part of a Portuguese armada to India led by the legendary explorer Vasco da Gama. Mearns tells the story that following the return of da Gamma and the main fleet to Portugal in February 1503, Vicente and Bras Sodre, uncles of da Gama, led their two ships back to patrol the waters off the south-west Indian coast. But Vicente sailed his squadron to the Gulf of Aden where they looted and burnt a handful of Arab ships. "Vicente then took his ships to Al Hallaniyah ...where they found a safe anchorage to shelter from the south-west monsoon...It was in this location, in May 1503, where a sudden and furious wind tore the two naus from their moorings and drove them against the rocky shoreline smashing their wooden hulls and causing the deaths of many crew, including the squadron commander Vcente Sodre"
Recovered from the ocean after 500 years was the 17.5 cm 344 gram metal Sodre astrolabe as well as more than 2000 other metal and ceramic artifacts. The were slowly desalinated over a period of two years. The astrolabe was clearly decorated with the Portuguese royal coat of arms at top and an esfera armilar (armillary sphere) at bottom. But there was no alidade or any visible gradations. Using laser imagery a total of 18 scale marks became visible along the limb of the upper right quadrant with a spacing of 5 degrees. These marks probably extended to make a full 90 degree quadrant. The solid metal Sodre astrolabe is a rarity, for shortly after 1500 a new generation of open ring astrolabes emerged. An illustration of a mariner's astrolabe from the Boria Chart (1529) shows a ring planisphere with angles marked for 180 degrees. The new open design remaind stable in the wind and became the dominant navigation instrument for the next 170 years. Read the full article at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1095-9270.12353 or a short condensed version at World’s Oldest Mariner’s Astrolabe Found | Archaeology | Sci-News.com
Armenian Sundials - Necessity Becomes History
Last February in the Panorama Armenian News an article reviewed some of the oldest sundials in Armenia. Piliposyan, Doctor of History at the Preservations Service for Historic-Cultural Reserve-Museums and Historic Environment (SNCOT) related that the oldest sundial may be on the Zvartnots temple dating to the 7th century. Sundials have been preserved on buildings of Dsegh, Tsakhkadzor, Dilijan, Noyemberyan as well as Nagorno Karabakh churches. Sundial also were curved on khachkars [Armenian cross-stones]. In the Panorama article Piliposyan said that apart from serving as clocks, sundials served as a means of communicating with god. He brought the example of the Zvartnots temple sundial found during excavations with enclosed documents calling on prayers to talk to god whatever time it was.
The vertical dials had horizontal gnomons and on the dial face there are typically 12 equally spaced divisions to mark the hours. Frank King commented on the dials that "These are variants of the standard European sundials used for indicating 'unequal [temporal] hours', at least approximately, in medieval times. Several thousand survive in England alone. They divide the daylight period from sunrise to sunset into 12 parts. Unfortunately, these parts are not equal in time and their relationship varies with the time of year....The examples in the photographs seem very nicely made."
To appreciate the Medieval Armenian dials as well as modern interpretations, visit https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2019/02/23/Armenian-sundials/2076856
NASS Conference in Denver June 20-23, 2019
Published: Wednesday, 20 February 2019 16:10 | Print | Hits: 1478
Register now for the North American Sundial Society 2019 conference to be held in the mile high city of Denver, Colorado. As always there will be an exciting list of presentations and tour of sundials. This year the conference is in June, starting Thursday afternoon at 4:30pm on June 20th continuing through 1pm on Sunday 23rd. THIS IS THE BUSIEST VACATIO WEEKEND OF THE YEAR IN DENVER. So make your registration now at the Hilton Garden Inn - Denver Downtown, 1400 Welton Street Denver CO 80202 (Phone 303-603-8000). NASS has a discound rate of $179/night (plus 15.75% tax). This rate will apply 5 days before and after the conference if rooms are available. Contact the hotel using the "NASS19" discount code. You can also go to the hotel's website set up for the NASS Registration at:
http://hiltongardenin.hilton.com/en/gi/groups/personalized/D/DENDDGI-NASS19-20190620/index.jhtml
The hotel is 25 miles from the Denver International Airport. Transportation to the hotel is possible using the RTD Train from the airport to Union Station and then the Free Mall Ride Bus on 16th Street. There is always taxi service and Uber.
Full NASS registration until April 14th is $310-$322 depending upon dinner selection. After April 14th the cost increases to $335-$347. Download the attached registration form for full details. If you have a presentation or a table display, please contact Fred Sawyer.
NASS-DenverRegistration-2019.pdf [ ] 175 kB
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University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Darwin College Lecture Series > MUSICAL IDENTITY
MUSICAL IDENTITY
Christopher Hogwood
Friday 19 January 2007, 17:30-18:30
LMH, Lady Mitchell Hall.
If you have a question about this talk, please contact Janet Gibson.
What are Brahms? If music has an identity, does anyone other than the composer know it? Is any knowledge or training necessary for us to appreciate the “identity” of a musical work? Individuals and societies use music to define their own identities, but does music itself offer anything more than a construct of freely interpretable parameters? What is a Beethoven quartet? the score? the memory? a composite of performances?
Christopher Hogwood will consider the implications of education, interpretation (including the “authenticists”), concepts of “style” in both written and improvised musics, fakes, arrangements, familiarity and religion, and also comment on the work of musicology in identifying the ‘DNA’ of composers, its place in the defining of anonymous works, attempts to create computer-music and the “myth” of the compositional paradigm.
Christopher Hogwood is one of the greatest proponents of the early music movement, as well as a renowned conductor of twentieth century works. This season he becomes lifetime Emeritus Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, the orchestra he founded in 1973, and begins a series of Handel operas in concert with the rarely performed Amadigi. In addition he is Conductor Laureate of Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and continues his close association with the Kammerorchester Basel. In demand by many of the world’s leading orchestras, he is a regular guest with the Tonhalle Zurich, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Athens Camerata. This season he also appears with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Bremen Philharmonic and Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Hogwood began his career as a keyboardist and has been a major force in the revolution that has forever changed the way music is performed, recorded and heard. Based on the principle of discovering and, where possible, recreating the composer’s intentions, his approach begins with musicology – going back to the original sources, correcting published errors and tracking subsequent changes. His repertoire ranges from mediaeval to contemporary music, but with a particularly affinity for Haydn and Handel and in twentieth-century music, for the neo-baroque and neo-classical schools. His current editorial work varies from the great overtures and symphonies by Mendelssohn to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and complete keyboard works of Purcell. Hogwood has made more than 200 records with AAM for Decca, including the first ever complete Mozart symphonies on period instruments. Other current projects range from the series of neo-classical works on Sony/BMG’s Arte Nova label with Kammerorchester Basel, to the Secret series for clavichord and Martinu’s complete works for violin and orchestra. Future plans include Prokofiev, Martinu, Copland, Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven on the clavichord.Hogwood’s many publications include a survey of patronage through the ages (Music at Court) and biographical studies of Haydn, Mozart and Handel. His latest book, `Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks’, is published by Cambridge University Press. He is Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Visit http://www.hogwood.org for further information.
This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.
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Articles from September 2006
Gift Shop, Ticket Office Open!
We're still at the ballpark! Stop by the Meat Locker, the T-Bones gift shop, any weekday from 10 am-4 pm and check out the latest T-Bones merchandise! As well, feel free to call (913)328-5640 if you'd like information about 2007 season tickets, or to just visit the ballpark. Thanks for visiting tbonesbaseball.com! Read More...
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T-Bones Fall Again, End Season on Five-Game Skid
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T-Bones' Road Woes Continue with Double-Header Sweep
GARY, Ind. � The Gary SouthShore RailCats (48-46, 24-22) dealt the Kansas City T-Bones� (45-49, 23-23) postseason hopes a severe blow by sweeping both ends of a double header Friday evening at U.S. Steel Yard. Gary cruised to a 6-0 win in the opener behind starter Ryan Miller, then rallied for five sixth-inning runs in the night cap to take a 5-2 victory, leaving Kansas City two games behind division-leading Joliet with just two games remaining.
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Whiteness Studies: An Insidious Ideology
In the wake of what has been called the largest college admissions scandal the Department of Justice has ever prosecuted, much has been made about the role of “privilege” in the college admissions racket. The defendants’ actions were unpardonable, of course, but the greater scandal is that the progeny of the privileged continue to take up more than their share of space in our nation’s most prestigious universities. The fraud and the graft, the faking of racial identities and of learning disabilities, the doctored CVs and ghostwritten admissions essays, the bribed proctors and dummy nonprofits and bogus athletic recruitments—these are but the logical endpoint of a system that has come to be marked by a Gini coefficient impossibly skewed, in which brand-name degrees are divided among the children of oligarchs like peerages.
"The defendants’ actions were unpardonable, of course, but the greater scandal is that the progeny of the privileged continue to take up more than their share of space in our nation’s most prestigious universities."
The U.S. Constitution specifies that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.” But what is a degree from one of our nation’s elite colleges—nearly all of which are funded in part by the generosity of the taxpaying public—if not a signifier of membership in a kind of de facto nobility? In the great national myth of equality, our country is alleged to be aristocracy-free, but there nevertheless exists a class of people who would appear to be suspiciously feudal in character: a class with its own set of norms and customs, and a tendency to go on reproducing itself through the generations, gobbling up desirable real estate and flexing its lobbying muscle at the highest reaches of government. After all, is it not clear that the top ten percent of income earners, with their mortgage deductions and low rate of taxation on capital gains, with their pseudo-environmental NIMBYism and excessively stringent professional licensing requirements, make up the most influential of the groups that seek to advance their interests? And what are zoning-restricted enclaves like Palo Alto, where the cost of real estate is prohibitive to all but the most handsomely remunerated, if not seigneurial realms in which a multitude of bumper stickers advertise elite alma maters like so many armorial bearings?
Indeed, the trappings of privilege would seem to be omnipresent among this cohort. But to speak of privilege as causative is to elide the complexity of its genesis as a phenomenon. For the last several years, I witnessed the operations of “privilege” firsthand. As an admissions essay consultant for the company that facilitated the scheme, a college counseling service called The Key, I spent my days driving from home to home in the tonier precincts of the San Francisco Peninsula, where I helped the children of Silicon Valley plutocrats get into the colleges of their choice. If my travels through this gilded realm taught me anything, it is that the case has little to do with privilege, a concept that should not be confounded with inequality.
For more and more we are coming to understand that personality and intelligence are heritable phenomena. In the great human drama of who succeeds in life, and who fails, and why, there may well be a place for heroic self-invention, for an individual through unilateral effort to rise above the others; but it appears, overall, that character and thus destiny are to some extent pre-ordained. And the progressive critique of privilege is necessarily invalidated in any case. For if privilege is traceable to autonomously undertaken hard work, then how can it not be in some sense earned, and therefore deserved? If, on the other hand, privilege is a kind of accidental inheritance—that is to say, the product of a fundamentally contingent interplay of genes and environmental influences—then a critique of the concept reveals it to be but an index of barely concealed ressentiment, one that regresses into infinity. Thus, a member of the “oppressed” in the United States is “privileged” relative to her counterpart in a Brazilian favela, who, in turn, is “privileged” relative to a subsistence farmer in the developing world. And so on. But notice: The bien pensants who have appointed themselves the oppressed American’s tribunes will assign to her no sense of guilt or obligation; the proper attitude for such a person, rather, is one of unappeasable entitlement with respect to those who enjoy advantages she does not. Never will she be asked to “check her privilege.” To conflate privilege with moral culpability is thus in a very real sense to indict the entire human race.
Could it be said of, say, an oncologist—like the head of one of the families I worked with—that his family was in any way privileged? The problem with charges of privilege is that they presume guilt while ignoring the crucial circumstances by which human differences emerge; they also ignore the value of those differences. Certainly, it is not easy to graduate from medical school, and to devote one’s life to the treatment of cancer patients is to achieve a significant social good. Any critique of privilege, then, must address itself to the ends of life, and to the purpose of work and enterprise. Would people work half so hard if they could not expect to provide a better life for their children? Does it not redound to the betterment of society to raise children who are what an admissions committee would call well-rounded, with all of the advanced placement courses and extracurricular activities which that entails? And how might privilege be eliminated, or moderated, in order to promote more-egalitarian outcomes?
Perhaps the most definitive study of equality of opportunity in education, the 1966 Coleman Report demonstrated that the home environment is the primary determinant of educational outcomes. And yet, the domestic sphere is also the realm of life that is least amenable to the manipulations of enlightened administrators. Even under the best of sociopolitical dispensations—namely, one which combines economic nationalism with a robustly enforced system of bourgeois values—considerable variation would continue to exist between individual households and groups alike. Plus, redistribution schemes and other forms of social engineering have shown themselves to be futile, because they incentivize the making of poor parental decisions—and punish the making of good ones. The College Board’s recently unveiled plan to assign to students a so-called “adversity score” is a case in point. Why bother to work hard, and move to a better neighborhood, when you will be penalized for it?
A political weapon wielded by the resentful, the war on privilege is profoundly wrongheaded, producing problems rather than solutions. It is a sign as well as a symptom of the contradictions that exist at the heart of liberalism itself, riven as it is by the yearning for freedom on the one hand and the desire for equality on the other. The success of some arouses the impulse to level not the playing field but the scoresheet. Therefore, those who have managed to scurry ahead in the rat race have to be forced back from the finish line. This is the effect of two fundamentally incompatible, yet under the liberal paradigm equally necessary, moral imperatives—one which seeks to promote equality, and another which seeks at the same time to deny it to others. If, through equality of opportunity, some people are able to rise in the world, then the opportunities their children enjoy will not be equal to those of the children of people who have failed to ascend to similar heights. In a world in which everyone had “the best,” then “the best,” being relative by definition, would cease to exist as a concept, and with it, the spirit of rivalry and emulation that inspires one to achieve great things.
In my dealings with the families of the elite, these contradictions led not just to cognitive dissonance, but to outright schizophrenia. At times, the warring ideological dictates they sought to obey could produce a kind of negative symbiosis that manifested as parasitism. In a perverse irony, we borrowed from the vocabulary of progressive egalitarianism in order to achieve the most inegalitarian of ends. In the perpetration of affirmative action fraud, in the fabrication of hard-luck biographies, and in the dreaming-up of all manner of humanitarian adventures, the only question was whether our deceptions would have the intended effect: namely, that of gaining the student admission to the school of her choice. It was entirely without guilt, or even the slightest inkling of sheepishness, that a student of mine, as straight and as white as could be, would concoct an essay about the micro-aggressions she had endured as a biracial lesbian; and how, although she is by now exhausted, her “lived experience” has rendered her ever more keen to advance the project of diversity and inclusion, of the dismantling of white privilege, of the smashing of the patriarchy, and of the securing of justice for people of color and LBGTQ persons everywhere.
In another telling episode, I wrote an essay with a student in which we discussed her experience as an intern with a community organization whose purpose was to provide assistance to victims of trauma, violence, and family instability in disadvantaged communities. What such people are most in need of, I said at one point, is probably birth control, a remark which elicited from her a look of momentary confusion, as if to say, “But then there would be no one for me to help!” And she couldn’t have that, now, could she?
Indeed, this parasitic relationship was embedded in the financial-accounting structure of the scheme itself: A number of parents charged in the case are alleged to have funneled bribes through the Key Worldwide Foundation, a nonprofit connected to The Key. Upon submission of payments to this entity, the parents were thanked, in writing, for helping the foundation “to provide educational and self-enrichment programs to disadvantaged youth.”
To members of the Palo Alto elite, the “marginalized” were but another source of profit and pelf—the “raw material,” as it were, for demonstrations of compassion. Thus the essays we wrote—subliterary exercises in the acquisition of what can only be called the secular woke equivalent of the Roman Indulgence—were chock-a-block with diversity fetish objects, with girls in rural Nepal the students were teaching to code, with twinkly old indigents they’d met in the course of participating in Habitat-for-Humanity-style projects in poor neighborhoods, with Third World agrarian proles given to making inscrutable, Yoda-like pronouncements: “All things are part of a great whole,” they’d say, or something comparably banal-yet-gnomic-sounding. These oracular utterances were proffered as evidence of continents roamed and wisdom acquired, and of a quasi-mystical openness to the more-esoteric forms of knowing that are said to be present among the oppressed. A common sentimental refrain in the essays we wrote was how relaxed and happy and stress-free such people were, in their villages, in their slums; and how we in the meritocratic enclaves of the West, overworked and anhedonic, would do well to emulate their more-laid-back approach to life. Notwithstanding this contrast, nobody ever raised the question, why bother to help these blissful Rousseauists if they’re so much happier than we are?
In one admissions essay, a student[1] and I wrote about how she’d helped a number of Latin American immigrants to settle in the United States. Though the essay was more or less apocryphal, it nevertheless got her into, or at any rate did not keep her out of, one of our nation’s most elite colleges. Why bother to fact check students’ admissions essays, when the purpose of such exercises is to demonstrate one’s ideological bona fides and general saintliness? The schools will claim that it is too expensive and time consuming to properly vet the applications of those to whom they are prepared to make an offer of admission. But if even the most impecunious of small-town newspapers can verify basic factual assertions, why can’t a university with an endowment in excess of $10 billion fact check? The daughter of a Latin American immigrant herself, albeit a high-achieving one, the student was also diverse; her test scores (fraudulently obtained, if the Department of Justice is to be believed) were moderately high as well, if they were not sufficient in themselves, for I’d seen any number of other students apply to the same school, with even better scores and better grades, only to be rejected.
On another occasion, in a palatial mansion whose style and opulence would not have been out of place in Havana circa the 1940s, a student and I crafted an essay about his Native American heritage, which in fractional terms approximated that of Senator Elizabeth Warren. In mien and bearing, he resembled nothing so much as a cross between Patrick Bateman of American Psycho and Hoyt Thorpe, the rakish frat boy of Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. He was the offspring of a Jewish billionaire and a mother so WASPy you’d think her principal activities were summering on the Cape, attending meetings of Daughters of the American Revolution, modeling lemon-yellow cardigans, and with an attitude of longsuffering forbearance scolding the Help for eating her kale chips. Nevertheless, he managed to turn the intersectional totem pole on its head. He was an intelligent student, and together we did what I thought was an admirable job. But he was hardly a shoo-in for the school—arguably the most prestigious college in the country—on which he’d trained his sights. It is not enough for one’s record to be unexceptionable. Yes, he had the grades, the test scores, the leadership positions, the cognitively demanding internships, and the varsity jacket. But it is also necessary to have the hidden x factor, the je n’ais se quoi, the ineffable out-of-left-field something and surplus value of specialness that marks one as fit for a life of traipsing through ivied quadrangles. And it was not clear, to me, that he did.
Yet he got in, largely, I presume, on the basis of his purported identity. We got a lot of rhetorical mileage, you see, out of a little service work he had done on a reservation somewhere, with promises—mostly, I suspect, empty—to do more once he had earned his degree. I have no idea whether any other forms of chicanery were afoot, but I will give the family the benefit of the doubt, although I do know that my soon-to-be-imprisoned former boss was able to secure for the essay a so-called “pre-read” from an admissions officer before the admissions cycle had begun in earnest.
This episode represents not so much a conflict of interest as it does a harmony of interests. The student pretended to be Native American and the school pretended to believe him, because diversity numbers. Although their public relations offices will portray them as victims of the admissions scandal, the schools were accomplices—if not, indeed, the scheme’s very instigators. In an age when many large industries have succumbed to financialization, more than a few of our nation’s most elite colleges have effectively become hedge funds. And to them, diversity is nothing more than corporate strategy, just another way in which capital goes about its business of plundering the oppressed. The cynicism beggars belief, especially now that Harvard has rescinded the admission of conservative activist Kyle Kashuv for the crime of having once written the N-word in a private document.
The fish, in other words, rots from the head. What, I am often asked, is the secret to getting into the school of your choice? While there is, for most people, an element of mystique about the process, since they don’t know which gods to propitiate and in what manner, it’s still possible to devise a formula that is almost algebraically precise in its efficacy: Be diverse and humanitarian as well as au fait with progressive politics; acquire grades and scores within the range of admitted students; and, whenever possible, be wealthy, for it turns out that colleges, however flush with cash they happen to be, like to get paid. Having helped hundreds of high-school seniors get into college, I have never seen a student with this combination of factors fail to get into a school that will grant her parents cocktail-party bragging rights in perpetuity.
In no segment of the admissions racket are the contradictions more pronounced—in no segment is the schizophrenia more fulminantly paranoid—than in the realm of standardized testing. The college entrance exams—the SAT and the ACT—are effectively IQ tests; once you have mastered certain basic concepts, it is not possible to improve your score by very much. There is also a high and consistent correlation between performance on the tests and success at the undergraduate level. These findings, though endlessly replicated by theorists of pedagogy, remain anathema to the egalitarian worldview of the progressive left. See, for example, the movement that is afoot to abolish the college entrance exams, as well as the vehemence with which leftists denounce any mention of tracking in high schools or “academic mismatch theory” as it pertains to college admissions.
See, too, the conflict surrounding New York City’s elite specialized high schools, where admission is determined by a single standardized test. The failure to achieve a sufficiently diverse (read: black and Hispanic) student body has led to calls for a lowering of the standards to which underperforming racial groups are held—by, for example, allocating a number of slots to the highest-performing students at each of the city’s middle schools. Students take the standardized test in 8th grade, and the top performers are able to go to the elite high schools. Under Mayor de Blasio’s plan, those schools would admit the top students at each middle school, thereby ensuring greater diversity (for being at the top of your class is not the same as gaining a high score on the test). Needless to say, white students, who are underrepresented at the schools, would not see their numbers increase under any such overhaul. Nor are Asians pleased with the idea. Although the Asian students are overwhelmingly drawn from working-class immigrant backgrounds, they would see their numbers decline precipitously, from more than two thirds to less than one third of the elite schools’ students.
In the milieu in which I traveled, progressive egalitarianism was something akin to a civic religion, a set of pieties to which everyone you might encounter subscribed. But when liberal orthodoxy belies a desire to see one’s progeny firmly emplaced at the top of the ant heap, the resulting dissonance can land a bourgeois householder in jail. If, according to Progressive Dogma, people do not vary in terms of intellectual ability; if anyone can succeed so long as she tries hard enough and does not experience oppression; and if the college entrance exams have no relation to academic performance, then why shouldn’t I drop upward of five digits on a quack who can vouch for my concern that my child—who doesn’t “test well”—has a learning disability, thereby entitling her to more time on the SAT? Better still, why don’t I just pay the proctor? Because the SAT and the ACT are effectively arbitrary measures, the students who do manage to score highly on the tests will fare no better or worse wherever they go. This may well be an injustice, but so is the very existence of the exams. So is it not my duty, as a liberal in good standing, to oppose injustice, particularly when my child is its principal victim?
Conceptually, this line of reasoning is an obverse reflection of the egalitarian-left assertion that transwomen should be able to compete against biological females in women’s athletics. Like the record-smashing transwoman athlete, the learning-disabled underperformer is nothing more than a neutral variety of different. Yet the implementation of egalitarian policies in these highly competitive realms would have the effect of conferring a distinct set of advantages upon the members of both groups. Of course, this leveling impulse is going to ruin women’s athletics, just as it has already compromised the integrity of standardized testing. With the moral confusion it has sowed and the resentment it has inspired in so many other areas of life, this leveling impulse does not bode well for the future of our civilization. After all, one’s alleged learning disabilities[2] will be granted few to no accommodations in the “real world” for which it is the purpose of college to prepare one. Would a lawyer with well-documented “learning differences” be granted more than the allotted 30 minutes in which to argue her case before the Supreme Court? Would an anxiety-prone doctor be given a chill-out period before performing an emergency surgery?
On my travels through the wilds of Atherton, California—home to the most expensive real estate market in the country—it struck me that the town was bringing to life the ideas presented in The Bell Curve. The families I worked with did indeed belong to the “cognitive elite” whose existence Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein identified—and warned us about—in their much-debated 1994 book. The families had come by their fortunes through a combination of brains and luck. Certainly, “white privilege” had nothing to do with it, for most whites occupy no such rarefied stratum, and many if not most of the students I worked with could, and did, claim to be non-white due to some phantom admixture of Latin or Asian or Middle Eastern blood. Or they were, in fact, visible and demonstrable Asian Americans of the first or second generation. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether many of my more-white-presenting students’ ancestors had arrived before the Civil War. So there goes class privilege, too. There is, I’ve heard it said, no old money in Palo Alto.
If, as Balzac said, behind every great fortune there is a crime, then in tracing the students’ genealogies one is likely to arrive at no more sensational a caper than that of a father or grandfather performing well on a standardized test, shortly after the advent of meritocratic college admissions in the wake of the Second World War. What this quietly revolutionary change in the way in which we sorted our high school graduates did was concentrate intellectual talent in a number of cities, most of it on the coasts, near elite universities. In time, through assortative mating, a class with its own set of values and interests began to emerge. Add to this change the compounding effects of geographical isolation, and the special premium that is placed upon brain power in an increasingly leveraged economy, in which sophisticated transactions can involve hundreds of millions of dollars, and you have the makings of an overclass in which status is all-important. Status is a proxy of wealth, and wealth is a proxy of brains. How better, then, to demonstrate brains than through the acquisition of that most precious of commodities, a degree from a brand-name school?
Members of the egalitarian left will protest that performance on standardized tests is a function of socioeconomic status. But it is even more so a function of intelligence, which, as anyone who studies intelligence will confirm, is in large part heritable. In this respect, the Coleman Report tells only half of the story. Intelligent people are more likely to have intelligent children, it is true. They are also more likely to have attained a higher socioeconomic status. There’s a catch, though. If the children of intelligent people are likely to be more intelligent than the children of unintelligent people, then they are also, in accordance with a phenomenon called “regression to the mean,” likely to be less intelligent than their parents. Still, in a meritocracy, you have to perform, and having children who fall behind you is a calamity. Hence all the anxiety, all the insanity. In fact, one does not tend to be smarter than one’s old man. It is, therefore, the inability to ensure, by means of intelligence, the high status of one’s children that drives the college admissions mania.
The Dumb Rich Kid, in other words, is a species that occurs naturally in the modern wild. And so millions of dollars have been spent in the effort of keeping her out of the lower-tiered colleges—witness the case of the disgraced fashion designer Mossimo Giannuli, who did everything in his power to get his daughter “into a school other than [Arizona State University].” His failure, as I see it, is proof that the system works. Barring occasional instances of fraud and bribery[3], the college admissions racket does a pretty good job of matching students with the schools at which they will be most likely to succeed. Contra leftist complaints, genuine academic talent seldom goes unrecognized.
For the most part, the families I worked with were concerned with signaling; what they sought was institutional cachet. Thus the better part of my job consisted of thinking up reasons why a particular student might plausibly want to attend a particular school. For, almost invariably, they didn’t know. Why Dartmouth?, the college’s famously abbreviated 100-word supplement asks. To which the only honest reply is, “Because nice things are nicer than nasty ones,” as Kingsley Amis put it in Lucky Jim. The practice of bribing coaches has come to be known as the “side door.” But for my students there were many side doors; one of them was to apply to an unpopular major, thus increasing the student’s odds of gaining admission to the school, after which she would switch, usually to business or computer science.
In the interstices of the rhetorical convolutions we performed in the supplements, in which we endeavored to mention every potentially relevant data point save that of prestige, I would attempt to afford my students a glimpse into the world of knowledge that existed beyond the U.S. News and World Report rankings. And to be sure, genuine intellectual curiosity did exist in my charges, though it was the exception, not the rule. A few of them cared passionately about the environment, and some young white men were what can only be called red-pilled, and so desirous of pursuing an education in politics. But most of my students wanted nothing more than to learn how to type code into a computer.
No wonder we are stuck with a middling and short-sighted overclass. Not to mention a polity that largely refuses to reckon with the conflicting ideological impulses which characterize the liberal project. We are committed to egalitarianism, even as we allow the massive importation of foreign students, a blinkered decision that places an American college education—a good subject to the principle of scarcity—beyond the reach of many American citizens. Then there is the proliferation of diversity bureaucrats. The University of Michigan spends an annual $10 million on this particular iteration of Totally Worthless Person, enough to give around 70 students per year a full ride to the school. The members of this administrative class contribute greatly to skyrocketing levels of student debt, to the ongoing blight of affirmative action[4], and to the exploitation, in the ways adumbrated above, of the very groups that it is the responsibility of such officials to serve. Finally, because bureaucracies are fundamentally expansionist, the hurt-feelings culture the diversity commissars sanction and codify will come to permeate the few remaining vestiges of the academy where it is not present. And as goes the campus, so goes the nation.
The mid-Peninsula idyll through which I traveled was itself a study in contradiction. Oaks and bay laurels, willows, and sycamores lined the avenues in a kind of reckless profusion; bosomy expanses of tule grass receded into the distance, recalling a bucolic Northern California past. It struck me as a strange place in which to situate a tech hub, for is there an industry more devoid of beauty, of soft edges and natural light? As that great moral philosopher the Unabomber said, “Imagine a world in which you have to take a pill to get through the day?” For more than half (I am told) of the teenagers in Palo Alto, that world—that dystopia—has arrived. The drugs—the long-term effects of which are unknown—are prescribed for socially constructed pseudo-maladies like ADD. Anxiety and depression are common too, especially among the girls. Every few years, there is an outbreak of teen suicides—what epidemiologists refer to as a “suicide cluster.” Suicide clusters are exceedingly rare events, and when they do occur something has gone terribly wrong in the culture at large. That something, in Palo Alto, is academic pressure. It is also the hell of Instagram. Guards keep round-the-clock vigil at the city’s train tracks.
Pulling into the drive ways of these manorial trophy homes, with their Teslas, their BMWs agleam in the soft Mediterranean light, I would often be struck by the brittleness of it all. How will it end, this Pinkerian techno-utopia of material plenty and physical comfort, and of strange, almost otherworldly beauty? Climatological disaster? Revolution? Then, inside, in one or another well-appointed room, as I prepared to churn out yet another 500 words of equalitarian boilerplate, in which minorities are helped and the poor uplifted, and potable water is delivered unto villages in the developing world, my charges would remind me, touchingly, of those portraits of the Romanov family in the final days of their exile, somehow aware of what was about to come. Yale or jail, indeed.
[1] Her parents have been charged in the case.
[2] Which often seem, tautologously, to be evidence of nothing more than an inability to perform as well as one’s higher-achieving peers.
[3] I should say, here, that the overwhelming majority of the families I worked with operated fully within the ambit of the law.
[4] Which has during the past 50 years noticeably failed to advance the project of racial equality, and now increasingly disadvantages whites just as their share of the population becomes proportionally smaller.
Andrew Testerman is a writer, editor, and admissions consultant in Northern California.
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Home News Briefs Briefs High Kicks, Laughs and Action: Local Filmmaker Set to Release Miniseries
High Kicks, Laughs and Action: Local Filmmaker Set to Release Miniseries
Posted By: Editoron: May 21, 2015 5:37 am In: Briefs, Featured, News Briefs, What's Going OnNo Comments
by Luke deNatale
Portland has a burgeoning film scene that is always bringing new filmmakers and genres to the fore. Amongst the many emerging filmmakers is Travis Bourassa.
Travis Bourassa
Local short film director, actor and writer, Travis Bourassa is set to release a short three part comedy mini-series called: Karate Brothers.
“So the series is based on Takashi and Jeremy Karate, who are two brothers with a mutual girlfriend, Marilyn,” said Travis.
“In the first episode they have to rescue her from an evil gangster. Their mentor is an old sea captain named Captain Nick.”
The series itself borrows from karate films of the past like Double Dragon, however it seems clear that Travis will be implementing his own comedic twist, something that is evident from a prior project. This isn’t Travis’ first foray into filmmaking.
A prior web series he created, titled Agents of H.A.W.K focused on the lives of two unlikely heroes becoming special agents to fight evil
“I did that [Agents of HAWK] a couple of years ago and I wasn’t really happy with it, but I was like,‘Well, the next thing will be better.’
“Based on what I’ve done with Karate Brothers, I’m way happier with it.”
Travis approaches these projects with a sense of DIY, particularly considering that the material from the movie was written by him. He also notes that he has had significant help from a local cinematographer, Ant Wheeler of Bonfire Films.
“I got really lucky with the actors. First day on set they just really got it… My cinematographer is a local guy named Ant Wheeler, he does a lot of big local stuff, he brought a great deal of professionalism to the whole project.”
Promotional shot from the Karate Brothers.
The film itself was financed by crowd-sourced funding.
“It was awesome, I made 500 bucks and it covered just about everything — the biggest thing was costumes and props.”
Travis also spoke of the support for his film and the sense of community from people in Portland, “It’s really cool to know that there are people out there that really liked and supported the idea behind the film.”
From speaking with Travis, it is clear that filmmaking is a passion of his.
“If it makes me laugh, I am pretty happy. I am just trying to work from the idea that if what I am doing feels fulfilling then that’s great. Whenever I have free time, I am finding that I am wanting to work on this.”
Travis is promoting the film mostly through social media. Trailers of the film can be viewed at the Karate Brothers Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thekaratebrothers
The film will premier at Genos, 625 Congress Street, on June 5th at 9 p.m. The film itself contains mild violence and some language. It should be considered comparable to a PG-13 movie.
–Luke deNatale, WEN Reporter
Referendum Initiated to Protect Scenic Views
Fatal Motorcycle Accident on Brighton
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Sacramentum Caritatis: England and Wales are fine!...
Helping Fr John Boyle spread the Gospel of Life
My new toy
The Westminster Stakes - an Interlude
Phoenix Nights Catholicsm
"For God and King": a warning
Where we nearly got married ...
16 reasons for unhappy trads to read Sacramentum C...
Pray for Spain
A reflexion for Lent
Things could be worse
Sailing to Byzantium
For Carthusian fans
The King over the water
What the Pope's Lenten preacher actually said
Sacramentum Caritatis: England and Wales are fine!
His Eminence Cardinal Murphy O'Connor has replied to an article published last week by Piers Paul Read. From today's Spectator:
"Sir: I am sorry that Piers Paul Read ('The Pope's anti-liberal revolution', 24 March) assumes that the English and Welsh bishops have not welcomed the Papal Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis. It is not always customary for bishops to issue immediate comments on Papal documents. I was, in fact, part of the drafting committee and thus closely involved in its preparation. My own statement expressed my admiration for the document and my wish for it to be promulgated widely among the Catholics of this country. I have no doubt my fellow bishops will be doing the same."
(Paragraph about ecumenism snipped)
No problems for England and Wales then: given that the Cardinal was "part of the drafting committee and thus closely involved in its preparation"; given that he "expressed (his) admiration for the document"; given his "wish for it to be promulgated widely among the Catholics of this country"; we can have no doubt that it will become a seminal text for the Church in England and Wales. No doubt the seminary classes in Latin have begun already, and the Latin classes for priests (whether starter classes or top-up classes) are already scheduled. No doubt this weekend Masses ad orientem will be essayed in all of our parishes. No doubt the Bishops (as "Celebrants par excellence", as Sacramentum Caritatis calls them) will be off the blocks to reintroduce Gregorian Chant as the principal music of our celebration.
How lucky we are!
Fr John Boyle writes about a prayer vigil outside an Abortarium and says:
"By the way, the main reason for posting this is so that when people search on e.g. "marie stopes maidstone" they might be led to this sort of post."
The best way to ensure that is to have as many people as possible link to his post.
Go to it, bloggers!
Posted by Ttony at 18:05 No comments: Links to this post
The American Minister in Ireland in 1942 is famously reported (perhaps apocryphally) as having interrupted a harangue by President De Valera on the rights of small nations: "Mr President, the only right we have is to die for our faith; anything else we have to fight for."
It would be nice to think that the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Wales was musing in a similar vein this morning. The SORS regulations have imposed the values of the Enlightenment definitively on our country: over the forty years since the 1967 Abortion Act, legislation has undermined any sense that there can be two conflicting rights, if one of those rights has to do with how an individual behaves sexually, because the individual's sexual rights take absolute priority over all other rights.
The secular agenda has won: there are a few mopping up actions to be completed, such as removing the right to charitable status of the contemplative orders, on the grounds that they don't do anything for society (for what good is prayer?) and no doubt an attack on the right of Faith schools to teach a single religious point of view.
We don't know what advice the Hierarchy has received about how to fight back. The Catholic Union says that "its purpose is to promote Christian standpoint in public affairs, through the intervention of its members who belong to the two Houses of Parliament, and through the formation of expert opinions which are presented to Government as Submissions"; well, it has failed. The Bishops' intervention on adoption was disastrous: however good the intention, however subtle the line the Church was trying to tread, they have been sidelined very effectively and portrayed (however unjustifiably) as hypocritical.
The Hierarchy seems to have rejected the "hard place" of encouraging vocal opposition to the Government's plans. Wednesday's demonstrations were organised by Evangelical christians, and were not publicised or encouraged by the Catholic Church, while the Cathedral played host to Jeffrey Archer. This contrasts with 1944: the Hierarchy organised demonstrations against the Education Bill which killed off the Bill's initial opposition to Faith Schools.
The alternative to the hard place is usually portrayed as the rock: we are fortunate in that we have a Rock to which we can cling: Rome; Peter. Now is the time to stop trying to accomodate our beliefs and practices to the secular country in which we live, and, once again, to become, proudly, Roman Catholics. If we have to retreat into a ghetto for a few years, fine: what has forty years of engagement brought us?
A recent post by Moretben led to a debate about Romantic Music (say, Beethoven to Richard Strauss, give or take). It was instructive that those of a traditional disposition in matters of the Liturgy see Romantic Music as a childish thing to be be put away - except at those moments when we feel a need to luxuriate in self-indulgent emotion. (I both paraphrase and cariacature.)
I used to like everything: I saw Black Sabbath and Deep Purple live in separate concerts within a couple of months of each other; I used to listen to Radio One; I used to go to folk clubs; I used to go to see the Halle Orchestra live; I used to sing Victorian parlour ballads to my Grandmother; I used to know lots of old music hall songs. I used to think that eclectism was a sign of maturity. "But when I became a man I put away the things of a child." (1 Cor 13)
Pop went first, and rock soon after. (Read the Pope's put down of both forms of music in "The Spirit of the Liturgy", by the way.) "Old songs" were enjoyable enough, but mainly entertained people born at the end of the nineteenth century: my grandparents' generation; and while it was nice to entertain them, I couldn't imagine singing "Believe me if all those endearing young charms" to somebody I loved while meaning it. They're lovely as a piece of nostalgia, but don't really say anything else to me now.
Folk music lasted longer until the realisation that even with really good folk music it only says what it has to say once, no matter with what force it says it. I can still feel an echo of that force when I listen to, say, the Chieftains, now; but it's an echo. (And I will run a mile to avoid the "come-all-ye" that I would have once run a mile to join in with.)
So, I was left with classical music - a universe in itself. I have some formal musical training and could spot the meretricious a mile off from an early age. But the developing taste gradually constricted, and even in the ocean of classical music, great swathes closed themselves off. Opera, once a passion, has retreated, leaving in its wake a litter of CDs which I will probably never listen to again: the voice is an instrument, not a protagonist. Modern classical music was fine to annoy parents with when I was seventeen, but my father's asking whether another cat had been thrown into the cellar sounds more like percipient criticsm to me today than the expression of philistinism that I liked to think it was then. The Baroque was wonderful until I realised that there were about ten tunes that mattered, each played in about four ways. And the seas continued to retreat, to the extent that there was no longer an ocean, but a few deep lakes.
I'm left with a few things, but the waters are no longer retreating. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ring truest; chant, of course, and not just Gregorian, but Ambrosian or Mozarabic; almost anything Orthodox; and some things I've rescued from the general retreat: late Beethoven; Bruckner; Sibelius; bits of Vaughan Williams; bits of lots and lots of things, really, but with little consistency, other their striking the same chord inside me that Tallis and Byrd strike all the time.
Music as a pleasant noise is fine: it surrounds me from when I wake to when I sleep; it's good to hear. But there is much less music to listen to and concentrate on nowadays, yet I find myself penetrating deeper and deeper into it.
Posted by Ttony at 20:26 1 comment: Links to this post
My new toy is an Internet radio. As long as you have Wifi access, all you need to do is plug it in, turn it on, enter the encryption key, and hey presto! more than 5,000 radio broadcasts from all over the world are available to you - or rather, in this case, to me!
I love listening to the radio, but I am hampered by only having AM, FM and DAB portables in the house. As I use a PC and not a laptop, I could until this afternoon, only access Internet radio stations from the back room, where the computer lives. Now I can listen to them from anywhere in the house.
There is a Swiss radio station which plays classical music: a man tells you in German what you are going to hear; you hear it, and then a woman tells you in French what you have just heard: there are no other interruptions. You can listen to Tango from Buenos Aires. The travel news on Classic FM South Africa tells me that the temperature this afternoon in Joburg was 28 degrees and there were queues on the M2 eastbound. (There are more than 200 classical music stations!)
I could now become more antisocial than ever, but my daughter has realised that there are more pop music stations in the world than anything else ...
Paddy Power seems to be receiving no bets at the moment on the succession to Cardinal Murphy O'Connor: the odds are as they were the last time I posted on the Westminster Stakes. I had thought of doing a post giving some of the in-depth form analysis punters aspiring to a serious investment on this particular book might like to take advantage of, but decided to put that off for a while, and instead do a snapshot of the reactions to Sacramentum Caritatis, given that its author (The Man in White) will be the judge and jury on the winner of this particular race.
Damian Thompson, Editor-in-Chief of the Catholic Herald, noted the fact that the Apostolic Exhortation was effectively ignored by the Hierarchy on its publication. Now that they have had a few days to reflect, what do they say?
The Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has noted the publication and provides links to the document itself, and to a summary (curiously contained on the "Year of the Eucharist" page).
However, if you are the sort of Catholic who expects that your Bishop's diocesan homepage will give you some information about the Pope's Exhortation, then you are in for a surprise.
Hexham and Newcastle thinks that the document is about globalisation and environmentalism. Northampton thinks it's about Latin. Nottingham just links to the Vatican website. Westminster gives a reasonable (if very short) summary. And that's it: none of the other dioceses mention it. Even bearing in mind that the dioceses of Wrexham and Shrewsbury do not have functioning websites, the response is - well, poor.
I have learned about the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival, and about the new Catholic Assistant Chaplain General of the Armed Forces. But don't look to the diocesan websites in England and Wales to find out what the Pope thinks about the Eucharist.
Fr Ray Blake has highlighted a couple of YouTube videos. One is of the Halloween Mass in Orange County, California, notorious for, amongst other things, an extraordinary minister costumed as the Devil; the other is of a recent Mass celebrated by the egregious Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles (also California) at the end of a recent RE Congress.
Reading Fr Ray's post, it struck me that we have no simple expression (other than "sacreligious" or "heretical", of course) to describe the sort of thing that isn't just one-off wild and wacky, but is a head-on confrontation with the Universal Church. "Cafeteria Catholicsm" describes a pick-and-mix approach that offers a choice: what about the sort of Catholicsm where no choice other than a liberal-two-fingers-to-Rome is on offer?
I'd like to propose "Phoenix Nights Catholicsm". The Phoenix Club, owned by Brian Potter is a simulacrum of a normal club: it has no licence; it is a dangerous fire hazard; it is corrupt and dishonest; it is meretricious; its music is abysmally poor. The poor club-goers of TV's parallel Bolton have no real choice: the Banana Grove is equally awful, and the man in charge, Den Perry, is as criminal as Potter.
Phoenix Nights Catholicsm is not yet common in England and Wales, but we have our Brians and our Dens, and, given half the chance, they will impose their version of the practice of our religion on the rest of us.
Let's not give them their half chance. Let's do the thing they most dislike: laugh at them, laugh as much as I laught at Phoenix Nights. They are on the "Road to Nowhere": let's hasten them on their way.
If any of you have a link to the "For God and King" blog, then delete it immediately without clicking on the link. The site owner has let it lapse, and the sitename has been reallocated. It has been taken over by a pornographer who first redirects you to an explicit set of photos and then flashes up an invitation (seemingly coming from Microsoft) to download some software to clean the filth from your computer. It's a Trojan, of course (WinFixer). Any decent up-to-date anti-virus software will sort the subsequent problem out for you, but least downloaded, soonest mended.
The Catholic Caveman's blog is headed by a picture of Mass at Covadonga. The shrine commemorates the apparition of Our Lady to the local King, Pelayo, who in 722 fought and defeated the Moors in the valley below the cave. Pelayo's victory meant that the invading Arab armies were never able to conquer the whole of Spain: Catholicsm, and the rule of the post-Visigothic Monarchy was preserved. After the Moorish defeat at Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel, the Reconquest of Spain could begin: it was slow, but in 1492 Granada fell, and the Moors were expelled from Spain forever.
We should have been married there; we wanted to be married there. We were engaged when we lived in the same province and came to love the shrine which, as the picture shows, is in a cave. There are bears in the mountains, and eagles overhead. On a spring morning there is no more beautiful place to go to Mass.
In theological terms, Matrimony is unique in that it is the only Sacrament adminstered by those participating in it themselves. In human terms it is more complex: it is the only Sacrament in which the mother and the mother-in-law have at least as big a say as the participants. There is a social dimension around Matrimony which no other Sacrament has. This is right and proper: the other six Sacraments are essentially individual, while Matrimony unites two individuals to create a new family, a new opportunity for life. Matrimony is the Sacrament on which human society is (was? should be?) founded. Stable civil society depends on married couples bringing up families. That is why Matrimony is the only Sacrament for which parallel civil legislation exists - I once had to adminster the vows to a Spanish couple marrying in England as the Priest-Registrar did not speak Spanish and had both a ecclesiastical and a civil legal obligation to ensure that the vows had been understood and had been undertaken willingly.
When the mothers decided, therefore, that we were not to marry in Covadonga, but in the UK, we didn't really have any choice. We could have had a perfectly licit Sacrament in front of a priest and another witness, but it would have felt hole-in-corner. So we did as we were told, and had a wonderful ceremony. And even if there's a little bit of both of us that still wishes that things might have been different, Our Lady of Covadonga is as near here as She is there.
16 reasons for unhappy trads to read Sacramentum Caritatis carefully
Many trads in the Blogosphere have been disappointed in the Pope's Apostolic Exhortation, mainly because it didn't say what they wanted it to say. I'd prefer to see it as the next correction, after the Address to the Roman Curia of 22 December 2005, to the course of the Petrine Barque.
My thesis is that the Holy Father a) wants evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change; b) is boxing liberal Bishops into a corner they have made for themselves, because this document is a response to what the Synod of Bishops said it wanted him to say; and c) has a deliberate agenda of carrying out what Vatican II said, rather than accepting what has been done "in the spirit of Vatican II".
In this light, try the following extracts from Sacramentum Caritatis:
(Para 3) Concretely, the changes which the Council called for need to be understood within the overall unity of the historical development of the rite itself, without the introduction of artificial discontinuities. (From the footnote: I am referring here to the need for a hermeneutic of continuity also with regard to the correct interpretation of the liturgical development which followed the Second Vatican Council.)
(Para 21) Finally, a balanced and sound practice of gaining indulgences, whether for oneself or for the dead, can be helpful for a renewed appreciation of the relationship between the Eucharist and Reconciliation.
(Para 23) Priests should be conscious of the fact that in their ministry they must never put themselves or their personal opinions in first place, but Jesus Christ. Any attempt to make themselves the centre of the liturgical action contradicts their very identity as priests. This is seen particularly in his humility in leading the liturgical assembly, in obedience to the rite, uniting himself to it in mind and heart, and avoiding anything that might give the impression of an inordinate emphasis on his own personality.
(Para 35) Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.
(Para 38) The ars celebrandi is the best way to ensure their actuosa participatio. The ars celebrandi is the fruit of faithful adherence to the liturgical norms in all their richness; indeed, for two thousand years this way of celebrating has sustained the faith life of all believers, called to take part in the celebration as the People of God, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
(Para 39) It is his responsibility to ensure unity and harmony in the celebrations taking place in his territory. Consequently the Bishop must be "determined that the priests, the deacons, and the lay Christian faithful grasp ever more deeply the genuine meaning of the rites and liturgical texts, and thereby be led to an active and fruitful celebration of the Eucharist". I would ask that every effort be made to ensure that the liturgies which the Bishop celebrates in his Cathedral are carried out with complete respect for the ars celebrandi, so that they can be considered an example for the entire Diocese.
(Para 40) The ars celebrandi should foster a sense of the sacred and the use of outward signs which help to cultivate this sense, such as, for example, the harmony of the rite, the liturgical vestments, the furnishings and the sacred space. The eucharistic celebration is enhanced when priests and liturgical leaders are committed to making known the current liturgical texts and norms, making available the great riches found in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Order of Readings for Mass. Perhaps we take it for granted that our ecclesial communities already know and appreciate these resources, but this is not always the case.
(Para 41) Everything related to the Eucharist should be marked by beauty. Special respect and care must also be given to the vestments, the furnishings and the sacred vessels, so that by their harmonious and orderly arrangement they will foster awe for the mystery of God, manifest the unity of the faith and strengthen devotion
(Para 42) Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another. Generic improvisation or the introduction of musical genres which fail to respect the meaning of the liturgy should be avoided.
(Para 46) Given the importance of the word of God, the quality of homilies needs to be improved. Hence ordained ministers must "prepare the homily carefully, based on an adequate knowledge of Sacred Scripture". Generic and abstract homilies should be avoided.
(Para 53) The active participation of the laity does not benefit from the confusion arising from an inability to distinguish, within the Church's communion, the different functions proper to each one. There is a particular need for clarity with regard to the specific functions of the priest. He alone, and no other, as the tradition of the Church attests, presides over the entire eucharistic celebration, from the initial greeting to the final blessing. In virtue of his reception of Holy Orders, he represents Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, and, in a specific way, also the Church herself.
(Para 56) We hold that eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion are so linked as to make it generally impossible for non-Catholic Christians to receive the former without enjoying the latter. There would be even less sense in actually concelebrating with ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church.
(Para 62) Speaking more generally, I ask that future priests, from their time in the seminary, receive the preparation needed to understand and to celebrate Mass in Latin, and also to use Latin texts and execute Gregorian chant; nor should we forget that the faithful can be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin, and also to sing parts of the liturgy to Gregorian chant.
(Para 64) A mystagogical catechesis must also be concerned with presenting the meaning of the signs contained in the rites. This is particularly important in a highly technological age like our own, which risks losing the ability to appreciate signs and symbols. More than simply conveying information, a mystagogical catechesis should be capable of making the faithful more sensitive to the language of signs and gestures which, together with the word, make up the rite.
(Para 66) During the early phases of the reform, the inherent relationship between Mass and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was not always perceived with sufficient clarity. For example, an objection that was widespread at the time argued that the eucharistic bread was given to us not to be looked at, but to be eaten. In the light of the Church's experience of prayer, however, this was seen to be a false dichotomy.
(Para 73) For the sake of these important values – while recognizing that Saturday evening, beginning with First Vespers, is already a part of Sunday and a time when the Sunday obligation can be fulfilled – we need to remember that it is Sunday itself that is meant to be kept holy, lest it end up as a day "empty of God.
Yesterday, as the photo shows, two million Spaniards took to the streets of Madrid to protest about the government's negotiations with the Basque terrorist group ETA. This might not be the worst thing happening in Spain at the moment.
A posting in La cigüeña de la torre alerts us to a case being brought in Spain by a Catholic organisation against (inter alia) a leading Spanish socialist politician for the publication of a series of extremely pornographic satires on Christian images of Our Lord and Our Lady. The cigüeña does not post a link to these photos and I have hopefully given no clues as to where they can be found - please do not seek them out: they are profoundly disturbing; there must have been a morbid as well as a blasphemous mind behind them.
Unfortunately, this is par for the course in Spain, a country which is being polarised by a government which is determined to carry through a radical anti-Catholic agenda. Spain needs our prayers. Indeed, Europe needs our prayers.
Hat tip to Lactente nutris ubere who quotes the LMS's site. One sentence leapt off the screen at me:
"The empty womb stripped of its child by an abortionist is analogous to the empty altar stripped of its God by the theological abortionist - the man who either denies, or, what is more frequent, ignores or plays down the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Blessed sacrament of the Altar." ('Empty Womb, Empty Altar', Prof. Frederick Wilhelmsen, Latin Mass Magazine, March/April 1993).
I have just read a post at Wanton Popery about the consecration of an Episcopalian Bishop in Florida's being transferred to the local Catholic Cathedral because of the number of people expected. I had earlier read Fr Zuhlsdorf o{]:¬) quoting an interview with the egregious Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles about the Tridentine Mass. I read in V for Victory about a scandalous gathering in California purportedly about Catholic RE.
However irritated we might get, from time to time, with the behaviour of some of our hierarchy, we should recognise that they come nowhere near the line some of their American colleagues appear to have crossed.
"Sailing to Byzantium" by W B Yeats. Verse III.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
I grew up in an area where there was a large number of Ukranian families. They came to the local Catholic schools, but we never saw them at Mass, for there were several towns locally where the Ukranians had their own churches. The Salford Almanac had every year a Ukranian supplement which listed their calendar and a long section from Canon Law about what had to happen if anybody wanted to change Rite - this was mainly assumed only to happen when Ukranian married Roman.
The first flush of aggiornamento I experienced in the early seventies was an encouragement for a small group of us (I think we were in Lower 6th) to visit each others' churches on successive Sundays. They came to ours first then we went to theirs.
Thirty-five years later I can still remember the impression that an Eastern Liturgy had on me. I wasn't overwhelmed by a sense of theatricality: I had learned to serve Mass in the traditional Roman Rite, after all. What I found was a heady if suffocating mix of the numinous, the Liturgy as Eikon, music which penetrated to the heart, community and solidarity in Faith, and incense as surely God intended.
Even after all this time, I can still catch myself thinking about finding a house more than four miles away from a Catholic church but less than four miles from a Ukranian one. I realise, though, even while fantasising, that I am seeking to miss the point. The Eastern Churches, whether schismatic or not, are local Churches, however widely the diaspora of their faithful has spread their worship. Each one is an incredibly rich cul-de-sac.
I belong to Rome: not Kiyiv, or Constantinople, or Moscow. My belonging is not a matter of choice: I can't pretend that I'm not from Manchester, even if I have now lived away from Manchester longer than I ever lived there. And Rome is not limited: Rome's ambit is universal and orthodox, not local and orthodox.
We are a ragged family: cousins who shout at each other, brothers and sisters who quarrel and argue; big brothers who lay the law down. Amidst all the clamour we sometimes wish that everything could be as nice at home as it is at a favourite Aunt's house. But, for better or worse, we belong to our own family and make our home there.
"For better or worse": we have to hang on to that.
A short piece from YouTube in Portuguese is available from the Casa de Sarto. As I post this, it's the second article down, beneath one about the plot to defame Pope Pius XII.
The short text says "The Charterhouse of Évora: expelled in 1834 by Jacobin revolutionarism, the Carthusians returned to their Portuguese home in 1960."
Is the return of Moretben imminent? Are the insistent rumours of his release from Midland exile correct? Can those of us who have kept burning a small candle, lit from the tremendous fire of his saeva indignatio, proudly proclaim the return of our Chief? Are heretics quaking? Are liberals desperately recanting yesterday's received opinion? Are traditionalist apologists looking to the acres once walked by Belloc to catch sight of their leader?
We wait, and we hope.
Fr Ray Blake copies part of the CWNews report on Cardinal Biffi's Lenten Retreat. It is fascinating, not least because in publicising Biffi's meditation CWNews seems to have been a bit coy about repeating one part of what he said. According to Zenit he said:
' Quoting the work "Three Dialogues on War, Progress and the End of History," Cardinal Biffi told his listeners that "the Antichrist presents himself as pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist."
"He will convoke an ecumenical council and will seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions, granting something to each one. The masses will follow him, with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants," he said.
The cardinal added that Solovyov says in that work: "Days will come in Christianity in which they will try to reduce the salvific event to a mere series of values." '
CWNews must be worried that people will be daft enough to believe that Cardinal Biffi thinks that Bl Pope John XXIII was the Antichrist. That would be to misunderstand both Biffi and Solovyov (and John XXIII come to that). But things have come to a pretty pass when a major Catholic news agency thinks that a Lenten meditation preached before the Pope has to be censored in case less astute Catholics get the wrong end of the stick.
What next? Church leaders telling us that the faithful aren't clever enough to cope with two different rites being available at the same time in the Western Church?
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Development of the makhalla institution
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Development of the makhalla institution and its role in support of family and youth
The role of non-governmental non-profit organizations and civil society institutions, whose activities are aimed at ensuring the interests of broad sections of the population, has increased in the process of further deepening democratic reforms and development of civil society in Uzbekistan today. In this regard the most important and national democratic institution of civil society in Uzbekistan is makhalla, which has been considered to be a unique institution that combines the lowest and regional branches of self-government in the country.
Literally translated from Arabic the word «makhalla» means an adjacent camp or a city camp, actually expresses a part of the city exercising local self-government. In Uzbek practice makhalla is a system of territorial, social, political, and spiritual-educational self-government, which is not found in any other country. Moreover, for centuries, Uzbek makhalla has been considered a center of education, preservation of national customs, traditions and values, a spiritual center for citizens. Makhalla has an essential role in formation of human qualities such as mutual respect, kindness and mercy, unity in carrying out khashar (public works) and family rituals among the residents of makhalla. The significance of makhalla institution is that it has information about all residents and their life conditions, people who need material and moral support and also about the unemployed, conflicts in families and concerns of the population. In this regard, it provides targeted social assistance to socially vulnerable groups of the population and ensures a stable spiritual and moral atmosphere in families, attracting citizens, especially young people to useful work.
Today in Uzbekistan there are more than nine thousand bodies of self-government of citizens, which make a significant contribution in resolving issues of local importance, ensuring a stable spiritual and moral atmosphere, strengthening friendship and solidarity, educating the younger generation and strengthening interethnic harmony and tolerance.
With achievement of independence in Uzbekistan, special attention has been paid to the development of the activities of makhalla institution, the improvement of its institutional and legal framework. The legal status of makhalla for the first time was enshrined in Article 105 of the Constitution, adopted on December 8, 1992.
The law of the Republic of Uzbekistan «On the bodies of self-government of citizens» adopted on September 2, 1993 was the first to streamline the activities of the makhalla institution. The concept of self-government of citizens is determined by the law as an independent activity guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan for solving local issues based on their interests, historical features of development, as well as national and spiritual values, local customs and traditions. The law sets basic principles of the activities of citizens’ self-governing bodies as well as a standard structure of these bodies consisting of a Council (Kengash), commissions on the main activities of the assembly of citizens and an Audit commission.
The Council is formed in order to fulfill the decisions of the assembly of citizens as well as the current activities of the citizens’ self-government bodies. It operates in the composition of a chairperson (aksakal) of the assembly of citizens, his deputies (consultants on the elderly and veterans and youth issues), advisers, executive secretary and a specialist of the Women’s district (city) Committee for working with and strengthening the spiritual - moral values in families, head of the public formation “Mahalla Posboni”, as well as local preventive inspectors, heads of educational institutions, rural medical units and family polyclinics.
Furthermore, the law sets up number of commissions which function on the main activities of the assembly of citizens such as, Conciliation commission, Education and spirituality сommission, Commission on social support, Commission on work with women, Commission on minors, youth and sports, Commission for the development of business and family business, Commission on ecology and nature protection, landscaping, Commission on public control and consumer protection. The management of these commissions is carried out by the chairman (aksakal) of assembly of citizens and his deputies while the members of the сommissions are elected by open or secret ballot according to the electoral legislation. Regarding the Audit сommission it is established to check the financial and economic activities of the assembly of citizens and operates independently while being accountable only to assembly of citizens. Members of the commission are not entitled to be simultaneously a member of another body of citizens.
Depending on the relevance of the problems in the relevant territory assembly of citizens can establish other commissions on its main activities. Commissions on the basis of the Model regulations are entitled to develop their own regulations which are approved by the assembly of citizens. In accordance with these provisions, the members of the commissions contribute to the elimination of existing problems in the relevant territory, participate in the preservation of national and spiritual values, traditions and customs, strengthening families, education of younger generation, ensuring inter-ethnic friendship and harmony. They also carry out public control over the implementation of measures to support socially vulnerable groups of the population, protect motherhood and childhood, develop small business and private entrepreneurship, national handicraft, sanitary and environmental conditions of the territory of makhalla and the execution of the legislation by assembly of citizens. So, commissions take an active part in all events of makhallas.
Employees of makhallas based on the direction of its activities cooperate with general education schools, employment centres, associations of private home owners, the youth Union, the Women’s committee, internal Affairs offices and other state, non-state and public organizations, operating in the relevant territories to address relevant problems. In order to ensure peace in makhallas and prevent crime and delinquency about seven thousand prevention inspectors operate in the same building with makhalla activists and contribute to more effective crime prevention.
An important step towards the democratization of activities of makhalla was made by the adoption of the Law «On the election of the Chairman (Aksakal) of assembly of citizens» on April 29, 2004. The law defined democratic principles of election to the bodies of self-government of citizens and introduced elective system to the makhalla bodies.
Within the framework of deepening and development of democratic reforms in the country, it became necessary to improve the legal framework for the activities of the makhalla institution. As a result, above mentioned laws were amended several times. By the adoption of the decree of the President Sh.Mirziyoyev on February 3, 2017 «On measures for further improvement of the makhalla institution» the activities of the makhalla institution have reached a new stage. In accordance with this decree, the Republican Council for the coordination of the activities of self-government bodies of citizens was given the status of a legal entity with its formation in the form of an Association of assembly of citizens. The document identifies five priority areas for further improvement of the makhalla institution.
According to the decree, changes in the structure of the assembly of citizens have been made by introducing new posts of Deputy Chairman of the assembly of citizens for issues concerning the elderly, veterans and the youth. Furthermore, inspectors for prevention of delinquencies, as well as heads of educational institutions, rural health centers and family clinics have been included into the Councils of the assembly of citizens.
The main purpose of the Republican Council, which is a non-governmental non-profit organization, is to increase the efficiency of the bodies of assembly of citizens and turn the makhalla institution into the closest to the population structure, realization of the rights to unite in an Association representing the common interests of the assemblies of citizens, strengthening their material and technical base, as well as further development of their interaction with state bodies and institutions of civil society.
To date Council pays special attention to improving the activities of the assembly of citizens, strengthening their material and technical base, providing training facilities, improving the skills and knowledge of workers and activists of the makhalla, providing support to low-income families, persons with disabilities and lonely elderly.
Over the past two years, 24 legal documents aimed at improving the activities of the makhalla, have been adopted and are being implemented.
It is important to underline another innovation in this direction, awarding initiative citizens and representatives of public structures who have made a worthy contribution to the implementation of the tasks of self-government of citizens by a newly established badge «Makhalla Iftikhori» («Pride of Makhalla»).
It is well known that public control is considered an important form of building civil society. The activities of the makhalla also concern the issues of public control. If earlier makhalla mainly conducted work on the basis of citizens’ appeals, now, according to the Law «On the bodies of self-government of citizens» it quarterly hears reports of heads of executive authorities of regions, cities and districts on issues within the scope of activities of the assembly of citizens, as well as reports of heads of enterprises, institutions and organizations located in the relevant territory on environmental protection, sanitation, landscaping issues, within its competence. Reports of heads of executive authorities of regions, cities and districts on issues concerning the activities of the assembly of citizens were heard at 6459 meetings over the last two quarters. The problems and shortcomings expressed by the population after hearing the reports found their solutions.
Strengthening healthy atmosphere in families, makhallas and society, education of the youth, preservation of peaceful and quiet life has been emphasized by our President as of great importance. There have been identified priorities in this direction.
At present, along with the education of a harmoniously developed younger generation and obtaining modern education for young people new mechanisms of cooperation, such as «Family-makhalla-educational institution» has been established in order to educate the youth in the spirit of universal and national values, high human qualities and reliably protect their minds from various ideological and spiritual threats. The main goal of the project is to control the attendance of classes by the young people, to be informed about what they do in their free time as well as to provide leisure activities, for instance, by attracting them to various study groups, craft training and sports clubs.
Parents, representatives of the older generation and the atmosphere in families play an important role in the education of the younger generation. In order to improve spiritual outlook of parents in the education of children «Parent universities» have been established under the self-government of citizens.
The strengthening of families are given great consideration, the important role of the Conciliation commission set within the assemblies of citizens should be underlined in this field. The Commission considers appeals on conflicts concerning family relations. According to statistics, out of 73.214 appeals examined over the past year 46.430 conflicts between family members were successfully resolved, in 7.974 cases relatives found reconciliation.
In order to prevent family divorces, troubles and other unpleasant cases, it is necessary to conduct regular explanatory work among the population, since peace and tranquility in families and makhallas ensure the development and well-being of society. In this regard significance of social projects and programs should be emphasized. From August 1-25 of the past year, Republican Council for the coordination of the activities of self-government bodies of citizens together with partner organizations, held a month aiming at strengthening families under the motto «We are against family divorces». Within the framework of the project various events were held to explain the value of the family and the responsibility of parents and representatives of the older generation of makhallas in family education and preparation of young people for family life, as well as to promote healthy lifestyles in families and popularize positive experience of exemplary families. Moreover, a number of educational events were held in all makhallas all over the country, for instance, educational event on the topic “The place of makhallas in preserving and developing national and universal values” was important in creation of an atmosphere of mutual respect, kindness, mercy and cohesion as well as strengthening of marriages in families, especially in educating young people.
Republican Council provides methodological and practical assistance to all makhallas of the country in formation of a healthy atmosphere in families and education by issuing manuals and recommendations, brochures and relevant literature.
Uzbekistan has developed a separate programme to ensure employment and create new jobs and is still implementing the measures outlined in it. In this regard, assemblies of citizens have become close assistants to the population in employment and development of family and private entrepreneurship. In order to create conditions for each family to engage in entrepreneurship and turn it into a source of income, program named «Every family entrepreneur» is being implemented, thereby the number of families engaged in business in makhallas is being increased.
In short, the role of the makhalla is proved to be invaluable in our country in the process of deepening democratic reforms and the development of civil society, including the local solution of socio-economic issues, strengthening families, increasing the activity of the population, especially young people as well as formation of a healthy lifestyle in society.
It should be noted that effective activities of assemblies of citizens is encouraged by our government. Up to date 500 employees of the makhalla system have been awarded high state awards for the past five years.
Despite the gradual development of the makhalla institution, there is still much work to be done. It is necessary that the relevant state and public organizations provide methodological and practical assistance to the commissions on the main activities of assemblies of citizens, especially in makhallas. Some commissions, such as Commissions on education and spirituality issues and Conciliation commission require experienced community activists to be involved in their work. Given the importance in raising exemplary parents, enhancing their full awareness of duty and responsibility to children, it is necessary to raise the educational culture of parents and turn the work of «Parent Universities» into vitality. In order to achieve active participation of community activists, parents, teachers and educators of educational institutions in the upbringing of the younger generation, it is necessary to improve their joint work and the «Family-makhalla-educational institution» cooperation mechanism. In the direction of prevention of youth neglect and homelessness, it is essential that the employment, full enrollment, organization of meaningful leisure activities for the young generation, such as sports, subject and creative classes should be ensured. Public oversight in ensuring the upbringing of children in the spirit of national values should also be established. Moreover, there is a need for the cooperation with partner organizations to study together the life of families, develop and implement systematic measures to eliminate the facts that negatively affect the situation in families.
In conclusion, it should be underlined that further enhancement of the role of the makhalla institution in solving social and economic problems is a requirement of time. After all, the successful implementation of these tasks is important in providing targeted social support to the population, providing employment, developing private entrepreneurship and family business, protecting the environment, increasing the civic activism of compatriots and their legal culture and strengthening the family institution, which as a result will serve to build a strong civil society.
www.uza.uz
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Uzbekistan to the UN Office and other International Organisations in Geneva © 2015
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Norman B. Berger
Michael V. Casey
Michael D. Hayes
Scott J. Helfand
David J. Jolivette
Jonathan N. Ledsky
Anne Mayette
Craig A. Varga
JD DePaul University College of Law
BA University of Wisconsin Madison
Norman Berger is a seasoned trial lawyer with a wide range of business litigation and counseling experience. He has litigated extensively in state and federal courts nationwide, and has tried cases before various state and federal regulatory agencies as well. Likewise, Mr. Berger has participated in numerous arbitrations and mediations, and has served as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, giving him a broad background in alternative dispute resolution.
Mr. Berger has represented a broad range of clients in business disputes involving real estate, manufacturing, employment, trademark and copyright, class action, corporate, bankruptcy, securities, ERISA and insurance issues. He practices extensively in matters involving real estate related disputes and in matters involving environmental issues. He has in-depth experience dealing with highly complicated technical and regulatory issues and with examining technical experts. He has represented clients in a variety of industries, including real estate, retail, heavy manufacturing, chemical, and recycling industries. In addition to representing them in litigation, he counsels the same clients on issues related to insurance coverage, permitting, enforcement, and administrative matters.
Mr. Berger’s practice is not limited to corporate clients. He is particularly proud of his efforts representing families whose homes have been contaminated by industrial pollution, resulting in, at the very least, a drastic decrease in property value, and at worst, property damage and serious health issues. Mr. Berger’s efforts on their behalf have resulted in remedies ranging from mandatory property cleanup to provision of clean water supplies, to monetary reimbursement for property damage and medical expenses in excess of $65 million. Mr. Berger is a co-author of a blog on environmental issues which can be found at www.pollutionlawwatch.com. His work in this area can be found at www.thepollutionlawyers.com.
Acts as National Litigation Counsel for multi-national publicly held retailer with respect to real estate disputes.
Acts as Common Counsel for PRP Group whose members include some of the largest multinational corporations in cost recovery litigation relating to a former landfill.
Obtained clean-up and several multi-million dollar settlements for homeowners whose well water and homes had been contaminated with cancer-causing industrial solvents.
Obtained a $7.2 million settlement in a toxic tort case for a client whose childhood exposure to chemicals caused her cancer.
Obtained a multi-million dollar judgment for a corporate client in one of the first cost-recovery trials under the CERCLA statute.
Member and Past Chairman of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the DePaul University College of Law.
Since 2005 has been selected each year as one of Illinois’ Super Lawyers by Chicago Magazine in its annual guide to the top attorneys in Illinois.
Since 1988, has served as a faculty member for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, the leading trial advocacy training program for practicing attorneys.
Past Chairman and Advisory Board Member of the Illinois State Historical Society’s Centennial Awards Program, established to recognize the contributions of the State’s preeminent firms and organizations.
Founding participant of the Pro Bono Committee for Representation of Indigent Defendants developed by the Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Served as President, Highland Park Giants Hockey Association.
125 South Wacker Drive, Suite 2150, Chicago, Illinois 60606 p. 312.341.9400
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VC Softball Season Ends in SoCal Regionals
Ventura 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 4
Southwestern 0 4 0 1 0 0 X 5 9 2
Ventura College sophomore Kayla Garcia was 1-3 in the Pirates' playoff game on Tuesday at Southwestern, knocking in VC's only run in the first inning. Ventura's season came to an end with the 5-1 loss to the Jaguars.
2B: Cassandra "Cassie" Van Til; Kianna Knoll
The Ventura College softball team's 2019 season came to an end on Thursday with a 5-1 loss at Southwestern College in Chula Vista in the play-in round of the CCCAA Southern California Regional Playoffs. Kali Brown had a pair of hits for the Pirates (22-17) and Kayla Garcia had a hit and an RBI. Serrina Cabral, Marisa Felix and Adriana Clemons also recorded hits in the season finale for VC.
Ventura, seeded No. 18 in the playoff bracket, took the early 1-0 lead in the top of th first inning in Garcia's RBI. They could not hold the advantage, however, giving up four runs to No. 15 Southwestern in the bottom of the second. The Jaguars followed with another score in the fourth inning to set the 5-1 final margin.
The Pirates end the season with a 22-17 record. They were 13-3 in Western State Conference North Division play, good for a second place finish.
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Tag: Egg Records
The Bats [February 2006]
Over the last 20 years The Bats have garnished a label of dependability – and with good reason. Though now taking a little bit of time between releases (one might jump to the conclusion that ‘At The National Grid’ is more like a reunion album than simply their first in 11 years), The Bats continue to write, record and perform scores of catchy, poppy tunes – jangly, homely and folky tunes filled with images of Bob Scotts‘ Central Otago past and propelled by one hell of a dynamic rhythm section.
One of the longest surviving Flying Nun groups still with their original line-up (the other would be the Tall Dwarfs), The Bats have continued to be a live fixture over the past decade, particularly in Christchurch; where the majority of the group now resides.
The story goes that when The Clean initially broke up in late 1982, Bob was flatting and jamming with Paul – who had been quite active with the great Toy Love, and various groups round Christchurch such as seminal pre-punk outfit The Detroit Hemroids and Jay Clarkson’s Playthings. Eventually Malcolm Grant (who had sat behind the kit for a later incarnation of Bill Direen‘s The Vacuum and local popsters The World) was brought into the fold, with Kaye completing the line-up by 1983.
I met Bob at the clash concert in the Christchurch town hall in the early 80s, he had moved from Dunedin and was looking for a flat, and my flatmate was leaving so he introduced me to Bob. Then we both ended up moving in to longfellow street with Paul and Malcolm among others, they had drums and amps set up in the living room and that’s when we started playing as a band. I didn’t have many expectations of The Bats, i’m pretty sure I didn’t think ahead much at all in fact but i’ve always loved playing Bob’s songs and playing live in all kinds of places.
– Kaye Woodward
During the hey-days of Flying Nun The Bats could do no wrong, with catchy singles such as ‘Made Up In Blue’ and ‘Block Of Wood’ and the critically-lauded debut LP ‘Daddy’s Highway’ all being perennial underground favorites. However the group never really garnished any popularity – The Chills were a bit of a one-off in terms of stardom for New Zealand bands, and so groups such as The Bats settled for creating fine tunes – and often. In the decade to 1995 the group amassed a terrific body of work – some 5 albums and a handful of eps and singles. Of course the other side of the dice was their live show, an exhilarating experience full of catchy sing-a-long numbers, and some cracking instrumentation – Paul’s a bit of a hero of mine in terms of bass-playing (he’d perfected the chugga-chugga sound by 1985), and they’ve always exuded a homely friendliness that few bands seem to match.
In recent years the garden city trio of Kaye Woodward, Paul Keen and Malcolm Grant has built The Bats side-project Minisnap up from the ground, performing a whole new collection of catchy, wistful pop tunes – with Kaye leading the way as vocalist. Meanwhile Dunedinite Bob Scott took a few years to reunite with his buddies in the clean whilst formulating new tunes for the stellar new LP – and of course everyone in the group has the odd day job, too.
We had been talking about doing a new Bats album for 2 or 3 years before actually doing it. Everything takes ages now of course because of everyone’s jobs and children. Bob came up from Dunedin for the main session at the national grid (which is John Kelcher’s 8 track studio in Cashel Street) over Easter 2003, the view was across to all the mannequins in Ballantyne’s lingerie department but the people/mall action down below was quite entertaining.
Although the studio experience with John Kelcher was a friendly and natural one, with an opportunity to jam and flesh out ideas, Bob described a handful of the new tunes as ‘complex’ to write, which combined with an unfortunate incident only compelled the delay in the albums development:
After that session Paul got busy over the winter digitizing, loading and eq’ing the tracks at home; but in August our computer (and a whole lot of other stuff) got stolen. We had to go back and re-digitize the 8 track, but were too busy and couldn’t really get into it until after summer. We did a final over dub/mixing session at home with Bob in Oct 2004. More mixing, the artwork and mastering was done and labels pinned down over the next 6 months, then we did preparation building up to a New Zealand and U.S. Release in October 2005.
Eventually the album was released in late 2005, with critical acclaim spreading across from the States, along with reports of brilliant college radio support – after a matter of weeks CMJ (a chain of radio stations across the USA) had reported ‘At The National Grid’ as one of the top ‘adds’ across the country – rising up the charts in nearly all of CMJ’s 200 stations. The group plan to bolster this support by playing the famed South By South-West festival in Austin Texas, then a quick tour around the main centers.
The plan is to go for 2 weeks and try and play to as many people as possible and give the album a boost. We are doing some in-stores too and they are great for getting through to people. The album seems to be going really well so doing these shows should help a lot. It will be interesting to see the mix of old and new fans. Emails have proved to be a great way of keeping in touch with and making contact with new fans.
– Bob Scott
With an impending European and UK release through Little Teddy and Egg Records, the group are looking forward to a successful 2006, though they’ve got a relaxed approach to touring these days after their previous overseas experiences:
We could have perpetuated our career overseas by touring a lot more and our labels would have liked that but I hated the tour bus style touring we did in Europe and the US In 93. Up till then we had always driven in vans or flown and stayed in hotels or with friends. We did some dates with Radiohead on that 93 tour, they were a big successful band but even they were traveling round in tour buses so I thought that if success meant spending months every year in a tour bus I didn’t really fancy it.
Posted on February 3, 2011 September 4, 2017 Categories InterviewsTags Bill Direen, CMJ, Egg Records, Flying Nun, John Kelcher, Little Teddy, Minisnap, Playthings, Radiohead, Tall Dwarfs, The Bats, The Clean, The Detroit Hemroids, The Vacuum, The World, Toy LoveLeave a comment on The Bats [February 2006]
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Football retires jersey No. 7 in honor of two quarterbacks
By Reagan Earnst October 21, 2016
Quarterback Case Keenum scored 178 touchdowns in his time as the Cougar signal-caller. | File photo/The Cougar
A historic number is up.
The Cougars announced Wednesday that no other Cougar football player — besides quarterbacks David Klingler and Case Keenum — will be No. 7 following the 2016 season. This action will take effect on Oct. 29 when the team faces the University of Central Florida Knights.
Klinger and Keenum are two of the most accomplished quarterbacks in NCAA history. Klingler sported the number from 1988 to 1991 while Keenum wore it from 2006 to 2011.
Together, the duo owns 32 NCAA records.
Keenum played six seasons with the Cougars after redshirting his freshman season and a medical waiver in his junior season. In his tenure, Keenum accumulated 20,114 yards of total offense — still an NCAA record.
Keenum, now a quarterback for Los Angeles Rams, is the most successful player in his position in UH football history with a 37-14 career record as the signal-caller. He finished his career on a high note by leading the Cougars to a 13-1 record and a win in the 2012 TicketCity Bowl over Pennsylvania State University.
Klingler rose to prominence in the 1990 season when he stepped in as the Cougars’ full-time starting quarterback. He captivated fans by completing 374 passes for 5,140 yards.
Klingler also tallied 54 touchdowns to just 20 interceptions in the season.
On Nov. 17, 1990, Klingler became a college football legend when he threw a record 11 touchdown passes against the Eastern Washington Eagles. The record remains unbroken.
The Houston native was known for his big-game potential as he had five career games with at least seven touchdowns. In a game against Louisiana Tech University in 1991, Klinger threw a record eight touchdowns in the second quarter.
According to a UH press release, to be eligible for jersey retirement at UH, a player must meet at minimum two of the following requirements:
Inducted into College Football Hall of Fame
Major National Award Winner
Consensus All-American
Conference Most Valuable Player/Player of the Year
Three-time All-Conference First Team member
Hold at least 5 NCAA Records for at least 10 years
No. 7 will become the third number retired in program history after 1989 Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware’s No. 11 and 1976 Lombardi Award winner Wilson Whitley’s No. 78.
The Cougars will battle UCF at 11 a.m. in TDECU Stadium.
Tags: Case Keenum, David Klingler, Kevin Sumlin, Tom Herman
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How Poppy Bush’s Brother, “Uncle Bucky,” Made a Killing Off the Iraq Wars
French parliament’s left parties to discuss vote of no confidence against government
Authored by Jeffrey St.Clair via Counterpunch.org:
Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of the Presiden George H. W. Bush’s family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.
Seeking to distinguish himself from his more predatory relatives, William Henry Trotter Bush, the younger brother of Bush Sr. and an investment banker in St. Louis, gave an interview to disclaim any profiteering on his own part. Indeed, he sounded downright grumpy, as if his older brother hadn’t done enough to steer juicy government deals his way.
“Being the brother of George Bush isn’t a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination,” huffed William H.T. Bush.
Well, perhaps being the brother of the president didn’t generate as much business as he hoped, but having the good fortune to be the uncle of the president certainly appears to have padded the pockets of the man endearingly known to George W. Bush as “Uncle Bucky.”
A few months before his selection as president, Bush’s Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI’s fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit is now one of the top Pentagon contractors. Next year its revenues will top $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts have been awarded in no bid, sole source deals.
True to form, Uncle Bucky claims that ESSI’s amazing transformation has nothing to do with him or his nephew, the president.
“I don’t make any calls to the 202 (DC) Area Code,” Bush sneered to the Los Angeles Times.
Uncle Buck’s characteristic modesty was swiftly undercut by statements made by top executives at ESSI, who seemed proud that their foresight in inviting Bush on board had paid off so handsomely for all concerned.
“Having a Bush certainly doesn’t hurt,” chuckled Dan Kreher, ESSI’s vice president for industrial relations.
Uncle Bucky Bush is 16 years younger than his brother, the former president. According to Kitty Kelley’s gripping history of the Bush clan The Family, Bucky was raised “almost as an only child” by his aging parents Dorothy and Prescott Bush, the senator who traded with the Nazis. Bucky was a sensitive and precocious kid with a peculiar devotion to choral music. In fact, the highlight of his career at Yale University was his starring spot with Whiffenpoofs, an elite choir.
While his older brother headed to Texas to make his name in the oil patch, Bucky returned to St. Louis, the Gateway City where the original Bush fortune had been built. He settled into a modest career as an investment banker and corporate consultant. Then, with his nephew poised to seize the White House, Uncle Bucky was offered a seat on the board of ESSI, a military support and defense electronics firm. ESSI’s company prospectus describes it as “a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America’s armed forces and certain foreign militaries.”
Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few short months, the company’s shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.
By the time of the Iraq war, ESSI was a brawny new player on the defense block. In the spring of 2003, ESSI acquired a military communications company called TAMSCO, whose prime activity was in developing military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany in anticipation of a US invasion of Iraq. After the ESSI buy-out, TAMSCO swiftly won contracts from both the Air Force and the Army for more than $90 million for the training of troops in the operation of the system and the installation of radar equipment in Kuwait.
Then Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.
In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a huge deal to provide the Army with equipment to search for Iraq’s non-existent chemical and biological weapons. Part of this package included a $19 million contract to provide protective tents for US troops from chemical bombs. The tents didn’t arrive in Iraq until after it was evident to nearly everyone that the Iraqi military didn’t have access to such weapons. This didn’t stop the money from flowing into ESSI’s coffers and it didn’t stop ESSI’s executives from playing along in the grand charade. “The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real,” huffed Michael Shananan, the company’s former chairman.
As the invasion transformed into a military occupation of Iraq, ESSI continued to pluck off sweet deals. In late 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose contracts passed across the Pentagon desk of arch neocon Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal to engineer a communications system for the CPA offices, barricaded inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Its executives openly clucked at the likelihood for protracted war. “The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by US forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support products and services we offer,” gloated Gerald L. Daniels, the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Rarely has corporate glee over the prospects of war profiteering been expressed so brazenly.
But Daniels had a point. Even as things began to go sour for the US in Iraq, ESSI stood to make lots of money. One of its biggest no-bid contracts came in 2004 in the wake of mounting causalities in light-armored vehicles hit by roadside bombs. ESSI won a deal to upgrade the armor of thousands of vehicles in or bound for Iraq. The company’s annual report for 2005 forecast that ESSI might make as much as $200 million from this bloody windfall alone.
As the flood of new contracts poured in, ESSI’s stock soared. In January of 2005, it reached its all-time high of $60.39 per share. A few days before the stock hit this lofty peak, Uncle Bucky quietly exercised his option to sell 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. He walked away from that transaction with at least $450,000. The stock sale occurred a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the Iraq war and a few days before word leaked to the press that the company was under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts. The timing of the trade was perfect.
In a February 2005 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, ESSI discreetly disclosed to its shareholders that the inspector general of Pentagon had launched an inquiry into a series of contracts awarded to the company in 2002 for work on the Air Force’s troubled automated cargo loading machine called the Tunner.
While the company’s chief financial dismissed the probe as “routine” and assured investors that it would have “no effect” on ESSI’s fortunes, the Pentagon held to a more restrained assessment of the potential liability. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense, said he had referred ESSI contracts valued at $158 million to the Pentagon’s inspector general because the deals “appear to have anomalies in them.” Many of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis and much of the probe appears to focus on the role Pentagon insiders played in steering the contracts to ESSI.
Much of the thrust behind ESSI’s sudden rise has been fueled by no-bid or source deals with the Pentagon.These no risk deals are part of a corporate strategy cooked up in part by non other than Uncle Bucky himself. In a profitable bit of self-dealing, ESSI hired its board member, Bucky Bush, as a consultant in 2002. Bush, who pulls in about $45,000 a year in director’s fees, was paid an additional $125,000 for his advice on ESSI’s buyout of other military contractors. The acquisition strategy outlined by Bush was to train the company’s appetite on the gobbling up of companies that held no-bid or sole source deals with the Pentagon.
In January 2005, ESSI spent $37.6 million to buy a New York electronics testing firm called Prospective Computer Analysis, Inc. In defending the purchase to shareholders, executives at ESSI emphasized that the company held “a lot of source contracts.”
A few months later, ESSI acquired Spacelink, Inc, a Virginia-based defense company, for $150 million. Spacelink, which supplies parts for military satellites and was poised to cash in on the $80 billion missile defense bonanza.
ESSI isn’t the only defense-oriented company to acquire the services of Uncle Bucky. The banker from St. Louis has also been retained as a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the primary financial underwriters of Halliburton. Lord Abbott is both one of the top 10 shareholders in Dick Cheney’s former company, as well as one of its top mutual fund holders. It’s all in the family.
Uncle Bucky didn’t unload all of his ESSI stock. He still retained 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million and used the profits from the sale to purchase a vacation home in Florida near his other nephew nourishing presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush.
Who knows if the Bucky will finally stop there?
(Bucky Bush died on February 27, 2018)
This essay is excerpted from Grand Theft Pentagon.
Iraq War George Bush WMDs Bush’s Uncle Bucky William Henry Trotter Bush
China Outraged At Arrest Of Huawei CFO, Warns It Will “Take All Measures”
AM Hants
Interesting and so worth sharing. ‘Poppy’Bush, son of Prescott. What could go wrong?
Shaun Ramewe
Totally sick – the whole damn disgusting depraved lot of them.
What one knows is good…Who one knows is better!!!
The Fall of Baghdad 16 Years Ago
Why ‘Russiagate’ Is the Same as ‘WMD in Iraq’ for America’s Mainstream Media
McCain May Be Dead, but ‘Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran’ Still Resounds
The United States Is at It Again: Compiling an Enemies List
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New Releases ~ March 8, 2019
Here are some New Releases :
Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration
An incredible array of artists and musicians honor one of the world’s most revered artists, Joni Mitchell, on her 75th birthday on Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration. The all-star tribute salutes Mitchell as a boundary-breaking artist highlighting her songs throughout her career. Featured performers include Brandi Carlile, Glen Hansard, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, Diana Krall, Kris Kristofferson, Los Lobos with La Marisoul, Cesar Castro & Xochi Flores, Graham Nash, Seal, James Taylor, and Rufus Wainwright.
Patty Griffin represents an extraordinary new chapter for this incomparable singer-songwriter and immediately stands among the most deeply personal recordings of her remarkable two-decade career. The album – which follows 2015’s Grammy Award-nominated Servant Of Love – collects songs written during and in the aftermath of a profound personal crisis, several years in which she battled – and ultimately defeated – cancer just as a similar and equally insidious disease metastasized into the American body politic. Yet as always, like very few others, Griffin’s power lies in how, as Holly Gleason in the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette observed, ‘her songs seem to freeze life and truth in amber.’ It’s in how Griffin can express the strikingly intimate while never making it about herself, all wrapped in sparse arrangements that breathe an incomparable force and import into her songcraft.
Weezer: The Teal Album
The Teal Album is the ultimate covers collection with songs from TOTO, Tears For Fears, Eurythmics, A-Ha, The Turtles, Black Sabbath, Electric Light Orchestra, TLC, Michael Jackson & Ben E. King.
Maren Morris: Girl
the second major label studio album by singer Maren Morris. Lead single “Girl” was called “an upbeat, optimistic single with a strutting, indie-rock guitar sound” by Rolling Stone. Morris co-wrote the song with Sarah Aarons, who worked on “The Middle”, and Greg Kurstin. Maren has released four studio albums. Her 2015 extended play, Maren Morris, charted on two Billboard charts. Her major label debut album, Hero, reached #5 on the Billboard 200 chart and #1 on the Top Country Albums chart.
David Gray: Gold In A Brass Age
Gold In A Brass Age was produced by Ben DeVries, son of producer and soundtrack composer Marius. The album finds Gray in renewed creative form and arrives just ahead of a run of headline shows in the US and UK. Gold In A Brass Age is defined by an intuitive approach from Gray, exploring new electronic textures and sound palettes, along with new production techniques in the process. David began writing Gold In A Brass Age in 2016 and it was recorded over several months between tours, including a 50 date US tour and a co-headline tour with Alison Krauss in 2017. Using a cut and paste approach to the arrangement of songs, the album’s atmospheric and experimental undertones are evident throughout.
Dido: Still On My Mind
One of the biggest selling UK artists of all time, Dido returns with her 5th studio album “Still On My Mind”. The long-awaited fifth overall album from Dido, following on from 2013’s Girl Who Got Away. The new album will show Dido’s love of hip-hop and folky roots. Much of Still On My Mind was written and recorded in England as “a result of the fruitful and incredibly natural production/songwriting partnership” with brother Rollo, who contributed extensively to all of her previous releases. Still On My Mind wafts in like a beautiful breeze, a chilled out tumble of sadness and joy, melancholy and bliss. That familiar voice is fully present, soft, intimate and delightfully conversational, caressing melodies over a subtle flow of beats, with an aching catch that tugs at the heart strings. She was the girl who got away. But after five years of silence, Dido is back.
Flight of the Conchords: LIVE in London
Two CD live release. In October of 2018, ten years after the launch of their hit HBO series, musical comedians Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement returned to HBO for the all-new comedy special. Live in London was taped before a live audience at the Eventim Apollo and featured the Conchords performing songs from the sold-out UK and Ireland edition of Flight of the Conchords Sing Flight of the Conchords Tour.
Butt-Naked Amanda Palmer: There Will Be No Intermission
Amanda says this is the most personal and painfully vulnerable album she has ever made and her songwriting has climbed up a few notches. This is the most honest record she has ever written, and was fueled by everything that was going on around her to dig deeper, try harder, and be less afraid. Included on There Will Be No Intermission are some songs that have been longtime live favorites, like Amanda’s cover of Dillie Keane’s “Look Mummy, No Hands,” as well as more recent releases like a tribute to Judy Blume on her 80th birthday. Other songs tackle abortion, cancer, motherhood, and politics. Amanda has shared a new song, “Drowning in the Sound,” which you can listen to below. It’s chorus pays tribute to Prince and Ani DiFranco, two of Amanda’s musical idols
Meat Puppets: Dusty Notes
The legendary Meat Puppets have reunited and put together an album of new music. The album, Dusty Notes, will be available March 8th via Megaforce records. Includes the single “Warranty”. Fans of the golden SST age of American punk and of these cowpunk trailblazers will be thrilled to welcome this: the first album by the original Meat Puppets lineup since 1995. Curt and Chris Kirkwood have reunited with drummer Derrick Bostrom, and you’ll also hear keyboardist Ron Stabinsky and Curt’s son Elmo (on guitar) here. Get this now (on CD or vinyl) so you’ll know these tunes by the time you see ’em on tour later this year: “Warranty,” “Nine Pins,” “Unfrozen Memory,” “The Great Awakening,” “Outflow,” the title track and more! Megaforce.
Tom Harrell: Infinity
When pianist Bill Charlap featured Tom Harrell at a recent gig with his trio at New York’s Jazz Standard, he summarized the trumpeter’s genius as concisely as anyone could. “It is our honor and privilege,” he announced, “To share the bandstand with a man who is a living, breathing melody.” For this latest HighNote release, featuring a razor-sharp quintet with saxophonist Mark Turner and guitarist Charles Altura, Harrell & company combine complex compositions, seductive rhythms, advanced harmonic concepts, vibrant solos and sheer inspiration in an album which transcends the jazz idiom. This is perhaps Harrell’s most imaginative recording to-date, with the scoring for the piano-less, tenor sax and guitar front line ensemble sui generis among his work.
Leo Bud Welch: The Angels in Heaven Done Signed My Name
Leo Bud Welch, the deceased delta bluesman, spent his life honing his musical craft. The Mississippi native and 30-year lumberjack performed as a gospel singer in his small hometown for years before he made his first record when he was in his seventies. The influence of the region he called home, his years of musicianship, and his well lived life blended together to create music that was as unique as he was. The stunning posthumous album, The Angels in Heaven Done Signed My Name, was produced by Dan Auerbach at his Easy Eye Sound studios in Nashville, Tennessee just before Leo’s death in December of 2017 and also features performances by the late Richard Swift.
The Coathangers: The Devil You Know
In their early years, Atlanta trio The Coathangers were very much of the classic punk ethos-the band was a live entity, and the records were a document of the charisma and chaos projected from stage. But after 12 years of relentlessly touring on a steady flow of EPs and LPs, The Coathangers finally took a moment to recalibrate before diving into the creation of their sixth studio album The Devil You Know. The band regrouped to make an album that captures all the vitality of their early years while honing their individual strengths into new communal achievements. It’s a record that takes their established takes on vitriolic punk, playful house-party anthems, and heartworn ballads and melds them into a new sound that retains all their former live show glories while revealing a new level of songwriting and nuance. “The writing process was done with an open heart,” says guitarist/vocalist Julia Kugel. “Everything that came before had to go away. And we started there, at ground zero.” With each album, you could hear the individual songwriters honing their style. But with The Devil You Know, it feels like we’re hearing the first Coathangers record written as a true unit.
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Tag: Cuba
Cuban Americans Can Now File Suit over Property Confiscated by the Cuban Regime
Cuba, LIBERTAD Act, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
NICOSIA CYPRUS , U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-.N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took time out of his busy schedule to issue the following statement in reaction to an announcement by the Trump Administration that the United States will implement Title III of the LIBERTAD Act. In Section 302 of the law, Congress provided U.S. citizens with verified claims for confiscated properties by the Cuban regime with the ability to pursue litigation in U.S. courts against companies that are conducting business in, on or with these confiscated properties.
“By fully implementing Title III of the LIBERTAD Act, the United States is rightly providing U.S. citizens with the means to hold the Cuban regime accountable through the U.S. justice system.
“For decades, Cuba’s authoritarian government has profited extensively off of the private property that it stole from its citizens. It has utilized these stolen properties to conduct business with foreign investors, while Cuban and Cuban-American families have had no legal recourse against this theft. In turn, the Cuban regime has used these ill-gotten profits to entrench itself in power, oppress the Cuban people, and bankroll campaigns of anti-democratic intervention across the hemisphere.
“Given that Cuba’s recalcitrant regime has never responded to diplomatic outreach, it is necessary to increase pressure on its economic interests. Today, American citizens are finally being provided the long overdue authority to seek legal recourse and economic compensation against the trafficking and misuse of their properties.”
NJ State Police More hopeful than ever for the return of Joanne Chesimard to the United States
cop killer, Cuba, Joanne Chesimard, NJ State Police, President Donald Trump's Miami speech, terrorist, United States, US/Cuba policy
Ridgewood NJ, President Trump pushed changes in US /Cuba policy , “To the Cuban government, I say: Put an end to the abuse of dissidents,” Trump said in Miami. “Release the political prisoners. Stop jailing innocent people. Open yourselves to political and economic freedoms. Return the fugitives from American justice — including the return of the cop-killer Joanne Chesimard.”
NJ State Police Colonel Fuentes’ Statement Regarding President Trump’s Administration New Policy Toward Cuba
“Just listened with great interest to President Donald Trump’s Miami speech on his Administration’s new policy towards Cuba. On behalf of all the men and women of the New Jersey State Police, I am grateful for his recognition and deep concern that Cuba continues to harbor this country’s most wanted cop killers and domestic terrorists. I am more hopeful than ever for the return of Joanne Chesimard to the United States to complete her term of imprisonment for the 1973 murder of Trooper Werner Foerster.”
ICE Newark arrests 113 criminal targets in 5-day enforcement surge
113 criminal targets, 5-day enforcement surge, aggravated assault and illegal reentry, Bangladesh, battery, Burglary, Central African Republic, child abuse, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, crimes against person, Cuba, damage to property, distribution of narcotics, Domestic Violence, Dominican Republic, DUI, Ecuador, El Salvador, fraud, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, ICE Newark arrests, illegal allien, illegal immigrants, illegal use of credit cards, India, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Korea, larceny, Latvia, Liberia, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, possession of a weapon, possession of narcotics, robbery, sex offense against a child/fondling, sexual assault on a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, Slovakia, theft of us government property, threaten to kill, trespassing, Trinidad, Uruguay.
Newark NJ, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Newark Field Office arrested 113 criminal targets during an operation Jun. 5-9, as part of the agency’s ongoing public safety and national security efforts. The operation was supported by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s New Jersey Field Office, the New Jersey State Parole Office, and ICE Homeland Security Investigations.
All of the targets in this operation were criminal in nature. 93% of those that were arrested were convicted criminals and 87% of them had prior felony convictions.
“The continued results of our Fugitive Operations officers and their law enforcement partners underscore ICE’s ongoing and steady commitment to public safety,” said John Tsoukaris, field office director of ERO Newark. “As part of this operation, we continue focus on the arrest of individuals who are criminal and are a threat to public safety and national security. Because of the tireless efforts of these professional officers, there are 113 fewer criminals in our communities,” he added.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection is extremely proud to have assisted in this operation,” said Leon Hayward, Acting Director New York Field Office. “It is through collaborative efforts, such as the one leading to today’s arrests, that law enforcement agencies can combat illegal acts and apprehend criminals who pose a threat to the Homeland.”
“The State Parole Board is pleased to have been able to take part in this very successful fugitive operation. Cooperative efforts with other state and federal agencies serve as a force multiplier resulting in a significant public safety benefit. We are proud of the efforts of our parole officers and all that took part in the operation.” said James T. Plousis, chairman of the NJ State Parole Board.
The individuals arrested throughout New Jersey were nationals of Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Korea, Latvia, Liberia, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Poland, Slovakia, Trinidad and Uruguay.
These individuals range from age 18 to 74 years old and all were previously convicted of a variety of offenses. Some of the convictions included sexual assault on a minor, child abuse, possession of narcotics, distribution of narcotics, robbery, trespassing, damage to property, DUI, crimes against person, fraud, sex offense against a child/fondling, threaten to kill, sexual exploitation of a minor, domestic violence, battery, theft of us government property, possession of a weapon, illegal use of credit cards, burglary, larceny, aggravated assault and illegal reentry.
Among those arrested during this operation include:
A Iraqi citizen convicted of possession of narcotics
A Honduran citizen wanted by Honduras for the offense of double Homicide
A Latvian citizen convicted of heroin sale
A El Salvador citizen convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor
A Ecuadorian citizen convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor
A Jordanian citizen convicted of synthetic narcotic possession
A Dominican citizen convicted of cocaine sale
A Bangladesh citizen convicted of aggravated assault with a weapon
In fiscal year 2016, ICE conducted 240,255 removals nationwide. Over ninety percent of individuals removed from the interior of the United States had previously been convicted of a criminal offense.
ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that targets serious criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, such as those charged with or convicted of homicide, rape, robbery, kidnapping, major drug offenses and threats to national security.
ERO Newark works closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to enforce federal immigration laws as part of its homeland security mission.
Obama ‘screwed’ us, angry Cuban migrants say
angry Cuban migrants, Cuba, deportation, Immigration, Obama ‘screwed’ us
BY THE MANILA TIMES ON JANUARY 13, 2017
PANAMA CITY: “Obama has screwed all Cubans,” Yadiel Cruz, a Cuban in Panama bitterly told Agence France-Presse on Thursday upon learning the US president has suddenly made it tougher for migrants like him to get into America.
The 33-year-old summed up what many compatriots were feeling as they digested the news in a Catholic shelter in Panama’s capital, a waypoint on their overland trek to the United States.
But, he declared, “for me, I’m not going back.”
Around him, dozens of other Cubans expressed sadness or anger.
Much of the fury was directed personally at US President Barack Obama for announcing that he has scrapped, with immediate effect, a 1995 policy that had given near-automatic entry to the US to Cubans who set foot on American soil, regardless of their visa status.
Now, like those who attempted to cross by water, they could face deportation back to Cuba unless they convince US officials they were afraid of being persecuted or had valid humanitarian reasons to be let in.
The move, made just days before Obama leaves office and hands the reins over to Donald Trump, known for his anti-immigration stance, rattled nerves, sparked frustration and evoked tears here.
http://www.manilatimes.net/obama-screwed-us-angry-cuban-migrants-say/306712/
President-Elect Donald J. Trump : Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights
Cuba, Cuban Americans, denial of fundamental human rights, Fidel Castro’s legacy, firing squads, Passing of Fidel Castro, poverty, President-Elect Donald J. Trump, theft, unimaginable suffering
Ridgewood NJ, President-Elect Donald J. Trump Statement on the Passing of Fidel Castro , “Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.
“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.
“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty. I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”
Rep. Scott Garret Leads Formal Call on Obama to Address Extradition of cop-killer Joanne Chesimard and terrorist William Morales
cop killer Joanne Chesimard, Cuba, Extradition, FALN, New Jersey State Troopers, Obama, Rep. Scott Garret, terrorist William Morales
file photo of Joanne Chesimard
Ridgewood NJ, Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) today formally called upon President Obama to request the extradition of cop-killer Joanne Chesimard and terrorist William Morales during his upcoming visit to Cuba. These murderous fugitives have been living freely in Cuba and were granted protection by the Castro regime who has refused to extradite them. To date, the Obama Administration has not addressed the extradition of these convicted murderers as a condition of normalizing relations with Cuba and the Castro regime. Garrett was joined on the letter by Rep. Peter King (NY-02) and Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-07).
“Over a year ago, your administration announced the reopening of diplomatic channels with Cuba,” said the Congressmen in the letter. “Since then, your administration has continued to take steps towards normalizing relations by relaxing trade restrictions, reopening embassies, and re-establishing scheduled air services. On February 18th your administration announced your trip this March to Cuba citing the significant progress made by normalizing relations. However, we fail to see any progress in extraditing the fugitives like Joanne Chesimard and William Morales, nor any improvement in the treatment of the Cuban people by their government.”
Murderers Living Freely in Cuba:
Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was convicted of murder of a law enforcement officer, and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. In 1973, New Jersey State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper made a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. When the troopers asked the vehicle’s driver to exit the car, one of the passengers, Joanne Chesimard, pulled out a gun and began shooting. During the ensuing firefight, Foerster was hit twice in the chest and Harper once in the shoulder. The injured Foerster was then shot twice in the head—execution style—with his own sidearm.
William Morales was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison for his participation in the terrorist organization Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaciόn Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN). William Morales was a chief bomb maker for FALN, and he was linked to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City, an attack that killed four people and injured sixty others
Pope arrives in Cuba for first-ever meeting with the Russian patriarch
Cuba, first-ever meeting, Great Schism of 1054, Pope, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Russian patriarch
Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY2:17 p.m. EST February 12, 2016
Despite famine, religious wars, worldwide conflict and the spread of civilization, the heads of the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox churches haven’t spoken since the Great Schism of 1054 shattered Christendom, so they have a lot of catching up to do at their historic meeting Friday in Cuba.
The pope, en route to a visit to Mexico, landed Friday afternoon at Havana’s José Martí International Airport where he will meet Patriarch Kirill for a two-hour “personal conversation” and sign a joint declaration.
On Arrival, he was warmly greeted on the tarmac by Cuban president Raul Castro, who clasped the pope’s outstretched hands in both of his.
The split between the two churches nearly 1,000 years has festered over issues such as the primacy of the pope and accusations by the Russian Orthodox Church that the Catholic Church tries to poach converts in Russia.
No pope has ever visited Russia. En route to the historic visit Friday, journalists asked Pope Francis if a visit to the nation is on his papal bucket list.
“China and Russia, I have them here,” Francis said, pointing to his heart. “Pray.”
Few people expect Friday’s two-hour meeting — which took two years of secret planning to pull off — will wipe away centuries of distrust and suspicion in a few hours, but it will be a groundbreaking step toward Catholic-Orthodox relations.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/12/pope-francis-patriarch-kirill-roman-catholic-church-russian-orthodox-church-meet/80278172/
Dissidents arrested as Pope Francis celebrates his first Mass in Cuba
ciommunism, Cuba, Dissidents arrested, first Mass in Cuba, Pope Francis
By Nick Squires, Havana
8:06PM BST 20 Sep 2015
Pope Francis meets with Fidel Castro in Havana, after an outdoor mass attended by tens of thousands of people in the capital’s Revolution Square
Cuban authorities prevented leading dissidents from meeting Pope Francisin Havana on Sunday, in a sign of the Communist regime’s rigid intolerance of political opposition.
Two well-known dissidents, Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva, had been invited by the Vatican to attend a vespers service led by the Pope’s in Havana’s historic baroque cathedral.
But they said they were detained by security agents and barred from attending the event.
“They told me that I didn’t have a credential and that I couldn’t go to the Pope’s event that was taking place there in the plaza of the Cathedral,” Ms Roque said.
She said that she and Ms Leiva had also been invited by the Vatican to meet Pope Francis at the residence of the Holy See’s ambassador to Cubashortly after the pontiff’s arrival on Saturday, but that they were detained on that occasion as well.
The head of an opposition group called the Ladies in White said that 22 of the 24 members of the group who had hoped to attend a Mass celebrated by the Pope were prevented from doing so by Cuban security officials.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/11878383/Dissidents-arrested-as-Pope-Francis-celebrates-his-first-Mass-in-Cuba.html
Garrett to Obama: Prioritize the Extradition of Murderous Fugitives from the Castro regime
Castro Regime, Cuba, Extradition, New Jersey cop-killer Joanne Chesimard, New York City terrorist William Morales, Scott Garrett
New Jersey cop-killer Joanne Chesimard
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in calling on President Obama to demand that Cuban officials extradite New Jersey cop-killer Joanne Chesimard and New York City terrorist William Morales as the United States announces the reopening of embassies in both countries. Chesimard and Morales are convicted felons who escaped to Cuba and were granted political asylum by the Castro regime. Cuban officials have publicly announced they will not negotiate any extradition as a condition for normalized relations between the United States and Cuba.
“It is imperative that your administration ensures that justice is served by making the extradition of Joanne Chesimard’s and William Morales’ a top priority,” said the group of lawmakers in the letter to President Obama. “In recent months Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman said “the return from Cuba of fugitives from U.S. justice is an issue of long-standing concern to the United States that will be addressed in the broader context of normalizing relations.” However, there has been no evidence of progress in securing the return of these fugitives.”
Reps. Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02), Tom MacArthur (NJ-03), Leonard Lance (NJ-07), Bill Pascrell (NJ-09), and Peter King (NY-02) also signed Garrett’s letter.
Click here to read the entire letter to President Obama.
About Chesimard and Morales:
Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. In 1973, New Jersey State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper made a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. When the troopers asked the vehicle’s driver to exit the car, one of the passengers, Joanne Chesimard, pulled out a gun and began shooting. During the ensuing firefight, Foerster was hit twice in the chest and Harper once in the shoulder. The injured Foerster was then shot twice in the head—execution style—with his own sidearm.
William Morales was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his participation with the terrorist organization Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional Puertorriquena (FALN). William Morales was a chief bomb maker for FALN, and he has been linked to the 1979 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City, an attack that injured 60 and killed four.
Inside Fidel Castro’s luxurious life on his secret island getaway
Communism, Cuba, Fidel Castro’s luxurious life, secret island getaway, tyrant
By Juan Reinaldo Sanchez
For 17 years, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez served as bodyguard to Fidel Castro. But when he became disillusioned with the Cuban dictator’s hypocrisy and tried to retire in 1994, Castro had him thrown in prison. Sanchez made 10 attempts to escape the island, finally making it to the US in 2008. Now he reveals all in his new book, “The Double Life of Fidel Castro.” In this excerpt, Sanchez exposes “El Jefe’s” privileged life.
Modal Trigger
“The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo” by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez (St. Martin’s Press)
To Cubans, Fidel Castro presents himself as a man of the people, claiming to make only 900 pesos a month (about $38) and owning no property other than a modest “fisherman’s hut” somewhere on the coast.
In truth, El Jefe is worth hundreds of millions and owns 20 properties, including a chalet where he goes duck hunting every year and a private marina in the Bay of Pigs.
http://nypost.com/2015/05/10/inside-fidel-castros-luxurious-life-on-his-secret-island-getaway/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Wood on Summer’s Coming: Hot Weather Care for Horses
One more for the road on The Ridgewood Board of Education is seeking qualified candidates to fill a seat on the Ridgewood Board of Education
Brian on Summer’s Coming: Hot Weather Care for Horses
Longtime residents on National Weather Service : Excessive heat and humidity
The bird on Van Neste Square Litter Mess
Christy George on the bogg bag
Anonymous on Van Neste Square Litter Mess
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List of sovereign states in 1938. Photo: File
The Emblem of Tibet is a symbol of the Tibetan government in exile, combines several elements of the flag of Tibet. Photo: File
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. Photo: TPI/Yeshe Choesang
His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet says compassion is caring for others
Jane Cook, Tibet Post Internatonal
Last Updated: 03 March 2016
Previous Article Tibetan leader urges Buddhist centres to be an academic centre
Next Article Spiritual leader of Tibet says real change starts with individuals
Rochester MN, USA — Explaining that all 7 billion human beings belong to one human family in today's world, the spiritual leader of Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said "compassion is about showing care and concern for others."
Many of the 500 people who had won a lottery for seats at the occasion turned to watch as he walked smiling up the aisle, his hands folded in greeting, at Mayo Clinic - Rochester, MN, United States, on 29 February 2016.
President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, John Noseworthy, was on hand to introduce him and invite him to speak about Compassion in Medicine. When he had done so, His Holiness insisted that he sit next to him. The talk was broadcast over the Clinic's internet and webcast around the world.
His Holiness began his 'talk' and said “it's a great honour to have this opportunity to speak to all of you who make such a positive contribution to the clinic's work. You treat hundreds of thousands of people who come with hope and you fulfil their hopes. Looking after those who are in physical and mental pain is a challenge. I'm an old patient and this time I've spent more than a month here, during which time the doctors, nurses and technicians have all been very kind. Besides exercising your professional skills, you have been caring, concerned and friendly. It's an honour for me to talk to you today.”
He remarked that religious faith has long been a source of solace and support for people facing difficulties. Faith brings hope and optimism even to the dying. He added that he doesn't have much time for formality and that since we are all the same as human beings, we need to think of one another as brothers and sisters.
“The differences between us of race, nationality, faith, or whether we are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, are secondary to our basic sameness as human beings. When we stress such differences it just causes problems between us. At a fundamental level we are the same. If we were to emphasise this basic sameness among all 7 billion human beings alive today, it would reduce many of the problems between us. This is why I greet people I talk to as 'brothers and sisters'.
“If I think about how I am different from you, that I'm from Asia, I'm a Buddhist monk, a Tibetan, or even that I am His Holiness the Dalai Lama, it creates a barrier between us behind which I find myself alone. When I think of myself as a human being like all of you in the audience, there's no barrier between us. Remembering that all 7 billion of us belong to one human family is very important in today's world. It's how we can ensure harmony among humanity. But we need to make an effort to educate people about this reality.
“Faced with a patient in need of help, those of you who provide care in this hospital don't first ask where they come from or what they believe, you examine what their problem is and how you can help and treat them. If we could apply such an open attitude in all our relations, everyone would benefit. Compassion is about showing care and concern for others. When you do that you benefit the family and friends of the patient too.
“Now I'd like to have some more interaction with you and answer some of your questions. I welcome your comments or even criticism because I believe that it's by answering such challenges that we learn.”
Cathy Wurzer, a local Twin Cities' TV host, took the chair next to His Holiness to put the audiences' questions to him. She began by asking how to increase respect for others. His Holiness replied that we are all formed the same way, in the womb. A new-born child and mother are naturally drawn to each other. This is the same for all of us. We are also all the same in wanting to live a happy life. It's on such a basis that we can treat each other with respect.
He said there are times when you may be angry with someone and you only feel hostile towards them. But there are likely to be many causes of your anger and you may have contributed to some of them. He mentioned the advice of cognitive therapist Aaron Beck that when you are angry and the person you are angry with seems completely negative to you, you need to recall that 90% of that feeling is your own projection. Anger is not fixed or absolute. It changes. He said that many of our destructive emotions are mixed with exaggeration. As human beings we have a marvellous brain that allows us to consider things from different angles and that can be a way of dealing with emotions like anger.
Asked how to respond to people who have difficulty accepting their illness, His Holiness advised letting them calm down, expressing concern for them and, showing a smiling face, letting them feel confident that you will do what you can to care for them. He recommended letting them know the reality of their condition, how seriously ill they are.
Ms Wurzer commented that some people seem able to regard their cancer or terminal illness as a blessing. His Holiness responded by telling her of a Tibetan he knew who asked his doctor to tell him the truth of his condition, to warn him so that, if need be, he could prepare for death. Anything else he said would be a kind of self-deception.
To a question about how care-givers cope with the helplessness of not being able to do more for their patients, His Holiness responded by saying, “Be as kind as you can. Showing loving kindness is an important way to keep the dying person in good spirits. Many of us believe that having a positive frame of mind, feeling optimistic at the time of death is important for our next life. Christians should remember God and feel confident of going to heaven. Falling into despair and depression is of no help at all.”
He went on to say that our disturbing emotions are generally linked to ignorance and not understanding reality. To address this it is helpful to learn how our minds and emotions work, and then tackling difficult situations will be easier.
Asked whether to be compassionate it's necessary to believe in a personal God, His Holiness replied that he understood that for believers each life is created by God, that God is infinite compassion and that as children of God each of us has a spark of compassion within us. Non-believers may disregard love and compassion as simply religious qualities when in fact they are basic human values.
“Without love between us how can families and communities be happy? We are social animals and what brings us together is love. No one can survive entirely alone, we depend on one another. Whether you believe in religion or not, as a human being, happiness is related to your state of mind not just to your various sensory experiences, what you see, hear, taste and touch.”
Noting that even amidst all the comfortable facilities you could wish for it's possible to be unhappy, while many among the poor are happy and content nevertheless, His Holiness told the story of a monk he met in Barcelona. He'd spent five years as a hermit in the mountains, living on little more than bread and tea. When they met His Holiness asked about his practice and the monk told him that he had meditated on love. And when he did so, there was a sparkle in his eyes of true happiness and satisfaction. His Holiness concluded that what we really need to do is use our intelligence to develop inner peace.
Asked about the relationship between this and technology, he declared that technology is wonderful, but it depends on how we use it. He alluded to what can also be learnt from the science and philosophy found in ancient Indian thought.
Questioned about how to keep your spirits up when faced with anguish and suffering, His Holiness remarked that emotions that contribute to inner peace are constructive. He said there are two kinds of compassion. One is a biased concern for those we know, but another has the vaster scope of recognising that each of us is a human being and has the goal that all human beings should be happy. It's on the basis of such warm-heartedness that we can contribute to others' welfare. To create a more compassionate world, we need such a change of heart.
He cited scientific evidence that infants, even before they can talk, show a preference for examples of helpful behaviour and turn away from illustrations of harm. The conclusion is that basic human nature is positive and kind. Therefore cultivating warm-heartedness and compassion is something we can all do.
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Trump’s Entire Arts And Humanities Panel Quits In Protest
Drop the mic, check the gate, house lights up and everybody out. Did Trump’s entire Arts and Humanities panel just quit? You bet your multicultural ass they did. Hey Donald, the people you are insulting are standing right here. Your presidential advisory committees are made up of American human beings that can see, hear, feel, smell and taste the bullshit that spews from your mouth and Twitter feed on a daily basis.
All 17 members of the panel, which included actor Kal Penn, artist Chuck Close and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, have announced their resignation. The group cited the “false equivalence” of Trump’s comments about last weekend’s “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville, when he blamed “many sides” for the violent demonstrations (“many sides”) that left an American woman, Heather Heyer, dead from a terrorist attack on American soil by white supremacists armed for a gang fight that Jerome Robbins couldn’t fathom choreographing.
NYC Public Theatre icon, Broadway director George C. Wolfe was the 17th and final board member to announce his resignation. Mr Wolfe, was not necessarily hanging the jury, his reps were quick to interject that he was also quitting. It’s George C. Wolfe, his drama is always good, he’s probably just securing the last draft for a political message finale of legendary proportions, worthy of Shakespeare in the Park.
Not only did the committee quit but they kinda suggested that if Trump can’t pull his head out of his ass that maybe he should quit too. Excerpts from the letter read, “Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions” and “Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.” How artistic of the committee that the first initials of the letter’s six main paragraphs spell out “r-e-s-i-s-t.” How “c-u-n-t-y.” We love it.
Established in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan, the committee had First Lady Nancy Reagan serving as honorary chair. The Committee works with both government and private agencies in promoting the arts through such programs as Save America’s Treasures and Turnaround Arts.
The Trump Company gets smaller and the players are killed or dying off…
tags: chuck close, donald trump, george c. wolfe, jhumpa lahiri, kal penn, nancy reagan, ronald reagan, shakespeare in the park
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Stats (PDF)
Stats (HTML)
UCFiesta Bowl Guide
In the Polls
In the Draft
Heupel Named Eddie Robinson Award Finalist
DALLAS (FWAA) - The Football Writers Association of America, in conjunction with the Allstate Sugar Bowl, announced eight finalists for the 2018 Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award on Wednesday, including UCF’s Josh Heupel.
In alphabetical order the finalists are: Bill Clark, UAB; Josh Heupel, UCF; Brian Kelly, Notre Dame; Jeff Monken, Army; Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma; Nick Saban, Alabama; Dabo Swinney, Clemson; and Jeff Tedford, Fresno State.
"It is an outstanding group of coaches," said 2018 FWAA President Stefanie Loh of the Seattle Times. "Any one of the coaches would make a great choice for our 2018 Coach of the Year. We believe all these men demonstrate the coaching excellence that the award's namesake, Eddie Robinson, showed on and off the field."
The 2018 recipient will be announced on Thursday, Dec. 13. The official presentation reception will be on Jan. 5, 2019, in San Jose, Calif., where the winning coach will be handed the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year bust during a reception hosted by the Allstate Sugar Bowl in conjunction with the College Football Playoff National Championship.
"The Allstate Sugar Bowl is proud each year to recognize the top college football coach in the nation while at the same time honoring the great accomplishments of a Louisiana legend, Coach Eddie Robinson," said Sugar Bowl Committee President Rod West. "And we're excited to do so again this year when we present the award to this year's winner.”
The eight finalists have been placed on a ballot which has been sent to the entire FWAA membership. Ballots will be accepted through 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Dec. 7.
The FWAA has presented a coaching award since the 1957 season when Ohio State's Woody Hayes was named the first recipient. The FWAA coaching award is named after the late Robinson, a coaching legend at Grambling State University for 55 seasons.
In his first season as a head coach in Orlando, Heupel has fashioned a 12-0 record. The Knights have the longest winning streak in the FBS at 25 games and will meet LSU in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl after winning the American Athletic Conference title. The former Oklahoma quarterback, who was previously offensive coordinator at Missouri, has the Knights ranked No. 7 in the AP Top 25 Poll and the Amway Coaches Poll.
The Eddie Robinson Award is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA), which encompasses college football's most prestigious awards. Founded in 1997, the NCFAA and its 24 awards now boast over 800 recipients, dating to 1935. Visit ncfaa.org to learn more about our story.
The Football Writers Association of America, founded in 1941, consists of 1,300 men and women who cover college football. The membership includes journalists, broadcasters and publicists, as well as key executives in all the areas that involve the game. The FWAA works to govern areas that include game-day operations, major awards and its annual All-America team. For more information about the FWAA and its award programs, contact Steve Richardson at tiger@fwaa.com.
Stadium History Stats (HTML) UCFiesta Bowl Guide In the Polls In the Draft 2018 Yearbook Game Notes Camps
Meet the Knights
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KLRU Presents: Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years - An All Star Benefit Concert on June 26th
Austin City Limits announces KLRU Presents: Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years, an all-star benefit concert on Thursday, June 26 featuring some of the brightest stars in the show's history returning to the Austin City Limits stage. The star-studded evening, hosted by Jeff Bridges and Sheryl Crow, will feature Alabama Shakes, Gary Clark Jr., Joe Ely, Robert Earl Keen, Kris Kristofferson, Lloyd Maines, Bonnie Raitt, T Bone Burnett, Jimmie Vaughan, Grupo Fantasma and Doyle Bramhall II along with musical performances from Bridges and Crow, celebrating Austin City Limits legacy as an American music institution over the last four decades.
Commemorating the trailblazing music series 40th Anniversary, the evening will benefit KLRU-TV, Austin PBS, which created Austin City Limits in 1974 and still produces the show today. The concert will take place at ACL's home, ACL Live at The Moody Theater, and will be taped as part of a two-hour primetime special, Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years, airing Friday, October 3, 9 – 11pm ET, on PBS. ACL continues its remarkable run, kicking off its milestone 40th year with the series season premiere on October 4. The complete broadcast episode schedule for Season 40 will be announced at a later date.
Tickets for KLRU Presents: Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years will go on sale to the public Friday, May 16th at 11 am at klru.org/benefit. Tickets start at $75.
Learn more about Austin City Limits, programming and history at acltv.com.
tags: Austin City Limits, ACL, KLRU
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History of Acadia University
In 1831 the Nova Scotia Baptist Education Society founded Queen's College. Acadia began as an extension of Horton Academy (1828), which was founded in Horton, Nova Scotia, by Baptists from Nova Scotia and Queen's College (1838). The College was later named Acadia College. Acadia University, established at Wolfville, Nova Scotia in 1838 has a strong Baptist religious affiliation. It was designed to prepare men for the ministry and to supply education for lay members.
The two major Universities of the day in Nova Scotia were heavily controlled by Denominational structures. King's College (University of King's College) was an Anglican School and Dalhousie University, which was originally non-denominational, had placed itself under the control and direction of the Church of Scotland. It was the failure of Dalhousie to appoint a prominent Baptist pastor and scholar, Edmund Crawley, to the Chair of Classics, as had been expected, that really thrust into the forefront of Baptist thinking the need for a College established and run by the Baptists.
In 1838, the Nova Scotia Baptist Education Society founded Queen's College (named for Queen Victoria). The College began with 21 students in January 1839. The name "Queen's College" was denied to the Baptist school, so it was renamed "Acadia College" in 1841, in reference to the history of the area as an Acadian settlement. Acadia College awarded its first degrees in 1843 and became Acadia University in 1891, established by the Acadia University Act.
The Granville Street Baptist Church (now First Baptist Church (Halifax)) was an instrumental and determining factor in the founding of the University. It has played a supporting role throughout its history, and shares much of the credit for its survival and development. Many individuals who have made significant contributions to Acadia University, including the first president John Pryor, were members of the First Baptist Church Halifax congregation. Similarly, the adjacent Wolfville United Baptist Church plays a significant role in the life of the university.
This was unique at the time, and a direct result of Baptists being denied entry into other schools that required religious tests of their students and staff.
In 1851, the power of appointing governors was transferred from the Nova Scotia Baptist Education Society to the Baptist Convention of the Maritime Provinces.
Clara Belle Marshall, from Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia, became the first woman to graduate from Acadia University in 1879.
Acadia student-athlete Edwin Borden who graduated from Acadia in 1892, and again with a Master’s degree in 1896, after which he went on to earn his Doctorate. He was Acadia’s first graduate of African descent, and was also a member of Acadia’s varsity baseball team. Borden is presumed to be among the first athletes of African descent at any Canadian university.
In 1966, the Baptist denomination relinquished direct control over the University. The denomination maintains nine seats on the University's Board of Governors.
On 4 January 2008, Dr. Gail Dinter-Gottlieb decided to step down as President and Vice Chancellor of the University before her term expired. Her resignation was effective 29 February 2008. Ray Ivany began his position as President and Vice-Chancellor on 1 April 2009.
Acadia's sports teams are called the Axemen and Axewomen. They participate in the Atlantic University Sports conference of Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
School spirit abounds with men’s and women’s varsity teams that have delivered more conference and national championships than any other institution in Atlantic University Sport. Routinely, more than one-third of Acadia’s varsity athletes also achieve Academic All-Canadian designation through Canadian Interuniversity Sport by maintaining a minimum average of 80 per cent.
Expansion and modernization of Raymond Field was completed in the fall of 2007 and features the installation of an eight-lane all-weather running track and a move to the same premium artificial turf used by the New England Patriots of the National Football League for its main playing field. The Raymond Field modernization was a gift to the university by friends, alumni, and the province. War Memorial Gymnasium also saw the installation of a new playing floor to benefit its basketball and volleyball teams.
The Memorial Gymnasium honours students who had enlisted and died in the First World War, and in the Second World War. Two granite shafts, which are part of the War Memorial Gymnasium complex at Acadia University, are dedicated to the university's war dead.
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Category: LL Cool J
Covered In Folk: Birthday Boys T-Bone Burnett, Dave Grohl, LL Cool J, Allen Toussaint
January 13th, 2008 — 03:59 am
It is my honor to share a birthday with a seminal hip hop balladeer, a grunge god, the hands-down master of New Orleans R&B songwriting, and the best soundtrack and pop-americana producer in the business. Since it was too hard to pick just one, instead of focusing on a single artist or genre today, I’m featuring some of my absolutely favorite covers of the work of LL Cool J, Dave Grohl, Allen Toussaint, and T-Bone Burnett, all of whom were born on January 14.
If I didn’t have an outlet for celebrating these four incredible musicians, I’d probably spend the day moping around the house, feeling old. Instead, I get to spend a few hours researching, listening to, and celebrating the songs of their younger days, and mine. Not bad for the last day of my 34th year. Though to be fair, it also helps to realize that I’m younger than all of them.
Today’s piece de resistance is Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ incredible cover of Fortune Teller from Raising Sand, their recent all-cover release, which owes its existence to not one but two of these four deities of the musical realm. But the rest of this fine set is worthy of your consideration, too. The envelope, please…
Though Allen Toussaint (b. 1938) has always been recognized as a performer and songwriter in hs own right, most of the songs he’s written found fame in either his own hands or the hands of other R&B and rock artists. But his works are so prevalent, they show up in the folk world, too, especially where folk and blues-tinged rock meet. Bonnie Raitt‘s funky cover of Toussaint’s 1970 hit What Is Success pays tribute to both the R and the B. Meanwhile, Fortune Teller, penned pseudonymically by Toussaint’s alter ego Naomi Neville, and recorded by bands from the Rolling Stones to the Who, is just incredible in the hands of Plant, Krauss, and our next birthday boy.
Bonnie Raitt, What Is Success (orig. Allen Toussaint)
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Fortune Teller (orig. Benny Spellman)
T-Bone Burnett (b. 1948) spends most of his time behind the scenes in the music world. But even if you’ve never heard his work as a roots rock Country singer-songwriter, you know his work as a Grammy-winning producer and song-writer for a bevy of musicians you really do admire (Roy Orbison, Elvis Costello, Gillian Welch, Spinal Tap, his wife Sam Phillips) and for a rash of award-winning soundtracks (Cold Mountain, O Brother Where Art Thou, Walk The Line). Burnett plays guitar on the above-mentioned Fortune Teller, and produced the album, too; here’s four more amazing covers of songs he either arranged or co-wrote.
Alison Krauss, Sitting In The Window Of My Room (trad.)
k.d. lang, Till The Heart Caves In (orig. Roy Orbison)
Brooks Williams, Libera Me (orig. Sam Phillips)
Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss, Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby (trad.)
Update: Coverfreak shares a great T-Bone Burnett cover of Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend
Hip hop artist and actor LL Cool J was born in 1968, and he dropped his first album of major label tracks at 17 years old, which makes the entire hip-hop genre older than you thought. Here’s a pair of playful indiepop folk covers of 1987 Def Jam release I Need Love, the first “romantic hip-hop ballad” to hit the top of the pop charts, just to prove it can be done, and done well; irish folk-rock singer-songwriter Luka Bloom and indie folktronic group Sexton Blake do excellent coverwork here and elsewhere, and come highly recommended.
Luka Bloom, I Need Love (orig. LL Cool J)
Sexton Blake, I Need Love (ibid.)
Before he formed the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl (b. 1969) was Nirvana’s last and most famous drummer. The folk scene is long overdue for some good Foo Fighters covers; while we wait, check out Laura Love‘s sparse bass and vocal, Patti Smith‘s soft banjo-tinged americana, and Kathryn Williams tense string quartet jazz folk — some of the best from an infinite series of covers of Nirvana songs penned and recorded during Grohl’s tenure.
Patti Smith, Smells Like Teen Spirit (orig. Nirvana)
Kathryn Williams, All Apologies (orig. Nirvana)
Laura Love, Come As You Are (orig. Nirvana)
All artist and album links above go direct to label and musician homepages, so you can best support artists directly, and avoid supporting the faceless megacorporations which commodify those artists. Please, folks: buy what you hear if you like what you hear, and help me realize my birthday wish for a future bright enough to contain the infinite possibility of homegrown music, in a world in which artists can sustain themselves without having to keep their day jobs.
Just can’t get enough? Cover Lay Down publishes every Sunday and Wednesday, and some Fridays and Holidays. Our archives are open late, but they don’t stay up forever, so don’t forget to hit up older posts before the songs go back to the ages from whence they came.
1,066 comments » | Alison Krauss, Allen Toussaint, Bonnie Raitt, Covered in Folk, Dave Grohl, k.d. lang, Kathryn Williams, Laura Love, LL Cool J, Luka Bloom, Patti Smith, Sexton Blake, T-Bone Burnett
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EDDIE IZZARD THE BIG INTIMACY TOUR, STRIPPED TOO - 2010
First he was 'Dressed To Kill'; then 'Sexy' for the world to see! Now Eddie Izzard is back on stage in his latest one man show: 'Stripped Too - The Big Intimacy Tour'.
The New York Times calls Eddie Izzard "Miraculous, delirious, catch your breath funny!" and the New York Post says he's "Irreverent, wicked ... a comic genius!"
Eddie Izzard - Stripped Canadian Tour - 2010
This spring, comedian and actor Eddie Izzard, adored by fans and critics alike for his lightning quick wit and surreal humor, will bring his largest comedy tour of his career, ‘STRIPPED’, to Canada. His first extensive tour of Canada, you don’t miss your chance to see what The New York Times calls, "The most brilliant stand-up comedian of his generation.”
Izzard’s comedy concerts have evolved from cult-followings to cultural events as his last tour, ‘SEXIE’, was seen live by more than 100,000 people as the tour sold-out in 15 cities in a matter of days, including a five night engagement at New York's City Center and six nights at The Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.
BILLY CONNOLLY LIVE! in seattle and chicago - 2010
Uncensored, uncut and unpredictable, internationally-renowned comedian/actor Billy Connolly will expose audiences to his hilarious, oxygen-depriving new show Billy Connolly Live!
Making a rare appearance in Chicago and Seattle, for the first time in over a decade, Connolly is considered “Britain’s greatest living comedian.” Critics have hailed him as “a genius,” “a comic legend,” “brilliantly funny” and “a superstar.” His comedy has been referred to as “priceless, non-stop laughter verging on tears” and “a must see night of comedy – he’s fantastic, charming, rude and above all – hilarious.”
Billy Connolly - The Man Live Canada Tour - 2010
Unless you were fly fishing in Hudson Bay or stopping by the Arctic Circle for a family trip snapshot, then you haven’t seen Billy Connolly on Canadian soil since his smash hit Too Old To Die Young tour in 2006. The new tour called The Man Live will be rolling across Canada this November, kicking off the tour with three nights at Toronto’s hallowed Massey Hall.
Billy Connolly is a legendary comedian from Glasgow whose finger is placed firmly on the pulse, at all times. While it is the nature of comedy to insult and offend, there are few who can master the art of the “f-bomb” with such grace and charm. Considering his ability to crush box office records across the globe, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to experience his performance that inevitably evokes gut-wrenching laughter. His incorrigible style and wit has perched him high atop the comedic hierarchy.
LEWIS BLACK IN GOD WE RUST - 2010
NY City Center New York
Lewis returns to NY for three nights only at NY City Centre. In his new show Lewis Black takes on pretentious politicians, sell-out celebrities and all those things and ideas you thought you could trust. Using his acerbic wit and personal wise-cracks, he reminds us as long as we laugh we can still have faith, while In God We Rust.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO DIARY OF A MADMAN - 2010
In Leguizamo's trademark live performance style, this piece explodes with energy taking audiences on a non-stop fever-pitch adventure, heating up the stage with vivid accounts of where he's been and the colorful characters who've shaped different facets of his life. From his adolescent memories in Queens, New York, to the early days of his acting career and beyond – with stories of the outrageous 80's avant-garde theater scene and anecdotes from major movie sets and roles opposite some of Hollywood's biggest film stars – John Leguizamo Diary of a Madman is in turns uproarious and heartfelt, laying it bare for those along for the ride.
STUFFED AND UNSTRUNG in NYC - 2010
DYLAN MORAN LIVE! - 2010
DYLAN MORAN’S stand up shows have sold out across the world. From New York and LA through Europe and onto Australasia MONSTER I, MONSTER II and LIKE TOTALLY have cemented this unkempt wordsmith’s reputation as one of the foremost comics of his generation. Likened to DAVE ALLEN and labeled ‘The Oscar Wilde of Comedy’ DYLAN is unpredictable, bizarre, elegiac, often cruel but above all painfully funny. MORAN sees through the joys and disappointments of human existence with the sensibility and intense perception of a man teetering on the edge. He chews life up and spits it out stamping it into the pavement as he goes. ‘He’s one of a kind”. The Daily Telegraph
JOHN LEGUIZAMO – KLASS KLOWN - 2010
This autobiographically based piece recounted stories and characters from Leguizamo's adolescence in New York to the outrageous theatre scene of the '80s to anecdotes about major movies and roles opposite Hollywood's biggest stars.
CHRISTOPHER TITUS NEVERLUTION - 2011
Edgier and more fearless than ever, comedian Christopher Titus debuts his brand new one-man show, Neverlution,
After taking on family, Armageddon and, most recently, divorce, Christopher Titus is taking on society's complacence and offers solutions that only he could come up with. Interweaving his personal experiences, Titus calls for a revolution against technology, politics, racism, child worship and the prescription drug companies, a revolution he argues we will never have because we are fat, lazy and scared. In Neverlution, Christopher Titus promises to fix the world's problems, one hilarious rant at a time.
EDDIE IZZARD STRIPPED TO THE BOWL - 2011
"British performer Eddie Izzard became not only the first solo comedy act to appear at the Hollywood Bowl, but he also raised the performance bar all the way to where the Bowl ends and the night sky begins.
Embodying myriad human characters and animals as diverse as a speechless giraffe, a journaling giant squid and a squirrel that survived Noah’s ark (“it was a nightmare, man, like ‘Ghost Ship,’ without the gold”), Izzard had no problem filling the Bowl, with his sly wisdom and, more important, cascades of laughter. Though his timing flagged a bit after the intermission, he quickly found his footing and finished to roaring crowds. After one brief encore, he slipped quietly backstage without taking a victory lap. But then again, he didn’t need to" - LA Times
Hailed as one of the foremost stand-ups of his generation, comic genius Eddie Izzard will bring his deliriously, dizzyingly, exhaustively, catch-your-breath funny show to the Bowl.
"L.A. has ridiculous amounts of sunshine — coming from London and from Europe that's completely different. And there's great bits of L.A. that I love to go to. But you have to drive to them. I'm very happy to do stuff in L.A., 'cause I used to be a street performer in London and now to play the Hollywood Bowl, that's great.
"And to play the Hollywood Bowl is like the American dream." - Eddie Izzard
JOHN LEGUIZAMO GHETTO KLOWN ON BROADWAY - 2011
Lyceum Theatre
Conceived and performed by Emmy and Obie Award winner John Leguizamo and directed by Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens.
“Ghetto Klown” is the next chapter in John Leguizamo’s popular personal and professional story. It is his fifth one-man play, his third on Broadway, and follows in the uninhibited tradition of his Mambo Mouth, Spic-O-Rama, Freak, and Sexaholix…a Love Story. In Leguizamo’s trademark style, the piece explodes with energy, heating up the stage with vivid accounts of the colorful characters who have populated his life. He takes audiences from his adolescent memories in Queens to the early days of his acting career and on to the sets of major motion pictures and his roles opposite some of Hollywood's biggest stars.
Leguizamo explains, “Ghetto Klown” is all the things I say to my therapist and my manager, but would never want the general public to know. It’s cheaper than a lawsuit and I get to take a bow at the end. It’s like Wikileaks but with no international manhunt. Yet.”
“Ghetto Klown” was showcased in earlier incarnations in cities including Philadelphia, New Haven, Santa Fe, Louisville, La Jolla, Berkeley, Toronto, and at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival
Henson Alternative’s STUFFED AND UNSTRUNG in San Francisco & tour the US - 2011
What happens when Henson puppeteers are unleashed? You get a new breed of intelligent nonsense with six talented, hilarious, expert puppeteers improvising songs and sketches based on your suggestions! With a motley group of characters brought to life by the world renowned puppeteers of The Jim Henson Company, this is not your average night of improv and it is definitely not for children. But all others are welcome to enjoy the uninhibited anarchy of live puppet performance as never seen before.
SHAUN MAJUMDER This tour has 22 cities - THE ROAD TO MAJUMDER MANOR - 2011
One of Canada’s favorite comedians, Gemini Award winning Actor / Comedian Majumder is fresh off shooting ABC’s show, Detroit 1-8-7, and hurrying home to jump on stage. Majumder has risen as one of this nation’s brightest stars with beloved characters like Raj Binder - the uber-sweaty, much cherished in your face interviewer. On stage he delivers his slice of life commentary in a clever, drenched in wit satirical style.
ERIC IDLE¹S WHAT ABOUT DICK!- 2012 The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles
Eric Idle's New Comedy About an Old Problem
Starring: Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, Tracey Ullman and Sophie Winkleman
'With eight new songs from Eric Idle and John Du Prez, the Grammy-award winning duo who brought you SPAMALOT
The performance of What About Dick? was videotaped and is available for digital download from www.whataboutdick.com
Idle calls it a nice hybrid... It’s got elements of a musical – we have songs – and it’s got elements of a play, but it’s not a play that you have to take completely seriously because it’s a sort of send-up. It has bits of stand-up and improv and these hilarious actors playing multiple roles and doing impersonations. I was laughing so hard there were tears running down my cheek.”
Described by Idle as “Oscar Wilde on acid, or like Downton Abbey, only even funnier,” Dick? begins with the birth of a sex toy invented in Shagistan in 1898, tells the story of the decline of the British Empire as seen through the eyes of a Piano, as well as the story of young Dick, his two cousins and their dipsomaniac Aunt Maggie, who all live together in Kensington in a large, rambling, Edwardian novel. There’s Reverend Whoopsie, a private Dick, the incomprehensible Scottish Inspector McGuffin and the case of the Houndsditch Mutilator. What else do you need to know for six bucks?
SIMON AMSTELL - NUMB- 2012 - 2013
With a hit BBC TV series, Grandma's House and his second critically-acclaimed international theater tour, no one is more successful at being awkward than award-winning comedian Simon Amstell. Skewering his insecurities with a sharp wit and hopeful optimism, Amstell confronts the anxieties of modern life that have left him Numb.
Since April, Simon has been touring Numb through theaters in Australia and the UK to rave reviews and sold-out houses.
A beautifully articulate storyteller, Simon premiered Numb as an intimate BBC TV special on December 31, 2012. Simon’s five-week run of Numb last summer in New York City played to rave reviews and sold-out houses leading The New York Times to compare him to, “a young Woody Allen.” The NYC run followed a three month tour through theaters in the UK and Australia.
Simon premiered his first hour-long TV special, Do Nothing, on BBC America in October 2012. Recorded at Vicar Street, Dublin, Do Nothing captures Simon at his intimate, painfully honest best. “Pin point timing... highly literate and charming... an endearing mixture of offhand candour and sharp wit,” raved critics.
“The real deal. Where philosophy collides with anxiety: where Heidegger meets Woody Allen." - The Guardian
"One of the most elegant, articulate, sensitive and endearing proponents of 'Soul Comedy’ that there is.” – The Scotsman
“Simon Amstell is fast and funny in mind and mouth and is very dangerous in a fist fight if his fists are holding very big knives.” – Eddie Izzard
MARC SALEM¹S MIND OVER MANHATTAN - 2012
World-renowned mentalist Marc Salem will take you on a captivating and surprising journey through the possibilities of the human mind when he returns to New York with a new show “Marc Salem - Mind Over Manhattan.” Produced by Metropolitan Talent and WestBeth Entertainment, “Mind over Manhattan” will delight audiences of all ages with a series of mesmerizing and mystifying mind games.
Using psychological techniques, a sharp eye for human nature, a quick wit and more than 20 years of studying the human mind, Salem creates an astounding, mystifying and often hilarious show having prompted New York critics to hail his sold-out engagement at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre.
Billy Connolly - The Man Live in New York and San Francisco - 2012
His tours in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand sold out within hours, and he last played the US six years ago, enjoying a hit New York engagement in 2006. Hailed as the UK’s most influential comedian of all time, voted best comedian of all time by the UK’s Channel 4, and included as one of the Huffington Post’s favorite UK comedians.
“Bladder-challenging tour de force” Evening Standard (London)
"A SUPERSTAR!" N.Y. Times
"DON'T MISS HIM! Where do hot young comics get their inspiration, they look to legends like Billy Connolly" TimeOut NY
DYLAN MORAN YEAH YEAH 2012 - 2013
Moran’s perspective is unashamedly unique. He observes life through the tinted hue of a glass of fine full-bodied red wine and then paints what he sees onto a deliciously cruel and rich life canvas. Blisteringly funny, and painfully accurate, this is like looking at a Canaletto painting whilst someone simultaneously punches you in the stomach and tickles you breath-less. Called “the Oscar Wilde of Comedy,” by the London Evening News, Moran is universally considered one of the foremost comics of his generation.
Dark, dry and relentlessly sharp, Yeah, Yeah is Dylan Moran’s critically-acclaimed roller coaster ride of emotion, hilarity, poignancy and joy as he deliberates life, love and disappointment with remarkable observation. Dylan toured Yeah, Yeah to sold-out theaters in the UK and Australia and in September, Dylan toured the show through Switzerland, Holland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia and Russia, becoming the first professional English-speaking comedian to perform in Russia.
Regarded internationally as the premier comedian of his generation, Dylan Moran is a comedic force on stage and screen. Dylan received a BAFTA Award for his Channel 4 sitcom, Black Books, and starred in the hugely popular films Shaun of the Dead, Run Fatboy Run and Notting Hill.
For more on Dylan Moran visit www.DylanMoran.com and follow Dylan on Twitter - @TheDylanMoran
‘He’s biting, sarcastic and side-splittingly hilarious!’ – SF Bay Guardian
‘An Original! He transforms the mundane into madcap!’ - NY Times
TREVOR NOAH - BORN A CRIME- 2013
WestBeth Entertainment presents groundbreaking South African comedian, Trevor Noah, in Born A Crime, a four week run at 45 Bleecker in New York City.
Born a mixed-race child under Apartheid in South Africa, Born A Crime is Trevor Noah’s search for identity in a world obsessed with labels. An eloquent comedic storyteller, Noah challenges the status quo through his unique perspective, breaking down cultural flaws on all sides and finding our mutual connections with laughter.
Trevor Noah is a comedian from South Africa who has achieved international acclaim. Releasing five hour-long stand-up specials he’s sold more DVDs than any other standup on that continent; fans recite his performances verbatim, share his clips globally, and have joined him in legions on Facebook and Twitter. Noah has hosted numerous television shows in South Africa, including the country’s music, television and film awards, the South African Comedy Festival, and two seasons of his own late night talk show. He is also the subject of the award-winning film Township to the Stage which tells the story of his remarkable career in post-apartheid South Africa.
For more on Trevor Noah visit www.TrevorNoah.com where you can find links to his Twitter, Facebook and Youtube pages.
EDDIE IZZARD– FORCE MAJEURE in canada - 2013
After selling out Madison Square Garden and also becoming the first stand-up comedian to play a solo show at the Hollywood Bowl, he has set off on the most extensive comedy tour ever, with Eddie globetrotting from Cardiff to Kathmandu, Moscow to Mumbai and now Halifax to Victoria on his Force Majeure World Tour! Just announced, as part of more than 25 countries throughout Europe, Africa, UK, Australia and New Zealand, India, Nepal, The Far East and The United States, Eddie will kick off the Canadian leg of his Force Majeure tour in Halifax, Nova Scotia on November 10th! Having spent time as a teenager in Canada, Eddie is excited to show his Canadian fans his Force Majeure!
“Inspired! Against a set that is part-Avengers, part-Austin Powers, Izzard proves that he’s still frivolous and fleet of foot – even in Cuban heels.” – Said London’s The Independent of Izzard’s Force Majeure.
Success around the world, both on stage and on screen, Eddie Izzard is never one to rest on his laurels. He keeps audiences on the edge of their seats with his bizarre tangential, absurd, and surreal comic narratives that find him espousing his views on Darth Vader, Greek Mythology, human sacrifice and chaos theory, and that’s just the start!
LA SOIREE 2013-2014 - Union Square Theater
La Soirée is the five-star theatrical phenomenon that has won devotees around the world with its lineup of jaw-dropping, singular, sexy and inexplicable acts. La Soirée answers Entertainment Weekly's question, "Are they really going to do that?'' Yes. We are.
Discover the hilarious, decadent and downright dangerous show that EW calls "a mesmerizing hybrid of sideshow, vaudeville & burlesque" and Flavorpill says is "definitely not for kids but oh so much fun for adults."
Experience this unforgettably naughty and hilarious evening of high glamour and low inhibition entertainment before it's too late. Come one, come all and come often to the delicious, deviant and delirious La Soirée.
Had a 6 month run at the Union Square Theatre in NYC.
BILLY CONNOLLY – THE MAN LIVE - 2014
Legendary comedian, Billy Connolly, brings his tour, Billy Connolly: The Man Live, to Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland and Seattle in March.
Hailed as the UK’s most influential comedian of all time, voted best comedian of all time by the UK’s Channel 4, and included as one of the Huffington Post’s favorite UK comedians, Connolly will next be seen in The Hobbit: There and Back Again and What We Did On Our Holiday. He recently voiced the role of King Fergus in Disney Pixar’s hit animated film, Brave, and starred in Quartet directed by Dustin Hoffman.
Billy Connolly is a standup comedian, actor, musician, TV presenter and artist. Born and raised in Glasgow and after serving his apprenticeship as a welder, he became a professional performer in 1962, forming “The Humblebums” band with Gerry Rafferty, before pursuing a solo career as a comedian. Aside from starring in numerous films and TV series, Billy has toured worldwide continuously for the last 50 years, performing to an audience of over 10,000,000. Billy was awarded a CBE in 2003 and was given the Freedom of the City of Glasgow in 2010.
EDDIE IZZARD– FORCE MAJEURE world tour in america – part 1 - 2014
Eddie Izzard will bring his massive Force Majeure world tour to the U.S., visiting 32 cities through the spring with more dates to be announced later this year.
Force Majeure is the most extensive comedy tour ever; launched in March of 2013, the tour will take Izzard to 25 countries on five continents. From Cardiff to Kathmandu and Moscow to Mumbai, Force Majeure will play throughout Europe, Africa, Russia, the U.K., Canada, the U.S., India, Nepal, The Far East and Australia. Izzard recently completed runs in France performing entirely in French and in Berlin performing entirely in German.
One of the most acclaimed comedians of his generation, Izzard’s unique, tangential, absurd, and surreal comic narratives are lauded for their creativity and wit, earning him a New York Drama Desk Award and two Emmys for Dress to Kill, two British Comedy Awards for Top Stand-Up Comedian, and an Olivier Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement.
In the U.S., Izzard is the first solo stand-up comedian to perform at the Hollywood Bowl; has sold-out three consecutive nights at Radio City Music Hall and toured arenas throughout the U.S. including a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.
THE THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR - 2014
Created and written by Hollywood scribes Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, The Thrilling Adventure Hour is a live show performed in the style of an old-time radio broadcast featuring some of the most mind-boggingly talented and respected performers of our time. What makes The Thrilling Adventure Hour so addictive, in part, is that Acker and Blacker have created original serial programs within their show. Performed monthly at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles – and the occasional out-of-town presentations – audience members are graced with episodes of shows like “Beyond Belief” and “The Adventures of Captain Laserbeam” and characters like Sparks Nevada, Croach the Tracker and Frank and Sadie Doyle (played by Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster, photo by Matt Harbicht). But it’s not just the live sold-out shows in Los Angeles; the shows are recorded and presented as The Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast through Nerdist Industries, giving the show comedy cred throughout the world.
GHETTO KLOWN - 2014 Summerstage in Chicago
Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo, who has appeared in more than fifty films and was also seen on Nickelodeon series “The Brothers Garcia,” as well as on “ER” and “Miami Vice,” is also one of the nation’s most accomplished stage performers. “Ghetto Klown” is the next chapter in John Leguizamo’s popular personal and professional story. It is his fifth one-man play, his third on Broadway, and follows in the uninhibited tradition of his “Mambo Mouth,” “Spic-O-Rama,” “Freak,” and “Sexaholix … a Love Story.” In Leguizamo’s trademark style, the piece explodes with energy, heating up the stage with vivid accounts of the colorful characters that populate his life. He takes audiences from his adolescent memories in Queens to the early days of his acting career and on to the sets of major motion pictures. Leguizamo explains, “Ghetto Klown” is all the things I say to my therapist and my manager, but would never want the general public to know. It’s cheaper than a lawsuit and I get to take a bow at the end. It’s like Wiki leaks but with no international manhunt. Yet.”
Puppet Up! - Uncensored November 2014 & March 2015
Marines Memorial in San Francisco & Kirk Douglas Theatre in LA
The grown-ups wing of The Jim Henson Company presents PUPPET UP! - UNCENSORED, the live show that lets loose the perilous and provocative elements of comedy on stage with a bunch of fine-looking puppets. A night of major laughs, not for minors.
A hit in Edinburgh, Toronto, Australia, and all over the US, world-class Henson puppeteers are unleashed in this live, outrageous and very spontaneous show, featuring over 60 original Jim Henson puppets - a motley group of characters - in a night of off the cuff comedy.
Created by award-winning director, producer, and writer Brian Henson and actor, director, and improvisational guru Patrick Bristow (Ellen, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Whose Line Is It Anyway?), PUPPET UP! – UNCENSORED invites audiences to witness the other side of The Jim Henson Company and what happens when the camera stops rolling.
Infinite Monkey Cage
First US Tour
Simon Amstell
To Be Free Tour
Force Macjeure Pt. 2
Oct. - Nov. 2015
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Only when elections are clean and fair, can citizens be real masters of their own destiny and expect holders of public office to act accountably and effectively.
BERSIH started out as the Joint Action Committee for Electoral Reform, which was formed in July 2005, and the coalition’s objective was to push for a thorough reform of the electoral process in Malaysia.
The formulation of the Joint Communique
The Joint Communique was a result of an ‘Electoral Reform Workshop’ held in Kuala Lumpur in September 2006. The Joint Communique defines the long-term objectives and the immediate working goals of the coalition.
BERSIH Steering Committee
The original Committee comprises members from the political parties, as well as representatives from the following NGOs: Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram), Women’s Development Collective (WDC) and Writers Alliance for Media Independence (WAMI).
The Beginning of BERSIH
BERSIH was officially launched on 23 November 2006 in the Malaysian Parliament building lobby. It was attended by political party leaders, civil society groups and NGOs, including PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, PKR vice-president Sivarasa Rasiah, DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng, DAP National Publicity Secretary and MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok, PAS deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa, PAS Youth chief Salahudin Ayub, PSM Secretary-General S. Arutchelvan, Malaysian Trade Union Congress Syed Shahir Syed Mohamud, WDC executive director Maria Chin Abdullah and SUARAM executive director Yap Swee Seng.
Launch of BERSIH 2.0
The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (better known by its Bahasa Malaysia name “BERSIH”) issued its first joint communiqué on 23 November 2006. At its formation, BERSIH comprised civil society organisations and political parties with the objective of campaigning for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. BERSIH’s journey thus far has been both monumental and memorable. The public demonstration of November 2007, which saw thousands of ordinary Malaysians take to the streets in support of clean and fair elections, was a critical juncture in our nation’s electoral journey. Almost 3 ½ years later, the aims of BERSIH remain relevant. The time came for BERSIH to continue its crusade for clean and fair elections independent of any political party. BERSIH was thus re-launched as BERSIH 2.0, a coalition of like-minded civil society organisations unaffiliated to any political party. Our aim is to effectively monitor both sides of the political divide.
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Home / Events / Calendar / Country Music: An Evening with Ken Burns
Country Music: An Evening with Ken Burns
Join Ken Burns, who has produced and directed some of the most critically acclaimed and most watched documentaries in television history, for a special preview of his new project, Country Music on August 20 in Harris Concert Hall.
The evening includes clips from the series as well as commentary from panelists including bassist and composer Edgar Meyer, and AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.
Country Music explores the history of a uniquely American art form. From its deep and tangled roots in ballads, blues, and hymns performed in small settings, to its worldwide popularity, learn how country music evolved over the course of the twentieth century. The eight-part, sixteen-hour series features never-before-seen footage and photographs, plus interviews with more than 80 country music artists. No one has told the story this way before. (Written by Dayton Duncan and produced by Julie Dunfey, Duncan, and Burns.) Country Music premieres on September 15 on PBS. See the trailer here.
Tickets are $200 and net proceeds benefit the AMFS and The Better Angels Society.
Note: AMFS passes are not valid for this co-presentation; all attendees must purchase single tickets.
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Windsor wants Barnaby’s promises kept even if he is ousted on July 2
20/10/2018 admin 南京夜网
Tony Windsor has written to the PM seeking a commitment that Barnaby Joyce’s promises be kept after the electionNew England Independent candidate Tony Windsor has written to the Prime Minister asking him to confirm election promises that Barnaby Joyce has made during the campaign will be kept regardless of who wins the seat on July 2.
Deputy Prime Minister and current member for New England Barnaby Joyce has made a plethora of promises leading up to the July Poll.
Mr Windsor sought assurance in writing from the Prime Minister and is awaiting a response.
“It’s imperative that Prime Minister Turnbull reassures voters that, if his Government is re-elected, all the promises made by his Deputy Barnaby Joyce will be kept, regardless of who becomes the next Member for New England,” he said.
Mr Windsor said he does not want the people of New England to be taken for granted, as happened at the 2013 Election.
“News of my not standing at the 2013 Election saw the withdrawal of funding for the Armidale Hospital, and the Legume to Woodenbong Road in Tenterfield Shire, showing the National Party’s contempt for the people of New England,” he said.
“I was shocked to sit down after the 2013 Election and hear directly from Mr. Joyce that funding for the much needed new Armidale Hospital and the Legume to Woodenbong Road projects had their funding pulled, after I announced that I was not going to re-contest that election.
“For the National Party to go back to taking the people of New England for granted so quickly was disgraceful.”
Mr Windsor said the people of New England have every right to be cynical about the promises, and particularly the timing of the promises.
“If Mr Joyce was serious about looking after the people of New England instead of looking after his own job in Canberra, he would have ensured that all the promises currently being made would have been included in the 2016 Budget, announced only six weeks ago, and had all the paperwork done and signed off on prior to the Government going into caretaker mode,” he said.
Member for New England Barnaby Joyce rebuked Mr Windsor claims and said his promises will be kept if Malcolm Turnbull is the Prime Minister after July 2.
“It is clear these promises will be delivered if the Coalition Government is returned,” he said.
“I am working hard and hope to be returned with the Coalition Government as well.”
Dory’s popularity could be a problem
Concerned: Aquarium owner Jack Tanner with a Blue Tang he has owned for about seven years. Picture: Penny StephensPETowners looking to findDoryare being urged to wait before diving in as there are fears increased demand will cause the RoyalBlueTang’s numbers to dwindle worldwide.
Retailers are also warning beginners to keep away from the fish which they say won’t survive more than six hours in the wrong hands.
The Paracanthurus hepatus is the star of the new Disney Pixar film, FindingDory, which opened in Australia on June 16.
The film has already created a new box office record in the US for the highest opening of an animated film.
The 3D computer animation features the friendly-but-forgetfulDorywho is searching for her parents.
Jack Tanner, aquarium owner, speaking about Blue Tang survival.Finding Nemo, about a clownfish who gets taken from his Great Barrier Reef home to a dentist’s office aquarium.
Finding Nemo grossed just under $US1 billion worldwide and became the best-selling DVD in history. It also led to a 40 per cent increase in the demand for the brightly-coloured fish as a pet, leading to a depletion in stocks.
There are fears the same fate will befall the brightbluecolouredDory.
Flinders University Associate Professor of Conservation Karen Burke da Silva said unlike the clown fish, RoyalBlueTangs could not be bred in captivity, increasing the risks.”At the moment . . . 100 per cent of theBlueTangis taken from the wild,” Burke da Silva said.
Burke da Silva is also the founder of the Saving Nemo project which conducts research into breeding marine aquarium species and stemming their decline. Since its start eight years ago, the project has bred 1000 clown fish for commercial aquariums.
She said, unlike the clown fish, the RoyalBlueTangwere pelagic spawners, who released their eggs and sperm into water. The process was one of the reasons scientists were unable to breed them in captivity.
The tiny size of the larvae was another obstacle for researchers who were unable to find food small enough to feed them. She said even though Australia had sustainable fishing, wild fish should be kept free.
“I think people should wait till we are able to breedBlueTangin captivity,” Burke da Silva said. Butonline classifieds show manyRoyalBlueTangs for sale.
Aquarium owner Jack Tanner in Williamstown, Victoria,said they were expecting inquiry for the RoyalBlueTangto go up by “300 per cent”.He said they were educating customers about the difficulties of keepingDoryas a pet.”They can live up to 10 to 15 years,” he said. “If they are in the wrong hands, they won’t even last six hours.”
School holiday movie guide, page 27.
Luke’s long-lasting union with the Latrobe Valley
Luke Van Der Meulen
IT was at the advent of the power industry’s privatisation that Luke van der Meulen became an unintentional unionist.
Working as a unit controller at Loy Yang and armed with an associate engineering supervision qualification, he was certain to become an advanced engineer.
But when the State Electricity Commission of Victoria announced plans to cut 20 per cent of its 22,000 workers in 1988, he reluctantly stood for the honorary position of the FEDFA sub-branch, which later became the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.
“If you want a history of the Latrobe Valley power industry, I’ve been involved in every power industry negotiation since 1989,” Mr van der Meulen said, reflecting on his career at the Latrobe Valley’s CFMEU.
“Not some, all of them.”
Tomorrow will mark Mr van der Meulen’s final day as president of the CFMEU Victorian District mining and energy division, a role he has held since 2001.
From a scantly publicised ‘Rally in the Valley’ protest in 1990 attracting 4000 workers, family members and the community opposing proposed privatisation plans, to the historical 100-day lockout at Yallourn in 2013, he’s fought to maintain Latrobe Valley jobs against the odds.
The self-described “activist” has combatted for better worker conditions in countless enterprise bargaining agreements, campaigned against workforce casualisation and foreign contractors to keep jobs local and sought political support for future industries and a transition to a diversified regional economy.
Few stories better show his resolve than the Yallourn W enterprise bargaining agreement that escalated to an industrial blackout across Victoria in 2000.
Mr van der Meulen remembers members holding a mass meeting at the Morwell Bowling Club calling for the immediate shut down of all power stations.
As generators wound down, he brokered a deal with then Member for McMillan Christian Zahra and former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks from his home telephone to protect workers from being sued if they returned to work.
But the following morning, writs were issued to 13 employees and unionists, including a $40 million dollar indictment and injunctions against him, later dropped in 2002.
“It was serious, but the Commissioner who terminated the agreement later said to me, ‘Do you know where I was the night you shut down the power industry? I was having dinner out with my wife and everything went black’.”
Still, he says he has always done everything to avoid industrial disputes.
“The power stations are big companies that are heavily resourced with many people at their beck and call,” Mr van der Meulen said.
“It should be avoided at all costs, but if you have to have a blue, you have to have a blue and be completely committed to it.”
Early years in the ValleyBorn in the Netherlands in the mining town of Valkenburg, Mr van der Meulen’s Latrobe Valley childhood began when his father moved to work at the gas and fuel factory as a payroll officer.
Never one for “regimentation”, he said he struggled in the Catholic education system attending St Vincent’s Primary School and later Morwell Technical High School.
He could barely read when he left school and found work at Lyndale Poultry farm in Morwell bagging chicken manure for six-pence and the Alexandra Road sawmill before securing an apprenticeship at the SECV when he was 16 years old.
In his second year of his boilermaker apprenticeship at the Morwell workshops, key union delegate and leader of the 13-week 1977 maintenance strike, Sammy Armstrong, taught him how to read.
Mr van der Meulen said the renowned communist never put anything political in front of him, but taught him how to read the headlines in the ‘brew room’ and engaged him in anti-war thinking and activism.
He remembers Sammy musing, “I don’t know why they’re sending all these soldiers to Vietnam to kill communists 3000 miles away when they’re bypassing me 100 miles away from Melbourne”.
“I went from not being able to wait to get there (Vietnam) to becoming a protestor and being involved in the early moratorium against the Vietnam War,” Mr van der Meulen said.
An unintentional unionistAlthough never identifying as a communist, Mr van der Meulen’s political views and opinions have not always been readily accepted.
Looking at the privatisation of global economies under politicians such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and United States President Ronald Reagan, Mr van der Meulen said he could foresee the privatisation of the power industry to others’ dismay.
“People called me a ‘knuckle dragger’, a Neanderthal and a fool. I couldn’t get anyone to listen to anything I had to say.”
In 1996 he stood for the seat of McMillan as a Greens candidate against Labor’s Barry Cunningham and the SECV’s “pain today for gain tomorrow” privatisation slogan.
He said the Greens’ principles of democracy, peace and social justice resonated with him.
“In those days, if you were breathing and upright… they were that desperate for candidates,” Mr van der Meulen joked.
Despite environmental policies like carbon pricing posing a threat to local jobs, he has also been a long-time advocate of the region’s transition to renewable technologies.
Sitting down with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the CFMEU Latrobe Valley headquarters in Morwell in 2011, he stressed his support for a carbon trading scheme hinged on a community not to be left behind again.
He believes many of his views deemed “idiotic” at the time turned out to be right, including the injustice of the Vietnam War and a long-term transition away from coal.
“My members have not always wanted to be represented this way, and it’s a bit of a paternalistic view, but I feel it’s in their long-term interest,” he said.
“I’ve always been convinced of the problems of CO2 emissions before (joining) the Greens and long before I was in a union office.”
Looking to the futureOutside the confines of the wooden-panelled, 1960s boardrooms of the former SECV that became the CFMEU headquarters at Lignite Court, Morwell, Mr van der Meulen has also advocated for mine regulation, rehabilitation and a transitioned economy away from coal mining.
Long before the reopened Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry addressed mine rehabilitation last year, he attributed disasters like the closure of the Princes Highway tumbling into the Hazelwood mine, the catastrophic collapse of the Latrobe River into the Yallourn coal mine and the Hazelwood mine fire as examples of State Government due-diligence failures.
“We publicly highlighted that it was not a case of the Latrobe River flooding and bursting its banks, but an instance of the state regulator failing to stop the mine encroaching on the river under the mine,” Mr van der Meulen said.
Similarly he said the 2014 mine fire would have never happened if the regulator had insisted on mine rehabilitation.
“Had we not raised the question of rehabilitation as a result of the Morwell mine fire, people would have been talking about pollution and smoke and how bad the Victorian Health Department let us down,” he said.
Later he called on the State Government to fast track the rehabilitation of Latrobe Valley’s disused sections of coal mines to create excavation jobs for the region.
He said the union was more than just fighting for power station jobs, but also for the community.
In order to look after his members he said he had to support the community in which they lived and the place where their kids went to school.
The struggles aheadOn the heels of power station closures in Anglesea, Port Augusta as well as the Energy Brix site in Morwell, Mr van der Meulen retires as the Latrobe Valley power industry faces perhaps its greatest challenge of all.
As rumours continue to circulate about a phase down at Hazelwood and Yallourn power stations, he acknowledges the region’s economy is still heavily dependent on the jobs and incomes generated by the power stations and mine workers.
“Losing just one of those 1500 jobs to us is important and damages the community and we think we’re obligated to struggle for those jobs for future generations,” Mr van der Meulen said. “It’s a community question, I think.”
Trevor Williams has been elected to replace Mr van der Meulen. Read his story in Monday’s Express.
The severed pinky, the glass eye and the drug debt
Newcastle courthouse. A MAN who had his little finger chopped“clean off” by a machete over an unpaid drug debtwas also stabbed repeatedly while asleep on a lounge in April, according to court documents.
David Alexander Sharp, 37,appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday accused of“organising and facilitating” the second alleged attack on the 26-year-old man at Mr Sharp’s Balemo Crescenthome on June 16.
He chose to represent himself from the dock during a bail application, telling Magistrate Robert Stone his prosthetic eye had fallen out and smashed on Tuesday night and he required urgent medical attention.
He also told the court he was unaware there was going to be“an act of violence”at his house when he invited the alleged victim over.
Mr Sharp has been charged with causinggrievous bodily harm to a person with intent and police allege he acted in company with the alleged attacker, Paul Dargan.
Mr Dargan, 22, who ischarged with the same offence, appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Monday and was refused bail to re-appear on July 6.
According to police facts,Mr Dargan was also allegedlyresponsible for the first attack on the 26-year-old manat a home in Tahlee Street at Windale on April 1.
On that occasion the 26-year-old was allegedly woken up by being punched in the head before he was stabbed three times in the arms with a knife.
Police allege the dispute stems from $150 worth of the drug ice owed by the alleged 26-year-old victim to a Windale drug dealer.
On June 16, the 26-year-old was allegedly contacted via Facebook by Mr Sharp,who said he had a buyer who was looking to purchase three-and-a-half grams of the drug ice for $1200.
The two men planned to sell the drugs and split the profits.
But when the 26-year-old arrived at Mr Sharp’s home, Mr Dargan allegedly leapt out from behind a sheet and charged at the alleged victim with a machete.
According to police facts, Mr Dargan said: “Where’s the f—ing drugs c—?” and “Do you think I’m f—ing around?”
He is then alleged to have swung the machete at the 26-year-old’s head, who pulled out of the way and put his hand up to protect himself.
Court documents state the 70 centimetreblade struck the victim’s left hand and chopped his little finger“clean off”.
The 26-year-old was also allegedly struck with the machete to the left leg and right hand.
The cut to his hand severedan artery, causing blood to spurt from the wound, court documents state.
The blow also severed tendons in his right forearm and hand and the 26-year-old has no feeling or use in his right hand, court documents state.
The 26-year-old was bleeding so much that he wasallowed to leave and call an ambulance.His finger was unable to be reattached.
Magistrate Stone refused Mr Sharp bail, citing the seriousness of the allegations and the need to protect the community.The matter was adjourned to August.
Susan Sarandon stuns in new Marc Jacobs campaign
Susan Sarandon has been photographed in a stunning portrait for Marc Jacob’s Fall 2016 collection.
The 69-year-old actress, who is known for her roles in Thelma & Louise and Dead Man Walking, was captured by photographer David Sims in a picture published to the brand’s and the designer’s personal Instagram accounts on Tuesday.
Jacobs wrote alongside the image that he “fell in love” with Sarandon’s portrayal of Janet in the 1975 cult classic film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“[The film] became an invitation (or excuse) to dress up and express oneself fearlessly,” he wrote, adding that the film “made it cool for boys to wear sequins, satin and fishnets”.
“It was in my early days at [US menswear brand] Perry Ellis when I first had the privilege of meeting Susan. Her intelligence, courage, strength, conviction and ballsiness has always been so admirable to me. There’s an inherent seductive quality in Susan as a woman who always speaks her mind and an artist who takes risks.” SUSAN, Seduction Like so many teenagers, I spent countless Friday and Saturday nights at midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the 8th Street Playhouse (which is still standing!) and the Festival Theatre on 57th Street (which has long since closed). TRHPS was a coming of age and right of passage. It became an invitation (or excuse) to dress up and express oneself fearlessly. The cult classic made it cool for boys to wear sequins, satin and fishnets. I fell in love with Susan Sarandon’s onscreen portrayal of Janet during her “loss of innocence” scene by way of a crossdressing alien and her giddy, ecstatic rendition of, “touch-a, touch-a, touch me…” There was a subtle rebellious quality that I found in Susan with how she chose to play Janet and perhaps (as I now look back on it) her decision as a young actor to take a role in a film that challenged the notion of gender roles. In the hyper-stylized, gothic film, The Hunger, Susan’s portrayal as the lesbian love interest of vampire Catherine Deneuve was yet another progressive challenging of normal and a testament to Susan’s artistic exploration of boundaries. It was in my early days at Perry Ellis when I first had the privilege of meeting Susan. Her intelligence, courage, strength, conviction and ballsiness has always been so admirable to me. There’s an inherent seductive quality in Susan as a woman who always speaks her mind and an artist who takes risks. Her talent as an actress is one of extraordinary range, talent and power. The stunning Susan Sarandon by David Sims for our Fall ’16 ad campaign.A photo posted by Marc Jacobs (@themarcjacobs) on Jun 28, 2016 at 7:14am PDT
Sarandon tweeted that she “had so much fun” at the shoot.So proud to be in the company of @marcjacobs. Had so much fun! https://t.co/xUeJ6c5Xsy— Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) June 28, 2016
The actress joins Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne and Missy Elliott, who have also posed for the fashion house’s Fall 2016 campaign.
The Marc Jacobs gig comes after Sarandon was announced as the face of L’Oreal Paris in January.
The picture even won the approval of British journalist and television personality Piers Morgan, who famously criticised Sarandon for wearing a similar neckline to the SAG Awards in February, where she was due to present the awards’ In Memoriam segment.She (@SusanSarandon) looks fabulous. Just hope she doesn’t wear that to speak at a funeral/memorial. https://t.co/RttKmFILHL— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 28, 2016
The Border Mail Election Guide 2016MURRAY
Panel to assist with Harden Piggery application
YOUR SAY – THE ELECTION
Sunshine Bay residents not convinced
Riverina gets creative in love search
Design: WebMotive
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The Bethlehem Land Trust is dedicated to the preservation and conservation of farmland, undeveloped forests, and open space in the town of Bethlehem. The lands we protect fall into two categories:
Land Trust Ownership (owned by the Trust outright)
Conservation Easement (remains privately owned)
Land Trust Ownership
The Bethlehem Land Trust acquires land through outright donation by a property owner or, as our funds permit, by purchase. We provide stewardship for all properties we own, and offer public access to them where feasible. Property given to the Land Trust may be named after the donor if he or she so wishes.
Conservation Easement
A conservation easement or conservation restriction is a legal agreement between the landowner and the Land Trust that permanently limits the way the land may be used in order to protect its conservation value. The property remains privately owned and the owner may live on it if desired. Easements may be structured to meet the specific and mutual needs of the owner and the Land Trust. For farmland, an easement generally allows agricultural activity to continue. A conservation easement is permanent and should the landowner wish to sell or bequeath the property, the easement will pass to the new owner, who must honor it.
The Land Trust does not provide stewardship for eased properties but is required by law to monitor them at least once a year to see that the easement is being honored. Public access to eased land is generally not granted, although the landowner may offer access on an occasional or permanent basis, if he or she wishes.
The Bethlehem Land Trust is a not-for-profit 501c3 organization. All donations to the Trust are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Tax benefits vary with the type of donation and the circumstances at the time of the gift.
An outright donation of property may provide the donor with significant tax benefits, which can be structured and scheduled in various ways. Similar benefits accrue to a sale that is priced below market value.
Conservation easements offer tax benefits on both the federal and local level. The easement itself may be considered a charitable contribution and the designation may lower property taxes. A conservation easement may also reduce estate taxes. The specific benefits will vary depending on the value and circumstances at the time the easement is created and when the property passes to your heirs.
The Land Trust Alliance
The Bethlehem Land Trust is a member of the The Land Trust Alliance, a national organization representing more than 1,700 land trusts across America. The Land Trust Alliance advocates for public policies that support land trusts’ conservation goals, including increased land conservation funding and improved
tax incentives so that more landowners can afford to choose conservation.
For the latest news on conservation policy, tax benefits, and more detailed land preservation information, visit the Land Trust Alliance website: http://www.landtrustalliance.org/
We can explain the legal
and tax implications of land conservation and help you choose the option best for you. Should you wish to donate now or through your estate planning, we will assist and facilitate the process. Contact us.
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Home / Famous & Infamous Cases / Serial Killer Kenneth McDuff
At age 28, Bill was appointed to be the first federal prosecutor to serve the Central Texas area. For the next 14 years, Bill would serve as a supervisory Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Department of Justice.
Texas serial killer, Kenneth McDuff, had been improperly released from Texas prison. McDuff began to kill again. Bill and the McNamara brothers – two United States Marshalls from Waco, Texas lead a six-week manhunt for McDuff. With the help of John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted,” McDuff was captured in Kansas City, Missouri. Several murders were solved and a number of bodies were found during the manhunt. The efforts of Johnston and the McNamara’s are chronicled in the book Bad Boy from Rosebud. During the search for McDuff, it was determined that the chairman of the Texas Parole Board had released McDuff without good cause. An investigation ensued, and Bill Johnston ultimately prosecuted Dr. James Granbury, the now-former chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Also during the McDuff manhunt, it was revealed that no agency was responsible for locating Texas fugitive parolees. Bill Johnston had an idea. He proposed to Texas Governor, Ann Richards, that a group of experienced lawmen be formed to track down and arrest Texas’ most dangerous fugitives. Ann Richards loved the idea. She quickly formed what became known as “The Governor’s Fugitive Squad.” The group, in modified form, still exists today and has been responsible for arresting thousands of Texas fugitives.
The McDuff story has been depicted on a number of national television broadcasts including the Discovery channel, Dateline NBC and the ABC show 20-20. The McDuff story has also been the subject of two Texas Monthly articles.
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‘I felt one squiggle’: Woman pulls over a dozen worms from her eye after rare infection
Posted 6:44 pm, February 12, 2018, by Jeremy Tanner, Updated at 06:46PM, February 12, 2018
OREGON – Imagine looking into your irritated eye for a pesky eyelash, only to pull out a translucent, wiggling worm nearly a half inch long.
“I looked at it, and it was moving,” recalled 28-year-old Abby Beckley of Grants Pass, Oregon. “And then it died within about five seconds.”
Now, imagine doing that not once but 14 times.
An Oregon woman discovered she had live worms in her eye, leading to a unique discovery https://t.co/KBNiVOkNng pic.twitter.com/l9JL5jymUU
— CNN (@CNN) February 12, 2018
That’s what Beckley endured over a three-week period in August 2016. Her story, published Monday as a case report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a historic one:
“This is only the 11th time a person has been infected by eye worms in North America, ” explained lead author Richard Bradbury, who is the team lead for the CDC’s Parasite Diagnostics and Biology Laboratory. “But what was really exciting it that it is a new species that has never infected people before. It’s a cattle worm that somehow jumped into a human.”
A summer adventure
Growing up on a ranch in Brookings, Oregon, surrounded by cattle and horses, Beckley loved the outdoors. She also had a burning desire to travel. So, in July 2016, she jumped at a chance to combine the two by working on a commercial salmon fishing boat in Craig, Alaska. It was only a couple of weeks into the job that the symptoms started.
“My left eye just got really irritated and red, and my eyelid was droopy,” Beckley remembered. “I was getting migraines too, and I was like, ‘What is going on?’ ”
She’d been suffering for five days when the ship finally returned to port. Beckley found a good mirror and looked closely into her eye, never expecting what she would find.
“I pulled down the bottom of my eye and noticed that my skin looked weird there,” Beckley said. “So I put my fingers in with a sort of a plucking motion, and a worm came out!
“I was just in shock,” she said. “I ran into my crewmate Allison’s room, and I said, ‘I need you to see this! I just pulled a worm out of my eye!’ ”
Believing it to be a salmon worm, the women feverishly searched for similar cases on the internet but could find nothing. Visits to a local doctor and ophthalmologist also proved fruitless.
“They said they had never seen anything like this,” Beckley said, adding that during that time, she pulled another four worms from her eye. “And then I could see them moving across my eye at that point, too. There were so many.”
Worried family and friends encouraged her to return home and set up an appointment at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. She went directly there from the airport.
“There were several doctors examining my eye, and at first, they were a bit skeptical, because who comes in and claims they have a worm in their eye?” Beckley remembered. “I am thinking to myself, ‘Worms, please show up,’ because sometimes they would go behind my eye and under the eyelid, and you couldn’t see or feel them anymore.”
Luckily, she says, after a half-hour, the worms made an appearance.
“I felt one squiggle across my eye, and I told the doctors, ‘You need to look right now!’ ” Beckley said. “I’ll never forget the expression on their faces as they saw it move across my eye.”
‘I tried not to go to the darkest place’
While some of the worms Beckley removed were sent off to the CDC for identification, she frequently visited the university for vision tests and eye washes designed to flush out additional worms. Although her vision remained fine, the flushes were unsuccessful.
“I just kept pulling the worms out of my eye at home, but when I went to the office, they would flush, and nothing would come out,” Beckley said. “They were trying to figure out what to do because there was no road map, no protocol for this.”
The worst part, she says, was wondering what the worms might do to her body, “so close to my brain and eyes.”
“I tried not go to the darkest place, like, are these worms going to paralyze my face or infect my brain or impact my vision?” she said. When a doctor explained that the worms would remain on the surface of her eye, she calmed down.
“I was definitely in distress, for sure, but I also started making jokes, because I had to, to deal with it,” Beckley said. “It’s so gross to think about, but it was happening to me.”
‘Fascinating ecological niche’
Parasitic eye worms are common among dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and wild carnivores like foxes and wolves. The larvae are transmitted by female “face flies” that feed on the animal’s eye secretions.
“Tears are full of proteins of various kinds, so the flies get a lot of nourishment from those tears,” explained Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University’s Division of Infectious Diseases, who was not involved in Beckley’s case. “For a scientist, it’s a fascinating ecological niche.”
The worm larvae grow into adulthood and reproduce between the eye and the eyelid. Their offspring leave the host’s body via more secretions from the inflamed eye, which the flies ingest, completing the life cycle.
“The early-stage larvae need to go through the fly’s digestive system to be able to develop to a more advanced stage to infect another host,” Bradbury explained. “It’s a complicated life cycle.”
Veterinarians treat the infection in pets and livestock with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. But in untreated animals, Bradbury says, the worms can live and reproduce up to 30 months, leading to vision loss or even blindness.
People infected by the parasite typically don’t suffer that fate, because, like Beckley, they can remove the worms from their eyes.
Unraveling a medical mystery
When the worms from Beckley’s eye arrived at the CDC’s diagnostic lab, scientists were expecting to find a species of the Thelazia parasite called californiensis. That’s what infected the eyes of the 10 cases found in the US: nine from California and one from Utah.
“It’s an eye worm that often infects dogs and very occasionally affects humans,” the CDC’s Bradbury explained. “Another type of eye worm called callipaeda, found in Asia and Europe, has also infected people, but it’s also rare, with only about 163 reported cases in the world.”
Most cases of human infection around the world occur in poor, rural communities among the very young and elderly, who may be less able to keep flies from their face. But not always. In 2015, a 21-year-old South Korean soldier developed eye worms from the Asian strain, callipaeda, after multiple brief contacts with a dog in his father’s factory.
“He recalled nothing abnormal about the dog,” said Dr. Kyungmin Huh, a South Korean doctor who wrote about the case in the New England Journal of Medicine. “But I should note that previous reports show that patients cannot remember how it was transmitted in the majority of cases.”
Beckley has no memory of any fly landing close to or in her eye.
“It makes me curious if there was someone else who had this happen but wasn’t seen by a doctor,” she mused. “The only reason that I knew the cause is that I physically pulled one out of my eye.”
Schaffner agreed: “Dollars to doughnuts, there were people in the past that had these infections but were never specifically diagnosed. Here, we have someone who developed this unusual infection, and the physicians were interested enough to send the materials to the CDC, where they have extraordinary diagnostic abilities.”
Without that expertise, says Schaffner, investigators may have never noticed the small differences in the anatomy of the worms from Beckley’s eye.
“Something was strange about it,” Bradbury said, “and we had to go digging to find out what it was. I finally found the microscopic pictures I needed to find the exact species in a paper written in German in 1928.”
Bradbury says the species, Thelazia gulosa, is unique to cattle and has never before been seen in a human eye. That means Beckley was infected by cattle near her home, before she left for Alaska.
“It’s possible that there are cases that were misdiagnosed as another species of the worm, californiensis, because people just assume that it will be,” Bradbury said. “But through our work, we were able to understand that a brand-new species can now infect people who are around cattle.”
The end of a nightmare
Beckley was not treated with anti-parasitic medicine because doctors were worried that a dead worm might remain in her eye, possibly causing scarring. Instead, she was told to continue to monitor her eyes and remove any worms she found. How did she handle the uncertainty?
“You can go into ‘Poor me, Oh, my God, I’m going to let this destroy me,’ or you can just think, ‘OK, these are worms, and now I know the life cycle, and I know that they will die, and they are just sharing space,’ ” she said. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t grossed out! It doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry! But I would try to self-soothe and put it in perspective.”
Twenty days after pulling the first worm from her eye, Beckley discovered the final wiggling worm. Once that was out, her ordeal was over. She knows because she’s not found another since. Her vision remains good, with no other complications.
But why go public with her story?
“Part of the reason I’m speaking out is that I had wished I could find one article or source that would reassure me this happened to someone else and they are fine,” Beckley said. “if this does happen again, I’m hoping my story will be out there for the next person to find.”
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Woman wakes up from back surgery to find her kidney had been removed
WELLINGTON, Fla. – Imagine going to the hospital to have back surgery, only to wake up and learn one of your major organs was mistakenly removed.
That nightmare was a reality for one West Palm Beach woman at Wellington Regional Medical Center, according to WPTV.
“It was an ordinary day,” described Maureen Pacheco, who was 51 when it happened back in April 2016.
Pacheco was suffering from back pains from a car accident and after a lengthy process and diagnosis from her doctors, she was checked into Wellington Regional to have back surgery to help with the pains.
“There was no red flags or anything,” she said of the day she went into the operating room.
But she ended up leaving the hospital without one of her healthy kidneys. One of the surgeons, Dr. Ramon Vazquez, mistook it for a cancerous tumor and removed it from her body without her consent.
“He just took my life and just dismissed it,” said Pacheco.
Pacheco recently settled in a lawsuit against her doctors — Dr. John Britt and Dr. Jeffrey Kugler — and Dr. Vazquez.
However, a complaint by the Florida Department of Health is still ongoing. Adding to the frustration, Pacheco says Dr. Vazquez wasn’t even her doctor — his job was just to cut her open so her physicians could perform the back surgery.
“If he would have looked at the MRIs that were given to him, he would’ve realized it,” she said.
According to the state’s health department website, Dr. Vazquez has an active medical license.
The site shows him practicing at with Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, and Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach.
“Physicians do get second chances,” said Pacheco’s attorney, Donald Ward III of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, PA in West Palm Beach.
“It’s unlikely that he would lose his license over something like this. What is most likely is that he would face a fine and possibly be required to do some continuing medical education so that he could learn not to make the same mistake in the future,” he added.
Ward said Dr. Vazquez would have to pay that fine out of pocket because he didn’t have malpractice insurance.
“What is not common is for you to meet that general surgeon the morning of and be told that if something were to happen to you, that general surgeon doesn’t carry any health insurance whatsoever,” he said.
Dr. Vazquez’s attorney, Mike Mittelmark, said his client settled the matter for a nominal amount due to the uncertainty of litigation. He added that in no way did Dr. Vazquez admit liability by agreeing to the settlement.
“I wish no ill will against him. Everyone is entitled to their livelihood but you should have consequences when gross mistakes and negligence are made,” said Pacheco. “I just wish that he learns a lesson from the consequences.”
Pacheco said no amount of money will fix the complications she faces for the rest of her life.
“It’s always in the back of my mind — lifelong kidney transplant or dialysis,” she said. “Now, I’m always fearful.”
Wellington Regional Medical Center issued this statement in response to WPTV’s request for comment:
Dr. Vazquez is not and has never been an employee of Wellington Regional Medical Center. Dr. Vazquez was an independent physician with medical staff privileges at Wellington Regional as well as other hospitals in Palm Beach County. Dr. Vazquez is no longer on the medical staff of Wellington Regional. Wellington Regional took all necessary and appropriate steps to review the circumstances of this most unfortunate incident. In the over 30 year history of Wellington Regional Medical Center, an incident of this nature has never occurred before or since.
Dr. Vazquez could not be reached for comment.
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Review: Surf Harp – Mr. Big Picture
Wednesday, February 21st, 2018 by Cara Hullings
Photo by Micah E. Wood
Artist: Surf Harp
Album: Mr. Big Picture
Release Date: 2/23
LIYL: Talking Heads, The Strokes
Surf Harp’s sophomore album, Mr. Big Picture, is a new, unique sound for the 5-piece local band. Drawing from their garage pop origins as well as their psychedelic 90’s sound from their first LP, Peel, Surf Harp has finally found their own rhythm. This new album perfectly blends their previous style with a hint of 80’s new wave in sound and in concept. A lot of the tracks take the average aspects of a mundane office life and make it interesting by exploring concepts that are not-so-mundane like not fitting in, death, and even what seems to me like dissociation. Such lyrical writing reminds me of Talking Heads, which is exactly what this self-proclaimed art rock band is going for.
Their song writing blends perfectly with these new wave lyrical themes. Mr. Big Picture not only includes varying, layered vocals, synth, and layered guitar, but it also experiments with distorted, lo-fi samples from everyday objects, such as a vacuum cleaner and power tools. Such experimentation allows each song to have its own personality, giving the album a holistic integrity as an art piece. My favorites are “D.I. Cig,” “Mirror Maze,” which makes you want to dance with its post-punk feel and alternating vocals, as well as “Mr. Big Picture,” which gives you the band’s pop roots with an art twist. However, all the tracks rock in their own way, making this an album you absolutely need to listen to. Find it here on Friday when it’s released by Friends Records or on iTunes. The record release party is being held at The Windup Space on Friday night.
Posted in Featured, Music, News, Reviews | No Comments »
Review: Marty O’Reilly & The Old Soul Orchestra
Saturday, February 10th, 2018 by Kaili McDonald
Artist: Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra
Album: Stereoscope
RIYL: Civil Wars, The Dead Tongues, Bon Iver
I have the chills, but that’s not because this winter has been brutally frigid here in Baltimore. In my short life, I have found that great music is goosebump-inflicting, and I am afflicted, thanks to Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra. Released on February 9, 2018, Stereoscope is the four-piece’s second full album. Compared to Stereoscope‘s predecessor, Pray for Rain, which has a lot of blues and traditional folk influences, Stereoscope sounds like Bon Iver with a twist. Stereoscope has a lot more string instruments, modern folk influences, and light rock influences. All in all, it’s a great album to listen to while reading (or prepping for a philosophy exam), in bed, under the covers, on a rainy Saturday. Here’s why: (more…)
Posted in Music, New Releases, Reviews, Top 40 | No Comments »
Review: American Pets – Bad Dream
Wednesday, February 7th, 2018 by Kaili McDonald
Artist: American Pets
Album: Bad Dream-Single
RIYL: The Republic Tigers, The Little Ones, Matt Pond PA
Released: January 5, 2018
Do you ever hear a song by a band you’ve never heard of, get excited to look them up to see what else they’ve recorded, and find squat? This is what happened when I looked up American Pets . So, here’s what I know: American Pets classify themselves as a four-piece indie-rock band, they originate from Los Angeles, California, “Bad Dream” is the only song that they have released, but they are releasing their very first EP later this month. “Bad Dream” has me highly anticipating the EP’s release. (more…)
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Review: Captain, We’re Sinking – The King of No Man
Tuesday, January 30th, 2018 by Kaili McDonald
Captain, We’re Sinking
The King of No Man
Rate: 10/10
RIYL: The Menzingers, The Wonder Years, The Descendents
As a whole The King of No Man definitely has a softer tone than Captain, We’re Sinking’s last album, The Future Is Cancelled, which was released in 2013. Despite this, The King of No Man is still very distinctly the punk sound of Captain, We’re Sinking. Overall, the album has mellow verses with heavier choruses. This album’s tracks have similar sounds to that of The Wonder Years, Knuckle Puck, The Gaslight Anthem, classic punk bands such as The Rites of Spring and The Descendents, and complimenting other out-of-genre influences. I feel like this album is like the Thanksgiving meal of punk; there’s so many sub-genre punk tracks that work deliciously well together. Below is just a taste of what the album is like: (more…)
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Review: Anderson East – Encore
Wednesday, January 24th, 2018 by Kaili McDonald
Artist: Anderson East
Album: Encore
RIYL: James Morrison, Passenger, John Mayer, Ray LaMontagne
As the boyfriend of one of my favorite country artists, Miranda Lambert, Anderson East is a person of my special interest. There’s something about this soulful singer’s voice that makes it clear why Lambert swoons over him—it’s downright gorgeous with just a touch of a rocker’s raspy-ness. From the beginning, Encore has a funkier and more upbeat and in-your-face sound than East’s previous album, Delilah. Still, Encore is not without a few of Anderson East’s signature style consisting of slower love songs. A lot of different (and great) components of the album remind me of the 60s and 70s funk-rock and The Temptations. With co-writers such as pop artist Ed Sheeran, country artist Chris Stapleton, and Nashville songwriter Aaron Raitiere, this album is pure beauty. In this way, Anderson East takes southern soul and twists it making his music accessible to listeners of many different genres. (more…)
Review: Spice Boys – Glade
Artist: Spice Boys
Album: Glade
Label: Punk Slime Recordings
RIYL: FIDLAR, WAVVES, Together PANGEA
Rate: 9/10
When I first heard of the band Spice Boys, I was immediately intrigued and “Wannabe” by Spice Girls starting playing in my head. To my surprise, the Spice Boys are nothing like their flavorful, female, predecessors. Spice Boys released their first EP in 2016. After signing to Punk Slime Recordings shortly after this, Spice Boys have blessed us with their newest album, Glade. The whole album is full of distortion of all aspects of the songs—the vocals, the guitar, even the drums sound more static-y than normal. This Swedish garage rock band’s sound makes me think of kicking up some trouble with my friends on the beach in the summer. The use of echoes and wa-wa-like effects in all of the tracks just gives the album a really fun-inspiring. The fast-paced and upbeat songs make you want to dance like a fool. (more…)
Review: Shooter Jennings and Jason Boland – Baltimore Soundstage
Sunday, December 10th, 2017 by Kaili McDonald
On December 6, 2017, Shooter Jennings and Jason Boland rocked the Soundstage on the very first night of their joint tour. The opener was Sean K. Preston (not Britney Spears’ son as he mentioned) and he was equally as amazing. With a sound somewhere between Johnny Cash and Elvis, songs of divorce and snakeskin boots, and incredible vibrato, Preston set the stage perfectly for Shooter and Boland. Preston’s classic country sound complimented the mellowness of the genuinely heartfelt performance that ensued. (more…)
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Hitting the Jackpot with The Yardbirds
Friday, August 11th, 2017 by The Professor
The Yardbirds mark their premiere appearance in Atlantic City
by Radio RockonTour host Timothy Tilghman
Formed in London in 1963, The Yardbirds finally debuted in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Friday, July 7, 2017, among the assorted characters who gamble their fortunes on the turn of a card. The talented musicians appeared at the Resorts Superstar Theater anchored by original drummer Jim McCarty who is the last founding member of The Yardbirds. (more…)
Earth People! The Triumphant Return of Dr. Octagon
Monday, June 26th, 2017 by The Professor
by Earl Crown, host of Crucial Cuts on WLOY
On June 4th 2017, Kool Keith (aka Dr. Octagon) came to Baltimore Soundstage with his hip-hop super-group, and reminded us why we loved Dr. Octagon in the first place. His 1996 album, Dr. Octagonecologyst, is considered by many to be among the most important albums of that decade and a must-own LP for any serious fan of the genre. With the help of producer and DJ Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, as well as world-class turntablist DJ Qbert, Octagon was able recreate the genius of his groundbreaking 1996 album on stage.
The Dr. Octagon tour features an all-star stage band, with a live drummer and bass player, along with two DJs, the aforementioned Dan the Automator and DJ Qbert. The set list for the Baltimore Soundstage show included many tracks from the Dr. Octagonecologyst album, including “3000”, “Earth People” and “Bear Witness”. The appreciative crowd got especially wild for “Blue Flowers,” a fan-favorite from the 1996 release. (more…)
Pretty Don amazing: Don Broco Live
Thursday, May 11th, 2017 by Margaret Jokoh
The British rock band, Don Broco, has been around since 2008, but have just embarked on their first US tour. Aside from having the pleasure of interviewing the band, I had the opportunity of seeing them live at Baltimore Soundstage.
Anyone who knows Baltimore, knows that the music fans of the city are very hard to please, especially the pop punk scene, who have seen acts like Modern Baseball, All Time Low and many more jump off to headlining acts at major festivals and their own tours. And to be honest, Don Broco is definitely the odd ball out when looking at the bill. They are lined up with bands like: With Confidence, Against the Current and State Champs. Fortunately, there were a few fans there, but Don Broco definitely had a challenge ahead of them. (more…)
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Discussion: Re-imagining Libraries
Kel Friday, July 10, 2015 discussion 10 comments
I love libraries. I loved perusing the shelves, searching for hidden story gems as a kid and an adult. Some libraries are fortunate enough to reside in literary communities full of like-minded readers. Others...not so fortunate.
I wrote a little over a year ago about a somewhat depressing conversation I had with my local librarians. Cliff notes version: almost everyone's there for the computers and hardly anyone ventures beyond the new books shelves into "the archives." It's had me thinking...how do you increase the use of libraries in communities that don't use them?
As I understand it, the primary purpose of (public) libraries is to make information accessible to the public and, historically, to provide a place for the community to assemble and discuss ideas. That sounds a lot more like a school or university library these days. I raid the nonfiction section now and then, but I'm usually checking out fictional stories. And checking out books, I'm probably in the minority at my local library; the majority come for the computers alone. But that's just it: "making information accessible," in the form of books, isn't relevant to most of this library's patrons. Essentially, they just want (and use) a free internet cafe.
On top of the lack of interest in books, fiction and non-fiction, public libraries are funded by government. Their budgets are determined by what the government gives, which (correct me if I'm wrong) I believe is affected by how much "business" they do. They can also be subject to some of the government's bureaucratic limitations and unnecessary expenses (such as paying double for a computer due to City contracts).
You guys are all readers. You love books. I know librarians talk about this stuff all the time, but I'm interested in your thoughts. What are your ideas for making libraries relevant in communities that don't utilize them? Here are a few brain kick-starters:
How would you draw in non-readers and get them, not just excited about reading, but excited about reading for the rest of their lives?
Would you target families as a whole? Just parents?
Ideas to make libraries more cost-effective or cost-efficient? What do you think of a possible public/private hybrid system for libraries?
I know no one likes to talk about libraries being anything but free, but your tax dollars already go to them, so what about instituting a subscription model? Would library services be more valued because you know exactly what you're paying for them?
What about more meeting spaces or driving more conversation about hot topics? Libraries were houses of debate and discussion back in the day. Do you think that would appeal to people now? Would more discourse lead to a more informed public?
Do libraries need to offer "information" in more tangible forms? More classes on practical skills perhaps?
Do the libraries just look old and need a fresh set of decor? Comfier seating? More seating? A full cafe like Barnes & Noble? Would that bring more people in or get them to stay longer?
Or a new set of rules, perhaps? Maybe people don't come because they want to chat, not whisper while glancing at the librarians in fear.
Is increasing readership a lost cause? Are people who prefer movies and video games and TV just never going to be interested in more than 30-minutes on the computer? And if that's the case, should libraries adapt to that type of consumer and change their premises and services accordingly?
I know that's a lot of questions, but you guys are a bright bunch, so I'm hoping to hear a lot of ideas. It can be along any, all or none of these thought trains. Just, how would you revitalize libraries not getting used?
alyssa zech July 10, 2015 at 10:46 PM
Fantastic questions! I love when my library system hosts different events. They have speakers come in to talk about local history, or puppet shows for the kids. Storytime is a big draw for me with a little one. She is learning to love the library at a young age!
Decor I think does play a part. The big city's main library got a makeover about 3 years ago now. The decor reminds me of an Apple store, but it draws a lot of people in with its nooks, crannies, and 'newness'
Events can definitely be a draw. And I think you're right about the decor and, perhaps more importantly, the atmosphere it evokes. After all, there's a reason why people spend hours hanging out in Starbucks but as little time as possible in classrooms, right? ;)
Topaz Winters July 11, 2015 at 1:37 AM
This is such an interesting discussion - one that I think we as readers have sort of been putting off. One thing I'm so, so proud of my local library for doing is basically taking charge of the literary and writing communities in our area. They regularly host bookish events, writing workshops, author visits, storytime for the younger kids, etc. - that helps a lot with drawing in readers who perhaps would stick to bookstores otherwise.
Another thing: I realise this is a bit frivolous, but library design is way more important than we give it credit for. This will probably vary depending on weather conditions, but fireplaces and cushy chairs and cafés help with that - or, in more hot/humid climates, just installing little nooks and crannies for readers to explore & curl up & get lost in would really help invite new people in.
It sounds like your library has done a good job of bringing in the existing literary culture. Now, how to drag the rest of the population in? :) But yes, the decor and atmosphere can play a big role in how people feel in the space and how they interact with it.
Hazel West July 12, 2015 at 2:22 AM
This is something I've thought about a lot. My town library is small and I grew up going there, but in the past ten years or so it's just gotten more and more people use it for computers, and even worse people just talk on their phones and everything and the librarians don't do anything about it. It's always been a spot too, where kids go after school to get tutored and research, and they barely are able to use the computers because everyone else is on them. They always try to make it look so friendly an inviting, but I can't help but think it's not worth it. If it was bigger it would be better. I also have the downtown library which is four stories and lovely, with research rooms, card catalog and all that, and people who actually use it properly. I love going there to research.
My county actually does pretty good with library events (I just went to a multi-author event actually that was really nice) but I really don't know how they could do better. I sometimes just feel like I live in a not very literate area.
Someone suggested the other day that some libraries may not have as many "book-focused" patrons because the readers get their books elsewhere. While I know some readers who don't like library books, or who only do electronic and borrow them remotely, I have doubts about that being a significant factor. I don't have stats to back it up, but I think the trend is more like what you described--people coming for computers or because it's a free place to hang out. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing--I readily admit to not using the library for research and other intellectual pursuits most of the time--but I feel like we need to clarify the purpose of libraries (individually or as a whole) and adjust them to best serve that purpose.
It's a shame that your library doesn't have at least a couple computers set aside for school work/tutoring in the after-school hours. :( Maybe that's something they'd be willing to change?
As a librarian, I just want to say that libraries (and the librarians who work in them) do a lot more than promote reading and books. The role of the library in society has been a moving target for years. A library’s service model has to change and evolve or risk being left behind.
The idea that libraries only provide information is outdated. While it is a big part of what libraries do, it's only part of the story. A public library is a space to provide access to resources and information. It's a community space. Libraries have always provided a variety of services outside of books and will continue to do so for many years.
In terms of computers being used in the library: what a wonderful privilege to not have to come to the library to have access to a computer and the Internet! That is something that is not true for many library patrons, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Libraries are based for the most part on the model of equal access, so to say that providing computers for patron use is part of the "problem" with libraries does a disservice to the people who need them and to the library itself.
Furthermore the idea of qualifying how a person uses the library as more or less valuable based on how “literary" or “scholarly" their pursuits is, frankly, horrifying. The moment you start quantifying library use and ranking which uses are more salient/valuable is the moment the library falls apart.
I am assuming these statements stem from having small libraries that cannot provide separate computer spaces for children and teens and adults. However, even then I would point out that public libraries provide community spaces; they have never been meant to function solely as research spaces. (There are research libraries for that. Similarly, there are subscription libraries for those who would like to pay for specific library services.)
Libraries do not offer judgment. A teen looking at YouTube videos and Facebook has as much right to be on a computer as a guy looking for jobs or a kid doing research. And, in terms of libraries, the important thing is that they all have the option to do that whether they have computer/internet access at home or not.
In terms of events, I’d also suggest anyone reading this post take a good look at their library’s events calendar before judging whether the public is making good use of a library. While not every library can provide author events or book clubs, those events are only a fraction of the programming provided by libraries. What about story time programs for babies and toddlers? What about craft programs for kids? What about gaming and computer programs for teens? What about introductory computer classes? What about English classes? What about resume and job search help?
While I am positive this discussion comes from a good place with the best of intentions I’d also like to say that every library is different and applying experiences from one library to the world of librarianship in general is dangerous. That the idea of people chatting in the library is being discussed as a stigma or something to be fixed is also deeply troubling to me. The idea that people “glance at librarians in fear” when trying to have a conversation just seems to be playing into the worst stereotypes of librarians.
Libraries provide a variety of services to patrons including some bookish ones and some not. Libraries provide public spaces and a sense of community. While I appreciate the desire to support libraries, I would make a simple suggestion: The best way to use a library is by going to one whether for materials/programs or just to hang out. That's it.
Kel July 15, 2015 at 10:41 AM
You have a lot of good points! My first thoughts when writing this were about how to grow readership in communities (perhaps I should have said "increase readership" rather than "use of libraries"), but I definitely recognize that libraries have to adapt and offer many services beyond books. I guess that's where some of my other questions come from; for instance, would it be beneficial to rework a library whose main use involves computers to be more like an internet cafe with a smaller section of books on the side? What's the most efficient use of space and funds, and what will best serve and most benefit the community?
While I'd love to see everyone get super excited about books, I know that probably won't happen; and I know that each library is different with a different membership and different needs. (I'm an ESL and computer tutor at my local library, and there are always waiting lists for both.) I like how you said "the best way to use a library is by going to one," so it's interesting to think of ways to encourage communities who don't use them as much to come in (and, if we're lucky, maybe convert them into reading nerds like us in the process ^^). Thanks for commenting! :)
mark sehgal August 29, 2016 at 4:37 PM
Mojo September 3, 2016 at 3:19 PM
Libraries play important role for the education of students, it have many benefits for the students, countless books are present in libraries for the education of order the best essay student, we should always give respect to our books because these books are the true friends of a person.
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The original story can be found at http://www.bpnews.net/28460/firstperson-faith-and-healing--wheres-the-evidence
FIRST-PERSON: Faith & healing -- Where's the evidence?
by William A. Dembski, posted Friday, July 11, 2008 (11 years ago)
FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--Todd Bentley's healing ministry has gained national attention. His daily meetings for the past three months in Lakeland, Fla., have attracted hundreds of thousands from all over the world. The press has begun to question Bentley's legitimacy -- Is his financial accounting above board? Are miracles really happening? I want to raise some more personal concerns.
On July 3, my wife, three children and I attended Bentley's "impartation service" in Denton, Texas, north of Dallas. Why? We have twin 7-year-old boys, one of whom is autistic (largely nonverbal, still not fully toilet trained, serious developmental delays). Friends urged that we attend the meeting for his miraculous healing.
Call us stubborn, but my wife and I are unimpressed with doctors who see our son's condition as hopeless. We believe that God still heals and that His means of healing include conventional medicine, alternative medicine, prayer, fasting, love and, yes, miracles. In any case, we haven't given up on our son's recovery (we still remember the day when he was developmentally on track). So if God wanted to use Todd Bentley, we were open to it.
As faith healers go, Bentley is unconventional. Exhibiting black shirt, baggy jeans, tattoos and piercings, he prefers grunge to Gucci. But his appearance wasn't a problem for my wife or me. God in the Bible used many unconventional people. The problem for us was the manipulation, hype and agenda that seemed to pervade the meeting.
It was a 130-mile drive for my family to get to the meeting. When we called the organizers, they urged us to get there by 3 p.m. even though the meeting didn't start till 7 p.m. The venue (a basketball arena) seated 8,500 people, yet the organizers told us to expect 14,000 people to show up. So the only way to be sure of getting a seat was to get there early.
We therefore piled the kids into the minivan early afternoon, arriving around 4:30. At 6:30, after sitting for two hours, the arena was about three-quarters full. One of the organizers then announced that traffic was backed up for miles around Denton and that several thousand were trying to get into the meeting, most of whom would have to be turned away. This was sheer hype. A significant block of seats (at least 20 percent) were cordoned off and never used throughout the whole night. We could have arrived anytime and still gotten seats.
At 7, Keith Miller (the chief organizer, www.sfwm.org) started things off. After prompting the audience to perform ritualistic acts of worship (stand up, raise your hands, say after me ...), he passed the baton to a young woman singer and her backup band. The sound system was terrible -- sounds were loud and distorted. The music was repetitive in the extreme. In almost two hours of this "music ministry," only a handful of songs were sung, and many of them seemed to consist of only one or two phrases.
Finally, around 9 p.m. Bentley began to speak. He devoted much of his message to the visions he has received and the miracles he claims have happened in his ministry. Then, almost as an afterthought, he spent a few minutes preaching from the Bible (John 5). In fact, he admitted that he was having us open the Bible simply so that it couldn't be said that he didn't preach from the Bible. So much for reverencing the Scriptures.
Nowhere in Bentley's message did I see an emphasis on the love and compassion of God -- that healing is an expression of God's goodness and care for humanity. Rather, the emphasis throughout was on power -- the power to heal and be healed.
Bentley told stories of remarkable healings. In fact, he claims that in his ministry 30 people have now been raised from the dead. Are these stories credible? A common pattern in his accounts of healing was an absence of specificity. Bentley claims that one man, unembalmed, had been dead for 48 hours and was in a coffin. When the family gathered around at a funeral home, the man knocked from inside the coffin to be let out.
But what are the specifics? Who was this man? What's his name? Where's the death certificate? And why not parade the man at Bentley's meetings? If I am ever raised from the dead through anyone's ministry, you can be sure I'll put in a guest appearance. Bentley claims that he is having a team investigate healings performed under his ministry and will soon go public with the evidence. I look forward to seeing it.
After preaching, Bentley took the offering. During the offering he asked "How much anointing do you want to receive?" Thus he linked the blessing we should receive with the amount of money we gave.
After the offering, Bentley said a general prayer for mass healing. People who thought they were healed then came forward. But I saw no obvious or dramatic evidence of healing. After the general prayer for mass healing, Bentley indicated that he would pray for the severest cases.
At this point, a friend who was with us urged that she and my wife take our son with autism down for prayer (I stayed with our other son and daughter). Over an hour later my son with autism was still not able to get to the main floor for prayer. Ushers twice prevented that from happening. They noted that he was not in a wheelchair. Wheelchair cases clearly had priority -- presumably they provided better opportunities for the cameras, which filmed everything. They also invoked the fire marshals, who, they claimed, prohibited too many people on the floor of the arena. But earlier in the service, during the worship time, they had packed the floor with people singing and whooping it up.
After midnight we were told that it would be an hour and a half before our son could get prayer. At that point, we got up and left. Yet the story doesn't end there. When we got to the minivan, our other son remembered that he had left his Bible in the arena. When my wife went back to retrieve it, everybody, including Bentley, had suddenly cleared out. Staying an hour and a half would not have mattered.
Our son was refused prayer twice because he didn't look the part, and he was told to wait still longer for a prayer that would never have been offered. And even those who looked the part seemed to look no better after Bentley's prayer -- the exodus from the arena of people bound in wheelchairs was poignant.
My son's situation was not unique -- a man with bone cancer and his wife traveled a long distance, were likewise refused prayer, and left in tears. People with needs were shortchanged. It seemed that power, prestige and money (in that order) were dominating motives behind the meeting. Minimal time was given to healing, though plenty was devoted to assaulting our senses with blaring insipid music and even to Bentley promoting and selling his own products (books and CDs).
Neither my wife nor I regret going. It was an education. Our kids are resilient. But the ride home raised a question. We found ourselves avoiding talking about the event until the children fell asleep. Then, as they drifted off in the early morning, we talked in hushed tones about how easily religion can be abused, in this case to exploit our family. What do we tell our children? I'm still working on that one.
William A. Dembski is research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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August 28, 2015 by Cody Villafana
Filed under Cody, Reviews
Starring: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgard, Kristen Wiig
Directed by: Marielle Heller (debut)
Written by: Marielle Heller (debut)
In 1970’s San Francisco 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) finds herself going through a sexual awakening. Documenting her experiences on a tape player, Minnie finds herself in an affair with her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard). Through her experiences, Minnie sets on a mission to find out who she is as a person and as a women in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.”
The subdued performance of lead actress Powley is almost to a fault, creating some shaky acting bits and shoddy narration that never truly works. Part of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” takes place through animations, largely from the mind of its main character, an aspiring cartoonist. Generally speaking, live-action blended with animation is a bit of a hit or miss proposition and it doesn’t work very well here. Rather than being an enhancing look and providing depth and insight to the character, the animations feel ill fitting and distracting. The entire plotline of being a cartoonist, in fact, spawns from a single throwaway scene that’s sole purpose is to give the character an eccentric hobby and a new plot device.
If director Marielle Heller wanted audiences to be uncomfortable or feel like the central relationship in the film was wrong on a level, it isn’t something that is conveyed with any strength. In fact, many of the sex scenes, if not all of them, are shot in ways that are meant to titillate. Does she want this to be a normal sexual awakening with little consequence? It is likely that this sort of cognitive dissonance was purposeful, but it’s difficult to shake the moral gray area that “Teenage Girl” spends most of its time in, especially given the age of its protagonist.
Moral ambiguity aside, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is the type of independent film that feels like it is trying far too hard to be quirky and different. Its nonchalant attitude and subdued tone make for a slow driving narrative that lacks any real substance. As a coming-of-age film, it certainly doesn’t resonate with any real meaning or hit the ever-important nostalgia area. At times, there are underlying themes of not only female empowerment, but also the lessons learned by a teen trying to grow up too fast. While the latter hits successfully a few times, the former has its legs taken out too many times and makes for an experience that is frequently grating and wholly unsatisfying.
Tags: 2015, alexander skarsgard, Bel Powley, codyreview, Kristen Wiig, Mariella Heller, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
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& Institutes
Physics Institute
Climate and Environmental Physics (CEP)
Faculties & Institutes
Faculty of Science
Services of CEP
Radiocarbon dating
Jungfraujoch Research Station
Noble Gas Radionuclides
The High Altitude Station at Jungfraujoch (46°33´N, 7°59´E) is widely recognized as an important research site because of its unique location, its year-round accessibility, and an excellent infrastructure. The research station is situated at an altitude of 3450 m above sea level, between the peaks of the Jungfrau (4158 m a.s.l.) and the Mönch (4099 m a.s.l.). A second research location, the Sphinx laboratory (3580 m a.s.l.) was constructed in 1937. Because of its altitude, the station is mostly in the free troposphere and is quite insensitive for ground-based pollution sources. The sampled air is therefore representative for the atmospheric background mixing ratios of many constituents which are monitored by several research groups. The infrastructure and support for scientific research are provided by the International Foundation High Altitude Research Stations Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat (HFSJG) which was founded in 1930.
Research at the Jungfraujoch
Since 2000 the Climate and Environmental Physics division of the Physics institute of the University of Bern, takes air samples on a regular basis for analysis of CO2, ΔO2/N2, δ13C and δ18O on CO2. Since 2004, the ambient mixing ratios of CO2 and O2 are also monitored quasi-continuously at the Sphinx laboratory. The objectives of these measurements are to monitor the background CO2 mixing ratios, which have been increasing significantly since the start of the industrial era, and to gain knowledge about the partitioning of CO2 among the main reservoirs: the ocean, the atmosphere and the land biosphere. Furthermore, 2-weekly integrated samples of 14C which can be used as an indicator for the fossil-fuel based CO2, is monitored by the university of Heidelberg since 1986. Other research at Jungfraujoch include: aerosols, meteorological parameters (e.g. temperature, air pressure, solar radiation), O3, NOx, cosmic radiation, 7Be, 10Be, 85Kr and permafrost monitoring. For more information about the research at Jungfraujoch see: www.hfsjg.ch/reports.
Presently, our measurements are funded through ICOS-CH, the Swiss contribution to ICOS-ERIC. Formerly, they are supported by the Swiss GCOS office. The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) is an initiative of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the UNESCO, the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the International Council of Science (ICSU). GCOS is designed to ensure that the observations and information needed to address climate-related issues are obtained systematically and made available to all potential users. In particular, GCOS responds to the objectives and requirements of systematic observation as specified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.
High Alpine Research stations Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat
Jungfraujoch CO2-data
Webcam Jungfraujoch (Switch)
Webcam Jungfraujoch (Swisspanorama)
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© 2019 University of Bern
University of Bern
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Challenging the way we respond to sexual violence
Social movements have complex life cycles. In the sixties our efforts contributed to the end of the war in Vietnam and taught a new generation that political activism could change minds and policy. It also reminded us that the fight for social justice is not a single battle, but a war against all forms of oppression — including the oppression of women. Yet the feminist revolution that we called for then seems to have stalled. Much of what we were fighting for — including a women’s right to be free from the threat of rape — seems low on our list of national priorities. CounterQuo is not the beginning of a movement but rather the evolution of a movement that has done much — but needs to do more. I am not so idealistic as to think that we can eliminate rape in the next 10 years. But I hope that my grown son and daughter can each raise their families in a world where it is the rapist who has to live with the shame, and the victim who is embraced by our legal system and by our culture.
— Georgia Murray
Georgia Murray led several businesses at Boston Financial, a real estate investment company specializing in privately owned affordable housing. Between 1973 and 2000 she led several divisions, including Property Management, Asset Management, and Investment Real Estate. She was a partner in the firm, and served as a member of the Board of Directors from 1986-1999, when the firm was sold to Lend Lease Real Estate Investment.
Ms. Murray has been an active board member of Capital Crossing bank and its predecessor company since 1988, participating in the strategy which took the bank public in 1995, and its sale to Lehman Brothers in 2007. She was a member of the audit committee and loan and investment committee, and chair of the compensation committee. She currently is a member of the board of Capital Crossing Preferred.
In 2005, Ms. Murray joined the board of Franklin Street Properties, a publicly traded REIT with a national portfolio. She is chair of the compensation committee and serves on the audit committee.
Ms. Murray has been the president of the Multifamily Housing Institute, a trustee of the Urban Land Institute, and a director of the National Multifamily Housing Council. She has spoken on national and local panels formed for the discussion of affordable housing. Ms. Murray was a senior advisor to the Harvard Graduate School of Design on the Public Housing Operating Cost Study from 2000-2003, and has co-authored a case study on affordable housing finance which she co-teaches at the Tuck School and Harvard Business School. She was a member of the executive committee of the Commonwealth Housing Task Force. In 2007, she joined the board of the Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc.
Ms. Murray is a board member of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, and served as the first Director of the Inner City Economic Forum(ICEF) from 2004-2005. She currently serves as the chair of the Steering Committee for ICEF, and chairs the Development Committee for ICIC.
Ms. Murray currently serves as the chair of The Victims Rights Law Center, and is a member of the Advisory Board of The Crittenden Women’s Union.
Counterquo is an initiative of
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Hospitals to lawmakers: Expand Medicaid
Posted Jan 15, 2015 at 5:42 PM No comments
Leaders of five of the six hospitals in the Big Horn Basin had a united message for area legislators on Thursday: We need Medicaid expansion.
That message was voiced by Eric Boley, past chairman of the Wyoming Hospital Association, during the Big Horn Basin Healthcare Legislative Forum in Powell.
“We have 26 states in the country that have adopted Medicaid expansion,” Boley said. “Those states that have adopted Medicaid expansion, their hospitals are doing much better. Charity care, uncompensated care, has dropped drastically in those states.”
Lawmakers, in turn, assured attendees that they are working on a plan that could be in place as early as April. The forum, which took place in the Yellowstone Building at Northwest College, was planned and organized by Powell Valley Healthcare.
“We’re at an important point in time,” said Bill Patten, PVHC chief executive officer. “We thought it would be a good idea for the folks who are in a position to both oversee and impact healthcare in our state, in our area, to have a chance to get together to talk about the issues.”
The goal, he said, was for everyone “to walk away with an understanding of the things that, from a health care facility perspective, we would appreciate our elected officials pursuing.”
Pat McConnell (left) and Dr. Lenox Baker, representing West Park Hospital, examine handouts during the Big Horn Basin Healthcare Forum, hosted by Powell Valley Healthcare on Jan. 8. Photo by Ilene Olson
The meeting was attended by representatives of West Park Hospital in Cody, North Big Horn Hospital in Lovell, South Big Horn Hospital in Basin and Hot Springs Memorial Hospital in Thermopolis. Legislators attending were Reps. David Northrup and Dan Laursen, both R-Powell, Rep. Elaine Harvey, R- Lovell and Sen. Ray Peterson, R-Cowley.
Boley said hospitals in Wyoming provided $232 million worth of uncompensated care in fiscal year 2013, at an estimated cost of $125 million.
“Those are our costs, not charges,” he said.
Of the total, $76 million was charity care for people with low incomes. Statistics show 60 percent of them are employed but can’t afford insurance, he said.
“This is a problem that is not going to go away,” he said. “I think it is time in our state that we do something here.”
Medicaid expansion could relieve some of that financial stress, he said. In addition, it would allow people to receive care on a preventative basis, before medical problems becomes so severe that they require a visit to the emergency room, he said.
“I don’t really care which plan passes. I just think we need a plan passed that will take care of these uninsured people,” said Eric Boley, past chairman of the Wyoming Hospital Association.
Medicaid expansion is going to be a hot topic and a tough one in the Legislature, Boley said. He noted that debate on an alternative plan similar to Indiana’s will start in the Senate, where it will be explained by Sen. Charlie Scott of Casper.
In addition, although the proposed Share Plan failed the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Interim Committee on a 7-7 vote, “I have heard that there are some representatives that are going to introduce that individually, and it will be looked at during the Legislature,” Boley said.
“I don’t really care which plan passes,” he said. “I just think we need a plan passed that will take care of these uninsured people.”
Peterson and Harvey, both of whom serve on the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Interim Committee, said work on an alternative plan is progressing.
“Wyoming has the advantage of three years of studying,” Peterson said. “This alternative plan is our best solution so far. ... It’s a good fit, the Wyoming way ... something that’s realistic.”
Because it has waited, “Wyoming has the advantage of having the ability to see effects (of Medicaid expansion) in other states,” Peterson said. “These states are feeling some strong-arming of the government. Costs are uncontainable. ... When the federal government does pull out — and they will, they always have — we’re going to be left holding the bag. Where is that money going to come from?”
As examples, he cited of abandoned mine lands (AML) funding and coal severance taxes, both of which have been withheld from the state by the federal government.
“That’s half a billion (dollars),” he said.
Peterson said it was no great surprise that the Share Plan died in committee, as a similar proposal was defeated last year.
Hospitals in Wyoming provided $232 million worth of uncompensated care in fiscal year 2013 at an estimated cost of $125 million.
Harvey, who co-chairs the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Interim Committee with Sen. Scott, said the Legislature, as a last resort last year, directed the Wyoming Department of Health in a budget bill footnote to come up with a plan to be negotiated with the federal government.
“Of the things in the budget bill, only half of those things were addressed in the Share Plan,” she said. The department provided its report the day before Thanksgiving, and the committee hasn’t had time to formalize the envisioned plan, she said. “We have talked with people on the ground (who) have seen firsthand what the unintended consequences are. We have ... looked at many different plans and picked the things that we liked from other states. ... We couldn’t publicly come out and say we think we got it.
“Charlie (Scott) and I put together our notes, and I took those notes to Washington, D.C., and met with the director of (Health and Human Services),” she said. “Only one thing is a bit controversial. Everything else, the HHS has passed in some state. When you hear, ‘Oh, they’ll never accept that,' or ‘It will take months to negotiate.' Well, it’s already been negotiated. I was told in Washington, D.C., if we pass a bill in February, there is no reason we can’t have Medicaid expansion in practice in April.”
One of the sticking points, Harvey said, is determining who contributes to health savings accounts.
“That’s going to be the individual and Medicaid,” she said. “It’s already happening in other states. I just want to let you know that we are with you here. We’re going to give people a hand up. We don’t have a bill yet, but I promise you it’s coming. We’re going to stay with you, and what it’s going to take is communication.”
Another topic of discussion at the meeting was a bill that would allow surgical centers to provide up to three days of convalescent care, making it possible for them perform do joint replacements and other more complicated surgeries. Currently, surgery centers can keep patients for only one day, after which patients must be moved to hospitals.
“This would devastate West Park Hospital,” said hospital CFO Pat McConnell.
Boley said the Wyoming Hospital Association opposes the bill because it gives an unfair advantage to surgical centers, which erode the bottom line for hospitals by “cherry-picking” — taking the most profitable surgical procedures away from hospitals without the need of providing emergency room service or charity care.
“They’re claiming they can do it cheaper,” he said. “They would discharge the patient to a motel, then have a nurse go in and check on them. It’s cheaper ... because they don’t have the overhead.
“If there were safety nets where they had to take care of emergencies, the uninsured, etc., I don’t think we would have as much concern,” he added.
Boley noted that surgery centers are not allowed to care for Medicare patients, who must be undergo surgery in hospitals.
“We would be able to keep those — the lowest-paying (patients),” he said.
Pat McConnell, chief finance officer for West Park Hospital, said, “This would devastate West Park Hospital. Right now, that’s the majority of surgeries we do, those categories. there is a strong financial incentive for those surgeons to move to centers they have part ownership in. I would have to advise my board that we would have to curtail certain services we provide at a loss. The community would lose those services.”
Patten said a hospital he formerly managed was 90 miles from an ambulatory surgery center, and even from that distance, it affected the hospital.
“The surgery center had to call 911 to transfer patients to a hospital when they couldn’t care for them. We couldn’t call 911 — we are 911. I would suggest a convalescent care center is a surgery center on steroids,” he said. “Make sure there is a level playing field — that’s
all we ask.”
Protect critical access hospitals
A list of health care priorities also asked lawmakers to help strengthen small hospitals. Boley said critical access hospitals — hospitals with 25 or fewer beds, including all hospitals in the Basin — are financially fragile now, and 12 of the 16 critical access hospitals in Wyoming are losing money, largely due to changes in federal health care regulations. He asked lawmakers to do what they can to protect critical access hospitals, which are vital to small communities in the state.
The hospital association says 12 of the 16 critical access hospitals in Wyoming are losing money.
Harvey said the federal government’s health care rules don’t work for small, rural frontier states. Those rules aim at streamlining medical delivery and getting rid of critical access hospitals in favor of economy of scale.
“It works great in New York and California. It doesn’t work in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana or Colorado,” Harvey said. “I think that we are being set up to fail on multiple levels.”
Steve Bahmer, vice president of the Wyoming Hospital Association, summed it up: “If we lose hospitals, we lose lives.”
The Big Horn Basin's hospitals' ‘Top 10’ legislative priorities
We ask that you find a way to support the expansion of the Wyoming Medicaid program.
Title 25 regulations (governing involuntary hospitalizations) need to be clarified and properly funded.
Health care services should receive the lions’s share of any tobacco tax.
Unless there is a level playing field (no cherry-picking of payer type, similar quality and staffing requirements, etc.) we ask that you oppose the Convalescent Care Bill.
We ask that you find a way to fund a student loan repayment program for providers.
Support all efforts to repeal the 96-hour certification rule, the 2-midnight rule and the direct supervision requirement.
Make sure that the designation of our 16 critical access hospitals is not jeopardized.
Adjust Medicaid payments for nursing home/long-term care rates to better reflect cost of care.
Do all you can to reduce the amount of burdensome regulations.
Provide whatever support you can to make sure we stay open and can remain financially viable.
~By Ilene Olson
by Ilene Olson, healthcare, Legislature, politics, West Park Hospital
▼ January 11 - January 18 (12)
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Photo: Barley bull
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Satiric look at publishing offers high-brow humor
Adam Langer
Published on August 11, 2010 at 12:00 am
By Kate Ergenbright
“A Million Little Pieces” author James Frey made headlines a few years ago for falsifying portions of his memoir, a scandal that culminated in a public confrontation with Oprah Winfrey. However, the publishing industry has seen its fair share of this type of literary scandal. In “The Thieves of Manhattan,” author Adam Langer pokes fun at this history and the changing landscape of the publishing industry.
“The Thieves of Manhattan” satirizes the current trend of publishing books written by politicians and celebrities famous for anything but their writing and storytelling skills. Langer, a former editor of the now-defunct Book Magazine and author of three other novels, focuses his novel on the Frey-like experience of aspiring writer Ian.
Ian embodied the aspiring-writer stereotype: living in New York City, working at a coffee shop and receiving rejection letters from each publishing house he sent his work to. But after meeting Jed, a jaded former editor, Ian finds himself in the midst of a literary scam when the two bond over their hatred for Blade Markham, a thug-turned-best-selling-author whose memoir, Ian and Jed believe, is full of lies.
Filled with jealousy, Jed convinces Ian to pass off a fictional novel as his memoir and, once the book becomes a hit, to reveal that they lied to embarrass the publishing industry and gain notoriety. But, of course, not everything goes according to plan.
“The Thieves of Manhattan” is full of literary references and paints a comedic, and at times bleak, portrait of the publishing world. But I’m uncertain of its mass appeal to people who aren’t literary agents or aspiring writers.
Langer uses his own vocabulary, substituting words such as “money” for “daisies,” which is a reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Although he does provide a glossary of terms in the back of the book, it’s annoying to have to stop reading to look up Langer’s version of a simple noun or verb. This aspect of the novel detracts from the enjoyment of reading and can be confusing to many people who may not have read as many of the classics as Langer makes readers aware that he has.
Overall, I’d say that “The Thieves of Manhattan” is a solid satire for industry types, but to the average reader uninterested in the underhanded aspects of the publishing industry, this book lacks charm.
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Bernie Sanders’ New Group Is Already In Turmoil
January 01, 1970 | Politico | News
Less than a week before its official launch on Wednesday, Bernie Sanders’ new political group is working its way through an internal war that led to the departure of digital director Kenneth Pennington and at least four others from a team of 15, and the return of presidential campaign manager Jeff Weaver as the group’s new president.
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(ImagineChina)
China’s then head table tennis coach Liu Guoliang watches Ma Long of China competing against Jeong Sangeun of South Korea in their men’s singles third round match during the Seamaster 23rd ITTF-Asian Table Tennis Championships 2017 in Wuxi city, in east China’s Jiangsu province, April 14, 2017.
Ping Pong Fury
by Ma Tianjie
Chublic Opinion
Ma Tianjie
Ma Tianjie runs Chublic Opinion, a popular Chinese public opinion blog. He was an English major at Peking University and later earned his Master’s degree in environmental policy from American...
This article was first published by Chublic Opinion.
The match was scheduled for 7:40 p.m. on June 23. Thousands of viewers were eagerly anticipating Chinese Ping Pong superstar Ma Long to face off against his Japanese challenger Yuya Oshima at the China Open, held in the southwestern city of Chengdu. However, time reached 7:30 and there was no sign of Ma anywhere near the Ping Pong table, leaving the Japanese, the referees, and spectators wondering about his whereabouts. The answer, it turned out, lay on Weibo. At 7:00, Ma, together with two other Chinese players and two coaches, sent out an identical post saying, “at this moment our hearts are not in the game. We only miss you, Liu Guoliang.”
It soon became clear that this was not a scheduling error, but an open revolt unprecedented in the history of Chinese Ping Pong. Liu Guoliang, to whom the Weibo posts were dedicated, was the Head Coach of China’s national Ping Pong team until three days earlier, when he was abruptly reassigned to the National Ping Pong Association as Vice Chair, a role widely believed to have no real power (there were 18 Vice Chairs ranking higher than him). A legendary Olympic champion himself, he was considered the most successful coach of the national team in a generation. Under his leadership, the Chinese Ping Pong team pocketed all four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics. A new Ping Pong dynasty was just in the making.
People were furious about his removal. At the stadium, realizing that they were probably witnessing history, spectators began to chant the name Liu Guoliang. When the video appeared on Weibo, it added fuel to the flame of anger ignited by the not-so-subtle protest from the athletes.
The online storm created by the astonishing act of rebellion set off an intensive round of debate that represented competing narratives about what’s going on inside China’s state sport establishment. Befitting Ping Pong’s status as the country’s “national ball game,” the debate carried a microcosmic quality in the sense that within the seemingly narrow topic area of one sport was contained Chinese society’s many anxieties about governance, and its imagination about how reform should be brought about to a gargantuan, complex system. Heroes and villains clash in this little universe inside a Ping Pong ball, and people generate conflicting morals and lessons from the stories.
Ping-Pong Diplomacy
Nicholas Griffin
The spring of 1971 heralded the greatest geopolitical realignment in a generation. After twenty-two years of antagonism, China and the United States suddenly moved toward a détente—achieved not by politicians but by Ping-Pong players. The Western press delighted in the absurdity of the moment and branded it “Ping-Pong Diplomacy.” But for the Chinese, Ping-Pong was always political, a strategic cog in Mao Zedong’s foreign policy. Nicholas Griffin proves that the organized game, from its first breath, was tied to Communism thanks to its founder, Ivor Montagu, son of a wealthy English baron and spy for the Soviet Union. Ping-Pong Diplomacy traces a crucial intersection of sports and society. Griffin tells the strange and tragic story of how the game was manipulated at the highest levels; how the Chinese government helped cover up the death of 36 million peasants by holding the World Table Tennis Championships during the Great Famine; how championship players were driven to their deaths during the Cultural Revolution; and, finally, how the survivors were reconvened in 1971 and ordered to reach out to their American counterparts. Through a cast of eccentric characters, from spies to hippies and Ping-Pong-obsessed generals to atom-bomb survivors, Griffin explores how a neglected sport was used to help realign the balance of worldwide power. —Scribner
From the public’s perspective, the heavy-handed demotion of a national sports hero and the poignancy in the athletes’ protest against that decision, perceived to be “suicidal” for their careers, reinforced a deep-rooted narrative about petulant, incompetent bureaucrats screwing up what’s treasured and cherished by the people based on misguided ideas and dogmas. In this case, that arrogant government official is Mr. Gou Zhongwen, China’s sport minister, who is widely believed to be behind this personnel change.
Gou fits with the stereotype of the know-nothing-but-control-everything Chinese bureaucrat. First of all, he doesn’t have much of a track record in sports. Barely seven months in his current position, he used to be a vice mayor of Beijing and, before that, a technocrat managing China’s electronics industries. From the outset, he suffers from a credential deficit when placed side by side with Liu Guoliang. In Chinese, the expression “waihang guanli neihang” (the layperson manages the expert) captures a common critique of a top-down command-based system that does not value expertise. The idea of an electrical engineer “bossing around” a bunch of Ping Pong world champions is repulsive for many on line, even though in modern politics or business, lack of issue area expertise usually does not automatically bar someone from leadership positions, especially for so-called political appointees.
Other materials emerged to support that damaging storyline. They showed him as having a history of insensitive “meddling” with otherwise well-functioning sectors, from Beijing’s metro system to the city’s middle school enrollment scheme. As vice mayor, he reportedly demanded the Beijing metro strictly limit the number of passengers in passenger cars, ignoring the miserable daily reality of rush hour Beijing commutes. Tales like this left no space for exploring the actual rationale behind such seemingly ridiculous policies.
During this round of Gou-bashing, even more damaging materials were brought up to show him as not just incompetent but also corrupt. A businessman claimed on Weibo that Gou’s brother exploited Gou’s government connections to embezzle money from him. Those comments were quickly removed from the social media platform.
Beneath these allegations and insinuations that portray Gou as an autocratic czar squandering China’s most loved sport lies a deeper suspicion. The familiar “power struggle” story once again proves its attractiveness. According to this version, Gou’s move is more calculated than it appears. His real target is Cai Zhenhua, the vice minister and someone with a much more solid power base in the sport establishment. A world champion himself, Cai used to be coach and mentor of Liu Guoliang in the 1990s, and is credited to have laid the foundation for the dynasty that Liu would later inherit. His monumental success propelled his rapid rise in the hierarchy of Chinese sport, from head of the Ping Pong and Badminton Center to Vice Minister, overseeing, most notably, the development of soccer, a sport embraced with high expectations from the country’s top leader. Many observers once believed that Cai was on the way to be the No. 1 person in Chinese sports. Gou’s appointment at the end of 2016 dashed those hopes.
The appointment also fuels speculations about a possible schism between the two men: does Cai resent Gou for getting in the way of his much anticipated promotion? Does Gou see Cai as a threat to his authority in the sports administration? These questions are the building blocks for extended stories of how this Liu episode is part of Gou’s maneuver to undermine Cai. A winning Liu Guoliang, and his Ping Pong team, would supply Cai with a steady line of political capital, which would enable him to challenge the new minister’s agenda. In the highly watched field of soccer, the rivalry is already bubbling up in the eyes of some observers. The National Soccer Association’s decision to hire the Italian star coach Marcello Lippi at a time when the national team was desperately hanging on to the last remaining chance of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia was widely hailed as a wise move. However, the General Administration of Sports seemed to be unhappy with how much China paid for Lippi (a contract worth U.S.$23 million per year), issuing a notification criticizing the Association which Cai leads.
Two weeks before Liu’s reassignment, his colleague Kong Linghui, another confidant of Cai and coach of the national women’s Ping Pong team, was recalled from an ongoing tournament in Germany and suspended from his job following revelations that he owed millions to a casino in Singapore. The disciplinary action might be justifiable. But when seen together with Liu’s dismissal, spectators connected the dots and completed a story of the new king trying to oust his disgruntled challenger.
The episode reveals the Chinese public’s complicated emotional attachment to Ping Pong. On the one hand is the public’s intense disdain for the so-called central planning sports system (“juguotizhi”), a gold-medal-churning machinery that focuses the entire country’s public sports resources on a selected group of elite athletes; on the other is their profound affection for Olympic champions like Liu Guoliang, and the immense emotional investment in the idea of winning. The complex confounded even some of the savviest navigators of Chinese social media. On June 29, when the Communist Youth League tried to invoke patriotism on Weibo ahead of the 20th anniversary of the reversion of Hong Kong to China, it found itself being booed by thousands of otherwise patriotic followers airing their frustration with the sport administration, leading to an embarrassing retraction of the post.
The 2012 London Olympics was an eruption point for the “anti-juguotizhi” sentiments on China’s nascent social media, triggered by a few disturbing and embarrassing incidents that summer, which deeply shook society’s faith in a system that pushed China to the top sections of Olympic medal ranking in recent Games. Liu Xiang’s unexpected dropping out from the 110-meter hurdles game due to an injury touched off a bitter round of bickering on Weibo about whether the state sports apparatus over-drilled him ahead of the London Games for the sake of a gold medal. Two Chinese women’s badminton players’ scandalous disqualification from the Games because of “passive play” added to the belief that a gold-medal-obsessed system had led China onto a path that totally disregarded the essence and spirit of sport. In that summer, the debate culminated with two editorials representing the zeitgeist, one by the liberal Caixin Media, whose Editor-in-Chief Hu Shuli declared that “taxpayers would ultimately grow tired of the ‘gold medal only mentality’,” and the other by the Party’s chief mouthpiece, People’s Daily, which asserted that elite athletes needed state support to excel in the games. It argued that good performance in the Olympics would inject “positive energy” to the whole country. The central planning system is not antagonistic to investments in “sport for the mass” (qunzhong tiyu) and should co-exist with other forms of support schemes.
Mass Medal Preparedness
China’s Olympic training system demands its athletes give their all—and not expect much in return.It’s a structured, planned, and government-funded system specifically designed to churn out winners.While other countries around the world build...
The People’s Daily editorial underscores the major fault line in public discussions about China’s athletic ambitions, which continues to define the contour of such debates today. The state-controlled system is pitched against a more liberalized structure where market, rather than government, “picks the winner” (as in which sports game ultimately prospers and becomes competitive); and a choice has to be made if public resources for sports are to benefit the general public or just a bunch of elite athletes. What’s interesting with the Ping Pong episode is how a public once so scornful of the system now defends its most symbolic heroes with such passion, while the man who actually commands the system now has to be defended as a reformer challenging the status quo.
In a widely circulated post titled “Why would Wang Anshi touch the Army of Yue Fei?,” the author uses ancient Chinese legends to illuminate the situation today. Wang Anshi, the famed Song Dynasty reformer who lived 1,000 years ago, is known for his wide-ranging, resolute reforms that rolled over vast vested interests, causing vehement backlash from his contemporaries. Yue Fei, a tragic war hero who roamed China a century later than Wang, was called back from the battlefield while still winning, and forced to commit suicide due to malicious accusations of corrupt officials in the Emperor’s court. The two historical figures would never have met each other. But the author cleverly taps into the cultural symbolism of both and highlights the treacherous public opinion environment that Gou elicits.
According to the author, Gou is exactly the kind of reformer that is trying to dismantle the central planning, gold-medal-oriented system. His previous moves, such as making basketball superstar Yao Ming the president of China’s Basketball Association, a non-government body, represent his intention to encourage more societal participation in the development of sports games. It should be sports professionals (like Yao Ming) who direct the future of games through market-oriented sports associations. The stereotype of “layperson directing the experts” does not really apply to Minister Gou, as he has been laboring to put experts in leadership positions. So why should Ping Pong be an exception? Despite the spectacular successes of the national team in recent years, Ping Pong has every symptom of an ailing system. Its gold medals are products of centrally controlled training bankrolled by taxpayer money. The country’s nascent professional Ping Pong league never takes off as elite athletes invariably prioritize national team presence, making commercial games empty-seated. Moving Liu Guoliang to the National Ping Pong Association is consistent to what’s happening to other sports.
Other sympathetic commentators locate Gou’s reforms in the longer history of Communist China sport development and project him as the heir of his predecessor Wu Shaozu. Wu, who took the helm of Chinese sports in the era of Reform and Opening, made the first attempt to return sports from elites to the “mass” through the reconfiguration of the athletic apparatus. Fighting off the most radical proposal at that time to abolish the sports bureaucracy and embed its functions into the Ministry of Education, Wu Shaozu nevertheless made efforts to redistribute resources within the ministry that strengthened the “sports for the mass” arm vis a vis the elite sports sections. On his watch, China’s mass participation in sport prospered for a while, up to the point when the pseudo-scientific Qigong, endorsed by Wu as effective exercises, alarmed the top leadership as a political threat. Wu was removed from his position by end of the 1990s. And his two successors were too absorbed by China’s later bids for the Olympics to continue the emphasis on grassroots sports. The pendulum swung back toward getting as many gold medals as possible. Then came Minister Gou Zhongwen, who, according to his supporters, re-embarked on a journey that Wu left more than two decades ago.
Through such narratives, Gou is recast as a determined yet flawed reformer, legitimate in his cause, but somehow mismanaging the process by single-mindedly “recalling a winning general from the battlefield,” underestimating the public backlash it could cause. Under this new frame, Liu Guoliang and his loyal players do not appear that heroic anymore. They become the vested interests that the reform is designed to bust. One Weibo post refers to the Head Coach’s power to distribute commercial interests among his team members, including brand sponsorship and advertisement commissions, which creates a system of favoritism. Removing Liu would destroy this web of patronage, hence the revolt from his beloved team members. An official statement from the General Administration of Sport confirms this narrative. While condemning the striking athletes as irresponsible and “denigrating the nation,” it also insisted that “sport reform is unstoppable” and that consensus of the importance and urgency of reform was much needed. All players were forced to apologize for their action and retract their controversial Weibo posts.
Like many debates in China today, the reform narrative attracts its own critics, the leftist nationalists. In a WeChat post by a leftist account, the author attacks Gou’s reform as “extreme neo-liberalism” that will ultimately ruin Chinese sports. Market-oriented capital only seeks short-term returns, he argues. If the government retreats from the job of nurturing and supporting athletes from a young age, box-office-obsessed sports club bosses won’t step in to fill the gap. Rather, they will choose to import big-name foreign players to boost revenues, like what’s happening in China’s liberalized soccer industry. The attempt to bring soccer-style market reform to Ping Pong is a “malicious move by the neo-liberalists to undermine the glory of Chinese sports,” warns the post. It inherits the “worst part” of American professional sport, while willfully ignoring the robustness of government-backed sports support systems in the U.S.
The deceitfully tiny plastic ball of Ping Pong carries a symbolic weight in China that seems to defy the gravity of politics as usual. To spin it, new Minister Gou might indeed need the political clout and wisdom of Wang Anshi.
Media, Politics, Society
Sports, Sina Weibo, WeChat, Qigong, Olympics, Bureaucracy
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tag 'Dana Point'
Current selected tag: 'Dana Point'. Clear.
2012 Dana Point Concours d'Elegance Names Ducati as Featured Motorcycle Marque of the Year
From www.marketwatch.com - May 31, 2012 2:59 PM
DANA POINT, Calif., May 31, 2012
The Dana Point Concours d'Elegance(R) will celebrate 86 years of Ducati high performance, one of the world's leading motorcycle manufacturers, during its 30th anniversary, June 23-24, at the St. Regis Monarch Beach golf links in Dana Point, Calif. The premier celebration of automotive elegance in Southern California will feature some of the best motorcycles and automobiles, each competing for top awards during the event.
"Initially, we included collector motorcycles at our event in 2010 as a one-time feature," noted Jeff Spellens, Dana Point Concours d'Elegance president. "The response was so incredible that collector motorcycles have become an integral part of the two-day event."
The Italian manufacturer will be represented on the golf links with a 1955 Ducati 125 Bialbero Gran Prix. The bike features a 125 cc Twin Cam engine, which was part of the original group of motorcycles with the first Twin Cam motor designed by Chief Engineer at Ducati Fabio Taglione.
A 1966 Ducati Monza 250 will also capture attention. Manufactured for the American market, the Monza 250 was only built in 1966 and 1967. This '66 was a barn find in Indiana before the current owner purchased and restored the motorcycle.
One Ducati is a showcase for the company's superior engineering. Introduced in 1970 and designed by Chief Engineer Taglione, the Desmo head opens and closes the valves using the camshaft, without valve springs. Today it is a trademark of the Ducati brand and is featured in a 350 cc single cylinder 1970 350 Desmo that can be viewed just inside the entrance of the motorcycle pavilion. Another Ducati that will feature a Desmo head is a 1965 Ducati 250 Mach I Desmo. The bike has a 250 cc engine and is restored to excellent condition.
"Much like owning a Shelby or a Harley-Davidson, owning and riding a Ducati is a lifestyle decision," added Spellens. "It is fitting to celebrate an Italian manufacturer at our event, who understands the meaning of good taste, class and sophistication."
To see these Ducati's and more, guests can purchase a general admission ticket for $30 online or $35 at the gate. Motorcycle and car exhibitors can download a registration form and send to the appropriate chairman as noted on the documents. For more information about the event, please go to www.danapointconcours.org .
SOURCE: Dana Point Concours d'Elegance
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Dove Haigh Phillips / News / Marks & Spencer
July 20, 2010 dhp_admin News
M&S officially open £67m 1.1 million sq ft distribution centre on ProLogis Park Bradford.
The centre was opened by Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer, and the Leader of Bradford Council, Councillor Ian Greenwood.
The largest warehouse in the M&S network and one of the biggest in the UK, it will serve all M&S stores with furniture products and store equipment (e.g. racking) and, next year, ambient food (non-refrigerated food, e.g. biscuits, cereal, tins).
The centre took 205 working days to build and will employ over 1,200 people when it is fully operational. It has been developed with Plan A (M&S’ eco and ethical plan) in mind. The building is carbon neutral, has achieved BREEAM (the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings) Excellent and M&S has invested in a nature programme surrounding the site which has seen nearly 400 native trees planted, the creation of two ponds and new wetland areas.
Darrell Stein, M&S’ Logistics and IT Director, said: “This is an exciting day for our business. Bradford will deliver better service and better availability for our customers and it is a key part of our strategy to prepare our supply chain for the future. As an area, Bradford has fantastic transport links, a rich pool of resource and talent and has provided us with the support to deliver a facility to be proud of. We’re delighted to be here and look forward to a bright future in West Yorkshire.”
Councillor David Green, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Regeneration and Economy, said: “We welcome the launch of the Marks & Spencer distribution centre and acknowledge that the official opening of the first site at ProLogis Park represents an important landmark in the district’s regeneration.
“This site will provide hundreds of jobs for residents, contribute millions of pounds to our economy over many years and act as a catalyst for further growth.”
“Marks & Spencer’s choice of Bradford is clear evidence of the district’s ability to provide the infrastructure and skills required by market-leading businesses.”
The warehouse is part of ProLogis Park, a 90 acre business site that is currently being developed by US company ProLogis. There are plans to create a further 1,000 jobs at a range of business and enterprise units for small to medium-sized businesses. In addition, 145 houses are being built on the eastern part of the site.
Phase 2 provides a 11.2 acre site with scope for another 250,000 sq ft distribution facility.
Prologis’s Managing director, Andrew Griffiths, “We are actively seeking interested parties to help us create more jobs in the area, we are keen to further participate in the regeneration of the Bradford area.”.
Facts about the new Bradford distribution centre:
– You can fit 12 Wembley pitches or 15 Valley Parade pitches inside;
– It’s a one mile walk around the outside of the building;
– Around one sixth of the population live within an hour of the site;
– You would need approximately 140 billion Percy Pigs to fill the warehouse;
– There are 134 doors for lorries to access loading bays;
– 3,500 tons of steel were used in the building’s frame;
– Under the service yard there is a 2.1m diameter rainwater storage tank which is 1200m long. When full it holds four million litres of water;
– The sprinkler system has 50,000 individual sprinkler heads.
Dove Haigh Phillips are development advisors to Prologis on the site.
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