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Tag Archives: Royal Wedding
Shop in Monaco
On the French Riviera, visit the chic city of Monte Carlo in the petite kingdom or Principality of of Monaco. You will find some of the world’s most exclusive shopping and a beautiful old port. Squeezed into less than a square mile of territory, it is the world’s second smallest country, larger than only the Vatican.
A magnet for high rollers and famous for its annual Grand Prix motor race, it has been a playground for the rich and famous since the early 20th century. Drive through Monte Carlo, home to the royal Grimaldi family, who have reigned here for over 700 years. Admire the super yachts in the harbor, drive through the famous Grand Prix hairpin turn and along the Middle Corniche,
A fairy-tale aura has settled on this glittering city of the Grimaldi family, perhaps nowhere more elegantly than at the Prince’s Palace, where the late American actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly presided with Prince Rainier III. Monte Carlo’s medieval quarter perches on “The Rock,” an escarpment at the foot of the Maritime Alps. An overlook near the Prince’s Palace affords spectacular views of the Mediterranean and the harbor lined with mega-yachts.
The city’s most visited gem is the world-renowned Monte Carlo Casino, the peak of European prestige and glamour.
Check out the St. Nicholas Cathedral, consecrated in 1875. This is the burial site of the royal family, including American actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly. You can also visit the majestic Oceanographic Museum, soaring above the sea on a magnificent cliff.
If you are looking for the perfect destination wedding spot, go to Monaco on the French Riviera. This is where the highly anticipated Royal Wedding took place. The fairy-tale principality of Monaco is where Prince Albert II and his South African fiancee tied the knot. She wore a glorious Giorgio Armani wedding gown with a 15 foot train.
There were two separate events: a small civil ceremony in the Throne Room of the palace and a lavish Catholic ceremony. The religious ceremony of Albert’s parents, Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly, was held in the magnificent Cathedral of Monaco in 1956.
There were 3,500 guests at the religious ceremony in the Palace courtyard with 20 heads of state including: the kings of Spain, Sweden, Lesotho and Belgium as well as the Presidents of France, Ireland, Iceland, Lebanon, Malta, Germany and Hungary. Famous opera stars, models and notable race car drivers were also invited. The dinner was be prepared by renown French Michelin three-star chef Alain Ducasse.
“His Serene Highness” is the Prince’s title; used by the reigning families of Monaco and Liechtenstein. Prince Albert II is the 53-year-old ruler of the tiny principality of Monaco that is subdivided into three municipalities. Monaco (Monaco-Ville) is the old city located on a rocky promontory extending into the Mediterranean, known as the Rock of Monaco. This is where the Palace and the Saint Nicholas Cathedral (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) of Monaco are located. Many of the Grimaldis were buried in the Cathedral including Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III.
Rainiers III Grave in the Cathedral
Cathedral of Monaco
Monaco’s Crest
Monaco’s Flag
Cannon balls at the castle
Monaco Ville
A panel of the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece in the Cathedral of Monaco
Port of Monaco
Prince Albert II is the head of state and the head of the House of Grimaldi that reigns over the income tax free principality of Monaco that houses the gambling center of Monte Carlo Casino. The House of Grimaldi has ruled Monaco since 1297, and the state’s sovereignty was officially recognized by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861.
Charlene Wittstock is a South African former Olympic backstroke swimmer. Prince Albert II met Charlene Wittstock in 2000 when she traveled to Monaco for a swimming competition. Prince Albert participated in five Olympic Games, from Calgary in 1988 to Salt Lake City in 2002, as a member of the national bobsleigh team. He has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1985 and he is the President of the Monegasque Olympic Committee.
They attended the wedding of Prince William of Wales to Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011 in London, England.
Prince Albert and Charlene
A flag announcing the wedding of Prince Albert II of Monaco and his fiancee Charlene Wittstock flies above the guarded Monaco Palace. Now Europe will have another attractive princess for the tabloids to exploit.
Original Monaco Castle
This will be the first wedding of a ruling prince in Monaco since Albert’s father, Prince Rainier III, married Hollywood actress Grace Kelly in 1956. Prince Rainier ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs of the 20th century.
The wedding of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly took place before 600 guests at Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Monaco and was watched by 30 million television viewers in 1956. Grace Kelly’s ivory, lace and satin gown was reportedly the model for Kate Middleton’s wedding dress some 60 years later. They had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie.
Grace Kelly retained her American roots, maintaining dual US and Monégasque citizenships. She died on September 14, 1982, when she lost control of her automobile and crashed. Her daughter Princess Stéphanie, who was in the car with her, survived the accident.
Check out the official Royal Wedding Website: http://www.palais.mc/monaco/palais-princier/english/royal-wedding/royal-wedding.1819.html
Check out the Civil Ceremony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZa-WB8ChmI&feature=relmfu
There are plenty of sites to see in Monaco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHMZSCfiCrA&feature=related
Dr. EveAnn Lovero writes Travel Guides @ www.vino-con-vista.com
Filed under A Royal Wedding in Monaco, Prince Albert's Wedding
Tagged as Alain Ducasse, Charlene Wittstock, Giorgio Armani, Grace Kelly, House of Grimaldi, Kate Middleton, Monaco, Monaco Civil Ceremony of Prince Albert II, Monaco-Ville, Monte Carlo Casino, President of France, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Rainier III Prince of Monaco, Royal Wedding, Saint Nicholas Cathedral Monaco, Serene Highness, South Africa
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Cultural center at Ground Zero.. GZM…Park51…Cordoba House…Imam…Sheikh…Mufti… All these sound like bursts of machine-gun fire from the front-line. The conflict between the West and the Islam predicted by Samuel Huntington in “The Clash of Civilizations” manifests itself inside the U.S.A.
“Don’t fight hate with hate”, “Conquer terrorism with freedom”, “Don’t stereotype Muslims”. Those are the slogans of the liberals. I wonder if such values as the right to life, personal, political and economic freedom, the right to seek happiness in one’s own way, equality, diversity in culture, language, heritage, beliefs, OR such constitutional principles as popular sovereignty, separation of powers, representative government, checks and balances, individual rights – WILL ALL OF THESE be valued and treasured by those for whom the liberals are standing up? A student of Islam remembers his talk with a Muslim. The scholar said: “I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc.” Is all that “anti-Muslim”? His correspondent replied “So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims?”
The Westerners are naïve in their hopes to channel Islam along “democratic” lines. They are trying to see that religion with “western eyes.” It reminds me of what I read about the English translation of Qur’an in which a liberty with the original text was taken: the word “lightly” was added to Sura 4:34 after the directive to husbands to beat their disobedient wives. The Arabic doesn’t say to beat them lightly, it just says to beat them.
Is the U.S. government naïve or simply anti-American when it sends Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chief promoter of the mosque, all over the world as an interfaith communicator at the expense of the American tax-payers? Just one recent example: the Imam mentioned his attending an Islamic conference in Jordan: “I just came from a conference in Jordan, Amman where there were over 170 leading Muslim scholars from almost every part of the Muslim world, including some of the most important names like Sheikh Tantawi of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, who is the Chief Mufti of Egypt, the Chief Mufti of Jordan, the Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, who is a very very well known Islamic jurist, highly regarded all over the Muslim world.” Being referred by the link, I listened to the speech of the Sheikh Al-Qaradawi (the one who is so “highly regarded all over the Muslim world”) on YouTube. It was in Arabic, of course, but there were English subtitles. The speech was venomous, filled with hatred towards Israel and the West. By the end it culminated into the whole audience repeating after the Sheikh his calls to do away with the infidels.
As for the location of GZM, there’s another parallel. In 1993, Pope John Paul II asked 14 Carmelite Nuns to move their convent from just outside the Auschwitz death camp. The establishment of the convent near Auschwitz had stirred dismay among Jewish groups and survivors who felt that the location was an affront and a terrible disservice to the memory of millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust. Isn’t the position of John Paul II an example of real sensitivity, sympathy and commiseration? That raises another question: is the feeling of collective guilt something that can be experienced by the adherents of the Muslim faith? I doubt it when I remember watching the Arab children dancing with joy on the day when the World Trade collapsed burying more than 3,000 people?
I was not sure at first whether I had the right to come up with this blog. I’m not an American and I cannot judge with competence about many fine points of the event. However, I’m a Christian and I have got a granddaughter whom I do not want to be beaten by her future husband. Even “lightly”.
BUILDING BRIDGES FOR INVASION?
Ninety years ago the Red Army undertook a massive march westwards in an attempt to crush Poland and give new life to the communist movements in Germany and Hungary. The attack was nourished by the idea of the “world revolution” formulated by Lenin and Trotsky. The Russian Buonaparte Tukhachevskyi promised that mankind would get “happiness and peace” by means of the Red Army bayonets. The Red Guards said they would soon wash their feet in the Seine – the major waterway of France. Stalin, who was responsible for the “national policy” in the Russian communist party, came up with some suggestions about integrating Poland, Germany and Germany in the Russian Federation. All that threatened to become another Mongol invasion like it was in the 13th century.
However, the patriotism of the Poles who were defending their country saved Europe and Western civilization. The Russian cavalry was defeated near Warsaw in what was called “the Vistula miracle.” Out of the 150,000 Russian troops 25,000 died in battle, another 25,000 were captured and 40,000 were interned by the Germans. The idea of the “world revolution” went home feet first.
The Soviet history did not emphasize the defeat. Instead the heroism of the “red horsemen” was praised sky-high. Soviet pupils sang songs where it was stated that “the Polish landlords remember the saber-blades of our cavalry”. I also sang such songs.
This year the Poles celebrated the anniversary of their victory. The Russians decided to join the festivities in their own way: by building a memorial to the Russian troops who had died in August 1920. They motivated it by the necessity of “reconciliation” and “building bridges”. The monument was to be erected on the site of the battle and was promoted by the Polish Committee of Remembrance and Martyrdom. Eventually the monument was put up. It is a cross surrounded by stones in the form of bayonets (those bayonets which were supposed to carry happiness and peace” to the West in 1920). However, it was not opened: the Polish patriotic organizations picketed the place and prevented the Russian governmental delegation from arriving there. At the moment there is much hullabaloo in the Russian media about the Poles not taking the friendly hand extended by the Russians.
Why should the Poles take that hand? Isn’t it a hypocrisy to install the cross for the soldier-atheists whose purpose was also to rid mankind of Christianity? Have the Russians dissociated themselves from the atrocities of the Lenin-Stalin era? Isn’t Stalin now officially pronounced in Russia “the most skilled manager” of the Soviet state? Doesn’t the Russian foreign policy aim at interfering in the life of other countries – especially on the territory of “historical influence” : Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic republics, etc? Doesn’t Russia carry out secret service operations in western countries (to say nothing of Eastern Europe)– often accompanied by murders? Didn’t the Russian government obstruct the participation of the Polish side in the investigation of the plane crash over the Russian airport in which 99 per cent of the Polish political elite was killed?
I would call that monument a symbol of social insensitivity, if it had been erected with honest intentions. However, seeing what Russia is doing to Ukraine, I can only state that the monument to the “red cavalrymen” in Poland is Russia’s attempt to be “present”, to overpower, to dominate. And the Poles can only be commended for rebuffing it.
After the Soviet empire collapsed 19 years ago there developed an ideological vacuum in the theory of the Russian statehood. Actually, that was the reason why the then-president Yeltsyn called on the Russian political thinkers to start working on the conception of the Russian “national narrative” (“natsyonal’naya idea”). As it has appeared by now, no new theories were invented but some old ideological patterns have been modernized.
At first one of the old wineskins for the new wine seemed to be the 19th-century Slavophilism , which meant not only admiration of everything that was Slavic (arts, literature, folklore, history) but also implied that all Slavic nations should – under the leadership of Russia – stand united in opposition to the West. However, Slavophilism did not materialize: in the 20th century Bulgaria sided twice with enemies of Russia against the Russians, the Serbs conflicted with Bulgaria over Macedonia, while the Macedonians wanted to gain independence. With the bankruptcy of Slavophilism the Russian Orthodox Church decided to take the baton.
The head of the Russian church Patriarch Cyril has made an attempt to formulate the idea of the “Russian World”, the latter being understood as the area where the Russian language is functioning and which is also the “canonical” territory of the Russian Orthodoxy. This religious “umbrella-state” covering this area receives the name the “Holy Rus”. The matter is that the idea of the Holy Rus existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries too and was being implemented under the slogan “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”. Incidentally, this kind of racial division in religion (phyletism) is considered a heresy in the Orthodox Church and was denounced as such at the pan-Orthodox Synod of Constantinople in 1872. However, it agrees very well with the chauvinist ideology of the Kremlin which tries to restore the Russian Empire – at least on the European part of the ex-USSR – and to isolate Ukraine from Europe and the rest of the world. Besides, by using the idea of the Holy Rus, the Russian Church in Moscow hopes to give a fresh start to the religiosity of the Russian people. According to statistics Easter liturgies are attended by 8 per cent of the Russians and by 30 per cent of the Ukrainians. That explains frequent and lengthy visits of Patriarch Cyril to Ukraine. That explains the wide coverage of his visits by the Ukrainian media (which nowadays are 90 per cent pro-Russian) and silencing down any information about the Ukrainian orthodoxy or Protestant churches in Ukraine. Moreover, any opinions or actions of the Ukrainians which in any way could reduce the impact of Cyril’s tour of the country, were resolutely nipped in the bud by the favor-currying Ukrainian government.
You are currently browsing the BLOGGING IS LIVING blog archives for August, 2010.
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Sixth Circuit Finds Special Circumstances Preclude Involuntary Medication of Incompetent Defendant Charged with Bank Robbery
April 28, 2017 / Katherine Faris
United Sates v. Grigsby, 712 F.3d 964 (6th Cir. 2013)
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held on April 11, 2013 that special circumstances exist that outweigh the government’s interest in prosecuting for bank robbery a pre-trial detainee to restore him to competency. Unlike the Eighth Circuit evaluating similar special circumstances in United States v. Mackey, 717 F.3d 569 (8th Cir. 2013), reviewed below, a majority three-judge panel concluded that the potential availability of lengthy civil commitment together with the likelihood that, even if the defendant is restored to competency, he will be found not guilty by reason of insanity, greatly diminishes the government’s interest in prosecution.
Dennis Grigsby was charged with three counts of unarmed bank robbery in Columbus, Ohio, between January and March 2010. Grigsby’s attorney requested the court to order mental evaluations to determine Grigsby’s competence to stand trial and his sanity at the time of the offenses. The district court granted the motion and he was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York where two psychologists conducted the examinations. They both diagnosed Grigsby with paranoid schizophrenia and determined him incompetent to stand trial, but one postulated that he was sane at the time of his offense and the other that he was not. Both psychologists reported that Grigsby’s mental disease did not significantly interfere with his appreciation of the wrongfulness of his acts, but there was insufficient information about whether mental illness impaired his ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct. Neither the government nor the defendant objected to the reports’ findings and the district court committed Grigsby to the custody of the Attorney General in November 2010 for a period not to exceed four months for a determination whether he could be restored to competency.
Grigsby was then transferred to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina and was evaluated by a psychiatrist and psychologist at the facility. They found that Grigsby had a normal upbringing, education and employment until he stopped working due to “job burnout.” He was convicted of grand theft auto, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest in 2006; for criminal trespassing in 2007; and for resisting arrest in 2010. He served short jail sentences for these crimes. He was also charged with voyeurism and menacing by stalking, which were not prosecuted. Grigsby was in good physical health, never received mental health treatment and was not taking antipsychotic medication for his illness. He followed all of the rules of the facility, got along well with peers and staff, was not gravely disabled and did not present a danger to self or others, or to the safe operation of the facility. Although his dress and grooming were appropriate and he was oriented to person, place, time and circumstances, and denied hallucinations and delusions, they reported, however, that Gillenwater’s conversation was not linear and he displayed substantial evidence of thought disorder, including an extensive, but poorly organized, paranoid religious delusional system extending into all major functional areas of his life.
The evaluators determined that Grigsby was incompetent to stand trial. Because he was refusing all antipsychotic medications, they also requested an order under Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), allowing them to medicate him involuntarily to restore his competence to stand trial. The evaluators both determined that antipsychotic medication was substantially likely to render Grigsby competent to stand trial and substantially unlikely to produce sideeffects that would interfere with his ability to assist his attorney in conducting a defense and that less intrusive therapies, such as psychotherapy would not able work. They reported that antipsychotic medication was medically appropriate and would take at least four months to be effective.
In determining whether to uphold the district court’s order authorizing involuntary medication to restore Grigsby to competence, the Sixth Circuit applied the Sell test requiring the government to prove by clear and convincing evidence that 1) an important government interest in prosecution exists; 2) involuntary medication will significantly further the governmental interest, which requires proof both that administration of the medication is substantially likely to render the defendant competent to stand trial and substantially unlikely to cause side effects that will interfere significantly with the defendant’s ability to assist counsel in conducting the trial defense; 3) involuntary medication is necessary to further the governmental interest; and 4) administration of drugs is medically appropriate for the defendant. Id at 180-81.
At the district court hearing, Grigsby conceded that the government had an important interest in bringing him to trial for the serious crime of bank robbery. Grigsby argued, however, that special circumstances existed in his case to diminish that interest. He first argued that the potential availability of lengthy civil commitment together with the likelihood that he would be found not guilty by reason of insanity addressed the government’s interest in his continued confinement.
The Sixth Circuit reviewed the Butner psychiatrist’s testimony that if Grigsby is not forcibly medicated he would remain psychotic and medical staff at FMC-Butner would request his civil commitment. In order to be civilly committed, federal law requires the district court to determine by clear and convincing evidence whether Grigsby is suffering from a mental disease or defect and poses a substantial risk of bodily injury or serious damage to property. The evidence revealed that although Grigsby was not a present danger to himself or others in the structured environment at Butner, the government psychiatrist testified that he was not necessarily fit for release into society. The district court found that the evidence was inconclusive on that issue, but the Sixth Circuit determined that the district court should have inquired further. The Sixth Circuit found evidence in the record that supported the possibility that Grigsby might meet the insanity standard at trial, if restored to competence. Both the government’s psychiatrist and Grigsby’s expert agreed that Grigsby would need to be restored to competence before a definitive determination could be made, but Grigsby’s expert testified that he suffered from a severe and chronic mental illness and likely suffered from it at the time of the bank robberies. He also surmised that Grigsby may have experienced previous psychotic episodes.
The Court further determined that the length of Grigsby’s confinement while the government attempts to restore him to competency and prosecute him may approximate the length of any prison sentence he might receive if convicted. If convicted, the government indicates Grigsby might receive a sentence of 57 to 71 months based on sentencing guidelines. Unlike the Eighth Circuit, the Sixth Circuit found the government’s analysis under the guidelines instructive because the government often uses this range, rather than the maximum possible sentence, as a basis for negotiating plea agreements. The Court therefore found this range more useful when, as here, the government advances the length of sentence as a core reason why it wants to prosecute. The Court found that Grigsby had already been held since July 2010, or 33 months. It would take at least four months to restore him to competency, plus additional time to bring him to trial, and potentially additional time to re-restore him if he loses competency during the pendency of the trial. The Court also noted that often defendants plead guilty after they are restored to competency which reduces further their period of imprisonment under the guidelines. All of these factors indicated to the Court that Grigsby may remain in custody for a period roughly equivalent to the length of any prison sentence he might serve, thus lessening the government’s interest in prosecuting him.
The Court went on to find that antipsychotic medication can burden a defendant’s fair trial rights by affecting his ability to comprehend and react to trial events. Grigsby argued that he had trial-related concerns that tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, which causes constant movement and an inability to remain still, might impair his ability to make a dignified appearance before a jury and assist his counsel in his defense. Although the Court noted that the record indicates antipsychotic medication is generally effective in restoring competency especially in patient’s with Grigsby’s positive symptoms, it also found that the government’s psychiatrist testified that 30% of patients do not respond to haloperidol and another 30% show only a partial response. He also testified that 30% of individuals treated with haloperidol develop pseudoparkinsonism, 20-30% develop akathisia, 2-10% develop acute systonic reactions, and 18- 40% develop irreversible tardive dyskinesia. Although Grigsby had never previously been treated with antipsychotic medication, and the government psychiatrist testified that other medications would be prescribed to counter the side-effects and that the medication would be changed or discontinued if the side effects continued or irreversible side-effects developed, the Court nonetheless found that the record lacked clear and convincing evidence that medication is substantially unlikely to cause side effects that will interfere with Grigsby’s ability to assist in his defense.
Based upon all the facts above, the majority of the Sixth Circuit three-judge panel hearing the appeal found that the findings of the district court supporting an order authorizing involuntary medication were clearly erroneous. The Court reversed the district court order and remanded the case for further proceedings, specifying its expectation that the district court would determine whether civil commitment is appropriate for Grigsby. A dissent was filed in this case stating that the Court majority’s analysis of the special circumstances was highly speculative as to the likelihood of Grigsby’s civil commitment, his being found not guilty by reason of insanity, his pretrial confinement exceeding any sentence he might receive, and any side-effects impairing his pre-trial rights. Compare this decision with the decision in United States v. Mackey.
April 28, 2017 / Katherine Faris/
Other Federal Circuits, Involuntary Medication, Competence
Eight Circuit Upholds ...
Ninth Circuit Finds Constitutional ...
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Doug Nye, David Burgess-Wise, Andrew English
courtesy and copyright of The Daily Telegraph.
Doug Nye, David Burgess-Wise and David English look at the lives of two great men of motoring who passed away over Christmas.
The sporting world is mourning the deaths, over Christmas, of two significant figures of 20th century motoring – John Cooper and Walter Hayes. John died on Christmas Eve, aged 77, and Walter on Boxing Day, aged 76. Yet despite being from the same generation, their careers and achievements reflected very different times.
Genial, pipe-smoking John Cooper and his rugged garagiste father Charles founded in 1948 what became the world’s biggest manufacturer of specialist racing cars – the Surbiton-based Cooper Car Company. The media has rightly latched on to John’s later Mini Cooper activity, but to fellow racers that pales beside his stature in Formula One. Early customers included Stirling Moss and Bernie Ecclestone, while one Cooper Car Co employee was the young Ron Dennis. Cooper’s sharply focused and cottage industry-style practicality popularised rear-engine racing car design, launched Formula One’s “Rear-Engined Revolution”, and, with such like-minded team drivers as Roy Salvadori, Jack Brabham and the young Bruce McLaren, built towards the company’s double Formula One World Championship titles in 1959 and 1960.
While cashflow-conscious Charlie Cooper would carol, “Why change it when we’re winnin’?”- and world champion driver Jack Brabham would be needling John incessantly with, “We’ve got to change, or get left behind”- it was the younger Cooper who erected the umbrella under which his team and drivers could go for gold. “Just don’t tell Dad, all right?” he’d confide to Brabham, as the shrewd Australian was despatched to ZF in Germany or to ERSA in Paris to buy crucial components without which the little Cooper cars would never have worked so well. When their tiny team won the Formula One world titles in 1959, their budget for the year from Esso was just £10,000. For 1960, developing their own Cooper gearbox cost as much- John again keeping it from Dad- yet 20 years later when Williams won the titles its budget was nearer £10 million. And that disparity in available funding reflects the change which overcame premier-league motorsport through the 1960s – with Walter Hayes, Ford of Dagenham’s dapper, pipe-smoking director of public affairs, leading the charge.
Hayes’s arrival in the motor industry was unusual to say the least. In 1962, with the launch of the Cortina imminent, Ford of Britain chairman Sir Patrick Hennessy was anxious to revive the company’s flagging public image, so he asked his wartime colleague Lord Beaverbrook to recommend a likely candidate for the job. Beaverbrook’s recommended 38-year-old Hayes, associate editor of the Daily Mail (he was formerly editor of the Sunday Dispatch), who – though not a motoring man by background – had employed Colin Chapman on a freelance basis to contribute a “new type of motoring column”.
When the Cortina was launched, it was apparent that – apart from an unfortunate tendency for gearbox seizure on some early production cars – it was somewhat lacking in excitement. Hayes recalled: “A performance version seemed one obvious way of adding excitement, because the heart of the Lotus Cortina was one of the greatest engines the world has ever known. I don’t really think that’s an exaggeration. Also, it was something that could be easily done.”
The first fruit of this policy was the construction of a “GT” version, “so named because we sent somebody to Halfords to find the prettiest badge to put on it. The prettiest badge he could find had GT on it, so we bought one!”
The GT soon represented 25 per cent of all Cortina production, recalled Hayes: “It was an enormous success. This splendid performance sedan was a new concept in the marketplace, but it became perfectly obvious (to me anyway) that it wasn’t enough and a ‘super GT’ was obviously needed because the competitors were beginning to nibble at us. Colin Chapman was frankly a bloody marvellous ideas man, the only ace motoring man I knew when I joined Ford. I’d paid him so much money as a journalist that I sometimes think I started Lotus!
“Harry Mundy had done a twin-cam head for Colin on the 105E Anglia engine. He was always pissed off because I think they paid him £200 for it. There was this twin-cam version of this incredible engine which was doing things on the track in a modest way.
“At that time, it would have been ridiculous and bizarre to try to develop twin-cam engine manufacture or assembly inside Ford operations because in 1962 Ford in Britain was just Dagenham; there was no Halewood. The idea that somehow we could run a highly sophisticated twin-cam line there was impossible, so it was agreed that Colin would do the Lotus Cortina.
“I wanted it very much because by then Lotus was quite a name, and Colin and I sat up late one night to design the car around the twin-cam engine.”
Hayes also fought battles within Ford to pay for the motorsport programme which would- he was convinced – dispel the utilitarian old image of the “Dagenham Dustbin”. Under Walter, a Ford rally programme flourished and the firm’s illustrious Boreham competition department grew. Hayes also gave his considerable support to the fledgling Formula Ford single-seater class, seeing it as a “nursery for drivers”. In the 33 years since, more than 8,000 Formula Ford chassis have been built and more than 30,000 budding racers have been at the wheel, including James Hunt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jody Scheckter, Nigel Mansell, Martin Brundle, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button.
Hayes, Colin Chapman and Lotus – in fact the commercial nemesis of Cooper, yet one which John Cooper (unlike Charlie) hugely admired- had used Ford power, tuned by Cosworth, to dominate minor Formula racing. Then, in 1966 at a Ford policy committee meeting, under “any other business”, Walter Hayes announced: “Yes, I’d like to do a grand prix engine.” He told Henry Ford quite simply it would be the best £100,000 he’d ever invested…” and sure enough the result was the V8 Cosworth-Ford DFV engine, which one 155 Grands Prix and, like Cooper 10 years earlier, revolutionised F1.
With such competitive engines available off the shelf, and on-car advertising allowed from 1968, F1 exploded into the bug-money modern circus it is today. Where John Cooper’s little company – never employing much more than 40 – had once dominated, modern Ferrari and McLaren, fully employing 10 times more, are locked in combat today.
Alumni from the Cooper works in Surbiton, which is today the police patrol car garage flanking the Kingston Bypass, fed the booming British motorsports industry. Jack Brabham set up his own operation from 1961, and Bruce McLaren followed from 1964. John Cooper’s generosity of spirit was so great that to his ‘dying day he would not only bless both their efforts, but shared delight at their success.
Walter Hayes funded Colin Chapman’s creation of the Lotus superteam for 1967, combining the driving brilliance of world champions Jim Clark and Graham Hill in the Ford-engined Lotus 49s. They won or bust all year, until the United States GP at Watkins Glen. For Walter, victory there was crucial: “I told Jimmy and Graham, ‘This is the cars’ first race on Ford’s home ground, it’s vital we set the seal on the programme here’, and then in practice these two asses started competing with one another. I had to make them toss up to decide who was going to win without racing each other into the ground. It was Graham, but his car broke- so did Jimmy’s, yet he nursed it across the finish line and won! Then he gave me the trophy and I put it on my lap in the helicopter and brought it all the way home…and thought this was a great thing.”
As, indeed, it was.
Not that Hayes had finished making waves by any means. In 1987, he convinced his friend Henry Ford II to purchase Aston Martin and Hayes became chairman of the marque. Never the strongest firm financially, Aston Martin in the Eighties was in desperate need of a new, smaller car to increase overall sales. Hayes, adopting the role of James Garner’s “Scrounger” character from the film The Great Escape, cobbled together the parts and resources to build what became the DB7, the most popular Aston Martin model ever and the car which arguably saved the company.
These were two great men, both utterly charming, both real “racers” but with very different approaches – in very different times – to the same problems. With their passing, a great era has truly ended.
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James Haynor
James Haynor was born in Riverside, CA and grew up in Kenosha, WI. He received a Music Education degree from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Masters of Music – Applied Trumpet degree from Northwestern University – Evanston where he studied with Vincent Cichowicz.
Jim’s music career was highlighted by a 28 year stint with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra playing utility trumpet. Other playing included the Florentine Opera Company, American and Milwaukee Ballet Companies, Melody Top Summer Stock Theater, Skylight Comic Opera and backing such performers as The Moody Blues, Doc Severenson, Aretha Franklin, Glen Campbell, The King’s Singers, etc.
He also is a founding member of the Newberry Brass Quintet and played principal trumpet with the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra.
Jim currently performs as a free-lance player in the Milwaukee area and is kept busy as a writer/arranger. Jim has had many pieces published, some of which may be accessed through his website – www.jameshaynor.com
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Smoke rises after airstrikes targeting different parts of the Syrian capital Damascus, Syria, early Saturday, April 14, 2018. Syria's capital has been rocked by loud explosions that lit up the sky with heavy smoke as U.S. President Donald Trump announced airstrikes in retaliation for the country's alleged use of chemical weapons. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
The Latest: Russia: Missiles aimed at Syrian air base downed
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria (all times local): 2:50 a.m. The Russian military says Syria's Soviet-made air defense systems have shot down all 12 cruise missile aimed at a Syrian air base. The Russian Defense Ministry said that 12 cruise missiles have been...
FILE- In this March 29, 2018, file photo the logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square. Facebook made $40 billion in advertising revenue last year, second only to Google when it comes to its share of the global digital advertising market. Even with a recent decision to stop working with outside data brokers to help advertisers target ads based on things like offline purchases or credit history, this number is expected to grow sharply this year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
How Facebook ads target you
NEW YORK (AP) — If you want to tailor a Facebook ad to a single user out of its universe of 2.2 billion, you could. Trying to pitch your boutique bed and breakfast to a 44-year-old "trendy mom" who lives in Seattle, leans conservative and is currently traveling in the Toronto area but hasn't booked...
This photo posted on the Instagram account of Alice Bah Kuhnke on Friday, April 13, 2018 shows the Swedish Culture minister posing for a photo in support for ousted head of the Swedish Academy awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, saying the “feminist battle happens every day.” Kuhnke is seen wearing a white high-neck blouse with a knot, similar to those worn by the academy’s former member Sara Danius who stepped down Thursday. In Friday’s posting, Bah Kuhnke added the hashtag #knytblus _ Swedish for knot the blouse tie. (Johannes Bah Kuhnke/Instagram via AP)
Outrage in Sweden as 2 women pressured to leave Nobel group
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Outrage and photos of blouses sprouted Friday across Swedish social media in support of the ousted female leader of the prestigious academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many in gender-neutral Sweden are upset that two highly respected women are being forced out of top...
FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2017, file photo, Emma Kenney attends the THR and SAG-AFTRA Nominees Night at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Roseanne” actress Kenney said she’s taking a break from social media and Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
'Roseanne' star Emma Kenney seeking help for her 'battles'
LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Roseanne" actress Emma Kenney says she's taking a break from social media and Los Angeles. Her tweet comes after the 18-year-old told In Touch she's going to seek "treatment for my battles." She didn't specify what type of treatment, but said she's "going to get help and make...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 11, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election and data privacy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Zuckerberg says regulation inevitable. Is Congress up to it?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday that regulation of social media companies is "inevitable" and disclosed that his own personal information has been compromised by malicious outsiders. But after two days of congressional testimony, what seemed clear was how...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles as he departs after testifying before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 11, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election and data privacy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Is Facebook regulation 'inevitable'? Not so fast
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers that regulation of his company is "inevitable," but still came to Capitol Hill prepared to defend against proposals he thought went too far. He rarely had to. After about 10 hours of hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, markets rallied and privacy advocates...
The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, Calif., adorned with the names of hundreds of great comedians who have passed through its doors, honors founder Mitzi Shore Wednesday, April 11, 2018. Shore died earlier Wednesday at 87. Shore was one of the most influential figures in stand-up for more than four decades. Spokeswoman Jodi Gottlieb in a statement called her "an extraordinary businesswoman and decades ahead of her time who cultivated and celebrated the artistry of stand-up comedy." (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Mitzi Shore, whose club was a comedy mecca, dies at 87
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mitzi Shore, owner of the Los Angeles club the Comedy Store and one of the most influential figures in stand-up for more than four decades, has died. She was 87. Spokeswoman Jodi Gottlieb released a statement from the club announcing Shore's death, calling her the "legendary...
In this April 5, 2018, photo, a pedestrian passes the New York Stock Exchange. The U.S. stock market opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 11. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Banks and technology stocks fall; oil rises to 3-year high
NEW YORK (AP) — Companies including banks and technology and health care firms fell Wednesday after U.S. stocks had surged the day before. Oil prices hit a three-year high after President Donald trump tweeted that the U.S. will launch missiles at targets in Syria. Other than energy companies,...
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Preventing Sexual Assault, Grooming and Child Molestation in Schools
By Michael S. Dorn
PHOTO COURTESY OF SAFE HAVENS INTERNATIONAL
While school shootings may dominate media coverage and internet chatter, school officials must be sure not to ignore other, far more common, types of crisis events. For example, non-custodial abduction of students is a significant problem with some cases resulting in students being taken to other countries, and in rare instances, even murdered after they are abducted from schools. Sexual assaults and molestation of students are among the more common and traumatic types of school crisis events.
Sexual violence takes place in elementary, middle and high schools. These types of incidents have taken place in public school districts of every size, charter schools, faith-based schools and in some of the nation’s most prestigious independent schools. Sadly, sexual predators work diligently to seek access to youthful victims by obtaining employment, volunteering and defeating weak access control approaches in schools. And in an often overlooked point, sexual predators who use physical force or persuasion to victimize children are often students themselves. As schools are entrusted with the care of vulnerable populations, they have legal and moral obligations to take reasonable steps to prevent, detect and respond to sexual victimization of students and staff.
There are a wide array of opportunities to prevent sexual violence in schools that have little to do with physical security technologies and school design. For example, robust employee screening, training for staff on boundary invasion, grooming behaviors and sexual misconduct can help school officials deter and detect sexual predators. Thoughtful and structured student supervision is one of the most effective and often inexpensive ways to prevent sexual assaults by intruders and student perpetrators.
For organizations that desire truly high-end prevention efforts, there are validated screening tests that can identify adults who are at higher risk to molest students. While these types of approaches are valuable options for an effective prevention, detection and response strategy, there are also a variety of technology options and building design concepts that can help support them.
Natural surveillance
Natural surveillance is one of the three core philosophies of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). CPTED is a research-based approach to reduce crime and the fear of crime in buildings and outdoor spaces. Human supervision of students, staff and physical space are among the most powerful concepts to prevent sexual violence on K-12 campuses. The rapist and the child molester alike typically seek privacy with victims. Well-intentioned active shooter training programs are causing significant problems with teachers and other staff covering their classroom and office windows because of fears that a gunman will be able to see inside the classroom. Blocking windows in this manner can create a strong argument for attorneys to demonstrate a failure to meet the standard of care for security because the practice creates privacy for predators to groom victims. More importantly, this practice makes it easier for the sexual predator who obtains employment with a school to blend in because other staff who are not sexual predators are allowed to block vision panels.
PHOTO © MICHAEL DORN/SAFE HAVENS INTERNATIONAL
The use of murals, artwork and bright color schemes can not only help to increase the sense of ownership and connectivity, but can also help to prevent a prison-like environment. This beautiful photo-mural helps to create a warm and welcoming tone in this New Delhi international school where good physical security is evident but not overwhelming.
Building designs providing improved visibility can reduce the number of hidden areas that can be used by an attacker to rape or molest a victim. Reducing the number of hidden areas can reduce the burden of school security, school-based law enforcement officers, administrators and other staff to maintain effective supervision of students. For example, in many cases, simply adding a window to an office can create natural surveillance for an otherwise hidden hallway.
Natural access control
While electronic access control systems supported by effective training and practices can further enhance the security of schools, building designs that create natural access control are also of considerable value. Another aspect of CPTED, the concept of natural access control involves building designs which naturally channel people past locations that are staffed by a “capable guardian” such as a school office employee. This approach makes it more difficult for a person who is not authorized to enter an area without being observed. Though the concept has been in use for more than 40 years, many new school designs still lack this valuable feature. School renovation projects can offer excellent opportunities to improve natural surveillance.
Positive territoriality
The third core element of CPTED involves efforts to create a sense of connection and ownership between legitimate users and physical places like schools. This is known as positive territoriality. Murals, color schemes, artwork and other physical features can result in an increased tendency for students to get involved in their own safety. For example, excellent use of positive territoriality can make students more comfortable in reporting sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual misconduct by staff or a suspicious person. Effective use of positive territoriality can also help to tone down the feel of physical security measures like security cameras, remote buzzer access and visitor management systems. When school officials increase the implementation of physical security measures, increasing the use of murals, colorful flooring, bright paint schemes and the use of artwork can help prevent a prison-like environment while helping to enhance school climate.
There are two types of access control that can help to prevent sexual assaults. We most commonly think of perimeter access control prevent campus violence. Good perimeter access control is one opportunity to prevent sexual assaults and sexual molestation of school children. There have been enough instances of intruders entering schools and committing acts of sexual violence to demonstrate that this can be one good reason to consider locking exterior doors during the school day, using remote electronic access systems and robust visitor management systems. However, interior access control can be just as important. Unlocked closets, mechanical rooms, classrooms, auditoriums and other areas have been used by intruders who defeat perimeter security measures and by students to perpetrate acts of sexual violence in schools. As untrained school employees may not inherently know that it can be dangerous to leave these types of areas unlocked, it is a good idea to make staff aware of these hazards through written policies, staff development and proper building leadership.
Paper student contact cards that were the norm in schools for decades. Today’s school officials have a variety of superb options for electronic visitor management systems that can be used to rapidly screen visitors, vendors and volunteers for child custody orders, matches on sexual predator databases, and for an extra fee, limited criminal history information. When the cost and benefits of these systems are considered, electronic visitor management systems can be an excellent investment.
My clients know that I am probably the one of the last guys in the field to assume that security cameras are an automatic fix for school safety. However, the features of security cameras have improved dramatically over the past decade. Today’s smart cameras paired with robust software can incorporate astounding features such as gunshot detection, fire detection, audio analytics and much more reliable video analytics. While I have traditionally found security cameras to be far more helpful in determining what did and did not happen after a complaint was received, smart cameras can help prevent sexual assaults in some potential problem areas. For example, sexual assaults in stairwells and hidden alcoves in stairwells are a significant concern in schools. I was consulted on a particularly tragic case where a 10-year-old boy raped an 11-year-old boy in a stairwell of a charter school. This incident resulted in permanent closure of the school. In the past, I have suggested open stairwell designs, magnetic door hold-backs and parabolic mirrors to reduce privacy in these types of areas. While these are still among the most effective preventive measures, smart cameras with software to detect the sounds of aggression and video analytics software that can detect people who loiter in stairwells and trigger an alarm to alert staff to check the camera view.
While security technologies and building design alone should not be relied on to protect students and staff from sexual violence, they can dramatically enhance other important approaches to reduce the risks of these painful and damaging crimes of violence in schools.
This article originally appeared in the June 2017 issue of School Planning & Management.
Communities In Schools, Gallup Poll on School Discipline
2019 ‘State of School Safety’ Report Identifies Americans’ Top-Three Safety Concerns in Schools
U.S. Department of Education Delivers on Key School Safety Report Recommendation
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The Easiest Way to Sell My Ford for Cash in the UAE
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Great Ford Models
Founded by Henry Ford in 1903, the Ford Automobile company is one of the oldest in the industry and is renowned for its reliable performance-oriented cars. From the Mustang to the Explorer, Ford has earned a solid reputation for producing great cars and we look at some of the models that are here for the long-run.
1965-Present Ford Mustang
The Mustang was first unveiled in 1964 at New York’s World Fair and, even though it did not bear the impressive power and speed that it is known for today, it was still received enthusiastically. Ford quickly upgraded the lightweight sports car by transforming its design and creating the foxy body that most Mustangs have today. Even though Ford modified the Mustang over time it raised the stakes in 1982 by installing the 4.9L V8 engine that produced 157hp on its Ford Mustang GT. This move not only produced one of the best Ford Mustangs, but also inspired the competition to produce more powerful engines that produced more horsepower.
2006- Present Ford Edge
Ford Edge was first launched the Ford Edge in 2006 at the Detroit Auto Show. This mid-size crossover SUV was modelled after the Ford CD3 platform and came in four trim levels powered by three engine options, the 2.0L Ecoboost 14 turbocharged, 3.5L V6, and 3.7L V6. Ford is currently producing the second generation of the Edge with various modifications. The 2019 Ford Edge has received a major facelift with nine colour options for the exterior. An additional Sport Trim Level will also be available and this will be powered by the 2.7L Ecoboost turbocharged V6 engine that produces 355hp. Ford has also enhanced safety for the 2019 Edge by including safety features such as post-collision braking control, adaptive cruise control with a ‘stop and go’ lane centering feature as well as evasive steering assist.
1997- Present Ford Expedition
The Ford Expedition debuted in 1997 as the replacement of the Ford Bronco. Modelled after the Ford F-150, the Expedition is a big car with great on-road and off-road abilities. The recently launched 2018 Ford Expedition has already been ranked as the best large SUV currently in the market. It has not only received a facelift, but also features a powerful twin turbocharged V6 engine with 10-speed automatic transmission and delivers up to 400hp without blowing-up your fuel budget. In addition, the Explorer also has a spacious cabin with three rows that can comfortably seat up to eight adults as well as sufficient cargo space. Safety and reliability are a major plus in the 2018 Ford Explorer with different safety features including forward collision warning, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control and active parking assist, amongst others.
The 1990 – Present Ford Explorer
Ford Explorer was designed to replace the Ford Bronco II and this is why the first generation produced in 1990 shared a chassis and powertrain, both of which were derived from the Ford Ranger. The Explorer was the first four-door SUV ever produced by Ford and initial models included the Sport version, which was later discontinued. The Ford Explorer is currently in its fifth generation and comes in a unibody construction for the full size SUV. Ford uses the unibody chassis from the Ford Taurus and the body-on-frame for the Ford Expedition to create the current Expedition. The Explorer has gained preference as a family vehicle because of its great performance, on-road and off-road capabilities, as well as its spacious and comfortable cabin. It is also reliable and safe with the latest models sporting some cool technological upgrades.
2000-Present Ford Escape
Three generations of the Ford Escape have been produced since 2000, in joint conjunction with Mazda. In fact, the Mazda Tribute is a variant of the Ford Escape just as the Mercury Mariner and Ford Kuga. Most of the changes that the Ford Escape currently bears were incorporated in the 2013 model. The current Escape features a three four-cylinder engine producing 168hp with possible upgrades of 179hp turbo four or 245hp turbo four and can tow 3500 pounds. The 2018 Ford Escape also comes with an upgraded infotainment as well as the Sync 3, which is Ford’s 8.0 inch touchscreen that comes with voice recognition. The best trim level for the 2018 Escape is the SEL trim which comes with leather upholstery and heated side mirrors as well as rear parking sensors and a power liftgate.
1998-Present Ford Focus
The Ford Focus is a compact car that was launched in 1998 and is currently in its fourth generation of production. The Focus is well known for its sporty performance in its class and offers an array of powertrains to meet the needs of different clients. Whether you want the three-cylinder or the high-performance turbo-four engine, you are guaranteed of excellent handling from the Ford Focus. In terms of space, the Focus comfortably seats five people and even though its interior may not be posh, it is durable and comes with a practical, easy-to-use infotainment. Even though fuel efficiency might not be its main strength, the Ford Focus guarantees a sporty experience on both city roads and off-roads.
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‘Nikita’ will air a 6-episode final season
Daniel Fienberg 05.16.13 6 years ago 7 Comments
Somewhat buried in the top-to-bottom overhaul of its schedule announced on Thursday (May 16) morning was The CW’s official confirmation that this will be the final season for “Nikita.”
In its upfronts announcement, The CW revealed that the final season of “Nikita” will be a six-episode mission, currently without a home on the schedule. “Nikita” is being held for a TBD midseason slot along with longer orders for the dramas “Star-Crossed” and “The 100,” plus the new reality offering “Famous in 12.”
“Nikita,” which will close its third season on Friday night, had been on the bubble each year, going from the prime post-“Vampire Diaries” slot on Thursdays to Fridays at 8 p.m. to Fridays at 9 p.m. and back to 8 p.m. Although never a huge ratings success, the drama will end up hitting 73 episodes. Its predecessor, the Peta Wilson-driven “La Femme Nikita,” ran for 96 episodes between 1997 and 2001.
The CW teased a few details about the final season but those details spoil some rather key plotpoints from Friday’s finale, so we’ll just note that the show continues to star Maggie Q, Shane West and Lyndsy Fonseca.
TAGSfinal seasonNIKITAthe cw
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Kacey Musgraves’ ‘High Horse’ Is Surprisingly Funky But Predictably Excellent
Derrick Rossignol
Music News Editor
Kacey Musgraves’ upcoming album Golden Hour is set to drop next week, and ahead of that, we’ve heard some promising previews of the record, “Space Cowboy” and “Butterflies.” Now she’s shared another song in advance of the album, and “High Horse” is probably one of the funkiest songs a country artist has ever made.
The song debuted on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Apple Radio show, and Musgraves told Lowe that the album was inspired by the Bee Gees:
“I mean first of all I was on a huge Bee Gees kick whenever I was making this album and I was intrigued by the thought of a world where Bee Gees kind of meets country music.”
She also spoke about how happy she is that country music is finding its place in the realm of pop music:
“I think the new record is something that country people will have something to hold onto and I think people that don’t know anything or care about country music will like it as well, hopefully. It’s been awesome to see kind of shift towards appreciation in pop music for country and Western style. I mean with Kesha, Miley I mean even in the clothes that they wear, the fringe the rhinestones. I’ve been wearing that for since I was 12 years old and it genuinely really inspires me. So it’s cool to see other genres appreciating this really historic genre.”
Golden Hour comes out on March 30th via MCA Nashville. Listen to “High Horse” above.
TAGSGolden HourHIGH HORSEKacey Musgraves
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Category Archives: Mass Shooting
Some of you reading this will have been fighting for #gunsense and commonsense gun laws for some time. Some will have just joined the fight. Welcome to everyone.
Some of you will have always been ‘political’. For some of you this will be the first time you’re getting directly involved in a political movement. We are all cynical about politicians and Congress, but something has made you take that decision to say “I MUST ACT”.
Perhaps the 6-year-olds murdered at Newtown was your defining moment. Perhaps you or a loved one have been directly affected by gun violence. Perhaps you are fed up with people telling you that thousands and thousands of Americans dying each year is just “collateral damage” and a “new normal”. Perhaps you are a gun owner who knows that commonsense regulation is needed and are fed up with the NRA’s extremist stance.
You are right not to accept this situation. You are right to no longer stay silent. You are right to take action. You are right to push your politicians.
Without you, the field is left to the special interests and lobbying firms of the gun industry.
Without you, the field is left to those who spread misinformation, fear and paranoia with the sole purpose of making more money from selling guns to whomever they can get away with.
Without you, more children and teenagers will die needlessly.
Without you, more children will cower in lockdown bathrooms, terrified as they cram themselves in during a living nightmare.
Without you, more women will be subjected to deadly domestic abuse.
Without you, America will continue to head to a very dark place.
But with you, things CAN and WILL change for the better.
Make THIS YEAR the year when you take real and meaningful action.
Here are 5 #Gunsense New Year Resolutions – how many can you commit to and follow through on?
I will contact my Senator(s) and State Senator(s) at least THREE times this year and demand that they support commonsense gun laws (such as the “Big Ten”).
I will engage at least THREE friends or family members who currently do not support commonsense gun laws but who I think can be persuaded when given the facts.
I will make a financial contribution this year to an organization lobbying for commonsense gun laws (Unfortunately money really does matter when pushing politicians).
If I have children, I will ask THREE fellow families if they have guns in the home and, if so, how they are stored.
I will encourage at least FIVE friends or acquaintances to take meaningful action this year (either by telling them about my actions or sharing these #gunsense resolutions).
These resolutions are all real and effective steps you can take this year to Continue reading →
This entry was posted in 2nd Amendment, Background Checks, Call for Action, Domestic Violence, Gun Industry, Gun Manufacturers, Gun Safety, Gunsense, Mass Shooting, Newtown, NRA, Sandy Hook on January 1, 2015 by usgunviolence.
TAKE ACTION – How YOU Can Push For The ” Big Ten” Gun Safety Measures
TAKE ACTION:
The only way our laws will change is if people like YOU put pressure on our politicians in the U.S. Congress and State Senates.
Follow these simple steps:
Step 1) Find out who your US Senators and Representative are at http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
Step 2) Find out who your State Senator is from the State Senate website in your state.
Step 3) If possible, coordinate with your neighbors and friends in the area and all make contact on the same day or in the same week.
Step 4) Call, email and/or write to each of your representatives and ask which of the “Big Ten” gun safety measures they support:
Do you support universal background checks, including in private sales? If not, why not?
Do you support an assault weapons ban? If not, why not?
Do you support mandatory child safety locks on all guns? If not, why not?
Do you support mandatory safe gun storage laws, particularly if a household contains a minor or person adjudicated mentally ill? If not, why not?
Do you support repealing the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevents victims from holding the gun industry to account? If not, why not?
Do you support limiting magazine sizes to ensure law enforcement are not outgunned? If not, why not?
Do you support mandatory duty of states to report persons with mental health issues to the Federal background check system? If not, why not?
Do you support mandatory liability insurance for all gun owners? If not, why not?
Do you support mandatory reporting by gun owners of lost or stolen guns? If not, why not?
Do you support Smart Gun technology to ensure only approved adults can fire a weapon, as soon as the technology is state-of-the-art? If not, why not?
Step 5) Note down the answers you receive, share them with people in your area and, if possible, publish them to the web. Use #gunsense if posting to Twitter.
Step 6) Attend in-person meetings with your representatives and demand that they support these commonsense gun safety measures.
Thanks for reading and keep working for commonsense gun laws in America.
Every single minute you commit to this fight will prevent more Americans from experiencing that terrifying minute when gun violence erupts.
Follow US Gun Violence and spread the message that “Strong Gun Laws Save Lives”.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/usgunviolence6
Facebook: www.facebook.com/usgunviolence
This entry was posted in 2nd Amendment, Background Checks, Call for Action, Domestic Violence, Freedom Group, Gun Industry, Gun Manufacturers, Gun Safety, Gunsense, Mass Shooting, Newtown, NRA, Ruger, Sandy Hook, Smith & Wesson, Sturm on January 2, 2014 by usgunviolence.
Mass Shooting – Wounded – Woman (Barberton, OH)
Two men have been arrested in connection with the New Year’s Eve shooting deaths of a Barberton father and his two teenage children.
Michael Deon Hendon, 22, and Eric Donta Hendon, 30, both of Akron, were arrested Friday on three counts each of aggravated murder.
Additional charges, including a potential death penalty specification indictment, will be considered when the case is reviewed later this month by a Summit County grand jury.
The arrests came on the same day that John Kohler, the Barberton father whose home was targeted by armed robbers on New Year’s Eve, died of apparent gunshot wounds.
He was shot in the home invasion burglary that also claimed the life of his 18-year-old stepdaughter, Ashley Carpenter, and his son, David Kohler Carpenter, 14.
Kohler’s girlfriend, Ronda Blankenship, 38, survived the shooting and is recovering at an area hospital.
Autopsies this week showed that Ashley died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Her brother, David, died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head. He also suffered defensive wounds to his arms, reports show. They were found together in a back bedroom.
The haunting 911 call from a Barberton woman paints a picture of the aftermath of a shooting New Year’s Eve that left her and her boyfriend wounded and his two teenage children dead.
“Help, help,” a wounded Ronda Blankenship pleads to a dispatcher in the conversation released Thursday by Southwest Summit Communications. “I’m bleeding everywhere … my boyfriend is here. I have two kids here … Help, help, help. Oh God.”
The teens were visiting their father, John Kohler, 42, at his 7th Street Northeast home on New Year’s Eve.
His girlfriend, Rhonda Blankenship, 38, was also shot, but survived.
A call for help was made around 6:50 p.m.
AKRON, Ohio — One of two brothers accused of killing three people and shooting a fourth during a home invasion robbery in Barberton is mentally unfit for the death penalty, a judge ruled on Monday.
Michael Hendon, 23, of Akron, still faces aggravated murder charges in the Dec. 31, 2013 attack. Summit County Judge Amy Corrigal Jones ruled that Hendon mental disabilities barred him from being executed under state and federal laws.
Hendon is scheduled for a court hearing Tuesday to determine how the case will proceed.
Hendon and his brother, Eric Hendon, 32, are accused of breaking into a 7th Street S.W. home in order to steal drugs and money, according to police.
http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/barberton-police-arrest-two-in-slaying-of-teens-father-1.456772
http://www.cleveland.com/akron/index.ssf/2015/08/judge_rules_barberton_triple_m.html
http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/family-prepares-to-bury-teen-victims-in-barberton-shooting-1.456621
http://fox8.com/2014/01/03/autopsy-results-on-barberton-teens-released/
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/01/victim_in_fatal_barberton_quad.html
http://www.toledonewsnow.com/story/24627406/prosecutors-get-confession-from-suspect-in-barberton-triple-murder
http://raycomgroup.worldnow.com/story/27409507/brothers-in-barberton-triple-murder-seek-plea-deal-to-avoid-death-penalty
http://www.cleveland19.com/story/27409507/brothers-in-barberton-triple-murder-seek-plea-deal-to-avoid-death-penalty
http://www.fox10tv.com/story/24543218/death-penalty-sought
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ohio/obituary.aspx?pid=168932974
http://www.coxfuneralhomeinc.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2367494&fh_id=13548
This entry was posted in Mass Shooting, Multiple Shooting, Ohio, Robbery at Gunpoint, Woman, Wounded on December 31, 2013 by usgunviolence.
Mass Shooting – Killed – Male Teen – David Carpenter-Kohler (Barberton, OH)
This entry was posted in Dead, Male Teen, Mass Shooting, Multiple Shooting, Ohio, Robbery at Gunpoint on December 31, 2013 by usgunviolence.
Mass Shooting – Killed – Ashley Carpenter (Barberton, OH)
This entry was posted in Dead, Mass Shooting, Multiple Shooting, Ohio, Robbery at Gunpoint, Woman on December 31, 2013 by usgunviolence.
Mass Shooting – Killed – John Kohler (Barberton, OH)
This entry was posted in Dead, Man, Mass Shooting, Multiple Shooting, Ohio, Robbery at Gunpoint on December 31, 2013 by usgunviolence.
Mass Shooting – Killed – Girl – Rayna Miranda (Fontana, CA)
Relatives discovered the bodies of four family members, including two children with multiple gunshot wounds, inside a Fontana, Calif. home after what appears to be a murder-suicide.
Police obtained a search warrant overnight and are continuing the investigation Tuesday morning at the home in the 7300 block of Palmetto Avenue. Authorities received a call from a 16-year-old boy who said his family members had been injured or possibly killed in the house, according to Fontana police Sgt. Doug Imhof.
“We located four bodies, two children, a female about 12 years old, a male about 10 years old, a female victim adult 35 to 40 (years old) and a male about the same age,” Imhof said. “It appears as though they all lived there.”
The victims were identified as 38 year-old Ramon Miranda, 34 year-old Silvia Miranda, 10 year-old Rayna Miranda, and 12 year-old Ramon Miranda Jr., according to the San Bernardino County Coroner’s Office.
Silvia, Rayna and Ramon Jr. suffered multiple gunshot wounds, according to police. The man, Ramon Miranda, suffered a single gunshot wound to the head, police said.
At about 8:30 p.m. Monday, Fontana police officers were called to the home in the 7300 block of Palmetto Avenue, where they discovered the bodies of Ramon Miranda, 38, and Silvia Miranda, 34, and their son Ramon Jr., 12, and daughter Rayna, 10, according to the San Bernardino County Coroner’s office.
Boy, 16, finds bullet-riddled bodies of his mother and two siblings after ‘stepfather gunned them down in grisly murder-suicide’
Bodies found in blood-smeared home late Monday in Fontana, California
Stepfather Ramon Miranda, 38, apparently shot and killed 34-year-old Silvia Miranda and her children, 12-year-old Ramon Jr. and 10-year-old Rayna
They were discovered by Silvia Miranda’s son, 16, who had gone to check on the family after he’d been unable to contact them
Neighbors reported hearing arguing before family was found dead
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/bodies-found-fontana-home-homicide-investigation-238201121.html
http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20131231/fontana-family-found-dead-in-apparent-triple-murder-suicide
http://ktla.com/2013/12/31/four-people-including-2-children-found-dead-in-fontana-home/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/01/ramon-miranda_n_4527451.html
http://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/news/article_798310dc-4658-508f-8bde-4b641e56017e.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-fontana-deaths-20140101-story.html
http://abc7.com/archive/9376728/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/people-including-children-found-killed-california-home-article-1.1562139
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/12/31/authorities-probe-deaths-of-2-children-2-adults-in-fontana/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2532150/Family-four-including-children-10-12-dead-home-argument.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/01/teen-son-finds-mother-and-3-other-family-members-dead-in-apparent-murder/
http://lasvegassun.com/news/2013/dec/31/2-children-2-adults-found-slain-california-home/
This entry was posted in California, Dead, Domestic Violence, Girl, Mass Shooting, Multiple Shooting, Murder-Suicide on December 30, 2013 by usgunviolence.
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A military portrait of Captain Raymond Earl Hill
French soldiers in Paris, 1917
The SS Kaiser Wilhelm II (Agamemnon) — the transport ship that conveyed Capt. Hill and much of the 365th Infantry Division to France.
Cap’s cursive script was impressive by most standards.
Cap used the term “whining past” several times to describe the action of German artillery shells flying overhead. Something about it stuck with me—perhaps the poetry of it, perhaps the idea that it could also refer to the tyranny of history.
The name “Wells” has been passed down from Cap’s father. It is both mine and my mother’s middle name.
A young Captain Hill.
An older Raymond Earl Hill, still known to my family as Cap, with his second wife, Sybil Wardwell Hill (d. June 29, 1988).
Cap and his son, my grandfather (“Puppa”).
My grandfather, John Slayter Hill, at a young age (c. 1939).
Various records of Capt. Raymond Earl Hill (b. October 26, 1890)
Even more records.
A French fighter plane (c. 1917).
Cap’s official military record (May 18, 1917 – March 19, 1919)
People had much nicer handwriting back then.
Cap’s discharge paper is signed by then Major General Omar Bradley, who later became one of nine generals in U.S. history to receive a five-star rank.
A C.O. referred to Capt. Hill as “an exceptionally efficient officer.”
More discharge papers.
The record acknowledges Cap’s engagement in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, as well as his injury in the last month of the war.
A July entry to the journal.
A victim of the mustard gas
A ruined church in the Argonne forest. The structure on the left is a German observation post.
No Man’s Land (“Flanders Field”), France
Cap’s ID card.
American engineers returning from the St. Mihiel front.
A typical WWI trench (Somme, 1916).
One of the most horrifying details of WWI was the rampant use of chemical weapons—particularly lethal gases like phosgene and sulfur mustard, the latter of which would ultimately cause Cap’s injury on the final day of fighting.
A French 75mm anti-aircraft gun—not to be confused with the cocktail.
General John J. Pershing
A map of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 1918.
“Temporarily crazy from shell shock.”
U.S. soldiers of 2nd Division engaged in the Argonne Forest.
Men of U.S. 64th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, celebrating the news of the Armistice.
The front page of the New York Times: November 11, 1918.
“Gassed” by John Singer Sargent.
Flu victims from the AEF at a U.S. Army Camp Hospital in Aix-les-Bains, France, 1918.
British troops blinded by tear gas during the Battle of Estaires, 1918.
German machine gun crew on the Somme, equipped with early gas masks.
Officers of the 79th Division. Meuse, France. Christmas, 1918.
In 1917, the RMS Olympic was painted with a “dazzle” camouflage to make it more difficult for observers to estimate its speed and heading.
The SS George Washington in service during World War I
The Paris Peace Conference began January 18th, 1919. “The Big Four” (David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, President Woodrow Wilson of the U.S) made most of the decisions.
Another view of the Olympic’s “dazzle” camouflage.
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Committee for NASA Advisory Council says moon will be an important part of going to Mars
Posted 8:40 pm, June 17, 2019, by Kelley Smith, Updated at 09:13PM, June 17, 2019
HUNTSVILLE, Ala - The Trump Administration has announced a new deadline to get a man back on the moon in 2024, but for years there have been people dreaming to go where no man has gone before, not just to the moon, but to Mars and beyond.
One of NASA's advisory council committees recently made recommendations to help steer the agency toward that goal.
The Human Exploration and Operations Committee meets at least 4 times a year. At their most recent meeting, they explained that to meet this goal there needs to be a long-term, sustainable plan that includes the moon.
My dream is the beyond part. That's my dream because I believe that there is life out there. It might not be exactly like what we believe and what we think it's going to look like, but I believe there is life out there," Mark McDaniel said.
McDaniel is a Huntsville based attorney who serves on the HEO committee. He thinks the moon will be part of realizing that dream.
"This is what we need to do to go to Mars and beyond... We need to have a sustainable presence on the moon, not a one-shot deal," he stated.
He explains what that presence would entail.
"We have astronauts there, we have Gateway, we have Orion docking with that, we have, you know, astronauts going to and from Gateway down to the moon to mine the moon," he explained.
He says having people spending time on the moon will answer important questions about how humans can safely stay in space for longs periods of time.
"We've learned all kinds of things on the International Space Station about the effects of space on the human body, but we're talking about going to Mars. We're not talking about six months. We're talking about a long time.
Not months - but years. He says it takes 9 months to go to Mars with the trip taking about three years.
McDaniel says this plan might sound a little out of this world, but...
"You've got to dream. That's what it's all about. You've got to dream to do things that have never been done in the history of mankind," he said.
The HEO Committee Made Other Recommendations At Their Last Meeting
Streamline NASA decision making:
HEO says the decision-making process should be shortened to meet the goal of having humans land on the moon in 2024. Currently, decision making is slowed by having multiple reviews at a high level. It is the committee's recommendation to have decision making delegated to the lowest level of authority.
"You have to turn it over to the program managers and start letting people make decisions so they can make, get decisions made quicker as opposed to going up the line and having meetings and having conferences and having all this," McDaniel said.
He says this would take it back to the way it was during the Apollo days.
"We had strong leadership by the President. He had strong leadership from the Vice President and the House and Senate were backing it. We had program managers that were getting things done. So you have to streamline and you can't be worried about accountants as much as getting the job done," he explained.
Continue Utilization of ISS until other commercial platforms in LEO are available:
The committing is recommending that plans should be made to continue International Space Station Operations past 2024. Currently, there is a plan to decrease funding for the ISS after that year.
McDaniel calls that ISS a national treasure.
"The things that we're doing, like on the International Space Station have never been done in the history of mankind. We're doing research up there, cancer research, they're doing Parkinson's research up there, different plant research up there," he said.
The committee is recommending to continue providing funding for and use the ISS until suitable replacement platforms are commercially operated and available for NASA service contracts.
STEM Opportunities for students:
In order to go to Mars and beyond, NASA will need a workforce. The HEO Committee wants to get students inspired to pursue careers math and sciences.
"Because the people who will be doing a lot of this stuff, especially the 'beyond' part, they're in elementary school now. They're in kindergarten now," he explained.
Filed in: Huntsville
Mark McDaniel says it’s time to go back to the Moon
Trump: ‘NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon’ and focus on Mars
NASA estimates it will need $20 billion to $30 billion for moon landing, administrator says
Apollo 11 Huntsville News The Story
Madison man’s moon photo on USPS stamp
Retired NASA Engineer reflects on Apollo 11 mission
NASA wants astronauts to go back to the moon in 2024. Is it possible?
NASA plans to land the first American woman on the moon by 2024
Homer Hickam talks Huntsville’s importance during the Space Race
Apollo 11 Huntsville News
Buzz Aldrin visits Huntsville with criticism of current progress, as space industry advocates plan for the future
Apollo 11 Huntsville
U.S. Space and Rocket Center launches 5,000 rockets to celebrate 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 launch
Huntsville News
Should Huntsville add a new city council district on the city’s west side?
How you can send your name to Mars aboard the Mars 2020 Rover
Apollo 11 News
NASA to open moon rock samples sealed since Apollo missions
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IvailoKalfin
1 Political Memory: Ivailo KALFIN, MEP
Political Memory: Ivailo KALFIN, MEP
{{#icon:IvailoKalfin.jpg|Ivailo KALFIN}}
Born on 30 May 1964, Sofia
Country: {{#icon:BG.png|Bulgaria||MEPs_BG}} Bulgaria
Political Group: {{#icon:SD.png|SD||MEPs_SD}} Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (SD)
Party: Coalition for Bulgaria
Bâtiment Altiero Spinelli 14G146
Email: ivailo.kalfin(at)europarl.europa.eu
Site web: www.kalfin.eu
Committee on Budgets (Vice-Chair)
Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (Member)
Delegation for relations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo (Member)
Committee on Budgetary Control (Substitute)
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (Substitute)
Delegation for relations with the countries of South Asia (Substitute)
Secondary school-leaving certificate from French language school in Sofia (1983)
Bachelor's and Master's degree in international economic relations from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia (1988)
Master's in international banking from Loughborough University, Great Britain (1999)
Worked for commercial and consulting companies (1988-1994 and 1997-2002)
Member of the Bulgarian National Bank advisory council (since 2004)
Principal lecturer on the BA (Hons) course in International Finance and Trade run by Portsmouth University, Great Britain, in Bulgaria (since 2001)
Honorary professor of East China University, Shanghai (2009)
MP in the 37th, 38th and 40th National Assemblies: member of the budget and finance committee and foreign policy committee (1995-1997, 2000-2001 and 2005)
Vice-chairman of the EU-Bulgaria joint parliamentary committee (1995-1997)
Economic affairs secretary to the President of the Republic of Bulgaria (2002-2005)
Deputy prime-minister and Minister for foreign affairs (2005-2009)
Head of the Coalition for Bulgaria list for the European Parliament elections and leader of the Bulgarian delegation to the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP (2009)
Recipient of national honours from several European countries
24/11/2010 - Resolution on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) 99.8/100
22/09/2010 - Rapport Gallo on enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market 100.0/100
Thanks to improve this part with opinions from Ivailo KALFIN about La Quadrature du Net concerned issues (see page Help:Political_Memory to know how to do it).
Retrieved from "https://wiki.laquadrature.net/index.php?title=IvailoKalfin&oldid=143035"
MEPs BG
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On Demand Manufacturing
Geomagic scanning plug-ins enable real-time 3D comparison for inspection
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., October 26, 2004- Geomagic has released new plug-ins that enable instant 3D comparison for inspection applications. The plug-ins work in conjunction with Geomagic Qualify 7 software, released earlier this week.
Real-time 3D comparison is available currently for Perceptron and Faro systems. Other scanning companies have begun porting the functionality to their systems through a new plug-in architecture offered by Geomagic.
“These plug-ins provide the 3D equivalent of ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ for scanner users,” says Peter Scott, Geomagic's vice president of engineering. “It is a natural way to bridge the gap between capturing and processing data for downstream applications.”
Instant visual feedback
Real-time 3D comparison gives users instant feedback on inspection results during the scanning process. The user calls up the 3D CAD model of the physical part as a reference, using the scanner gun to orient the model on the computer display. As the user scans the physical object, deviations are instantly displayed as a color map on the reference model.
The combination of real-time 3D comparison and portable scanners extends the benefits of computer-aided inspection on the shop floor. In addition to speeding inspection time, the new plug-ins are expected to prove valuable in other shop-floor applications, such as verifying the accuracy of tools and molds without taking them out of the production environment.
“This new technology represents another step in transitioning inspection from a manual process that relies on expertise, to an automated process driven by software tools that are powerful, yet easy-to-use,” says Ping Fu, president and CEO of Geomagic. “It should yield measurable time savings for our customers.”
The 3D real-time comparison plug-ins for Geomagic Qualify 7 are available for free downloading on the Geomagic web site. Geomagic Qualify 7, which includes major new features for geometric dimensioning and tolerance (GD&T) and turbine blade analysis, is available through Geomagic and its authorized distributors.
About Geomagic
Geomagic (www.geomagic.com) is a global company dedicated to advancing and applying 3D technology for the benefit of humanity. Geomagic’s scanning and design software solutions are used to capture and model 3D content from physical objects, organically sculpt complex shapes, and prepare products for manufacturing. In addition, the company produces powerful 3D metrology and inspection software that verifies dimensional quality by comparing as-built products to master designs. Geomagic’s Sensable Phantom haptic devices simulate the sense of touch in a digital environment.
Geomagic’s software and hardware are utilized by world-class customers in a variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, medical, consumer products, toys, collectibles, coindesign, jewelry, fine art, heritage restoration, research, education, mold making, entertainment, training and surgical simulation. In fact, some of the world’s leading companies and research organizationsuse Geomagic software, including Ford, BMW,Boeing, Harley Davidson, Timberland, Mattel/Fisher Price, Lego, Pratt & Whitney, NASA, Schneider Electronic, 3M, Danaher and Invisalign. Geomagic is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., USA, with an office in Boston, subsidiaries in Europe and Asia, and channel partners worldwide.
Geomagic, Geomagic Studio, Geomagic Qualify, Geomagic Qualify Probe, Geomagic Spark, Wrap, Geomagic Wrap, Phantom, OpenHaptics, Omni, Freeform, Claytools, Sensable and Sensable Technologies, Inc. are trademarks or registered trademarks of Geomagic Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Rachael Taggart
Geomagic, Inc.
Contact Rachael
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Policy maps may help efforts to clean up the Yahara lakes
On a patch of land upstream of Lake Mendota, where Dorn Creek meanders through farmland, local, state and federal policies are working in tandem to reduce soil and nutrient runoff into the Yahara lakes. In fact, public efforts to clean up the lakes reside in often-overlapping patches across the Yahara Watershed, a pattern made more visible by new WSC research.
Graduate student Chloe Wardropper and principal investigator Adena Rissman have developed a new way of looking at how multiple government efforts work together to improve lake water quality. Using the Yahara Watershed in southern Wisconsin as a case study, they mapped where on the landscape soil erosion and nutrient reduction policies are applied, providing a more holistic view that could enhance decision making.
“Thinking about policies spatially could help to improve the efficiency of efforts and funding to reduce runoff,” says lead author Wardropper, a PhD student in the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
In the United States, all levels of government—federal, state, county and municipal—apply erosion and nutrient reduction policies to a landscape in a myriad of shapes and forms, including incentives (e.g. grants to implement reduction measures), regulations (e.g. land use restrictions), land acquisitions (e.g., establishing parks) and direct management practices (e.g., creating stormwater basins).
In the Yahara, a region containing both agricultural and urban land and where most water quality policies target phosphorus runoff, efforts include federal incentives for farmers to implement conservation practices on their land, state laws that limit development around lakes and rivers, Dane County parks and municipal street sweeping, among many others.
Wardropper says this “multilevel” governance system has its benefits, such as adaptability and more resources, but it can be difficult to get a clear picture of where and how progress is being made.
“Everyone is working on the same problem, but efforts may not be targeted at areas of the greatest concern,” she says.
The research team mapped 35 policies to get a bird’s eye view of how they overlap and interact with each other on the Yahara landscape and to see whether they are hitting the phosphorus hotspots, or sources of large amounts of runoff. They found that, combined, the palette of policies is missing some of the most important marks.
“We found a disconnect between where policies are applied on the landscape and where the major sources of phosphorus pollution are located,” says Wardropper.
She clarified that this disconnect does not indicate that the existing policies are ineffective, an aspect they did not examine. Rather, their analysis allowed them to see the configuration of the policies and whether they are being applied in areas of greatest concern for water quality.
For example, urban areas, especially in and around Madison, contained the highest concentrations of reduction interventions, which include stormwater infrastructure, city parkland and phosphorus fertilizer restrictions. However, urban areas account for less than 30 percent of the phosphorus runoff into the four Yahara lakes.
The urban concentration may be partly a result of more money and support from urban communities, says Wardropper.
“Coordination barriers within the multilevel system can constrain efforts to target areas of concern,” she explains, adding that barriers include limited access to data due to privacy concerns and differing priorities when it comes to allocating funds.
When it comes to overcoming barriers to hitting phosphorus hotspots, Wardropper says the type of policy tool used matters.
“Different policy tools produce different results and are appropriate for different areas. In a complex landscape like the Yahara, it’s important to understand the benefits and limitations of each tool, including the area it covers and the cost and staff time needed to get it on the ground,” she says.
For example, the voluntary nature of incentive programs to reduce farm runoff does not guarantee widespread participation by farmers. Improving participation requires removing barriers, such as lengthening grant cycles to allow more time for agency staff to build relationships with farmers.
“There have been over thirty years of publicly funded efforts to reduce phosphorus in the Yahara lakes, but still no statistically significant improvements to water quality. Understanding where these diverse efforts fall on the landscape is a first step to figuring out how we can improve them,” says Wardropper.
The team emphasized that good record keeping by government agencies made their research possible. However, data sharing restrictions limited their access to information on some policies.
Wardropper and Rissman, along with co-author Chaoyi Chang, published their findings in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning earlier this year.
*The landscape pictured above is a view from Pheasant Branch Conservancy in the Yahara Watershed, with public parkland in the foreground and conservation farming practices in the background. Credit: Adena Rissman
The maps above depict the Yahara Watershed, with 300 subwatersheds. Lakes and waterways are in blue. The left-hand map shows the locations of policy applications; red indicates a high number of policies covering a subwatershed. The right-hand map shows areas of high (red) and low (yellow) phosphorus runoff; white indicates no data available. As an example of disconnection between the number of policies applied and phosphorus hotspots, look to the Madison isthmus between the top two lakes. Source: Wardropper, Chang, & Rissman, 2015
Fragmented water quality governance: Constraints to spatial targeting for nutrient reduction in a Midwestern USA watershed
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ADV Rides 10 Best on a Bucket List Ride Through South America
10 Best on a Bucket List Ride Through South America
Highlights from a trip through some of the most inspiring landscapes on earth!
Every time I mention the “Big South America Trip” we did last fall on Adventure Bikes, people want to know more about it and the number one question (always) is… What was the best part? Seriously? How can you pick a “best moment” when you’ve traveled 11,000 miles through six amazing countries and some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth?
The questions go on and on… How did you do this? Where did you go? What did you think about this or that? Did anybody get hurt? The answers to these questions are somewhat subjective and various members of the team might answer differently, but here are some of the highlights from what we called Expedition 65º – a journey from Cartagena, Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina.
There is no particular order to the list, just a random compilation of the great stuff we saw, felt, smelt, heard, and so on…
1. Machu Picchu – Most Awe Inspiring
Courtesy Simon Tong
Located high in the Peruvian Andes is the Incan fortress of the clouds, Machu Picchu. It’s not only a world heritage site, but its one of the top three historic attractions on earth (the great wall of China and the Pyramids being the other two). Knowledge of this had us all eagerly waiting to climb those stone walls and walk in the footsteps of those Noble Incan elite from long ago.
However – take note! You cannot get to Machu Pichu without first starting in Cusco (Another world heritage site). Here’s how it works: park the moto—you can’t ride there anyway—and take the train from the city. Its a beautiful 4-plus-hour journey (each way) to Aguas Caliente. You’ll cross over the headwaters of the Amazon River as you go and once you reach the end, you board a bus which will take you up a dizzying set of switchbacks to the park’s boundary. The bus will drop you off at the entry to the park, where you pay your entry fee and join a guided group (no longer are you allowed to freely roam the property).
Frankly it’s really a good thing to have a guide to get a glimpse into Incan life. To learn the context and history from the locals is invaluable and nearly all the guides are Quechua speaking natives, the original descendants of the Inca’s themselves. If you don’t have a guide, you’ll just spend your time looking at a huge pile of very well stacked boulders wondering “what happened here?”. It’s truly an amazing place.
2. Salar de Uyuni – Most Isolated
Absolutely mind bending… In stark contrast to the lush green valleys of Colombia and near vertical mountains of the Andes in Peru, the salt flat of Uyuni, Bolivia is like nothing else. Yep, it’s a dry lake and many of us have seen—or even ridden on—those in our lifetime, but none are bigger or higher in elevation. Situated in the legendary Alitplano at 12,000 feet above sea level, is what feels like—and is—the flattest place on earth! AND it is gigantic! At just over 4,000 square miles, it’s four times larger than the Los Angeles metro area, twice the size of the state of Delaware and covered with nothing but salt and lithium. No green stuff. Very few rocks and lots of nothingness.
The Uyuni is the place that actually inspired me to launch the Expedition 65º trip, as I’d been there before leading one of our South American tours. However due to time constraints, we didn’t get enough time to truly soak it all in. The Uyuni beckoned to me… come explore… I vowed to do so and thus Expedition 65º was born in my mind, though it took two and a half years to return. On this visit, we took our time to exploring it. In fact we spent the night camping out in the middle of the Uyuni on the only piece of rock that sticks up from the lake bed — Isle de Pescado (fish island).
Ponder this for a moment… White as snow, but hot and dry… as flat as the ocean on a calm day with absolutely nothing on the horizon so you can see the actual curvature of the earth and the freedom to ride as fast as you can, for as long as you want, in any direction… and you have the Salar de Uyuni. Isolation takes on a different meaning there. There is nothing to see but the horizon and that makes for a special form of isolation. Nonetheless, there is both a magic and a majesty to this place that makes it a “must visit” destination. Also there is a great game you can play because the place is so vast. Try writing your name in cursive on the screen of your GPS. Where else in the world can you try such a thing?
3. Roaring Forties – Best Battle With the Elements
There is a zone of latitude called the ‘Roaring Forties’ that dates back to the days of the Yankee Clipper ships that would sail “around the horn” from Boston to San Francisco in the 1800s. They were the fastest ships on earth at the time, a reputation they earned because they could harness the “roaring winds” of Latitude 40 to 49.
We found out that the roaring forties are still alive and well when we rode south through Tierra del Fuego. We heard from the proprietor of a ranch that the winds were going to be pretty bad that day — but we had no idea. Sustained 70 to 80 mph sidewinds all day long! Try to ride on a heavily graveled road in wind like that. We were continually blown over like dominos… even with the bikes parked on their side stands, they were blown over. We eventually figured out that parking “into the wind” would prevent it… but then we’d have to turn “broadside to the wind” to begin riding and BAM!… on the ground again.
Eventually we hit a paved road where we had better traction and could fight the wind more effectively, but we suddenly became aware of another phenomena, riding “with the wind” at high speed is bizarre. When you’re riding into the wind, the noise is incredible. Think about it… A 70 mph wind, and you’re riding “into it” at 50 mph you have wind noise equivalent to 130 mph. Suddenly, the road makes a curve and you’re riding with the wind and its silent, and you feel “nothing’ in the way of wind resistance. You and the wind are moving at the same speed — lift your face shield, glance down at your speedo — you’re doing 75 with no wind on your face AND you hear nothing. Its freaky. You almost feel that you’re at a stop and could just step off your bike. The good news is that you can get nearly 100 miles per gallon riding with the wind!
4. Sopa! Sopa! – Funniest Moment
The language barrier can be frustrating… or hilarious. It just depends on your viewpoint. Here’s the best example I’ve ever had. On a random afternoon in Peru, one member of our party (named Evan) was sent ahead to seek out a hostel for us to spend the night. He found a great little place owned by a friendly Peruvian woman named Carmen. After he successfully negotiated for our rooms (landing us domiciles for $7.00 per person) he decided to clean up before dinner, so he stripped down and headed for the shower. Pulling back the shower curtain he found that there was no shampoo or soap, so he walked to the front desk with only a towel around his waist to see Carmen about this little problem.
Arriving in the lobby, he realized that he did not know how to explain what he needed… so since we all know that the best way to communicate in Spanish is to add the letter “A” or “O” to any English word and say it louder… Evan tried to ask for soap. “Soapa?” He asked…”SOAPA?” And again… one more time “SOAPA?” Suddenly, he remembered the word “sopa” means soup in Spanish. Carmen had both a puzzled look, and a small smile as Evan gave up and headed back to his room for a soapless shower.
And now… “the rest of the story.” It wasn’t until a couple members of the team arrived who were fluent in Spanish, did we come to understand what Carmen ‘really’ heard. You see – while Carmen did speak Spanish, her native language is Quechua (language of the Inca’s) and the word “sopa” literally translated means cunnilingus. When we all learned of his faux pas, we were rolling on the floor in laughter, and Carmen took the joke to the next level as well… can you imagine Evan’s consternation as Carmen followed him around the hostel for the rest of the night saying… Señor Evan? Sopa? Sopa? I will never forget that…
5. The Arrival – Most Anticipated Moment
How do you label excitement? One thing that happens as we age is that we’re truly excited less and less about things… so when you get ‘genuinely’ excited about something, its an awesome feeling. Let me tell you… Its hard to describe the excitement of arriving in a foreign country after a year and a half of planning and then going through a bunch of arduous legal dealings (customs, logistics, etc.) being able to walk into a warehouse and seeing your motorcycle for the first time in a foreign land.
So one of the peak moments of excitement during the trip had to be getting on our motorcycles and riding through Colombia for the first time. I like many others in our community have a hectic life – and to be able to “check out” for two and half months to do nothing other than ride was a luxury to cherish. Not thinking about my business, not feeling constrained by the requests of others, being ‘in the moment’ for two months. Realizing the trip was finally underway kinda made me giddy to be honest!
6. Cartagena – Best Nightlife
Courtesy Michael Keen
More historic than I could ever put into words, this Caribbean oasis was founded in 1533 as the northern coast port of Colombia, and survives now as an UNESCO world heritage site. There is a reason that everyone wears white clothes in this tropical sweatbox. White clothing reflects the scorching Caribean sun and at least helps you think that you “fit in.”
The fortified city of Cartagena has been the cultural crossroads of South America since the 1500’s and every great civilization seems to have left a little mark on the culture here, making for a great, and luckily, affordable vacation spot. The timid can easily enjoy the city in safety. But for those with a sense of adventure, get outside the walls and wander. If you don’t pick up a date for the evening, you’ll surely find something to tickle your fancy. From free-flowing bacchanalia, to haute couture, to multi-cultural cuisine. But a cheap set of plastic chairs surrounding a table in the town square is the life for me. Watching tourists and locals meet, through a bottle of rum, your eyes will see it differently while in Colombia. And the weather at night is perfect, all year round being this close to the equator.
7. Gaucho Parilla – Best Meal
OK – face it… Food is one of the best parts of travel; the uniqueness, the exotic flavors, the environments. And this meal was a truly remarkable experience.
Jorge Javonovics, one of our team members and a chef, is a jovial fellow and a native Argentine. As Expedition 65º entered Argentina, Jorge invited us to dinner with his family. Dinner is an understatement. It was a food orgy of epic proportions. Argentine hospitality is beyond most folks ability to grasp. There was roughly 60 pounds of meat and sausage for 20 people. (that’s right – about 3 pounds of meat per person) plus salad, veggies and all the other stuff… but the meat was the centerpiece, and beef especially is a great source of pride to the Argentinians as they ship it all over the world. The party started at sundown and carried well into the wee hours of the morning. The wine flowed… the meat rolled off the grill like cars in rush hour traffic. And I came away with a new definition of hospitality.
A moment of great pride for me was a gift presented to me by Jorge’s dad, a Gaucho knife. It turns out that there is a cultural aspect of coming to someone’s house for dinner that I was unaware of. Since the early days of Argentina when Beret wearing Gauchos (cowboys) roamed the Pampas, its been customary for all men to bring their own knife to a “Parilla” or Barbecue as we’d call it. The reason for this is that in the old days steel was expensive and most homes did not have enough knives to give to each person that might come to dinner @mdash; so it became customary for all men to bring their own! Now its embedded culture… if you’re going to visit someone’s home for a Parilla, you bring your knife! I’m proud to say that I have my own now and next time I go back to Argentina, I’m taking it with me.
8. Death Road – Most Thrilling Ride
As with all great trips, Expedition 65º wasn’t about “getting to the end of the world,” it was about the journey. And one day’s ride in particular stood out as an “icon” of adventure because we’ve all heard about… and seen it before. The famous Death Road in Bolivia is lined with tombstones and markers every few hundred feet, which are grim reminders to the toll paid by countless travelers over the years as they toiled along this narrow and treacherous “shelf” in the middle of the Andes.
In spite of the somewhat annoying toll booths and crossings that have popped up in recent years for tourists, it’s a spectacular ride — A narrow shelf 8 to 10 feet wide, with vertical cliffs that vary from a paltry thousand feet or so to drastic plunges of a half mile or more. To make matters more interesting, you get to ride through several small waterfalls that cascade directly onto the road (and you). Bottom line, the Death Road is one of the highlights of any South America trip @mdash; don’t miss it!
9. Hacienda Teneria – Most Unique Lodging
After a long days ride past snow-capped peaks and barren desert textures in Bolivia, we traveled South to find Hans Hesse’s hostel and campamento known as Hacienda Teneria. Hans is 80 years old and as his name would indicate is of German heritage. Teneria is a remote & decrepid 600-year-old pre-colonial Spanish-style hacienda. Hans scratches out a living hosting the few wayward travelers that somehow manage to find his front door! I mention this because even though we had a GPS waypoint for his ‘casa,’ we rode right on by because Hacienda Teneria does not have a “driveway” to enter the place… we found our way in by simply riding through the trees.
The prices are pretty reasonable at Teneria – $8 dollars for the night, a cold shower and a mattress in a room with 4 other guys made it all seem pretty acceptable. After all, we were in the middle of central Bolivia after 10 hours of riding on a single lane dirt road. On arrival, we were treated to one of our more unusual meals. Han’s lovely daughter, who is studying at the University in La Paz, had slaughtered a pig and it was on the spit for us as we arrived. We sat beneath the stars next to the spit and thought about the fact that our meal had been walking about in its pen only an hour or two before our arrival. And we all agreed we better not upset the young lady that had butchered the pig, as we might be her next target. Just another fantastic night after a tremendous day in Bolivia. By the way, the stars when viewed from 12,000 feet are amazing!
10. The End of the World – Most Emotional Moment
Yes, the journey was the important part but all journeys must come to an end… and so there’s this place called Ushuaia, the world’s most southerly city, that we called both the endpoint and the turning point in our trip. This is the place where we celebrated the success of the trip and the end of our journey @mdash; but that’s not where the road actually ends. So before we headed for the port city of Punta Arenas to ship our bikes home, we made one last ride in a southerly direction.
Roughly 20 miles south of downtown Ushuaia, and the famous sign seen in almost everyone’s photographs that travels here, is the actual end of the road. More accurately, it’s where the road runs into the sea. After spending two and half months riding “to the end of the world,” it was important for us to actually reach that final place where land meets water. We took an hour or so to just “soak it in.” We’d ridden to the literal end of the world. We were further south than New Zealand by a thousand miles… the closest you can get to Antarctica without a boat.
What are the final stats of our South America Trip? We spent 73 days on the road, traveling 11,259 miles, across six countries, with elevations from Sea Level to 16,700 feet. We wrecked one GS, had one broken leg, changed 32 sets of tires, got three flat tires, encountered zero significant illnesses, dealt with three blown shock absorbers, 55,000 photos were taken by our journalist/photographer and we created hundreds of wonderful memories to last the rest of our collective lives.
Want more stories from Expedition 65º? Check out the coffee table book entitled “Journey To The End Of The World.” You’ll find it in your local Barnes & Noble bookstore or online at Amazon. There is also a 4-part documentary film series you can order on DVD, or you can stream it instantly on Vimeo. Use it to inspire your own bucket list trip and get going! It’s a big world out there, enjoy it!
Photos by Alfonse Palaima, Sterling Noren and Jim Hyde
About the Author: Jim Hyde is a compulsive traveler, owner of RawHyde Adventures off-road training and tours, and a tireless advocate for the Adventure Riding community. When not sitting at the helm of the two training schools that RawHyde operates, Jim can be found leading groups of ADV Riders around the world from destinations like the Continental Divide to global locations like Iceland, Argentina, Peru & Bolivia. But there’s still more to see and do on his bucket list. Up next: The Silk Road from Istanbul to China!
Author: Jim Hyde
Jim is a compulsive traveler, owner of RawHyde Adventures off-road training and tours, and a tireless advocate for the Adventure Riding community. When not sitting at the helm of the two training schools that RawHyde operates, Jim can be found leading groups of ADV Riders around the world from destinations like the Continental Divide to global locations like Iceland, Argentina, Peru & Bolivia. But there’s still more to see and do on his bucket list. Up next: The Silk Road from Istanbul to China!
Here’s How I Set Off on a RTW Journey as a Complete Novice Rider
Insider Tips: Getting Brands to Sponsor Your Motorcycle Journeys
Expedition 65: Seeking the End of the World on ADV Bikes You might recall my story last month detailing a lengthy decision making […]
8 thoughts on “10 Best on a Bucket List Ride Through South America”
Mark Peters on September 28, 2017 at 1:55 pm said:
This makes me want to drop everything and ride through all these amazing landscapes! Can’t wait to check out the movie!
Eric Whitter on September 28, 2017 at 2:12 pm said:
Salar de Uyuni always looks so jaw dropping. Must be an unforgettable experience to ride through that region.
RobG on September 28, 2017 at 2:24 pm said:
That seems like a lot of tires for 11,000 miles.
Must be nice to have sponsorship to do this sort of trip.
MotoInsider on October 1, 2017 at 2:58 pm said:
I was the only one with any tire sponsorship and even I only changed tires once. I think Jim meant to say 32 tires, not 32 pairs. 🙂
Aja Patterson on September 28, 2017 at 10:04 pm said:
Sopa! Sopa!! haha hilarious >:D
Siima MotoWear on September 29, 2017 at 1:21 am said:
such a magical experience! wow! excellent post. I am so jealous!
Pavel Abraham on October 13, 2017 at 9:24 pm said:
could you please post an GPS for Hacienda Teneria? Thanks
michael huber on February 25, 2018 at 9:15 am said:
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Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) | Jul 21, 2017
Pope Francis donates to FAO to assist drought and conflict-stricken populations in East Africa
Gesture aims to encourage governments to support FAO's emergency response
Egalement disponible en Français
ROME, Italy, July 21, 2017/APO/ --
In an unprecedented move, Pope Francis has symbolically donated €25,000 to FAO's efforts supporting people facing food insecurity and famine in East Africa.
Pope Francis said the funds are "a symbolic contribution to an FAO programme that provides seeds to rural families in areas affected by the combined effects of conflicts and drought."
The pontiff's remarks were contained in a letter written to FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva by Monsignor Fernando Chica Arellano, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN food agencies in Rome.
Pope Francis' gesture stemmed from a pledge he made in a message to FAO's Conference on 3 July 2017 and was "inspired also by the desire to encourage Governments," Monsignor Chica wrote in the letter.
Famine was declared in parts of South Sudan in February and while the situation has eased after a significant scaling up in the humanitarian response, some 6 million people in the country are still struggling to find enough food every day.
Meanwhile the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in five other East African countries - Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - is currently estimated at about 16 million, which marks an increase of about 30 percent since late 2016.
Pope Francis, who has made solidarity a major theme of his pontificate, is set to visit FAO's headquarters on 16 October to mark World Food Day. This year the event is being held under the slogan: "Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development".
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Pope Francis donates to FAO to assist drought and conflict-stricken populations in East Africa Gesture aims to encourage governments to support FAO's emergency response ROME, Italy, July 21, 2017/APO/ -- In an unprecedented move, Pope Francis has symbolically donated €25,000 to FAO's efforts supporting people facing food insecurity and famine in East Africa. Pope Francis said the funds are "a symbolic contribution to an FAO programme that provides seeds to rural families in areas affected by the combined effects of conflicts and drought." The pontiff's remarks were contained in a letter written to FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva by Monsignor Fernando Chica Arellano, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN food agencies in Rome. Pope Francis' gesture stemmed from a pledge he made in a message to FAO's Conference on 3 July 2017 and was "inspired also by the desire to encourage Governments," Monsignor Chica wrote in the letter. Famine was declared in parts of South Sudan in February and while the situation has eased after a significant scaling up in the humanitarian response, some 6 million people in the country are still struggling to find enough food every day. Meanwhile the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in five other East African countries - Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - is currently estimated at about 16 million, which marks an increase of about 30 percent since late 2016. Pope Francis, who has made solidarity a major theme of his pontificate, is set to visit FAO's headquarters on 16 October to mark World Food Day. This year the event is being held under the slogan: "Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development". Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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Spring 2017 ›
Recognizing the Benefits of Recess
By Catherine Ramstetter, Dr. Robert Murray
One sunny day in May, Ms. Brown tells her first-grade class, “OK, boys and girls, it’s time for recess.” As the children leave the classroom in an organized fashion, three other first-grade classes join them out on the playground, an open field with one tree and a six-foot-tall monkey bar structure. Under the teachers’ watchful eye, the children climb and play.
After 15 minutes, one of the teachers blows a whistle, and the children run back to the building, where another teacher leads them in. Aside from a few latecomers to the door, every child has entered the building in less than 30 seconds. Back in the classroom, Ms. Brown begins a song about not dawdling, and the children move to the carpet for a group story discussion.
Earlier that day, Ms. Brown wasn’t so sure all of her students should go to recess. Connor had acted out one too many times, and she was thinking he didn’t deserve to go out and play. But then, she remembered her training last spring and summer with LiiNK trainers (a project described later in this article), who urged her not to withhold recess as punishment.
So when recess arrived, Ms. Brown decided to allow Connor to go out; she even let him be the first student out the door. The break from his desk ends up helping him refocus. Upon returning to the classroom, Connor apologizes to Ms. Brown and promises to behave better. She believes it. The rest of the day is pleasant for her and Connor—indeed, for the whole class.
While denying recess to a misbehaving student is common for many teachers, Ms. Brown’s response may not be. Her decision to allow Connor to attend recess and his subsequent apology show the power of unstructured play time for students during school.
What Is Recess?
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in its 2013 policy statement titled “The Crucial Role of Recess in School,” describes recess as “a necessary break in the day for optimizing a child’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development.”1 Recess ought to be safe and well supervised, yet teachers do not have to direct student activity. The frequency and duration of breaks should allow time for children to mentally decompress, and schools should allow students to experience recess periods daily.
As the AAP makes clear, outdoor play “can serve as a counterbalance to sedentary time and contribute to the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day.”2 An effective recess is one where children demonstrate their ability to stay within the boundaries of their play space, negotiate conflict with each other, and then return to academic learning. The peer interactions that take place during recess allow for communication, cooperation, and problem solving, complementing the classroom experience.3 Unstructured play, with adult supervision, gives children the opportunity to develop important social and emotional skills, which is essential to a well-rounded education.
The AAP’s policy statement on the role of recess in school cited four critical benefits of recess: (1) greater levels of physical activity and fitness, (2) improved attentiveness in class, (3) improved cognition and learning, and (4) practice of peer-to-peer social and emotional skills. The latter, often overlooked, is cited by child development experts as a fundamental skill set, laying the basis for social success in later life. As a result, the AAP concluded that “recess should be considered a child’s personal time, and it should not be withheld for academic or punitive reasons.”4
After all, “it is the supreme seriousness of play that gives it its educational importance,” said Joseph Lee, the father of the playground movement. “Play seen from the inside, as the child sees it, is the most serious thing in life. … Play builds the child. … Play is thus the essential part of education.”5
A Harvard-educated author and philanthropist, Lee advocated for playgrounds in city schools and parks in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a leader in promoting school attendance and safe havens for play for all children, especially poor children in the urban core of Boston. In the 1890s, children were forbidden from playing games in the streets and there were no playgrounds in the poorest neighborhoods, where adolescent boys were routinely arrested for delinquency. Lee was from a wealthy Boston family, and, recalling the childhood he experienced—one filled with games, dancing, and play—he took it upon himself to find a solution. He gained permission to clear a vacant lot and provide materials and equipment he felt children would be likely to play with or on, such as dirt piles, large pipes, and sand. And, as he predicted, children came to play.
Over the next decades, Lee’s initiative spread from Boston to Chicago and extended into municipal investment in parks and recreation centers for boys and girls. Lee’s efforts also extended to public education. He was determined that poor children receive the same kind of educational opportunity in schools as their more affluent peers by being educated by teachers who were trained as teachers. He personally underwrote the creation of Harvard University’s School of Education in 1920. It was during this period of growth in urban education and play space for children that recess—as a time during the school day for children to play in a designated space—came to be.6
Lee’s vision of play in education still resonates today. Given that the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) removes the emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing in schools and includes nonacademic indicators as a component of a student’s “well-rounded education,”7 schools that have narrowly focused on scores to the detriment of students’ well-being can now correct the imbalance. In doing so, they can ensure that recess, which plays a vital role in social and emotional development, maintains its rightful place in the school day.
The Current State of Recess
Beyond Lee’s advocacy of playgrounds and recreation, it is difficult to document a precise history of recess. In fact, when the School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) was initiated in 1994 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the purpose of providing “the first in-depth description of policies and programs related to multiple components of the school health program at the state, district, school, and classroom levels,”8 recess was not included.
It wasn’t until 1997 that the CDC defined recess as “regularly scheduled periods within the elementary school day for unstructured physical activity and play.”9 Recess was first included in the 2000 SHPPS, among various opportunities in schools for children to engage in physical activity. Prior to that, what we know about recess as an experience during the school day—an experience of childhood—is something that is informed by individual and collective memories.
Since then, in addition to SHPPS, other published research about recess practices and policies in the United States has included studies on a smaller scale, in a school or district. These explore various aspects of recess, under the assumption that recess is a given for every child in that school or district.10 Few studies, however, actually examine how recess varies within and across schools and districts (for instance, how teachers monitor and handle recess in the same school and grade).
Largely, the documentation of what happens in the daily, lived experience of recess in schools remains uneven and takes the form of blog posts, news stories, and other social media sharing. The limitations of understanding the delivery and experience of recess at individual schools aside, since the mid- to late-1990s, a growing body of evidence has emerged about the value of and practices and policies related to physical activity—of which recess is one part. Since its inception in 1994, SHPPS has been repeated in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2014.
According to SHPPS data from 2014, “82.8 percent of elementary schools provided daily recess for students in all grades in the school.”11 (For a summary of current recess practices, see the table below.) Because this study surveys principals and “lead health education teachers,” this statistic doesn’t necessarily paint a complete picture of where, when, or how recess is provided,* and the documentation about current practices only includes data collected from those schools that reported having regularly scheduled recess. Even with these limitations, however, the 2014 SHPPS research is useful. It shows that, among elementary schools with regularly scheduled recess, the percentage of schools providing recess decreases from first to sixth grade. The average number of days with recess per week across all grades was 4.9, and the average time spent in recess was 26.9 minutes per day.
(click image for larger view)
Decisions about timing, duration, location, and activities for recess are typically made at the school or grade level. While there is no recommended duration (minutes per day) or timing for recess, one of the largest studies published on recess found that for 8- to 9-year-olds, at least one or more daily recess periods of at least 15 minutes was associated with better class behavior ratings from teachers than no daily recess or fewer minutes of recess.12
According to SHPPS data from 2000 to 2014, among schools that offer recess, the percentage of classes having regularly scheduled recess immediately after lunch decreased from 42.3 percent in 2000 to 26.2 percent in 2014. This may be a result of a decrease in recess opportunities, or it may reflect schools’ shifting recess times to before lunch, which has been shown to increase meal consumption and decrease food waste, while improving lunchroom behavior and increasing attention in the classroom following lunch.13
A comparison of results from the SHPPS surveys in 2006 and 2014 also indicates an alarming trend: in 2006, 96.8 percent of elementary schools provided recess for at least one grade in the school, compared with 82.8 percent in 2014. Using self-reported data from high-level administrators at the district level, these surveys show that even though more than 80 percent of districts claim to provide daily recess, a 2014 analysis conducted by the CDC and the Bridging the Gap research program revealed that 60 percent of districts had no policy regarding daily recess for elementary school students and that only 20 percent mandated daily recess.
Additionally, a 2006 analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics found noticeable disparities:14
City schools reported the lowest average minutes per day of recess (24 minutes in first grade to 21 minutes in sixth grade).
Rural schools reported the highest average minutes per day (31 minutes in first grade to 24 minutes in sixth grade).
The lowest minutes per day of recess (21 minutes in first grade to 17 minutes in sixth grade) occurred in schools where 75 percent or more of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
Decreased opportunities for recess have been associated with increased academic pressure. Recess has been the victim of the perceived need to spend more time preparing students for standardized testing and, generally, to meet increased demands for instructional time. Diminishing recess first began in the early 1990s, and it further declined with the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2001, which emphasized English language arts and mathematics. To focus on these core areas, districts reduced time for recess, art, music, physical education, and even lunch.15 In addition, recess often was and is withheld from students as punishment for disruptive behavior and/or to encourage task completion, even though research shows this practice “deprives students of health benefits important to their well-being.”16
Interestingly, the emergence of a national health crisis in the United States—the rising rates of obesity in children—has sparked a reevaluation of recess. Recess was included, along with physical education and other opportunities for school-based physical activity, in the wellness policy requirement enacted in 2004 as part of the Child Nutrition and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Reauthorization Act.† (But, as we just noted, a recess-specific policy is lacking in 40 percent of school districts.) In 2014, this requirement was bolstered by an approved rule under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,17 which “expands the requirements to strengthen policies and increase transparency. The responsibility for developing, implementing, and evaluating a wellness policy is placed at the local level, so the unique needs of each school under the [district’s] jurisdiction can be addressed.”18 By June 30, 2017, all schools/districts must have a wellness policy that meets all required components.
In conjunction with these federal initiatives, some state legislatures have explored recess as part of a broader school-based wellness or physical activity education bill. Accurately documenting what these legislative actions mean for recess is difficult, partially because recess could fall under a variety of laws or policies, and also because the way the law or policy is written can vary. (For example, a mandate may require a set number of minutes per day for physical activity, with recess included, or it might require recess be specifically included in a district wellness policy.)
To supplement CDC and SHPPS information, the National Association of State Boards of Education’s State School Health Policy Database is updated as states enact or revise laws and policies. Within states, districts can add to or build on any federal or state requirement.‡ A similar database does not exist for district-level school health policies, but as indicated by Bridging the Gap’s research, such policies often do not include recess.
With the renewed emphasis on a “well-rounded education” thanks to ESSA, states and schools now have additional incentive to elevate policies and practices for regular recess as part of a robust package of “nonacademic” health and physical activity initiatives, which research has shown to positively affect academic progress.
ESSA requires states to select at least one nonacademic indicator that each school district will report. Funds for implementing the federal law will be allocated to the states to distribute, and they include funds for professional development and programs to support students’ physical health as well as their mental and behavioral health. Recess offers a unique way to address both.
Integrating Recess into School Culture
In 2011, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced it would reintroduce daily recess in the 2012 school year, making it “the first large urban district to once again require daily recess at the elementary and middle school levels.”19 This move was prompted by a groundswell of parents, community members, and concerned district employees, who led the push for recess reinstatement during their struggle to lengthen the school day. We could find no published accounts on the decision to eliminate recess in the first place; however, based on the timing (recess was discontinued in the early 1980s), we can surmise it was both a cost-cutting measure and a response to concerns that students spend as much time as possible on academics.
Thus, in the fall of 2012, when CPS extended the school day by at least 30 minutes across the district, recess once again became a daily occurrence at all elementary and middle schools. Exactly how these minutes are used varies at each school, but reinstating recess did not take away instructional time. Once recess was reinstated, the CPS Office of Student Health and Wellness codified daily recess by making it a provision of the district’s Local School Wellness Policy that was passed in 2012, which mandates that all CPS K–8 students receive a minimum of 20 minutes of recess each day.20 The office provides ongoing support for teachers and administrative personnel to engage in daily recess and other wellness practices. Reinstating recess not only required dedicating the time for it but also required training and resources for schools and teachers to ensure it was safe and consistent across a large number of schools in a wide variety of neighborhoods.
More recently, in September 2015, the Seattle Public Schools and the local teachers union agreed to a guaranteed minimum of 30 minutes of daily recess for elementary school students, although teachers had originally asked for 45 minutes.21
Such changes in recess require schools to rearrange schedules. But even in districts where recess is required, how students experience it is sharply inequitable, as demonstrated at Detroit’s Spain Elementary-Middle School, where “students are forced to walk the halls during recess, because the gym is shut down due to mold and the outdoor playground emits burning steam—even during Detroit snowstorms.”22§ Children in poverty also have less access to free play, fewer minutes of physical activity during the day, and the fewest minutes of recess in school.23
Promising Programs
Ongoing research continues to expand our understanding of why recess and play are crucial. Some studies are exploring play spaces, specific activities, and the benefits of close supervision, while others are examining the benefits of accumulated physical activity and social interactions. While much is being learned from practices in other countries, three programs in the United States are particularly instructive: Peaceful Playgrounds, Playworks, and the Let’s Inspire Innovation ’N Kids (LiiNK) Project out of Texas Christian University. Each offers a slightly different philosophy and approach, but the commonalities are that recess is well supervised and that every child experiences daily, safe play time during the school day. Each program is annually evaluated, and findings have demonstrated the benefits of recess as a component of a whole-child education.
Peaceful Playgrounds began in 1995 and is grounded in the following principles: teaching conflict resolution, establishing clear rules and expectations, providing low-cost equipment, and designing a play space that invites exploration and interaction and minimizes potential for conflict. Peaceful Playgrounds offers training for school personnel in the wealth of games available to children and provides blueprints, playground stencils, and playground game guides. The program emphasizes free choice by students.
Playworks, which began in 1996 as Sports4Kids, focuses on using safe play and physical activity during recess and throughout the day to improve the climate at low-income schools. The program offers a variety of services that hinge on training or providing Playworks “coaches” to “enhance and transform recess and play into a positive experience that helps students and teachers get the most out of every learning opportunity.” According to a survey of Playworks schools, staff report a decrease in bullying and disciplinary incidents, an increase in students’ physical activity during recess, and an increase in students’ abilities to focus on class activities.24
The LiiNK Project, a school curriculum modeled after one in Finland (whose academic performance consistently ranks in the top five countries in the world—well above the United States), was created three years ago to balance a focus on academics and the social and emotional health of children and teachers. Ms. Brown, the first-grade teacher mentioned earlier, teaches in a LiiNK school.
While LiiNK received national media attention in 2016 as strictly a recess program, it emphasizes more than just embedding additional recess into the school day. It also focuses on preparing teachers and administrators to redesign learning environments through recess, character education, and teacher training, in order to combat critical issues affecting the development of noncognitive skills, such as empathy in students.25 Preliminary pilot data are compelling: in schools implementing the LiiNK curriculum, student achievement significantly improved, as did students’ listening, decision-making, and problem-solving abilities.26
Other recess practices, both in the United States and in other countries, have demonstrated positive effects for students and teachers. As discussed previously, the move to conduct recess before lunch is associated with decreased food waste, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, and better behavior in the lunchroom and upon returning to the classroom.
In studies with British children, providing large equipment and playground markings increased physical activity levels.27 A study in Belgium found a similar effect on physical activity levels through providing smaller, less costly games and equipment.28 Across the globe, simply providing these kinds of portable play equipment, such as balls and jump ropes, encourages children to be active during recess.29
Holding recess outside invites self-directed play where children choose what to do, from playing make-believe games, to reading or daydreaming, to socializing and engaging in physically active games; the experience is up to the child. Certainly, these activities can also occur in an indoor setting, but the opportunity for exploration is limited.30 Interestingly, a large controlled study in China found that outdoor recess may help prevent or minimize nearsightedness in children.31
Meanwhile, children in Japan experience recess in five- to 10-minute bouts approximately every hour, based on the premise that a child’s attention span wanes after 40 to 50 minutes of academic instruction.32
Given the evidence of the value of recess for children and teachers, what can educators, schools, and districts do to promote this critical aspect of the education of the whole child? Daily decisions about who gets recess and when and where it will happen are often made by teachers; thus, teachers are a crucial link for recess. Policies that support daily recess for all children are also essential, especially when it comes to the practice of withholding some or all of recess for disciplinary reasons.33
It is imperative to treat recess time as a child’s personal time (similar to the way adults take breaks and choose how to spend them) and to make this explicit in policy and in practice. Recess time should not be usurped to fulfill a physical activity requirement. That is, if the school is required to offer opportunities outside of physical education classes, recess should only be included as an optional or supplemental opportunity. During recess, it should be as acceptable for children to engage in other types of play as it is for them to engage in physical activity. In addition to policy, teachers, administrators, and school staff would benefit from coursework during initial preparation, as well as from ongoing professional development, in recess management and in establishing and carrying out alternatives to discipline other than withholding recess.
Other ways to promote recess include:
Advocating for district and school policies that require or recommend daily recess for every child.
Disseminating information on the benefits of recess and the successful programs and practices described above.
Including recess-type games and the practice of conflict resolution in physical education teacher training and in school physical education curricula.**
Encouraging state and district boards of education to integrate the social and emotional benefits of recess in health education curricula.
Collaborating with school wellness councils, school health and wellness teams, and parent-teacher groups to reinforce policies for recess, fund the purchase and maintenance of playground or recess equipment, and train playground monitors and teachers.
Daily recess for every child supports a school’s mission of providing a high-quality, comprehensive, and meaningful education so students grow and reach their full potential. Participating in recess offers children the necessary break to optimize their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. It not only helps them get important daily physical activity but also requires them to engage in rule-making, rule-following, and conflict resolution with peers. These are essential life skills that children can learn to master through the serious act of play.
Catherine Ramstetter is the founder of Successful Healthy Children, a nonprofit organization focused on school health and wellness. A member of the Ohio chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Home and School Health Committee, she has researched and written about the importance of recess to children’s development. Robert Murray is a professor of human nutrition in the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio State University. A former chair of the Ohio AAP chapter, he was previously a professor in the department of pediatrics in the university’s College of Medicine.
*To see the original questionnaires given to principals and teachers, visit the CDC's website. (back to the article)
†The wellness policy language only includes recess as one of the ways schools can address student physical activity. Schools are only required to have a policy that addresses nutrition services, nutrition education, physical education, and physical activity. The federal law does not prescribe the duration, timing, or type of activities. Some states have laws, some have recommendations that are codified, and some have nothing (which is the case for recess in most states).
(back to the article)
‡For a state-by-state listing of recess policies in schools, see the NASBE's website. (back to the article)
§For more on health and safety in schools, see “A Matter of Health and Safety” in the Winter 2016–2017 issue of American Educator. (back to the article)
**Physical education is intended to impart not only sport-specific physical and competition skills but also lifelong physical health skills, like rule and goal setting, rule following, and general fine and gross motor skills. While separate from recess, physical education is one class that offers a place where children can learn recess-type games, or games that require imagination and physical movement, as well as appropriate ways to negotiate conflict with others. (back to the article)
1. American Academy of Pediatrics, “Policy Statement: The Crucial Role of Recess in School,” Pediatrics 131, no. 1 (2013): 186.
2. American Academy of Pediatrics, “Policy Statement,” 186.
5. Joseph Lee, Play in Education (New York: Macmillan, 1915), 3–7.
6. The history of Joseph Lee’s life is informed by Donald Culross Peattie, Lives of Destiny: As Told for the “Reader’s Digest” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 80–88.
7. Every Student Succeeds Act, Pub. L. No. 114-95, § 8002(21), 129 Stat. 2099 (2015).
8. Lloyd J. Kolbe, Laura Kann, Janet L. Collins, Meg Leavy Small, Beth Collins Pateman, and Charles W. Warren, “The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS): Context, Methods, General Findings, and Future Efforts,” Journal of School Health 65 (1995): 339.
9. Promoting Better Health for Young People through Physical Activity and Sports (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Education), app. 7, accessed January 19, 2017, www.thenewpe.com/advocacy/promotingPA.pdf.
10. A notable exception explored the effects of recess in one classroom in a school that had eliminated recess. See Olga S. Jarrett, Darlene M. Maxwell, Carrie Dickerson, Pamela Hoge, Gwen Davies, and Amy Yetley, “Impact of Recess on Classroom Behavior: Group Effects and Individual Differences,” Journal of Educational Research 92 (1998): 121–126.
11. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “School Health Policies and Practices Study: 2014 Overview” (Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015), 1.
12. Romina M. Barros, Ellen J. Silver, and Ruth E. K. Stein, “School Recess and Group Classroom Behavior,” Pediatrics 123 (2009): 431–436.
13. Ethan A. Bergman, Nancy S. Buergel, Annaka Femrite, Timothy F. Englund, and Michael R. Braunstein, Relationship of Meal and Recess Schedules to Plate Waste in Elementary Schools (University, MS: National Food Service Management Institute, 2003); Montana Office of Public Instruction School Nutrition Programs, Pilot Project Report: A Recess before Lunch Policy in Four Montana Schools, April 2002–May 2003 (Helena: Montana Office of Public Instruction, 2003); and Joseph Price and David Just, “Lunch, Recess and Nutrition: Responding to Time Incentives in the Cafeteria” (paper, Social Science Research Network, December 9, 2014), doi:10.2139/ssrn.2536103.
14. Basmat Parsad and Laurie Lewis, Calories In, Calories Out: Food and Exercise in Public Elementary Schools, 2005 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2006), 62.
15. Jennifer McMurrer, Instructional Time in Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects, From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 5 of the No Child Left Behind Act (Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy, 2008).
16. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Guidelines for School and Community Programs to Promote Lifelong Physical Activity among Young People,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 46, no. RR-6 (March 7, 1997): 12.
17. Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-296, § 204, 124 Stat. 3216 (2010).
18. “Local School Wellness Policy Implementation under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010: Summary of the Final Rule,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, July 2016, accessed December 15, 2016, www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/tn/LWPsummary_finalrule.pdf.
19. “CPS’ Daily Recess Is More Than Just Play,” Healthy Schools Campaign, February 17, 2015, www.healthyschools
campaign.org/chicago-focus/cps-daily-recess-is-more-than-
just-play-5395.
20. “Local School Wellness Policy for Students,” Chicago Public Schools Policy Handbook, § 704.7, October 24, 2012, http://policy.cps.edu/download.aspx?ID=81.
21. Rachel Lerman, “Seattle District, Teachers Agree to Higher Pay for Subs, Longer Recess, but Strike Could Still Happen,” Seattle Times, September 6, 2015.
22. Katie Felber, “Heartbreaking Video Depicts Harsh Reality of Detroit Public Schools,” Good, January 19, 2016, www.good.is/videos/heartbreaking-video-detroit-public-schools.
23. Parsad and Lewis, Calories In, Calories Out.
24. “2016 Annual Survey Results—National,” Playworks, accessed December 8, 2016, www.playworks.org/about/annual-survey/national.
25. Debbie Rhea, “Recess: The Forgotten Classroom,” Instructional Leader 29, no. 1 (January 2016): 1.
26. Rhea, “Recess”; and Deborah J. Rhea, Alexander P. Rivchun, and Jacqueline Pennings, “The Liink Project: Implementation of a Recess and Character Development Pilot Study with Grades K & 1 Children,” Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance Journal 84, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 14–17, 35.
27. Nicola D. Ridgers, Gareth Stratton, Stuart J. Fairclough, and Jos W. R. Twisk, “Long-Term Effects of a Playground Markings and Physical Structures on Children’s Recess Physical Activity Levels,” Preventative Medicine 44 (2007): 393–397.
28. Stefanie J. M. Verstraete, Greet M. Cardon, Dirk L. R. De Clercq, and Ilse M. M. De Bourdeaudhuij, “Increasing Children’s Physical Activity Levels during Recess Periods in Elementary Schools: The Effects of Providing Game Equipment,” European Journal of Public Health 16 (2006): 415–419.
29. Nicola D. Ridgers, Jo Salmon, Anne-Maree Parrish, Rebecca M. Stanley, and Anthony D. Okely, “Physical Activity during School Recess: A Systematic Review,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 43 (2012): 327.
30. Deborah J. Rhea and Irene Nigaglioni, “Outdoor Playing = Outdoor Learning,” Educational Facility Planner 49, nos. 2–3 (2016): 16–20.
31. Mingguang He, Fan Xiang, Yangfa Zeng, et al., “Effect of Time Spent Outdoors at School on the Development of Myopia among Children in China: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” JAMA 314, no. 11 (2015): 1142–1148.
32. Harold W. Stevenson and Shin-Ying Lee, “Contexts of Achievement: A Study of American, Chinese, and Japanese Children,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 55, nos. 1–2 (1990).
33. Lindsey Turner, Jamie F. Chriqui, and Frank J. Chaloupka, “Withholding Recess from Elementary School Students: Policies Matter,” Journal of School Health 83 (2013): 533–541.
[illustrations by Liza Flores]
American Educator, Spring 2017 Download PDF (256.66 KB)
By Catherine Ramstetter and Dr. Robert Murray
HTML | PDF
One Teacher’s Take on Recess
A Q&A with Christopher Smith
PDF of the full recess package
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The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
© American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. All rights reserved.
Photographs and illustrations, as well as text, cannot be used without permission from the AFT.
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List of women's national association football teams
This is a complete list of national teams in women's association football, arranged alphabetically within their confederations.
Women's association football, usually known as women's football or women's soccer, is the most prominent team sport played by women around the globe. It is played at the professional level in numerous countries throughout the world and 176 national teams participate internationally.
AFC (Asia)
CAF (Africa)
CONCACAF (North and Central America and Caribbean)
CONMEBOL (South America)
OFC (Oceania)
UEFA (Europe)
Template:Country data Aefghanistan
Northern Mariana Islands*
The Australian women's national soccer team is overseen by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Federation Australia (FFA), which is currently a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the regional ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) since leaving the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) in 2006. The team's official nickname is the Matildas, having been known as the Female Socceroos before 1995.
The Bahrain Women's National Football Team was first formed in 2003. The team represents Bahrain in international women's football and thus falls under the governance of the Bahrain Football Association; more specifically run by the women's committee at the Association. Although participating in several friendly tournaments, the team played its first official international match against the Maldives on April 22, 2007 and entered the FIFA Women's World Rankings in June 2007 at 111th out of 142.
The Bangladesh women's national football team is the women's national association football team of Bangladesh controlled by the Bangladesh Football Federation under the supervision of the women's football committee. It is a member of the Asian Football Confederation and has yet to qualify for the World Cup or a AFC Women's Asian Cup finals.
* Not a FIFA member.
Brunei, Oman, and Saudi Arabia have no national teams despite being AFC and FIFA members.
Under the current Sharia law, women's football in Brunei Darussalam is prohibited. Until women were banned from playing, football was the second most popular sport in the country for women. There are no registered female players in the country. While there is officially no support for women's football in the country, only foreigner girls at Berakas International School are allowed within the school campus. There are also some women futsal teams set up as regional representatives on occasion.
The national federation became a FIFA affiliate in 1980. The development of women's football in the Middle East and central Asia dates back only about ten years.
The national federation was created in 1956 and became a FIFA affiliate in 1956. However women's football is not included in the country's FIFA coordinated Goals! project. By 2011, inside the Saudi Arabia Football Federation, there has been an effort to create women's football programs at universities. Input had been sought on how to do this from other national federations including ones from the United States, Germany, Brazil and the United Kingdom. On the men's side of the game, the national federation has funded efforts to improve the quality of the Saudi Arabia men's national football team.
Congo,
Template:Ygfbw
Réunion*
Zanzibar*
The Algeria women's national football team represents Algeria in international women's football. The team is currently ranked 76th in the world in the FIFA women's rankings. The team's highest ranking was 64th, in June 2009. The team plays its home games at the July 5, 1962 Stadium in Algiers and is coached by Radia Fertoul since August 2018. Algeria played its first match on May 14, 1998, against France, and lost 14–0.
The Angola women's national football team represents Angola in international women's football and it is controlled by the Angolan Football Federation. Their best place on the FIFA Rankings was the 82nd place, in December 2003. The only tournaments that they qualified were the 1995 and 2002 African Women's Championships, and their best finish was as Semi-Finalists in the 1995 tournament. Angola has, in contrast to many other African countries, has never suffered a heavy defeat. They have seldom lost by more than two goals.
The Benin women's national football team represents Benin in international women's football and it is controlled by the Benin Football Federation. They never reached the African Championship or the World Cup finals.
Guadeloupe*
Martinique*
Anguilla women's national football team is the national team of Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, and is controlled by the Anguilla Football Association. It is affiliated to the Caribbean Football Union of CONCACAF. As of November 2015, it remains unranked on the FIFA Women's World Rankings.
The Antigua and Barbuda women's national football team, nicknamed The Benna Girls, is the national women's football team of Antigua and Barbuda and is overseen by the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association, a member of the CONCACAF and the Caribbean Football Union.
The Aruba women's national football team is the national women's football team of Aruba and is overseen by the Arubaanse Voetbal Bond.
Bonaire, French Guiana, Montserrat, Saint Martin, and Sint Maarten have no national teams despite being CONCACAF members.
French Guiana women's national under-19 football team played in the 2007 Inter-Guyana Games. Women's football was a demonstration sport and the Games were held in French Guiana. The team beat Amapá 1–0 on 23 March. They lost to the guest team Venezuela 0–9 in the finals on 24 March.
Montserrat women's national football team has not played a single FIFA recognised match, though they were scheduled to before withdrawing from the competition. Montserrat Football Association was created in 1994 and became a FIFA affiliate in 1996.
Kiribati*
Tuvalu*
Niue has no national team despite being an OFC member.
Liechtenstein has no national team despite being a FIFA and UEFA member.
Women's association football portal
Women's sport portal
List of women's association football clubs
List of association football competitions
International competitions in women's association football
This is a list of lists of universities and colleges by country, sorted by continent and region. The lists represent educational institutions throughout the world which provide higher education in tertiary, quaternary, and post-secondary education.
A unitary state is a state governed as a single power in which the central government is ultimately supreme. The central government may create administrative divisions. Such units exercise only the powers that the central government chooses to delegate. Although political power may be delegated through devolution to local governments by statute, the central government may abrogate the acts of devolved governments or curtail their powers. A large majority of the world's states have a unitary system of government.
The following are the regional bird lists by continent. Some are full species lists, others, particularly continental lists, have just the families.
The Confederation of African Football or CAF is the administrative and controlling body for African association football.
A football association, also known as a football federation, soccer federation, or soccer association, is a governing body for association football. Many of them are members of the sport's regional bodies such as UEFA and CONMEBOL and the world governing body, FIFA. A small number have not yet applied for or been granted entry to these higher bodies. Below is a list of football associations for which there are articles.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sports:
The following lists of presidents are available:
This is a comparison of the IOC, FIFA, and ISO 3166-1 three-letter codes, combined into one table for easy reference. Highlighted rows indicate those entries in which the three-letter codes differ from column to column. The last column indicates the number of codes present followed by letters to indicate which codes are present and dashes when a code is absent; capital letters indicate codes which match; lower case letters indicate codes which differ.
Divided regions are transnational regions, islands, etc. that may have at one time been a united sovereign state but are or have been subsequently politically divided by national borders, into separate sovereign and/or administrative divisions. The later qualification includes many reorganized regions within nation states blurring the pure "transnational" distinction, but retaining the sense of a historic region once governed together which is significant both historically and culturally.
At the 1995 Summer Universiade, the athletics events were held at the Hakatanomori Athletic Stadium in Fukuoka, Japan from 29 August to 3 September. A total of 43 events were contested, of which 23 by male and 20 by female athletes.
The seventeenth edition of the IAAF World Athletics Championships is scheduled to be held between 27 September and 6 October 2019 in Doha, Qatar at the renovated multi-purpose Khalifa International Stadium. For the first time sponsors of national teams will be permitted to appear on the kit that the athletes compete in.
Athletics at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics was held from 11 to 16 October. The events took place at the Parque Polideportivo Roca in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
International women's association football
The Best FIFA Women's Player
Women's Asian Cup
Regional (ASEAN, EAFF, SAFF, WAFF)
Women Cup of Nations
Regional (CECAFA, COSAFA, WAFU)
North America,
and the Caribbean
Women's Gold Cup
Women's Nations Cup
Women's Viva World Cup
African Games
Central American Games
Indian Ocean Island Games
South Asian Games
Albena Cup
Cyprus Women's Cup
Turkish Women’s Cup
Istria Cup
Peace Queen Cup
Yongchuan International Tournament
Player of the Century
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This article is about the U.S. state of Louisiana. For other uses, see Louisiana (disambiguation).
State of the United States of America
État de Louisiane (French)
Flag Seal
Nickname(s):
Bayou State • Creole State • Pelican State (official)
Sportsman's Paradise • The Boot
Motto(s): Union, Justice, Confidence
State song(s): "Give Me Louisiana"
"You Are My Sunshine"
"State March Song"
"Gifts of the Earth"
No official language
As of 2010[1]
English 91.26%
French 3.45% (incl. Cajun and Creole)
Spanish 3.30%
Vietnamese 0.59%
Louisianian (French: Louisianais)
New Orleans[2][3][4]
Largest metro
Greater New Orleans
Ranked 31st
42,069.13 sq mi
(135,382 km2)
• Width
130 miles (231 km)
• Length
• % water
• Latitude
28° 56′ N to 33° 01′ N
• Longitude
88° 49′ W to 94° 03′ W
Ranked 25th
4,659,978 (2018)
93.8/sq mi (34.6/km2)
• Median household income
• Highest point
Driskill Mountain[6][7]
• Mean
• Lowest point
New Orleans[6][7]
−8 ft (−2.5 m)
Before statehood
Territory of Orleans
Admitted to the Union
April 30, 1812 (18th)
John Bel Edwards (D)
Billy Nungesser (R)
Bill Cassidy (R)
John Kennedy (R)
U.S. House delegation
5 Republicans
1 Democrat (list)
Central: UTC −6/−5
US-LA
LA, La.
louisiana.gov
Louisiana state symbols
The Flag of Louisiana
The Seal of Louisiana
Living insignia
White perch
Inanimate insignia
Petrified palmwood
Diatonic accordion
State route marker
State quarter
Lists of United States state symbols
Louisiana entrance sign off Interstate 20 in Madison Parish east of Tallulah
Louisiana (/luˌiːziˈænə/ ( listen), /ˌluːzi-/ ( listen))[a] is a state in the Deep South region of the South Central United States. It is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States. Louisiana is bordered by the state of Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. A large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties. The state's capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans.
Much of the state's lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp.[9][self-published source] These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such as ibis and egrets. There are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape, and has produced extensive areas of longleaf pine forest and wet savannas. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of terrestrial orchids and carnivorous plants.[9] Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other southern state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized, and four that have not received recognition.[10]
Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural, multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th-century French, Haitian, Spanish, Native American, and African cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the US. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the present-day State of Louisiana had been both a French colony and for a brief period a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African people as slaves in the 18th century. Many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. In the post-Civil War environment, Anglo-Americans increased the pressure for Anglicization, and in 1921, English was for a time made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974.[11][12] There has never been an official language in Louisiana, and the state constitution enumerates "the right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins."[11]
2 Geology
3.2 Hurricanes since 1950
4 Publicly owned land
4.1 National Park Service
4.2 US Forest Service
4.3 State parks and recreational areas
4.4 Wildlife management areas
4.5 Natural and Scenic Rivers
5.1 Interstate highways
5.2 United States highways
6.1 Pre-colonial history
6.2 Exploration and colonization by Europeans
6.3 Expansion of slavery
6.4 Haitian migration and influence
6.5 Purchase by the United States (1803)
6.6 Statehood (1812)
6.7 Secession and the Civil War (1860–1865)
6.8 Post-Civil War to mid-20th century (1865–1945)
6.9 Post-World War II (1945–)
6.10 2000 to present
7.1 Race and ethnicity
7.3 Major cities
8.1 Federal subsidies and spending
9.2 Civil law
9.3 Marriage
9.5 Law enforcement
9.6 Judiciary
10 National Guard
12 Education
14.1 African culture
14.2 Louisiana Creole culture
14.3 Acadian culture
14.4 Isleño culture
14.5 Languages
14.6 Literature
14.7 Music
19.1 Geology links
19.2 Government
19.3 U.S. government
19.4 News media
19.5 Ecoregions
19.6 Tourism
Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane.[13] The suffix -ana (or -ane) is a Latin suffix that can refer to "information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place." Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of "related to Louis." Once part of the French Colonial Empire, the Louisiana Territory stretched from present-day Mobile Bay to just north of the present-day Canada–United States border, including a small part of what is now the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Geology[edit]
Main article: Mississippi River Delta
The Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened. Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south.[9] The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in areas such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Cenozoic Era, some 60 million years ago. The history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearing's Roadside Geology of Louisiana.[14]
The youngest parts of the state were formed during the last 12,000 years as successive deltas of the Mississippi River: the Maringouin, Teche, St. Bernard, Lafourche, the modern Mississippi, and now the Atchafalaya.[15] The sediments were carried from north to south by the Mississippi River.
In between the Tertiary rocks of the north, and the relatively new sediments along the coast, is a vast belt known as the Pleistocene Terraces. Their age and distribution can be largely related to the rise and fall of sea levels during past ice ages. In general, the northern terraces have had sufficient time for rivers to cut deep channels, while the newer terraces tend to be much flatter.[16]
Salt domes are also found in Louisiana. Their origin can be traced back to the early Gulf of Mexico, when the shallow ocean had high rates of evaporation. There are several hundred salt domes in the state; one of the most familiar is Avery Island.[17] Salt domes are important not only as a source of salt; they also serve as underground traps for oil and gas.[18]
Map of Louisiana
Aerial view of Louisiana wetland habitats.
A field of yellow wildflowers in St. Bernard Parish
Honey Island Swamp
Entrance to the Bald Eagle Nest Trail at South Toledo Bend State Park
Bogue Chitto State Park
Louisiana is bordered to the west by Texas; to the north by Arkansas; to the east by Mississippi; and to the south by the Gulf of Mexico.
The state may properly be divided into two parts, the uplands of the north, and the alluvial along the coast.
The alluvial region includes low swamp lands, coastal marshlands and beaches, and barrier islands that cover about 20,000 square miles (52,000 km2). This area lies principally along the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, which traverses the state from north to south for a distance of about 600 mi (970 km)) and empties into the Gulf of Mexico; the Red River; the Ouachita River and its branches; and other minor streams (some of which are called bayous).
The breadth of the alluvial region along the Mississippi is from 10 to 60 miles (15 to 100 km), and along the other rivers, the alluvial region averages about 10 miles (15 km) across. The Mississippi River flows along a ridge formed by its own natural deposits (known as a levee), from which the lands decline toward a river beyond at an average fall of six feet per mile (3 m/km). The alluvial lands along other streams present similar features.
The higher and contiguous hill lands of the north and northwestern part of the state have an area of more than 25,000 square miles (65,000 km2). They consist of prairie and woodlands. The elevations above sea level range from 10 feet (3 m) at the coast and swamp lands to 50 and 60 feet (15–18 m) at the prairie and alluvial lands. In the uplands and hills, the elevations rise to Driskill Mountain, the highest point in the state at only 535 feet (163 m) above sea level. From years 1932 to 2010 the state lost 1,800 sq. miles due to rises in sea level and erosion. The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) spends around $1 billion per year to help shore up and protect Louisiana shoreline and land in both federal and state funding.[19]
Besides the waterways already named, there are the Sabine, forming the western boundary; and the Pearl, the eastern boundary; the Calcasieu, the Mermentau, the Vermilion, Bayou Teche, the Atchafalaya, the Boeuf, Bayou Lafourche, the Courtableau River, Bayou D'Arbonne, the Macon River, the Tensas, Amite River, the Tchefuncte, the Tickfaw, the Natalbany River, and a number of other smaller streams, constituting a natural system of navigable waterways, aggregating over 4,000 miles (6,400 km) long.
The state also has political jurisdiction over the approximately 3-mile (4.8 km)-wide portion of subsea land of the inner continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. Through a peculiarity of the political geography of the United States, this is substantially less than the 9-mile (14 km)-wide jurisdiction of nearby states Texas and Florida, which, like Louisiana, have extensive Gulf coastlines.[20]
The southern coast of Louisiana in the United States is among the fastest-disappearing areas in the world. This has largely resulted from human mismanagement of the coast (see Wetlands of Louisiana). At one time, the land was added to when spring floods from the Mississippi River added sediment and stimulated marsh growth; the land is now shrinking. There are multiple causes.[21][22]
Artificial levees block spring flood water that would bring fresh water and sediment to marshes. Swamps have been extensively logged, leaving canals and ditches that allow saline water to move inland. Canals dug for the oil and gas industry also allow storms to move sea water inland, where it damages swamps and marshes. Rising sea waters have exacerbated the problem. Some researchers estimate that the state is losing a land mass equivalent to 30 football fields every day. There are many proposals to save coastal areas by reducing human damage, including restoring natural floods from the Mississippi. Without such restoration, coastal communities will continue to disappear.[23] And as the communities disappear, more and more people are leaving the region.[24] Since the coastal wetlands support an economically important coastal fishery, the loss of wetlands is adversely affecting this industry.
Climate chart (explanation)
Average max. and min. temperatures in °F
Precipitation totals in inches
Source: [25]
Metric conversion
Average max. and min. temperatures in °C
Precipitation totals in mm
Source: as above
Louisiana has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa). It has long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters. The subtropical characteristics of the state are due to its low latitude, low lying topography, and the influence of the Gulf of Mexico, which at its farthest point is no more than 200 mi (320 km) away.
Rain is frequent throughout the year, although from April to September is slightly wetter than the rest of the year, which is the state’s wet season. There is a dip in precipitation in October. In summer, thunderstorms build during the heat of the day, and bring intense but brief, tropical downpours. In winter, rainfall is more frontal and less intense.
Summers in southern Louisiana have high temperatures from June through September averaging 90 °F (32 °C) or more, and overnight lows averaging above 70 °F (22 °C). At times, temperatures in the 90s F, combined with dew points in the upper 70s F, create sensible temperatures over 120 °F. The humid, thick, jungle-like heat in southern Louisiana is a famous subject of countless stories and movies.
Temperatures are generally warm in the winter in the southern part of the state, with highs around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the rest of south Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico averaging 66 °F (19 °C). The northern part of the state is mildly cool in the winter, with highs averaging 59 °F (15 °C). The overnight lows in the winter average well above freezing throughout the state, with 46 °F (8 °C) the average near the Gulf and an average low of 37 °F (3 °C) in the winter in the northern part of the state.
On occasion, cold fronts from low pressure centers to the north, reach Louisiana in winter. Low temperatures near 20 °F (−8 °C) occur on occasion in the northern part of the state, but almost never do so in the southern part of the state. Snow is rare near the Gulf of Mexico, although residents in the northern parts of the state might receive dusting of snow a few times each decade. Louisiana's highest recorded temperature is 114 °F (46 °C) in Plain Dealing on August 10, 1936, while the coldest recorded temperature is −16 °F (−27 °C) at Minden on February 13, 1899.
Louisiana is often affected by tropical cyclones and is very vulnerable to strikes by major hurricanes, particularly the lowlands around and in the New Orleans area. The unique geography of the region, with the many bayous, marshes and inlets, can result in water damage across a wide area from major hurricanes. The area is also prone to frequent thunderstorms, especially in the summer.[26]
The entire state averages over 60 days of thunderstorms a year, more than any other state except Florida. Louisiana averages 27 tornadoes annually. The entire state is vulnerable to a tornado strike, with the extreme southern portion of the state slightly less so than the rest of the state. Tornadoes are more common from January to March in the southern part of the state, and from February through March in the northern part of the state.[26]
Average temperatures in Louisiana (°F)
Shreveport[27]
47.0 50.8 58.1 65.5 73.4 80.0 83.2 83.3 77.1 66.6 56.6 48.3 65.9
Monroe[27]
Alexandria[27]
Lake Charles[28]
Lafayette[28]
Baton Rouge[29]
New Orleans[29]
Hurricanes since 1950[edit]
August 28–29, 2012, Isaac (Category 1 at landfall) hits southeast Louisiana 7 years after Katrina (2005).
September 1, 2008, Gustav (Category 2 at landfall) made landfall along the coast near Cocodrie in southeastern Louisiana. As late as August 31 it had been projected by the National Hurricane Center that the hurricane would remain at Category 3 or above on September 1, but in the event the center of Gustav made landfall as a strong Category 2 hurricane (1 mph below Category 3), and dropped to Category 1 soon after.[30] As a result of NHC's forecasts, a massive evacuation of New Orleans took place after many residents having failed to leave for Katrina in 2005.[31] A significant number of deaths were caused by or attributed to Gustav.[32] Around 1.5 million people were without power in Louisiana on September 1.[33]
September 24, 2005, Rita (Category 3 at landfall) struck southwestern Louisiana, flooding many parishes and cities along the coast, including Cameron Parish, Lake Charles, and other towns. The storm's winds weakened the damaged levees in New Orleans and caused renewed flooding in parts of the city.
August 29, 2005, Katrina (Category 3 at landfall)[34] struck and devastated southeastern Louisiana, where it breached and undermined levees in New Orleans, causing 80% of the city to flood. Most people had been evacuated, but the majority of the population became homeless. The city was virtually closed until October. It is estimated that more than two million people in the Gulf region were displaced by the hurricane, and that more than 1,500 fatalities resulted in Louisiana alone. A public outcry criticized governments at the local, state, and federal levels, for lack of preparation and slowness of response. Louisiana residents relocated across the country for temporary housing, and many have not returned.
Further information: Hurricane Katrina effects by region § Louisiana, and Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
October 3, 2002, Lili (Category 1 at landfall)
August 25, 1992, Andrew (Category 3 at landfall) struck south-central Louisiana. It killed four people; knocked out power to nearly 150,000 citizens; and destroyed crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
August 17, 1969, Camille (Category 5) caused a 23.4 ft (7.1 m) storm surge and killed 250 people. Although Camille officially made landfall in Mississippi and the worst damage occurred there, it also had effects in Louisiana, destroying thousands of residences in Plaquemines Parish. New Orleans remained dry, with the exception of mild rain-generated flooding in the most low-lying areas.
September 9, 1965, Betsy (Category 4 at landfall) came ashore near Grand Isle, causing massive destruction as the first hurricane in history to cause one billion dollars in damage (over ten billion in inflation-adjusted US$). The storm hit New Orleans and flooded nearly 35% of the city (including the Lower 9th Ward, Gentilly, and parts of Mid-City), as well as most of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The death toll in the state was 76.
June 25, 1957, Audrey (Category 3) devastated southwest Louisiana, destroying or severely damaging 60–80 percent of the homes and businesses from Cameron to Grand Chenier. 40,000 people were left homeless and more than 300 people in the state died.
August 15–17, 1915: A hurricane made landfall just west of Galveston. Gales howled throughout Cameron and Vermilion Parishes and as far east as Mobile. It produced storm surge of 11 feet at Cameron (called Leesburg at the time), 10 feet at Grand Cheniere, and 9.5 feet at Marsh Island; Grand Isle reported water 6 feet deep across the city. The lightkeeper at the Sabine Pass lighthouse had to turn the lens by hand, as vibrations caused by the wave action put the clockwork out of order. At Sabine Bank, 17 miles offshore the Mouth of the Sabine, damage was noted. Damage estimates for Louisiana and Texas totaled around $50 million.[35]
Over 300 people drowned below Montegut – four can be identified as white, none of the others have been identified and are assumed to be Indians. The Indian settlement was about 10 miles below Montegut, called by the Indians – Taire-bonne – is now in swamp and can only be reached by boat. This hurricane caused the survivors to move to higher ground.
Publicly owned land[edit]
Owing to its location and geology, the state has high biological diversity. Some vital areas, such as southwestern prairie, have experienced a loss in excess of 98 percent. The pine flatwoods are also at great risk, mostly from fire suppression and urban sprawl.[9] There is not yet a properly organized system of natural areas to represent and protect Louisiana's biological diversity. Such a system would consist of a protected system of core areas linked by biological corridors, such as Florida is planning.[36]
Louisiana contains a number of areas which, to varying degrees, prevent people from using them.[37] In addition to National Park Service areas and a United States National Forest, Louisiana operates a system of state parks, state historic sites, one state preservation area, one state forest, and many Wildlife Management Areas.
One of Louisiana's largest government-owned areas is Kisatchie National Forest. It is some 600,000 acres in area, more than half of which is flatwoods vegetation, which supports many rare plant and animal species.[9] These include the Louisiana pine snake and Red-cockaded woodpecker. The system of government-owned cypress swamps around Lake Pontchartrain is another large area, with southern wetland species including egrets, alligators, and sturgeon. At least 12 core areas would be needed to build a "protected areas system" for the state; these would range from southwestern prairies, to the Pearl River Floodplain in the east, to the Mississippi River alluvial swamps in the north.[9]
National Park Service[edit]
Historic or scenic areas managed, protected, or otherwise recognized by the National Park Service include:
Atchafalaya National Heritage Area in Ascension Parish;
Cane River National Heritage Area near Natchitoches;
Cane River Creole National Historical Park near Natchitoches;
Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, headquartered in New Orleans, with units in St. Bernard Parish, Barataria (Crown Point), and Acadiana (Lafayette);
Poverty Point National Monument at Delhi, Louisiana; and
Saline Bayou, a designated National Wild and Scenic River near Winn Parish in northern Louisiana.
US Forest Service[edit]
Kisatchie National Forest is Louisiana's only national forest. It includes 600,000 acres in central and north Louisiana with large areas of flatwoods and longleaf pine forest.
State parks and recreational areas[edit]
See also: List of Louisiana state parks and List of Louisiana state historic sites
Louisiana operates a system of 22 state parks, 17 state historic sites and one state preservation area.
Wildlife management areas[edit]
Louisiana has 955,973 acres, in four ecoregions under the wildlife management of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheriess. The Nature Conservancy also owns and manages a set of natural areas.
Natural and Scenic Rivers[edit]
The Louisiana Natural and Scenic Rivers System provides a degree of protection for 51 rivers, streams and bayous in the state. It is administered by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.[38]
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is the state government organization in charge of maintaining public transportation, roadways, bridges, canals, select levees, floodplain management, port facilities, commercial vehicles, and aviation which includes 69 airports.
See also: List of numbered highways in Louisiana
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway near New Orleans
Interstate highways[edit]
I-910 (unsigned)
I‑12
Future I-69
United States highways[edit]
The Intracoastal Waterway is an important means of transporting commercial goods such as petroleum and petroleum products, agricultural produce, building materials and manufactured goods.
In 2011, Louisiana ranked among the five deadliest states for debris/litter-caused vehicle accidents per total number of registered vehicles and population size. Figures derived from[39] the NTSHA show at least 25 persons in Louisiana were killed per year in motor vehicle collisions with non-fixed objects, including debris, dumped litter, animals and their carcasses.
Main article: History of Louisiana
Pre-colonial history[edit]
Watson Brake, the oldest mound complex in North America
Louisiana was inhabited by Native Americans for many millennia before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century. During the Middle Archaic period, Louisiana was the site of the earliest mound complex in North America and one of the earliest dated, complex constructions in the Americas, the Watson Brake site near present-day Monroe. An 11-mound complex, it was built about 5400 BP (3500 BC).[40] The Middle Archaic sites of Caney and Frenchman's Bend have also been securely dated to 5600–5000 BP (3700–3100 BC), demonstrating that seasonal hunter-gatherers organized to build complex earthwork constructions in present-day northern Louisiana. These discoveries overturned previous assumptions in archaeology that such complex mounds were built only by cultures of more settled peoples who were dependent on maize cultivation. The Hedgepeth Site in Lincoln Parish is more recent, dated to 5200–4500 BP (3300–2600 BC).[41]
Poverty Point UNESCO site
Nearly 2,000 years later, Poverty Point was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in the state. The city of modern-day Epps developed near it. The Poverty Point culture may have reached its peak around 1500 BC, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture in North America.[42] It lasted until approximately 700 BC.
The Poverty Point culture was followed by the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the Tchula period, local manifestations of Early Woodland period. The Tchefuncte culture were the first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery.[43] These cultures lasted until AD 200. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the Marksville culture in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez[44] and the Fourche Maline culture in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture was named after the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in Avoyelles Parish.
Troyville Earthworks, once the second tallest earthworks in North America
These cultures were contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of present-day Ohio and Illinois, and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and arrow.[45] The first burial mounds were built at this time.[46] Political power began to be consolidated, as the first platform mounds at ritual centers were constructed for the developing hereditary political and religious leadership.[46]
By 400 the Late Woodland period had begun with the Baytown culture, Troyville culture, and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown Period and were succeeded by the Coles Creek cultures. Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers.[47][48][49] Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds. Scholars have speculated that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority.[50]
The Mississippian period in Louisiana was when the Plaquemine and the Caddoan Mississippian cultures developed, and the peoples adopted extensive maize agriculture, cultivating different strains of the plant by saving seeds, selecting for certain characteristics, etc. The Plaquemine culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the Medora Site, the archaeological type site for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define the culture,[51] the Atchafalaya Basin Mounds in St Mary Parish,[52] the Fitzhugh Mounds in Madison Parish,[53] the Scott Place Mounds in Union Parish,[54] and the Sims Site in St Charles Parish.[55]
Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the Cahokia site in Illinois east of St. Louis, Missouri. At its peak Cahokia is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic Natchez and Taensa peoples, whose descendants encountered Europeans in the colonial era.[56]
By 1000 in the northwestern part of the state, the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians occupied a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast Texas, and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The Caddo and related Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma of today.[57] Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in Caddo Parish[58] and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish.[59]
Many current place names in Louisiana, including Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches), Caddo, Houma, Tangipahoa, and Avoyel (as Avoyelles), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages.
Exploration and colonization by Europeans[edit]
Main articles: French colonization of the Americas, New France, Louisiana (New France), French and Indian War, Treaty of Paris (1763), New Spain, Louisiana (New Spain), West Florida, Indian Reserve (1763), American Revolutionary War, Gulf Coast campaign, Treaty of Paris (1783), Spanish West Florida, and Treaty of Aranjuez (1801)
Louisiana regions
The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when a Spanish expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542, Hernando de Soto's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. Spanish interest in Louisiana faded away for a century and a half.
In the late 17th century, French and French Canadian expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France laid claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
In 1682, the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor King Louis XIV of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now Ocean Springs, Mississippi, near Biloxi), was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French military officer from Canada. By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize), "seamark" in French. By 1721 they built a 62-foot (19 m) wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river.[60]
A royal ordinance of 1722—following the Crown's transfer of the Illinois Country's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies.[61] A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set the northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois); from there, northwest to le Rocher on the Illinois River, and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present day Rock Island, Illinois).[61] Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at Ouiatenon (on the upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana), Chicago, Fort Miamis (near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana), and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, operated as dependencies of Canada.[61]
The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas via the Old San Antonio Road, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river that were worked by imported African slaves. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in a growing town. This became a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places, although the commodity crop in the south was primarily sugar cane.
French Acadians, who came to be known as Cajuns, settled the swamps of southern Louisiana, especially in the Atchafalaya Basin.
Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country, around present-day St. Louis, Missouri. The latter was settled by French colonists from Illinois.
Initially, Mobile and then Biloxi served as the capital of La Louisiane. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, and wanting to protect the capital from severe coastal storms, France developed New Orleans from 1722 as the seat of civilian and military authority south of the Great Lakes. From then until the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, France and Spain jockeyed for control of New Orleans and the lands west of the Mississippi.
In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, in a region referred to as the German Coast.
France ceded most of its territory to the east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in 1763, in the aftermath of Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War (generally referred to in North America as the French and Indian War). The rest of Louisiana, including the area around New Orleans and the parishes around Lake Pontchartrain, had become a colony of Spain by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762). The transfer of power on either side of the river would be delayed until later in the decade.
In 1765, during Spanish rule, several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia (now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, Canada) made their way to Louisiana after having been expelled from their homelands by the British during the French and Indian War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana. The Spanish, eager to gain more Catholic settlers, welcomed the Acadian refugees, the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns.
Spanish Canary Islanders, called Isleños, emigrated from the Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783.
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for two years.
Expansion of slavery[edit]
Main article: History of slavery in Louisiana
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville brought the first two African slaves to Louisiana in 1708, transporting them from a French colony in the West Indies. In 1709, French financier Antoine Crozat obtained a monopoly of commerce in La Louisiane, which extended from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now Illinois. "That concession allowed him to bring in a cargo of blacks from Africa every year," the British historian Hugh Thomas wrote.[62] Physical conditions, including disease, were so harsh there was high mortality among both the colonists and the slaves, resulting in continuing demand and importation of slaves.
Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships, the Du Maine and the Aurore, arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 500 black slaves coming from Africa. Previous slaves in Louisiana had been transported from French colonies in the West Indies. By the end of 1721, New Orleans counted 1,256 inhabitants, of whom about half were slaves.
In 1724, the French government issued a law called the Code Noir ("Black Code" in English) which "regulate[d] the interaction of whites [blancs] and blacks [noirs] in its colony of Louisiana[63] (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). The law consisted of 57 articles, which regulated religion in the colony, outlawed "interracial" marriages (those between people of different skin color, the varying shades of which were also defined by law), restricted manumission, outlined legal punishment of slaves for various offenses, and defined some obligations of owners to their slaves. The main intent of the French government was to assert control over the slave system of agriculture in Louisiana and to impose restrictions on slaveowners there. In practice, the Code Noir was exceedingly difficult to enforce from afar. Some priests continued to perform interracial marriage ceremonies, for example, and some slaveholders continued to manumit slaves without permission while others punished slaves brutally.
Article II of the Code Noir of 1724 required owners to provide their slaves with religious education in the state religion, Roman Catholicism. Sunday was to be a day of rest for slaves. On days off, slaves were expected to feed and take care of themselves. During the 1740s economic crisis in the colony, owners had trouble feeding their slaves and themselves. Giving them time off also effectively gave more power to slaves, who started cultivating their own gardens and crafting items for sale as their own property. They began to participate in the economic development of the colony while at the same time increasing independence and self-subsistence.
Article VI of the Code Noir forbade mixed marriages, forbade but did little to protect slave women from rape by their owners, overseers or other slaves. On balance, the Code benefitted the owners but had more protections and flexibility than did the institution of slavery in the southern Thirteen Colonies.
The Louisiana Black Code of 1806 made the cruel punishment of slaves a crime, but owners and overseers were seldom prosecuted for such acts.[64]
Fugitive slaves, called maroons, could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from the French "marron," meaning "feral" or "fugitive."
In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote:
Truly, it is impossible for lower Louisiana to get along without slaves and with the use of slaves, the colony had been making great strides toward prosperity and wealth.[65]
When the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that enslaved Africans could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring Mississippi, though it violated U.S. law to do so.[65] Despite demands by United States Rep. James Hillhouse and by the pamphleteer Thomas Paine to enforce existing federal law against slavery in the newly acquired territory,[65] slavery prevailed because it was the source of great profits and the lowest-cost labor.
At the start of the 19th century, Louisiana was a small producer of sugar with a relatively small number of slaves, compared to Saint-Domingue and the West Indies. It soon thereafter became a major sugar producer as new settlers arrived to develop plantations. William C. C. Claiborne, Louisiana's first United States governor, said that African slave labor was needed because white laborers "cannot be had in this unhealthy climate."[66] Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of the African slave trade, which the US and Great Britain adopted in 1808. The United States continued to protect the domestic slave trade, including the coastwise trade – the transport of slaves by ship along the Atlantic Coast and to New Orleans and other Gulf ports.
By 1840, New Orleans had the biggest slave market in the United States, which contributed greatly to the economy of the city and of the state. New Orleans had become one of the wealthiest cities, and the third largest city, in the nation.[67] The ban on the African slave trade and importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During the decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from the Upper South to the Deep South, two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by their owners as slaveholders moved west for new lands.[68][69]
With changing agriculture in the Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from the Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the coastwise slave trade. After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis.
As the Deep South was developed for cotton and sugar in the first half of the nineteenth century, demand for slaves increased. This resulted in a massive forced migration (through the slave trade) of more than one million African Americans from the Upper South to the Deep South. Many traders brought slaves to New Orleans for domestic sale, and by 1840, New Orleans had the largest slave market in the country, was the third-largest city, and was one of the wealthiest cities.
Free woman of color with mixed-race daughter; late 18th-century collage painting, New Orleans.
Haitian migration and influence[edit]
Spanish occupation of Louisiana lasted from 1769 to 1800. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from Saint-Domingue, following a slave rebellion that started in 1791. Over the next decade, thousands of migrants landed in Louisiana from the island, including ethnic Europeans, free people of color, and African slaves, some of the latter brought in by each free group. They greatly increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, and the slaves reinforced African culture in the city. The process of gaining independence in Saint-Domingue was complex, but uprisings continued. In 1803, France pulled out its surviving troops from the island, having suffered the loss of two-thirds sent to the island two years before, mostly to yellow fever. In 1804, Haiti, the second republic in the western hemisphere, proclaimed its independence, achieved by slave leaders.[70]
Pierre Clément de Laussat (Governor, 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles, the one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most."[71]
French pirate Jean Lafitte, who operated in New Orleans, was born in Port-au-Prince around 1782.[72]
Purchase by the United States (1803)[edit]
Main articles: Louisiana Purchase, Territory of Orleans, Republic of West Florida, and Neutral Ground (Louisiana)
When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary, and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the Appalachian Mountains provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce was to use a flatboat to float it down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the port of New Orleans, where goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below Natchez.
Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana involved the creation of a new empire centered on the Caribbean sugar trade. By the terms of the Treaty of Amiens of 1802, Great Britain returned ownership of the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to take back Saint-Domingue, then under control of Toussaint Louverture after a slave rebellion.
When the army led by Napoleon's brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated, Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana.
Map of Louisiana in 1800
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in America. With the possession of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized Robert R. Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the City of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $2 million.
An official transfer of Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, Acting Intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from the United States. The closure of this vital port to the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe that the revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses by the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed James Monroe a special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $10 million.
However, on April 11, 1803, French Foreign Minister Talleyrand surprised Livingston by asking how much the United States was prepared to pay for the entirety of Louisiana, not just New Orleans and the surrounding area (as Livingston's instructions covered). Monroe agreed with Livingston that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain the desired New Orleans area), and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately. By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of 828,000 square miles (2,100,000 km2) for 60 million Francs (approximately $15 million).
Part of this sum, $3.5 million, was used to forgive debts owed by France to the United States.[73] The payment was made in United States bonds, which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope and Company, and the British banking house of Baring, at a discount of 87½ per each $100 unit. As a result, France received only $8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up the bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money – which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country.
Louisiana Purchase, 1803
When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10 million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15 million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert,[74] and that the Constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the Senate. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening Western and Southern interests in Congress, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803.
By statute enacted on October 31, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to take possession of the territories ceded by France and provide for initial governance.[75] A transfer ceremony was held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French, the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day, General James Wilkinson accepted possession of New Orleans for the United States. A similar ceremony was held in St. Louis on March 9, 1804, when a French tricolor was raised near the river, replacing the Spanish national flag. The following day, Captain Amos Stoddard of the First U.S. Artillery marched his troops into town and had the American flag run up the fort's flagpole. The Louisiana territory was officially transferred to the United States government, represented by Meriwether Lewis.
The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than 3 cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without a war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific.
Shortly after the United States took possession, the area was divided into two territories along the 33rd parallel north on March 26, 1804, thereby organizing the Territory of Orleans to the south and the District of Louisiana (subsequently formed as the Louisiana Territory) to the north.[76]
Statehood (1812)[edit]
Main articles: Admission to the Union, List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union, Seminole Wars, and Adams–Onís Treaty
Louisiana became the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30, 1812; the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana and the Louisiana Territory was simultaneously renamed the Missouri Territory.[77] An area known as the Florida Parishes was soon annexed into the state of Louisiana on April 14, 1812.[78]
From 1824 to 1861, Louisiana moved from a political system based on personality and ethnicity to a distinct two-party system, with Democrats competing first against Whigs, then Know Nothings, and finally only other Democrats.[79]
Secession and the Civil War (1860–1865)[edit]
Main articles: Ordinance of Secession, Confederate States of America, and Louisiana in the American Civil War
'Signing the Ordinance of Secession of Louisiana, January 26, 1861', oil on canvas painting, 1861
Capture of New Orleans, April 1862, colored lithograph of engraving
According to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002.[80] The strong economic interest of elite whites in maintaining the slave society contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union in January 26, 1861.[81] It followed other Southern states in seceding after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and it became part of the Confederate States of America.
The state was quickly defeated in the Civil War, a result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing the Mississippi. Federal troops captured New Orleans on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under federal control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress.[citation needed]
Post-Civil War to mid-20th century (1865–1945)[edit]
Following the Civil War and emancipation of slaves, violence rose in the South as the war was carried on by insurgent private and paramilitary groups. Initially state legislatures were dominated by former Confederates, who passed Black Codes to regulate freedmen and generally refused to give the vote. They refused to extend voting rights to African Americans who had been free before the war and had sometimes obtained education and property (as in New Orleans.) Following the Memphis riots of 1866 and the New Orleans riot the same year, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed that provided suffrage and full citizenship for freedmen. Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, establishing military districts for those states where conditions were considered the worst, including Louisiana. It was grouped with Texas in what was administered as the Fifth Military District.
African Americans began to live as citizens with some measure of equality before the law. Both freedmen and people of color who had been free before the war began to make more advances in education, family stability and jobs. At the same time, there was tremendous social volatility in the aftermath of war, with many whites actively resisting defeat and the free labor market. White insurgents mobilized to enforce white supremacy, first in Ku Klux Klan chapters.
By 1877, when federal forces were withdrawn, white Democrats in Louisiana and other states had regained control of state legislatures, often by paramilitary groups such as the White League, which suppressed black voting through intimidation and violence. Following Mississippi's example in 1890, in 1898, the white Democratic, planter-dominated legislature passed a new constitution that effectively disenfranchised blacks and people of color, by raising barriers to voter registration, such as poll taxes, residency requirements and literacy tests. The effect was immediate and long lasting. In 1896, there were 130,334 black voters on the rolls and about the same number of white voters, in proportion to the state population, which was evenly divided.[82]
The state population in 1900 was 47% African-American: a total of 652,013 citizens. Many in New Orleans were descendants of Creoles of color, the sizeable population of free people of color before the Civil War.[83] By 1900, two years after the new constitution, only 5,320 black voters were registered in the state. Because of disfranchisement, by 1910 there were only 730 black voters (less than 0.5 percent of eligible African-American men), despite advances in education and literacy among blacks and people of color.[84] Blacks were excluded from the political system and also unable to serve on juries. White Democrats had established one-party Democratic rule, which they maintained in the state for decades deep into the 20th century until after congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act provided federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote.
National Rice Festival, Crowley, Louisiana, 1938
In the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of African Americans left Louisiana in the Great Migration north to industrial cities for jobs and education, and to escape Jim Crow society and lynchings. The boll weevil infestation and agricultural problems cost many sharecroppers and farmers their jobs. The mechanization of agriculture also reduced the need for laborers. Beginning in the 1940s, blacks went West to California for jobs in its expanding defense industries.[85]
During some of the Great Depression, Louisiana was led by Governor Huey Long. He was elected to office on populist appeal. His public works projects provided thousands of jobs to people in need, and he supported education and increased suffrage for poor whites, but Long was criticized for his allegedly demogogic and autocratic style. He extended patronage control through every branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in the state. Long's rule ended abruptly when he was assassinated in the state capitol in 1935.
Post-World War II (1945–)[edit]
Mobilization for World War II created jobs in the state. But thousands of other workers, black and white alike, migrated to California for better jobs in its burgeoning defense industry. Many African Americans left the state in the Second Great Migration, from the 1940s through the 1960s to escape social oppression and seek better jobs. The mechanization of agriculture in the 1930s had sharply cut the need for laborers. They sought skilled jobs in the defense industry in California, better education for their children, and living in communities where they could vote.[86]
In the 1950s the state created new requirements for a citizenship test for voter registration. Despite opposition by the States Rights Party, downstate black voters had begun to increase their rate of registration, which also reflected the growth of their middle classes. In 1960 the state established the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, to investigate civil rights activists and maintain segregation.[87]
Despite this, gradually black voter registration and turnout increased to 20% and more, and it was 32% by 1964, when the first national civil rights legislation of the era was passed.[88] The percentage of black voters ranged widely in the state during these years, from 93.8% in Evangeline Parish to 1.7% in Tensas Parish, for instance, where there were white efforts to suppress the vote in the black-majority parish.[89]
Violent attacks on civil rights activists in two mill towns were catalysts to the founding of the first two chapters of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in late 1964 and early 1965, in Jonesboro and Bogalusa, respectively. Made up of veterans of World War II and the Korean War, they were armed self-defense groups established to protect activists and their families. Continued violent white resistance in Bogalusa to blacks trying to use public facilities in 1965, following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, caused the federal government to order local police to protect the activists.[90] Other chapters were formed in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
By 1960 the proportion of African Americans in Louisiana had dropped to 32%. The 1,039,207 black citizens were still suppressed by segregation and disfranchisement.[91] African Americans continued to suffer disproportionate discriminatory application of the state's voter registration rules. Because of better opportunities elsewhere, from 1965 to 1970, blacks continued to migrate out of Louisiana, for a net loss of more than 37,000 people. Based on official census figures, the African-American population in 1970 stood at 1,085,109, a net gain of more than 46,000 people compared to 1960. During the latter period, some people began to migrate to cities of the New South for opportunities.[92] Since that period, blacks entered the political system and began to be elected to office, as well as having other opportunities.
On May 21, 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women full rights to vote, was passed at a national level, and was made the law throughout the United States on August 18, 1920. Louisiana finally ratified the amendment on June 11, 1970.
View of flooded New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
2000 to present[edit]
Due to its location on the Gulf Coast, Louisiana has regularly suffered the effects of tropical storms and damaging hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, New Orleans and many other low-lying parts of the state along the Gulf of Mexico were hit by the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. It caused widespread damage due to breaching of levees and large-scale flooding of more than 80% of the city. Officials had issued warnings to evacuate the city and nearby areas, but tens of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, stayed behind, many of them stranded. Many people died and survivors suffered through the damage of the widespread floodwaters.
In August 2016, an unnamed storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain on southern Louisiana, including the cities of Denham Springs, Baton Rouge, Gonzales, St. Amant and Lafayette, causing catastrophic flooding.[93] An estimated 110,000 homes were damaged[94] and thousands of residents were displaced.[95]
Main article: Demographics of Louisiana
Louisiana's population density
1810 76,556 —
1820 153,407 100.4%
1830 215,739 40.6%
1870 726,915 2.7%
1890 1,118,588 19.0%
1920 1,798,509 8.6%
Est. 2018 4,659,978 2.8%
Sources: 1910–2010[96]
2018 estimate[97]
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Louisiana was 4,659,978 on July 1, 2018, a 2.79% increase since the 2010 United States Census.[97] The population density of the state is 104.9 people per square mile.[96]
The center of population of Louisiana is located in Pointe Coupee Parish, in the city of New Roads.[98]
According to the 2010 United States Census, 5.4% of the population aged 5 and older spoke Spanish at home, up from 3.5% in 2000; and 4.5% spoke French (including Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole), down from 4.8% in 2000.[99][100]
Race and ethnicity[edit]
According to the US census estimates, the population of Louisiana in 2014 was:[101]
White Americans – 63.4% (59.3% non-Hispanic white, 4.1% White Hispanic)
Black or African American – 32.5%
Asian – 1.8%
Multiracial American – 1.5%
Native American – 0.8%
Hispanic or Latino of any race – 4.8%
The major ancestry groups of Louisiana are African American (30.4%), French (16.8%), American (9.5%), German (8.3%), Irish (7.5%), English (6.6%), Italian (4.8%) and Scottish (1.1%).[102]
As of 2011, 49.0% of Louisiana's population younger than age 1 were minorities.[103]
Louisiana Racial Breakdown of Population
Racial composition
White 67.3% 63.9% 62.6%
Black 30.8% 30.5% 32.0%
Asian 1.0% 1.8% 1.5%
Native 0.8% 0.8% 0.7%
Native Hawaiian and
other Pacific Islander – 0.1% –
Other race 0.5% 0.7% 1.5%
Two or more races – 1.1% 1.6%
Religion[edit]
Religion in Louisiana (2014)[107]
religion percent
Jehovah's Witness
Other Christian
Other faith
The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Catholic Church with 1,200,900; Southern Baptist Convention with 709,650; and the United Methodist Church with 146,848. Non-denominational Evangelical Protestant congregations had 195,903 members.[108]
As in other Southern states, the majority of Louisianians, particularly in the north of the state, belong to various Protestant denominations, with Protestants comprising 57% of the state's adult population. Protestants are concentrated in the northern and central parts of the state and in the northern tier of the Florida Parishes. Because of French and Spanish heritage, and their descendants the Creoles, and later Irish, Italian, Portuguese and German immigrants, southern Louisiana and the greater New Orleans area are predominantly Catholic.[109]
Since Creoles were the first settlers, planters and leaders of the territory, they have traditionally been well represented in politics. For instance, most of the early governors were Creole Catholics.[110] Because Catholics still constitute a significant fraction of Louisiana's population, they have continued to be influential in state politics. As of 2008[update] both Senators and the governor were Catholic. The high proportion and influence of the Catholic population makes Louisiana distinct among Southern states.[111]
Jewish communities are established in the state's larger cities, notably New Orleans and Baton Rouge.[112][113] The most significant of these is the Jewish community of the New Orleans area. In 2000, before the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, its population was about 12,000. Louisiana was among the southern states with a significant Jewish population before the 20th century; Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia also had influential Jewish populations in some of their major cities from the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest Jewish colonists were Sephardic Jews who immigrated with English colonists from London. Later in the 19th century, German Jews began to immigrate, followed by those from eastern Europe and the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Prominent Jews in Louisiana's political leadership have included Whig (later Democrat) Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884), who represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate before the American Civil War and then became the Confederate secretary of state; Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Hahn who was elected as governor, serving 1864–1865 when Louisiana was occupied by the Union Army, and later elected in 1884 as a US congressman;[114] Democrat Adolph Meyer (1842–1908), Confederate Army officer who represented the state in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1891 until his death in 1908; Republican secretary of state Jay Dardenne (1954–), and Republican (Democrat before 2011) attorney general Buddy Caldwell (1946–).
Major cities[edit]
See also: List of municipalities in Louisiana, List of Louisiana metropolitan areas, and List of Louisiana locations by per capita income
Largest cities or towns in Louisiana
Source:[115][116]
Baton Rouge 1 New Orleans Orleans 393,292
2 Baton Rouge East Baton Rouge 225,374
3 Shreveport Caddo 192,036
4 Lafayette Lafayette 126,848
5 Lake Charles Calcasieu 77,117
6 Bossier City Bossier 68,554
7 Kenner Jefferson 67,451
8 Monroe Ouachita 48,371
9 Alexandria Rapides 47,334
10 Houma Terrebonne 33,278
See also: Louisiana locations by per capita income
The total gross state product in 2010 for Louisiana was US$213.6 billion, placing it 24th in the nation. Its per capita personal income is $30,952, ranking 41st in the United States.[117][118]
In 2014, Louisiana was ranked as one of the most small business friendly states, based on a study drawing upon data from over 12,000 small business owners.[119]
The state's principal agricultural products include seafood (it is the biggest producer of crawfish in the world, supplying approximately 90%), cotton, soybeans, cattle, sugarcane, poultry and eggs, dairy products, and rice. Industry generates chemical products, petroleum and coal products, processed foods and transportation equipment, and paper products. Tourism is an important element in the economy, especially in the New Orleans area.
The Port of South Louisiana, located on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is the largest volume shipping port in the Western Hemisphere and 4th largest in the world, as well as the largest bulk cargo port in the world.[120]
New Orleans, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge are home to a thriving film industry.[121] State financial incentives since 2002 and aggressive promotion have given Louisiana the nickname "Hollywood South". Because of its distinctive culture within the United States, only Alaska is Louisiana's rival in popularity as a setting for reality television programs.[122] In late 2007 and early 2008, a 300,000-square-foot (28,000 m2) film studio was scheduled to open in Tremé, with state-of-the-art production facilities, and a film training institute.[123] Tabasco sauce, which is marketed by one of the United States' biggest producers of hot sauce, the McIlhenny Company, originated on Avery Island.[124]
Louisiana has three personal income tax brackets, ranging from 2% to 6%. The sales tax rate is 4%: a 3.97% Louisiana sales tax and a .03% Louisiana Tourism Promotion District sales tax. Political subdivisions also levy their own sales tax in addition to the state fees. The state also has a use tax, which includes 4% to be distributed by the Department of Revenue to local governments. Property taxes are assessed and collected at the local level. Louisiana is a subsidized state, receiving $1.44 from the federal government for every dollar paid in.
Tourism and culture are major players in Louisiana's economy, earning an estimated $5.2 billion per year.[125] Louisiana also hosts many important cultural events, such as the World Cultural Economic Forum, which is held annually in the fall at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center.[126]
As of July 2017, the state's unemployment rate was 5.3%.[127]
Federal subsidies and spending[edit]
Louisiana taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Louisiana citizens received approximately $1.78 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state fourth highest nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Louisiana received $1.35 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (ranked seventh nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending received per dollar of federal tax collected were: Texas ($0.94), Arkansas ($1.41), and Mississippi ($2.02). Federal spending in 2005 and subsequent years since has been exceptionally high due to the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Tax Foundation.
Energy[edit]
The oil slick just off the Louisiana coast on April 30, 2010. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is now considered the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Louisiana is rich in petroleum and natural gas. Petroleum and gas deposits are found in abundance both onshore and offshore in State-owned waters. In addition, vast petroleum and natural gas reserves are found offshore from Louisiana in the federally administered Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Energy Information Administration, the Gulf of Mexico OCS is the largest U.S. petroleum-producing region. Excluding the Gulf of Mexico OCS, Louisiana ranks fourth in petroleum production and is home to about 2 percent of total U.S. petroleum reserves.
Louisiana's natural gas reserves account for about 5 percent of the U.S. total. The recent discovery of the Haynesville Shale formation in parts of or all of Caddo, Bossier, Bienville, Sabine, De Soto, Red River, and Natchitoches parishes have made it the world's fourth largest gas field with some wells initially producing over 25 million cubic feet of gas daily.[128]
Louisiana was the first site of petroleum drilling over water in the world, on Caddo Lake in the northwest corner of the state. The petroleum and gas industry, as well as its subsidiary industries such as transport and refining, have dominated Louisiana's economy since the 1940s. Beginning in 1950, Louisiana was sued several times by the U.S. Interior Department, in efforts by the federal government to strip Louisiana of its submerged land property rights. These control vast stores of reservoirs of petroleum and natural gas.
When petroleum and gas boomed in the 1970s, so did Louisiana's economy. The Louisiana economy as well as its politics of the last half-century cannot be understood without thoroughly accounting for the influence of the petroleum and gas industries. Since the 1980s, these industries' headquarters have consolidated in Houston, but many of the jobs that operate or provide logistical support to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico crude-oil-and-gas industry remained in Louisiana as of 2010[update].
Law and government[edit]
Constitution and Law
Louisiana Constitution
Louisiana Law
Governor John Bel Edwards (D)
State Cabinet
Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser (R)
Secretary of State Tom Schedler (R)
Attorney General Jeff Landry (R)
State Treasurer John Schroder (R)
Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry Mike Strain (R)
Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon (R)
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
President John Alario (R)
President pro tempore Gerald Long (R)
Speaker Taylor Barras (R)
Speaker pro tempore Walt Leger III (D)
Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson (D)
Weimer (N)
Guidry (R)
Clark (R)
Hughes (R)
Crichton (R)
Genovese (R)
Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal
Louisiana District Courts
Parish and City Courts
Mayor’s Courts
Nonpartisan blanket primary
Qualified Louisiana Parties
National minor parties
Political party strength
Political Subdivisions
Parishes (64)
Municipalities (303)
Federal Representation
United States Senators
See also: List of United States Senators from Louisiana
John Neely Kennedy (R)
1: Steve Scalise (R)
2: Cedric Richmond (D)
3: Clay Higgins (R)
4: John Fleming (R)
5: Ralph Abraham (R)
6: Garret Graves (R)
Louisiana portal
Further information: List of Louisiana Governors, Louisiana law, and Louisiana Constitution
The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, the tallest state capitol building in the United States.
The Louisiana Governor's Mansion
In 1849, the state moved the capital from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Donaldsonville, Opelousas, and Shreveport have briefly served as the seat of Louisiana state government. The Louisiana State Capitol and the Louisiana Governor's Mansion are both located in Baton Rouge. The Louisiana Supreme Court, however, did not move to Baton Rouge but remains headquartered in New Orleans.
Louisiana and California (whose supreme court is seated in San Francisco) are the only two states whose high courts are not headquartered in the state capital.
The current Louisiana governor is Democrat John Bel Edwards. The current United States senators are Republicans John Neely Kennedy and Bill Cassidy. Louisiana has six congressional districts and is represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by five Republicans and one Democrat. Louisiana had eight votes in the Electoral College for the 2012 election. It lost one House seat due to stagnant population growth in the 2010 Census.
Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes (the equivalent of counties in most other states).[129]
List of parishes in Louisiana
Louisiana census statistical areas
Most parishes have an elected government known as the Police Jury, dating from the colonial days. It is the legislative and executive government of the parish, and is elected by the voters. Its members are called Jurors, and together they elect a president as their chairman.
A more limited number of parishes operate under home rule charters, electing various forms of government. This include mayor–council, council–manager (in which the council hires a professional operating manager for the parish), and others.
Civil law[edit]
The Louisiana political and legal structure has maintained several elements from the times of French and Spanish governance. One is the use of the term "parish" (from the French: paroisse) in place of "county" for administrative subdivision. Another is the legal system of civil law based on French, German, and Spanish legal codes and ultimately Roman law, as opposed to English common law.
Louisiana's civil law system is what the majority of nations in the world use, especially in Europe and its former colonies, excluding those that derive from the British Empire. However, it is incorrect to equate the Louisiana Civil Code with the Napoleonic Code. Although the Napoleonic Code and Louisiana law draw from common legal roots, the Napoleonic Code was never in force in Louisiana, as it was enacted in 1804, after the United States had purchased and annexed Louisiana in 1803.
While the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808 has been continuously revised and updated since its enactment, it is still considered the controlling authority in the state. Differences are found between Louisianan civil law and the common law found in the other U.S. states. While some of these differences have been bridged due to the strong influence of common law tradition,[130] the civil law tradition is still deeply rooted in most aspects of Louisiana private law. Thus property, contractual, business entities structure, much of civil procedure, and family law, as well as some aspects of criminal law, are still based mostly on traditional Roman legal thinking.
Marriage[edit]
In 1997, Louisiana became the first state to offer the option of a traditional marriage or a covenant marriage.[131] In a covenant marriage, the couple waives their right to a "no-fault" divorce after six months of separation, which is available in a traditional marriage. To divorce under a covenant marriage, a couple must demonstrate cause. Marriages between ascendants and descendants, and marriages between collaterals within the fourth degree (i.e., siblings, aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, first cousins) are prohibited.[132] Same-sex marriages were prohibited by statute,[133][134] but the Supreme Court declared such bans unconstitutional in 2015, in its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Same-sex marriages are now performed statewide. Louisiana is a community property state.[135]
Main articles: Elections in Louisiana and Political party strength in Louisiana
Treemap of the popular vote by parish, 2016 presidential election.
From 1898 to 1965, a period when Louisiana had effectively disfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites by provisions of a new constitution,[136] this was essentially a one-party state dominated by white Democrats. Elites had control in the early 20th century, before populist Huey Long came to power as governor.[137] In multiple acts of resistance, blacks left behind the segregation, violence and oppression of the state and moved out to seek better opportunities in northern and western industrial cities during the Great Migrations of 1910–1970, markedly reducing their proportion of population in Louisiana. The franchise for whites was expanded somewhat during these decades, but blacks remained essentially disfranchised until after the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, gaining enforcement of their constitutional rights through passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation was passed under President Lyndon Johnson to protect voting and civil rights, most African Americans in the state have affiliated with the Democratic Party. In the same years, many white social conservatives have moved to support Republican Party candidates in national, gubernatorial and statewide elections. In 2004, David Vitter was the first Republican in Louisiana to be popularly elected as a U.S. senator. The previous Republican senator, John S. Harris, who took office in 1868 during Reconstruction, was chosen by the state legislature under the rules of the 19th century.
Louisiana is unique among U.S. states in using a system for its state and local elections similar to that of modern France. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run in a nonpartisan blanket primary (or "jungle primary") on Election Day. If no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, the two candidates with the highest vote totals compete in a runoff election approximately one month later. This run-off method does not take into account party identification; therefore, it is not uncommon for a Democrat to be in a runoff with a fellow Democrat or a Republican to be in a runoff with a fellow Republican.
Congressional races have also been held under the jungle primary system. All other states (except Washington, California, and Maine) use single-party primaries followed by a general election between party candidates, each conducted by either a plurality voting system or runoff voting, to elect senators, representatives, and statewide officials. Between 2008 and 2010, federal congressional elections were run under a closed primary system – limited to registered party members. However, upon the passage of House Bill 292, Louisiana again adopted a nonpartisan blanket primary for its federal congressional elections.
Louisiana has six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, five of which are currently held by Republicans and one by a Democrat. The state lost a House seat at the end of the 112th Congress due to stagnant population growth as recorded by the 2010 United States Census. Louisiana is not classified as a "swing state" for future presidential elections, as since the late 20th century, it has regularly supported Republican candidates. The state's two U.S. senators are Bill Cassidy (R) John Neely Kennedy (R).
Law enforcement[edit]
See also: List of law enforcement agencies in Louisiana
Louisiana's statewide police force is the Louisiana State Police. It began in 1922 with the creation of the Highway Commission. In 1927, a second branch, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, was formed. In 1932, the State Highway Patrol was authorized to carry weapons.
On July 28, 1936, the two branches were consolidated to form the Louisiana Department of State Police; its motto was "courtesy, loyalty, service". In 1942, this office was abolished and became a division of the Department of Public Safety, called the Louisiana State Police. In 1988, the Criminal Investigation Bureau was reorganized.[138] Its troopers have statewide jurisdiction with power to enforce all laws of the state, including city and parish ordinances. Each year, they patrol over 12 million miles (20 million km) of roadway and arrest about 10,000 impaired drivers. The State Police are primarily a traffic enforcement agency, with other sections that delve into trucking safety, narcotics enforcement, and gaming oversight.
The elected sheriff in each parish is the chief law enforcement officer in the parish. They are the keepers of the local parish prisons, which house felony and misdemeanor prisoners. They are the primary criminal patrol and first responder agency in all matters criminal and civil. They are also the official tax collectors in each parish. The sheriffs are responsible for general law enforcement in their respective parishes. Orleans Parish is an exception, as the general law enforcement duties fall to the New Orleans Police Department. Before 2010, Orleans parish was the only parish to have two sheriff's offices. Orleans Parish divided sheriffs' duties between criminal and civil, with a different elected sheriff overseeing each aspect. In 2006, a bill was passed which eventually consolidated the two sheriff's departments into one parish sheriff responsible for both civil and criminal matters.[citation needed]
In 2015, Louisiana had a higher murder rate (10.3 per 100,000) than any other state in the country for the 27th straight year. Louisiana is the only state with an annual average murder rate (13.6 per 100,000) at least twice as high as the U.S. annual average (6.6 per 100,000) during that period, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics from FBI Uniform Crime Reports. In a different kind of criminal activity, the Chicago Tribune reports that Louisiana is the most corrupt state in the United States.[139]
According to the Times Picayune, Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. Many for-profit private prisons and sheriff-owned prisons have been built and operate here. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's and 20 times Germany's. Minorities are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the state's population.[140]
Judiciary[edit]
The judiciary of Louisiana is defined under the Constitution and law of Louisiana and is composed of the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal, the District Courts, the Justice of the Peace Courts, the Mayor's Courts, the City Courts, and the Parish Courts. The chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court is the chief administrator of the judiciary. Its administration is aided by the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, and the Judicial Council of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
National Guard[edit]
Louisiana has more than 9,000 soldiers in the Louisiana Army National Guard, including the 225th Engineer Brigade and the 256th Infantry Brigade. Both these units have served overseas during the War on Terror in either Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. The Louisiana Air National Guard has over 2,000 airmen and its 159th Fighter Wing has likewise seen overseas service in combat theaters.
Training sites in the state include Camp Beauregard near Pineville, Camp Villere near Slidell, Camp Minden near Minden, England Air Park (formerly England Air Force Base) near Alexandria, Gillis Long Center near Carville, and Jackson Barracks in New Orleans.
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See also: Category:Louisiana media
Further information: List of school districts in Louisiana, List of colleges and universities in Louisiana, and French immersion in Louisiana
Louisiana is home to several notable colleges and universities, which include Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and Tulane University in New Orleans. Louisiana State University is the largest and most comprehensive university in Louisiana.[141] Tulane University is a major private research university and the wealthiest university in Louisiana with an endowment over $1.1 billion.[142] Tulane is also highly regarded for its academics nationwide, ranked fortieth on U.S. News & World Report's 2018 list of best national universities.[143]
Louisiana is also home to two major HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Southern University in Baton Rouge and Grambling State University in Ruston, LA. Both of these SWAC (Southwestern Athletic Conference) schools compete against each other annually in the much anticipated rivalry, the Bayou Classic, during Thanksgiving weekend in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Louisiana Science Education Act[144] is a controversial law passed by the Louisiana Legislature on June 11, 2008, and signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal on June 25. The act allows public school teachers to use supplemental materials in the science classroom which are critical of established science on such topics as the theory of evolution and global warming.[145][146]
See also: List of sports teams in Louisiana and Sports in New Orleans
Louisiana is nominally the least populous state with more than one major professional sports league franchise: the National Basketball Association's New Orleans Pelicans and the National Football League's New Orleans Saints. Louisiana has a AAA Minor League baseball team, the New Orleans Baby Cakes. The Baby Cakes are currently affiliated with the Miami Marlins.
Louisiana has 12 collegiate NCAA Division I programs, a high number given its population. The state has no NCAA Division II teams and only two NCAA Division III teams. The LSU Tigers football team has won 11 Southeastern Conference titles, six Sugar Bowls and three national championships.
Each year New Orleans plays host to the Sugar Bowl, the Bayou Classic, and the New Orleans Bowl college football games, and Shreveport hosts the Independence Bowl. Also, New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl a record seven times, as well as the BCS National Championship Game, NBA All-Star Game and NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.
The Zurich Classic of New Orleans, is a PGA Tour golf tournament held since 1938. The Rock 'n' Roll Mardi Gras Marathon and Crescent City Classic are two road running competitions held at New Orleans.
As of 2016, Louisiana was the birthplace of the most NFL players per capita for the eighth year in a row.[147]
Main article: Culture of Louisiana
Dishes typical of Louisiana Creole cuisine.
Louisiana is home to many, especially notable are the distinct culture of the Louisiana Creoles, typically people of color, descendants of free mixed-race families of the colonial and early statehood periods.
African culture[edit]
The French colony of La Louisiane struggled for decades to survive. Conditions were harsh, the climate and soil were unsuitable for certain crops the colonists knew, and they suffered from regional tropical diseases. Both colonists and the slaves they imported had high mortality rates. The settlers kept importing slaves, which resulted in a high proportion of native Africans from West Africa, who continued to practice their culture in new surroundings. As described by historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, they developed a marked Afro-Creole culture in the colonial era.[148][149]
At the turn of the 18th century and in the early 1800s, New Orleans received a major influx of white and mixed-race refugees fleeing the violence of the Haitian Revolution, many of whom brought their slaves with them. This added another infusion of African culture to the city, as more slaves in Saint-Domingue were from Africa than in the United States. They strongly influenced the African-American culture of the city in terms of dance, music and religious practices.
Louisiana Creole culture[edit]
Creole culture is an amalgamation of French, African, Spanish (and other European), and Native American cultures.[150] Creole comes from the Portuguese word crioulo; originally it referred to a colonist of European (specifically French) descent who was born in the New World, in comparison to immigrants from France.[151] The oldest Louisiana manuscript to use the word "Creole," from 1782, applied it to a slave born in the French colony.[152] But originally it referred more generally to the French colonists born in Louisiana.
Over time, there developed in the French colony a relatively large group of Creoles of Color (gens de couleur libres), who were primarily descended from African slave women and French men (later other Europeans became part of the mix, as well as some Native Americans.) Often the French would free their concubines and mixed-race children, and pass on social capital to them. They might educate sons in France, for instance, and help them enter the French Army for a career. They also settled capital or property on their mistresses and children. The free people of color gained more rights in the colony and sometimes education; they generally spoke French and were Roman Catholic. Many became artisans and property owners. Over time, the term "Creole" became associated with this class of Creoles of Color, many of whom achieved freedom long before the Civil War.
Wealthy French Creoles generally maintained town houses in New Orleans as well as houses on their large sugar plantations outside town along the Mississippi River. New Orleans had the largest population of free people of color in the region; they could find work there and created their own culture, marrying among themselves for decades.
Acadian culture[edit]
The ancestors of Cajuns immigrated from west central France to New France, where they settled in the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, known originally as Acadia. After the British defeated France in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) in 1763, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. The British forcibly separated families and evicted them from Acadia because they refused to vow loyalty to the new British regime. The Acadians were deported to England, New England, and France. Some escaped the British remained in French Canada.
Others scattered, to France, Canada, Mexico, or the Falkland Islands. Many Acadian refugees settled in south Louisiana in the region around Lafayette and the LaFourche Bayou country. They developed a distinct rural culture there that was different from that of the French Creole colonists in the New Orleans area. Intermarrying with others in the area, they developed what was called Cajun music, cuisine and culture. Until the 1970s, the term "Cajun" was considered somewhat derogatory.
Isleño culture[edit]
A third distinct culture in Louisiana is that of the Isleños, descendants of Spanish Canary Islanders who migrated from the Canary Islands of Spain under the Spanish crown beginning in the mid-1770s. They developed four main communities, but many relocated to what is modern-day St. Bernard Parish. This is where the majority of the Isleño population is still concentrated. An annual festival called Fiesta celebrates the heritage of the Isleños.
St Bernard Parish has an Isleños museum, cemetery and church, as well as many street names with Spanish words and Spanish surnames from this heritage. Some members of the Isleño community still speak Spanish – with their own Canary Islander accent. Numerous Isleño identity organizations, and many members of Isleños society keep contact with the Canary Islands of Spain.
Languages[edit]
The languages of historic Native American tribes that occupied what is now Louisiana include: Tunica, Caddo, Natchez, Choctaw, Atakapa, Chitimacha and Houma.
According to a 2010 study by the Modern Language Association, among persons five years old and older,[153] 91.26% of Louisiana residents speak only English at home, 3.45% speak French (standard French, French Creole, or Cajun French), 3.30% speak Spanish, and 0.59% speak Vietnamese.
Historically, Native American peoples in the area at the time of European encounter were seven tribes distinguished by their languages: Caddo, Tunica, Natchez, Houma, Choctaw, Atakapa, and Chitimacha. Of these, only Tunica, Caddo and Choctaw still have living native speakers, although several other tribes are working to teach and revitalize their languages. Other Native American peoples migrated into the region, escaping from European pressure from the east. Among these were Alabama, Biloxi, Koasati, and Ofo peoples.
Starting in the 1700s, French colonists began to settle along the coast and founded New Orleans. They established French culture and language institutions. They imported thousands of slaves from tribes of West Africa, who spoke several different languages. In the creolization process, the slaves developed a Louisiana Creole dialect incorporating both French and African forms, which colonists adopted to communicate with them, and which persisted beyond slavery. In the 20th century, there were still people of mixed race, particularly, who spoke Louisiana Creole French.
During the 19th century after the Louisiana Purchase by the United States, English gradually gained prominence for business and government due to the shift in population with settlement by numerous Americans who were English speakers. Many ethnic French families continued to use French in private. Slaves and some free people of color also spoke Louisiana Creole French. The State Constitution of 1812 gave English official status in legal proceedings, but use of French remained widespread. Subsequent state constitutions reflect the diminishing importance of French. The 1868 constitution, passed during the Reconstruction era before Louisiana was re-admitted to the Union, banned laws requiring the publication of legal proceedings in languages other than English. Subsequently, the legal status of French recovered somewhat, but it never regained its pre-Civil War prominence.[154]
Several unique dialects of French, Creole, and English are spoken in Louisiana. Dialects of the French language are: Colonial French and Houma French. Louisiana Creole French is the term for one of the Creole languages. Two unique dialects developed of the English language: Louisiana English, a French-influenced variety of English; and what is informally known as Yat, which resembles the New York City dialect, particularly that of historical Brooklyn. Both accents were influenced by large communities of immigrant Irish and Italians, but the Yat dialect, which developed in New Orleans, was also influenced by French and Spanish.
Louisiana's bilingual state welcome sign, recognizing its French heritage.
Colonial French was the dominant language of white settlers in Louisiana during the French colonial period; it was spoken primarily by the French Creoles (native-born). In addition to this dialect, the mixed-race people and slaves developed Louisiana Creole, with a base in West African languages. The limited years of Spanish rule at the end of the 18th century did not result in widespread adoption of the Spanish language. French and Louisiana Creole are still used in modern-day Louisiana, often in family gatherings. English and its associated dialects became predominant after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, after which the area became dominated by numerous English speakers. In some regions, English was influenced by French, as seen with Louisiana English. Colonial French, although mistakenly named Cajun French by some Cajuns, has persisted alongside English.
Renewed interest in the French language in Louisiana has led to the establishment of Canadian-modeled French immersion schools, as well as bilingual signage in the historic French neighborhoods of New Orleans and Lafayette. Organizations such as CODOFIL promote use of the French language in the state.
Main article: Literature of Louisiana
Main article: Music of Louisiana
Louisiana (New France)
Index of Louisiana-related articles
Outline of Louisiana – organized list of topics about Louisiana
^ Louisiana French: La Louisiane, [la lwizjan, luz-];[8] Louisiana Creole: Léta de la Lwizyàn; Standard French: État de Louisiane [lwizjan] ( listen); Spanish: Luisiana
^ "United States". Modern Language Association. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
^ "New Orleans a 'ghost town' after thousands flee Gustav: mayor", AFP, August 31, 2008, archived from the original on May 16, 2013
^ "Expert: N.O. population at 273,000". WWL-TV. August 7, 2007. Archived from the original on September 26, 2007. Retrieved August 14, 2007.
^ "Relocation". Baton rouge. Connecting U.S. Cities. May 3, 2007. Archived from the original on February 9, 2014.
^ "Median Annual Household Income". The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
^ a b "Elevations and Distances in the United States". United States Geological Survey. 2001. Archived from the original on October 15, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
^ a b Elevation adjusted to North American Vertical Datum of 1988.
^ Valdman, Albert; Kevin J. Rottet, eds. (2009). Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities. University Press of Mississippi. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-60473-404-1.
^ a b c d e f Keddy, Paul A. (2008). Water, Earth, Fire: Louisiana's Natural Heritage. Philadelphia: Xlibris. p. 229. ISBN 978-1-4363-6234-4.
^ Dayna Bowker Lee, "Louisiana Indians in the 21st Century", Louisiana Folklife Program, 2013
^ a b Louisiana Official Site on Languages, accessed August 22, 2016
^ Murphy, Alexander B. (2008). "Placing Louisiana in the Francophone World: Opportunities and Challenges" (PDF). Atlantic Studies. 5 (3): 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 10, 2013. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ Baker, Lea Flowers. "Louisiana Purchase". Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. Retrieved September 18, 2010.
^ Spearing, D. (1995). Roadside Geology of Louisiana. Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MT. 225 pp. 5–19
^ Coleman, J. M., Roberts, H. H., and Stone, G. W. (1998). "Mississippi River Delta: an overview", Journal of Coastal Research, 14, 698–716.
^ Holland, W.C. 1944. "Physiographic divisions of the Quaternary lowlands of Louisiana", Proceedings of the Louisiana Academy of Sciences VIII: 10–24.
^ Kniffen, F.B. and Hilliard, S.B. 1988. Louisiana: Its Land and People. Revised edition. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge. p. 66-68.
^ Spearing (1995), Roadside Geology, pp. 19–30
^ "Louisiana fights the sea, and loses". The Economist. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
^ Rivet, Ryan (Summer 2008). "Petroleum Dynamite". Tulanian. Tulane University: 20–27. Archived from the original on June 13, 2010. Retrieved September 7, 2009.
^ Keddy, Paul (2010). Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 497. ISBN 978-0-521-51940-3.
^ Ricardo A. Olea and James L Coleman., Jr. (2014), A synoptic examination of causes of land loss in southern Louisiana as they relate to the exploitation of subsurface geologic resources. Journal of Coastal Research, v. 30, no. 5, p. 1025−1044.
^ Boesch, D. F., Josselyn, M. N., Mehta, A. J., Morris, J. T., Nuttle, W. K., Simenstad, C. A., and Swift, D. P. J. (1994). "Scientific assessment of coastal wetland loss, restoration and management in Louisiana", Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 20.
^ Tidwell, Michael. Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast. Vintage Departures: New York, 2003 ISBN 978-0-375-42076-4.
^ "Louisiana Weather". Archived from the original on June 30, 2007. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
^ a b "NOAA National Climatic Data Center". Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ a b c "NowData – NOAA Online Weather Data". National Weather Service Forecast Office, Shreveport, LA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
^ a b "NowData – NOAA Online Weather Data". National Weather Service Forecast Office, Lake Charles, LA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
^ a b "NowData – NOAA Online Weather Data". National Weather Service Forecast Office, New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
^ Hurricane Gustav makes landfall, weakens to Category 1 storm Archived May 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Fox News, September 2, 2008.
^ Mandatory evacuations to begin Sunday morning in New Orleans CNN, August 31, 2008.
^ "Sixteen deaths connected to Gustav". KTBS. Associated Press. September 3, 2008. Archived from the original on September 18, 2008. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
^ Rowland, Michael (September 2, 2008). "Louisiana cleans up after Gustav". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
^ Stewart, Stacy (August 23, 2005). "Tropical Depression Twelve, Discussion No. 1, 5:00 pm. EDT". National Hurricane Center. Retrieved July 25, 2007.
^ "Cajun and Cajuns: Genealogy site for Cajun, Acadian and Louisiana genealogy, history and culture". www.thecajuns.com.
^ Florida Greenways Commission. 1994. Report to the Governor. Creating a statewide greenways system: For people ... for wildlife ... for Florida. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee, FL.
^ Lester, G. D., S.G. Sorensen, P. L. Faulkner, C. S. Reid and I. E. Maxit. 2005. Louisiana Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Baton Rouge, LA
^ Appendix B: Descriptions of Louisiana's Natural and Scenic Rivers: pp B-2 (list)- Retrieved 2017-03-18
^ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
^ Amélie A. Walker, "Earliest Mound Site", Archaeology Magazine, Volume 51 Number 1, January/February 1998
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^ "OAS-Oklahomas Past". Archived from the original on May 31, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2010.
^ a b "Tejas-Caddo Ancestors-Woodland Cultures". Retrieved February 6, 2010.
^ Raymond Fogelson (September 20, 2004). Handbook of North American Indians : Southeast. Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 978-0-16-072300-1.
^ "Southeastern Prehistory : Late Woodland Period". NPS.GOV. Retrieved October 23, 2011.
^ Timothy P Denham; José Iriarte; Luc Vrydaghs, eds. (December 10, 2008). Rethinking Agriculture: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives. Left Coast Press. pp. 199–204. ISBN 978-1-59874-261-9.
^ Kidder, Tristram (1998). R. Barry Lewis; Charles Stout (eds.). Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-0947-3.
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^ Rees, Mark A. (2007). "Plaquemine Mounds of the western Atchafalaya Basin". In Rees, Mark A.; Livingood, Patrick C. (eds.). Plaquemine Archaeology. University of Alabama Press. pp. 84–93.
^ "Indian Mounds of Northeast Louisiana:Fitzhugh Mounds". Archived from the original on December 24, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
^ "Indian Mounds of Northeast Louisiana:Scott Place Mounds". Archived from the original on December 25, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
^ Weinstein, Richard A.; Dumas, Ashley A. (2008). "The spread of shell-tempered ceramics along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico" (PDF). Southeastern Archaeology. 27 (2). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 25, 2012.
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^ "Notice of Inventory Completion for Native American Human Remains and Associated Funerary Objects in the Possession of the Louisiana State University Museum". Retrieved February 22, 2010.
^ David Roth, "Louisiana Hurricane History: 18th century (1722–1800)", Tropical Weather – National Weather Service – Lake Charles, LA, 2003, accessed May 7, 2008 Archived August 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
^ a b c Ekberg, Carl (2000). French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times. Urbana and Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 9780252069246. Retrieved November 29, 2014.
^ The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 by Hugh Thomas. 1997: Simon and Schuster. p. 242-43
^ "Code Noir of Louisiana – Know Louisiana".
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^ Thomas (1997), The Slave Trade, p. 549.
^ Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, p.2
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^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, pp. 96–98
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^ "The Association of Religion Data Archives | State Membership Report". www.thearda.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.
^ For Louisiana's position in a larger religious context, see Bible Belt.
^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Louisiana" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
^ Other Southern states – such as Maryland and Texas – have longstanding indigenous Catholic populations, and Florida's largely Catholic population of Cuban emigres has been influential since the 1960s. Yet, Louisiana is still unusual or exceptional in its extent of aboriginal Catholic settlement and influence. Among states in the Deep South (discounting Florida's Panhandle and much of Texas) the historic role of Catholicism in Louisiana is unparalleled and unique. Among the states of the Union, Louisiana's unique use of the term parish (French la parouche or "la paroisse") for county is rooted in the pre-statehood role of Catholic church parishes in the administration of government.
^ Isaacs, Ronald H. The Jewish Information Source Book: A Dictionary and Almanac, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1993. p. 202.
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^ "New Jersey Local Jobs –". Nj.com. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ Shevory, Kristina. "The Fiery Family," The New York Times, March 31, 2007, p. B1.
^ "Economy". Doa.louisiana.gov. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ "WCEF Culture". wcefculture.com. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016. CS1 maint: Unfit url (link)
^ [3];Bureau of Labor Statistics
^ "EIA State Energy Profiles: Louisiana". June 12, 2008. Archived from the original on February 6, 2011. Retrieved June 24, 2008.
^ Native Americans from the Handbook of Texas Online
^ Kinsella, Norman (1997). "A Civil Law to Common Law Dictionary" (PDF). KinsellaLaw.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 25, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2010.
^ "Covenant Marriage – Pros and Cons". Marriage.about.com. January 1, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2012.
^ "Louisiana Law Search". www.legis.state.la.us.
^ Louisiana Civil Code §3520B
^ "Reading the Fine Print: The Grandfather Clause in Louisiana". History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web. George Washington University. Retrieved October 11, 2013.
^ Cashman, Sean Dennis (1991). African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, 1900–1990. New York University Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780814714416.
^ "Louisiana State Police – About Us – LSP History". Lsp.org. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ Witt, Howard (March 27, 2009). "Most corrupt state: Louisiana ranked higher than Illinois". Chicago Tribune.
^ Cindy Chang. "Louisiana is the world's prison capital". The Times-Picayune. Nola.com. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ (LSU), Louisiana State University. "About Us". www.lsu.edu.
^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 2, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2017. CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
^ https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
^ Senator Ben Nevers. "SB733". Louisiana Legislature. Retrieved June 25, 2008.
^ Dvorsky, George (January 15, 2013). "How 19-year-old Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana's creationists". Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Archived from the original on February 25, 2013. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
^ Weiss, Joanna (January 29, 2013). "Jindal's creationism problem". Boston Globe. via HighBeam Research (subscription required). Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
^ "Woodland Hills High School in Pittsburgh has most NFL players; California leads states; Houston leads hometowns". Usafootball.com. September 24, 2010. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992)
^ Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, comp. Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1719–1820. Database http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/, 2003.
^ "French Creole Heritage". Laheritage.org. Archived from the original on August 30, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
^ Delehanty, Randolph.New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence, Chronicle Books, 1995, pg. 14
^ Kein, Sybil. Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color, Louisiana State University Press, 2009, p. 73.
^ "United States". Modern Language Association. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
^ Ward, Roger K (Summer 1997). "The French Language in Louisiana Law and Legal Education: A Requiem". Louisiana Law Review. 57 (4).
The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860 by Richard Follett, Louisiana State University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8071-3247-0
The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 by Hugh Thomas. 1997: Simon and Schuster. p. 548.
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World by David Brion Davis 2006: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533944-4
Yiannopoulos, A.N., The Civil Codes of Louisiana (reprinted from Civil Law System: Louisiana and Comparative law, A Coursebook: Texts, Cases and Materials, 3d Edition; similar to version in preface to Louisiana Civil Code, ed. by Yiannopoulos)
Rodolfo Batiza, "The Louisiana Civil Code of 1808: Its Actual Sources and Present Relevance," 46 TUL. L. REV. 4 (1971); Rodolfo Batiza, "Sources of the Civil Code of 1808, Facts and Speculation: A Rejoinder," 46 TUL. L. REV. 628 (1972); Robert A. Pascal, Sources of the Digest of 1808: A Reply to Professor Batiza, 46 TUL. L. REV. 603 (1972); Joseph M. Sweeney, Tournament of Scholars Over the Sources of the Civil Code of 1808,46 TUL. L. REV. 585 (1972).
The standard history of the state, though only through the Civil War, is Charles Gayarré's History of Louisiana' (various editions, culminating in 1866, 4 vols., with a posthumous and further expanded edition in 1885).
A number of accounts by 17th- and 18th-century French explorers: Jean-Bernard Bossu, François-Marie Perrin du Lac, Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Dumont (as published by Fr. Mascrier), Fr. Louis Hennepin, Lahontan, Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, and Laval. In this group, the explorer Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz may be the first historian of Louisiana with his Histoire de la Louisiane (3 vols., Paris, 1758; 2 vols., London, 1763)
François Xavier Martin's History of Louisiana (2 vols., New Orleans, 1827–1829, later ed. by J. F. Condon, continued to 1861, New Orleans, 1882) is the first scholarly treatment of the subject, along with François Barbé-Marbois' Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de colonie par la France aux Etats-Unis (Paris, 1829; in English, Philadelphia, 1830).
Alcée Fortier's A History of Louisiana (N.Y., 4 vols., 1904) is the most recent of the large-scale scholarly histories of the state.
The official works of Albert Phelps and Grace King, the publications of the Louisiana Historical Society and several works on the history of New Orleans (q.v.), among them those by Henry Rightor and John Smith Kendall provide background.
Louisianaat Wikipedia's sister projects
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Louisiana Weather and Tides
Geology links[edit]
Generalized Geologic Map of Louisiana, 2008
Generalized Geology of Louisiana (text to Generalized Geologic Map of Louisiana)
Loess Map of Louisiana
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Official State of Louisiana website
Louisiana State Guide, from the Library of Congress
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Census Statistics on Louisiana
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1st district: Steve Scalise – Website
2nd district: Cedric Richmond – Website & Campaign Website
3rd district: Charles Boustany – Website
4th district: John C. Fleming – Website
5th district: Ralph Abraham – Website
6th district: Garret Graves – Website
News media[edit]
The Times-Picayune major Louisiana newspaper
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Related to Louisiana
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 391,006 in 2018, it is the most populous city in Louisiana. A major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.
West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana
West Feliciana Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 15,625. The parish seat is St. Francisville. The parish was established in 1824.
West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana
West Baton Rouge Parish is one of the sixty-four parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 23,788. The parish seat is Port Allen. The parish was created in 1807.
St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana
St. John the Baptist Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 45,924. The parish seat is Edgard, an unincorporated area, and the largest city is LaPlace, which is also unincorporated.
Cameron Parish, Louisiana
Cameron Parish is a parish in the southwestern section of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 6,839. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the largest parish by land area in Louisiana, it has the second-smallest population in the state.
Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana
Avoyelles is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana near the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,073. The parish seat is Marksville. The parish was created in 1807, with the name deriving from the French name for the historic Avoyel people, one of the local Indian tribes at the time of European encounter.
Donaldsonville, Louisiana
Donaldsonville is a small city in and the parish seat of Ascension Parish in south Louisiana, United States, located along the River Road of the west bank of the Mississippi River. The population was 7,436 at the 2010 census, a decrease of more than 150 from the 7,605 tabulation in 2000. Donaldsonville is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area.
New Roads, Louisiana
New Roads is a city in and the parish seat of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The center of population of Louisiana is located in New Roads. The population was 4,831 at the 2010 census, down from 4,966 in 2000. The city's ZIP code is 70760. It is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Florida Parishes, on the east side of Mississippi River — an area also known as the Northshore or Northlake region — are eight parishes in southeast Louisiana, United States, which were part of West Florida in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Natchez District
The Natchez District was one of two areas established in the Kingdom of Great Britain's West Florida colony during the 1770s – the other being the Tombigbee District. The first Anglo settlers in the district came primarily from other parts of British America. The district was recognized to be the area east of the Mississippi River from Bayou Sara in the south and Bayou Pierre in the north.
History of New Orleans
The history of New Orleans, Louisiana, traces the city's development from its founding by the French, through its period under Spanish control, then briefly back to French rule before being acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. In the 19th century, New Orleans was the largest port in the South, exporting most of the nation's cotton output and other products to Western Europe and New England. It was the largest and most important city in the South; thus it was an early target for capture by the Union during the Civil War. With its rich and unique cultural and architectural heritage, it remains a major destination for tourism, conventions, and major sports events, even after the major destruction and loss of life resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Louisiana or French Louisiana was an administrative district of New France. Under French control 1682 to 1762 and 1801 (nominally) to 1803, the area was named in honor of King Louis XIV, by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. It originally covered an expansive territory that included most of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River and stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains.
Louisiana Creole people
Louisiana Creole people, are persons descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana during the period of both French and Spanish rule. The term creole was originally used by French settlers to distinguish persons born in Louisiana from those born in the mother country or elsewhere. As in many other colonial societies around the world, creole was a term used to mean those who were "native-born", especially native-born Europeans such as the French and Spanish. It also came to be applied to African-descended slaves and Native Americans who were born in Louisiana. Louisiana Creoles share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French and Louisiana Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism.
Louisiana (New Spain)
Louisiana was an administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1763 to 1801 that consisted of territory west of the Mississippi River basin, plus New Orleans. Spain acquired the territory from France, which had named it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV in 1682. It is sometimes known as Spanish Louisiana. The district was retroceded to France, under the terms of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800) and the Treaty of Aranjuez (1801). In 1802, King Charles IV of Spain published a royal bill on 14 October, effecting the transfer and outlining the conditions.
Demographics of Louisiana
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Louisiana was 4,670,724 on July 1, 2015, a 3.03% increase since the 2010 United States Census.
Louisiana African American Heritage Trail
Louisiana African American Heritage Trail is a cultural heritage trail with 26 sites designated in 2008 by the state of Louisiana, from New Orleans along the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge and Shreveport, with sites in small towns and plantations also included. In New Orleans several sites are within a walking area. Auto travel is required to reach sites outside the city.
Outline of Louisiana
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the U.S. state of Louisiana:
History of Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The foundation of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dates to 1721, at the site of a bâton rouge or "red stick" Muscogee boundary marker. It became the state capital of Louisiana in 1849.
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Category Archives: Music
Elk City rocks its hometown (Video)
Sorry for the long hiatus here at Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? It’s been a busy time since we last connected, and we’re hoping to get back on track now. Here’s a little something for your listening and viewing pleasure.
Elk City took to the stage in its hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, on Saturday with a super tight set that included some new music.
The afternoon set at the Center Stage Festival on Lackawanna Plaza also featured the band in its rather rare two-guitar configuration, because both Sean Eden (who also plays in Luna) and Chris Robertson were able to appear.
Elk City — which also featured songwriter Renée LoBue rocking a spectacular green and white dress, Ray Ketchem on drums, and Richard Baluyut on bass — is always a joy to see and hear, but the intertwining guitar lines give the sound some extra oomph.
Here are a couple of songs from the 45-minute set, first a new song, “Hot Rain,” followed by “He’s Having a Baby,” from the band’s 2018 album ‘Everybody’s Insecure”:
Tagged Elk City, montclair
Sharon Van Etten announces new album title, pre-release details
Sharon Van Etten (Photo by Ryan Pfluger)
We now know the title of Sharon Van Etten‘s new album, whose release date — Jan. 18, 2019, was announced in a clever manner on a limited edition fan T-shirt last, as Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? revealed last week.
“Remind Me Tomorrow” album cover art
The album pre-release info, complete with cover image and full tracklist, dropped Tuesday, Oct. 2, on all the usual services, including Bandcamp, where you can order a range of formats and special bundles with merchandise.
Oh, you probably want to know the title: “Remind Me Tomorrow.”
One track is available now, and the title seems like a statement of intent: “Comeback Kid.”
She emailed the news to her fan list early Tuesday:
Dear Fans,
Thank you so much for your support and encouragement the past 4 years as I have gone back to school, had a child, and landed my first acting gig.
During that time, I wrote a record and I am excited to announce that it will be out Jan. 18th, 2019.
Here is the first single, “Comeback Kid.”
The cover art is appropriate for a new mother like Sharon. The two kids in the photo are not hers, but the image offers some clues about how the private side of her life feels, if not how it really looks.
It’s not a very rock ‘n roll scenario, for sure. But that’s what’s so appealing about Sharon as an artist and a human being: She’s not afraid to be herself or to reveal herself.
In fact, her life is such an open book that fans can subscribe to Sharon’s calendar, which contains entries about video editing sessions, flights to performances, etc. Sign up for that here.
The record, according to a press release, “was written in stolen time: in scraps of hours wedged between myriad endeavors — Van Etten guest-starred in ‘The OA,’ and brought her music onstage in David Lynch’s revival of ‘Twin Peaks.’ Off-screen, she wrote her first score for Katherine Dieckmann’s movie ‘Strange Weather,’ and the closing title song for Tig Notaro’s show, ‘Tig.'”
The sonic palette of this record, produced by the Grammy-winning John Congleton (Laurie Anderson, Chelsea Wolfe, Best Coast, David Byrne, Angel Olson, The Mountain Goats, Murder by Death, and many, many more), is different from her previous work, with the Brooklyn-based New Jersey native recording everything in Los Angeles, according to the press release:
He helped flip the signature Van Etten ratio, making the album more energetic-upbeat than minimal-meditative. The songs are as resonating as ever, the themes are still an honest and subtle approach to love and longing, but Congleton has plucked out new idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound. Joined by Van Etten’s longtime collaborator and bandmate Heather Woods Broderick, plus Jamie Stewart, Zachary Dawes, Brian Reitzell, Lars Horntveth, McKenzie Smith, Joey Waronker, Luke Reynolds, and Stella Mozgawa, “Remind Me Tomorrow” was recorded at studios throughout Los Angeles.
See the full tracklist after the jump.
Posted in Music, News, Pop and Rock, Recordings
Tagged comeback kid, Jagjaguwar Records, new album, remind me tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten
It looks like Sharon Van Etten just slyly announced the release date for her next album
When Sharon Van Etten announced on Sept. 7 that she was selling a limited run of T-shirts created by a fan, it looked like a sweet gesture.
“A really sweet fan,” as Van Etten described it, designed a shirt that asked the question that’s been on the minds of many SVE fans: WHEN IS SHARON VAN ETTEN’S NEXT ALBUM?”
“A really sweet fan started making these shirts all DIY and it inspired me to share it with you all… So a limited run of these will be available for a very short time.
A really sweet fan started making these shirts all DIY and it inspired me to share it with you all… So a limited run of these will be available for a very short time. Thank you, @jasch16 for the inspirado. Link to the shirts in my bio. X Sharon
A post shared by Sharon Van Etten (@sharonvanhalen) on Sep 7, 2018 at 11:11am PDT
After all, a lot has happened since her last full album, “”Are We There,” was released by Jagjaguwar in 2014 — in particular her shift from touring musician to college student to actor to new mom.
Sure, she released an EP, “I Don’t Want to Let You Down,” in 2015, and has made guest appearances on a number of other artists’ recordings and at a number of shows and festivals since then, but she hasn’t been actively touring or performing full sets.
So the timing of this shirt, which Van Etten credited to Jack Schimmel and made available on her website, seemed just right. And it quickly sold out.
Among the comments on her Instagram were requests such as: “Okay, but when you do release a date can you please print a t shirt in response?”
The shirts shipped out this week. At first glance, they are exactly advertised. Standard Canvas brand back shirts with the question printed in bold white block letters on the front.
A Post-It note with a brief, personally addressed, handwritten note from Van Etten is stuck to the front of the shirt: “Thanks for wanting to know!”
Very nice, for sure.
The big surprise, though, is revealed only when the shirt is unfolded.
There’s printing on the back, something that’s not mentioned in Van Etten’s Instagram post or on the order page.
Posted in Music, News, Pop and Rock
Tagged new album, release date, Sharon Van Etten, t-shirt
Posted in Contemporary Classical, Music, News, RIP
Tagged Alarm Will Sound, composer, hht, mary kouyoumdjian, Matt Marks, matt marks obituary, New Music, suzanne marques
UPDATE: Fund for composer Mary Kouyoumdjian after death of fiancé Matt Marks passes $33,000
Posted on May 15, 2018 | 1 comment
The Columbia University music faculty has set up a GoFundMe campaign for composer Mary Kouyoumdjian’s possible “emergency costs” in the wake of the death of her fiancé, composer and Alarm Will Sound founding member Matt Marks.
By midday Tuesday, the fund, whose initial goal was $5,000, had attracted more than $33,000 in contributions.
To view the campaign and donate, GO HERE.
On the Slipped Disc New Music blog, commenter trolls (I guess there are trolls in every part of the internet, but this stunned me) have been horribly and unnecessarily brutal in questioning or condemning the fund-raising campaign for Kouyoumdjian.
I don’t know what unexpected expenses she might be facing as a result of her fiancé’s death, but it seems to me that it’s an individual’s prerogative to contribute to any cause he or she chooses.
Although I haven’t seen a wedding date for the couple mentioned, recent social media posts indicate the couple must have set one. There were mentions of picking out a dress and tasting wedding cakes, things that generally aren’t done prospectively,
Marks’ death Friday morning remains officially unexplained, though his sister, Suzanne Marques, in a lovingly gut-wrenching Facebook tribute to her “baby brother,” discusses a serious health issue he faced. Her exposition appears to provide at least a clue to what might have happened.
It cast something of a pall on this weekend’s Bang on a Can Marathon — a 10-plus hour concert of New Music, the world that nurtures the music of Marks and Kouyoumdjian — at New York University’s Skirball Performing Arts Center, It was addressed in a beautiful statement read by Bang on a Can All-Stars member Ken Thomson.
Tagged Bang on a Can, gofundme, mary kouyoumdjian, Matt Marks, New Music
Bang on a Can Marathon: Today’s the day
Artists scheduled to perform at the Bang on a Can Marathon 2018
What day could be more appropriate than Mothers’ Day for the mother of all Bang on a Can Marathons.
The free 10-hour multi-genre show kicks off at noon at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
Featured artists and composers include Bang on a Can founders David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, along with one of their mentors, Terry Riley — and, of course, the Bang on a Can All Stars.
But performances aren’t limited to contemporary classical. Singer-songwriter and Magnetic Fields‘ frontman Stephin Merritt is appearing in the first hour of the show, with cellist bandmate Sam Davol, to appeal to the pop audience. Another artist with proven crossover appeal, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos, appears later in the day.
If you can’t make it to Skirball, a livestream is scheduled. GO HERE to connect (free registration required to watch).
Check out the full performance schedule after the jump
Posted in Concerts, Contemporary, Contemporary Classical, Free, Music, News, Pop and Rock
Tagged Bang on a Can, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Bang on a Can Marathon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, livestream, Michael Gordon, New York University, skirball, skirball center for the performing arts, Terry Riley
New York composer Matt Marks dies at 38
Composer Matt Marks died Friday, May 11, 2018.
Talented young composer Matt Marks — really a quadruple threat, given his beautiful singing ability, high-level horn playing (he was a founding member of leading contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound), and arranging — died Friday, May 11.
He died in St. Louis, Missouri, where Alarm Will Sound had performed on May 9 and had been doing some recording, the band’s marketing director, Michael Clayville, tells NPR’s Deceptive Cadence blog.
Related: Fundraiser for Matt Marks’ fiancée
Learning of the sweet, funny, and sometimes acid-tongued Marks’ death under any circumstances would have been gutting. But my first clue came when composer Ted Hearne’s heartfelt tribute turned up in my Facebook feed Saturday night. I was in New Music setting that was such a familiar part of Marks’ life: at the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, New Jersey, for a Peak Performances presentation of Julia Wolfe and Maya Beiser’s “Spinning,”with composer David Lang and artist Suzanne Bocanegra among the members of the audience.
The context — Peak Performances has a track record of incubating powerful new works, including David T. Little’s “Dog Days,” which springs from a well that also nourished Marks’ work — made the news of his death that much more of a gut punch.
Marks’ passing was announced on Facebook by his fiancee, Mary Kouyoumdjian.
No cause of death was given.
Alarm Will Sound posted an announcement hours after Kouyoumdjian, which precisely repeated her parting admonition: “We appreciate your sensitivity during this difficult time.”
The always funny Marks — he frequently offered random, wry, witty commentary on Twitter, lately as “Matt Marks (aka JonBenét Gramsci)” and for many years, simply under the childlike moniker “Mafoo” — died the morning after he tweeted news that the National Endowment for the Arts had approved a $10,000 grant for the staging of his splendid opera, “Mata Hari” (seen last year at New York’s Prototype Festival) at the West Edge Opera in Berkeley, California, in August.
Oh hey we just won a NEA Grant for my opera Mata Hari https://t.co/eXRGP4cFm8
— Matt Marks (aka JonBenét Gramsci) (@mattmarks) May 10, 2018
WATCH: An excerpt from composer Matt Marks’ opera “Mata Hari”:
I saw and was impressed by “Mata Hari” at Prototype — where the composer, as always made a point to offer a cheerful hello — Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? last posted about him in 2010, after a performance of his earlier work, “The Little Death: Vol. 1,” which he also performed with soprano Mellissa Hughes.
So, I couldn’t say I knew him well, and don’t wish to take anything away from his close friends and family. I simply knew him through his often brilliant and usually funny work, and his public persona of a down-to-earth person who was consistently pleasant and friendly.
Composers Ted Hearne, far left, and Caroline Shaw, far right, were in the chorus for a performance of Matt Marks’ “The Little Death: Vol. 1” at Galapagos in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood in 2010, with Marks and Mellissa Hughes in the lead roles. (© 2010, Steven P. Marsh/willyoumissme.com)
Marks had only begun to reveal the full extent of his ability. He’s a composer who always held a special place in my heart because I got to see him and his work early on and watch him grow and blossom.
R.I.P. Matt Marks.
WATCH: The Beatles’ “Revolution No. 9,” arranged by Matt Marks:
Posted in Contemporary Classical, Music, News, Opera, RIP, Video
Tagged David T. Little, Julia Wolfe, mary kouyoumdjian, mata hari, Matt Marks, matt marks obituary, Maya Beiser, Mellissa Hughes, Peak Performances, prototype festival, Ted Hearne, the little death
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Robert Hood needs little introduction. Founding member of the legendary group Underground Resistance as a 'Minister Of Information' with ‘Mad’ Mike Banks & Jeff Mills, his seminal works on Jeff Mill's Axis and his very own M-Plant imprint paved the way for a wave of stripped-down dancefloor minimalism that directed much of techno's path throughout the late Nineties.
Robert Hood makes minimal Detroit techno with an emphasis on soul and experimentation over flash and popularity. Having recorded for Metroplex, Jeff Mills' Axis label, as well as Patrick Pulsingers 'Cheap' label, Peacefrog, and more recently Music Man, Hood also owns and operates the M-Plant imprint, through which he's released the bulk of his solo material. He has only released 2 ever CD mixes one for French label Logistic, and a mix for the club 'Fabric' mix series
"Growing up in Detroit, I grew up with Motown in the house - a lot of Motown and Philadelphia soul, artists like Marvin Gaye of course and Curtis Mayfield. I remember Isaac Hayes, the soundtrack from ‘Shaft’ had come out. My father was a jazz musician; he played piano, trumpet and drums. My mother was in an R’n’B group.
We listened to a lot of Motown - in fact, my grandfather’s first cousin is Berry Gordy. "I was influenced by my father - I wanted to play trumpet like he did."
Robert's father tragically died when he was just 6. The photo of Robert siting down holding a trumpet is his fathers.
"I had to beg my grandmother to let me borrow the trumpet to take a picture with it"
In the early 90's he began to concentrate on his own production 'Vision EP', the 'Riot EP' and X-102 were big stepping-stones for him as they were the first releases he worked 100% on his own. The X-101 to X-102, were Waveform Transmission projects with Mills for Tresor. He slowly progressed to work more and more on his own, but collaberated on some of the first Axis releases with label owner Jeff Mills as H&M (Hood & Mills) with ‘Tranquilizer EP’ and ‘Drama’.
He soon decided it was time for him to start his own label to focus on what was in his soul musically. M-Plant started in ’94. I had developed this “grey area” sound - what I mean by that is that in Detroit, even when the sun is out, there’s something in the atmosphere. I don’t know if its pollution or whatever, but the sky has that grey haze over it. It’s got to be something from the industrial factories there. I’d never really heard a sound like that before and it came from a Roland Juno - it was a chord sound that really went along with my depiction of what Detroit was at that time. A lot of buildings were abandoned and there was a lot of lifelessness in the city, especially downtown. The M-Plant, in minimalism, kind of reflected that. I remember thinking of Detroit like a museum. You know, like a work of art standing still, suspended in time. There wasn’t a whole lot of activity going on.
Releasing singles such as "Internal Empire,", “The Protein Valve” "Music Data," and "Moveable Parts", "The Pace", more recently "Range", "Alpha" and that isn't even touching his other monikers Floorplan, Monobox, The Vision, etc.
"M-Plant is what I've always wanted to hear: the basic stripped down, raw sound. Just drums, basslines and funky grooves and only what's essential. Only what is essential to make people move. I started to look at it as a science, the art of making people move their butts, speaking to their heart, mind and soul. “It's a heart-felt rhythmic techno sound. M-Plant is just M. minimal. “
Although his desire to remain underground has been replaced by an urge to reach a wider audience, Hood remains fiercely critical of artistic and economic movements destructive to inner-city communities and has combined his musical enterprises with outreach and social activist ends. With this in mind the seminal ‘Nighttime World Pt.1’ in 1995 and ‘Nighttime World Pt.2’ in 2000 incorporating Jazz, Soul, Hip Hop as well as Techno and House.
"These days I am focussed purely on minimalism and really embracing minimalism, because it’s taken on a life of its own. It’s now a music style separate from techno. I would never have imagined that it would take this direction. I didn’t see that one coming! I saw minimalism in life becoming more and more evident - in furniture, in electronics, in art, in automobiles, appliances - you know I could see that coming. But, as far as music itself being thought of now as an art form? Back then, I think people looked on at it as a trend but they didn’t realise that minimalism is an art form. I did not realise it would take on this characteristic as it has now. So, where I’m at right now is embracing minimalism and seeing how far I can push it - in my interpretation of what simplicity and the music is all about. I am really representing it as an art form and not a trend. As the future evolves, we’re going to get more and more minimal" Read more
Listen to Floorplan
Samuel Deep
Sandrien
De Sluwe Vos
Boris Werner
Mark Broom
Julian Alexander
Oliver Way
Bambounou
Caleb Calloway
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Jewish Amsterdam
Many people refer to Amsterdam as the Venice of the North, a pertinent name for a city with two hundred canals. Few people know Amsterdam’s second name, Mokum, Yiddish for place or town. Mokum is an appropriate name, because the city has welcomed Jews ever since the 16th century. Yet, life was full of hardships for the new immigrants who had to buy citizenship. They were not allowed to marry outside their circle because Jewish-Christian marriages were illegal in Protestant Amsterdam, nor did they have religious freedom. The Reformation forced Jews, but also Catholics to practice their religion in secret.
Jewish Immigrants
The 16th century saw an influx of Sephardic Jews, refugees from Spain, the Middle East and North Africa. The 17th century brought the Ashkenazi Jews from Germany and Poland. Unlike in other European cities, Jews in Amsterdam did not live in ghettos. The majority of them settled in and around what is now Waterlooplein and spread out to the Nieuwmarkt area. The two groups did not mix and even today they worship in separate synagogues.
Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam 1905 – Max Liebermann 1847-1935
Trade Guilds
Although relatively free from persecution, life for Jewish immigrants was not easy in Amsterdam. Trade guilds controlled most commercial activities and Jews were not allowed to become members. Sephardic Jews were fortunate. Many of them were diamond cutters for which there was no guild. That’s why today Amsterdam is still an important diamond centre. Others worked in retail: street markets, finance, medicine and the clothing industry; all trades without guilds. However, the majority was less successful, yet managed to scrape by on little money.
Better Times
In Napoleonic times, discriminatory restrictions on Jews and Catholics were abolished. Jews, Catholics and Protestants lived peacefully together until the beginning of World War II. In 1940, most of the approximately 130,000 Jews living in the Netherlands were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Sobibor. On 9th October, 1942 Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “The British radio speaks of their being gassed.” Only 5,500 survived the war, a tragedy whose effect can still be felt today. Presently, around 20,000 Jews live in the city, many of them in the Buitenveldert region and in the neighbouring town of Amstelveen.
Jewish Traces
When you walk through Amsterdam, the Jewish heritage is apparent. Bijenkorf, De Bonneterie and Metz department stores all had Jewish founders. Only Bijenkorf is still trading, the other two have disappeared. Tuschinski cinema, the Diamond Exchange and the Gassan Diamond Factory are examples of continued Jewish involvement.
Jewish Museums in Amsterdam
1. The Jewish Historical Museum housed in Europe’s largest synagogue complex displays examples of religious objects. Temporary exhibitions and the Museum for Children show the many aspects of Jewish life.
2. Anne Frank House, the canal house museum where the Frank family was in hiding for two years and where Anne Frank wrote her diary.
3. Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue, Europe’s largest synagogue when built in the 17th century. The soaring interior with massive pillars cannot but impress. Although nowhere near its pre-World War II numbers the Jewish population in Amsterdam still represents an important part of the city’s culture. The Holocaust deeply affected the Jewish community, but many have managed to rebuild their lives.
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Burgess Family History
Anna Burgess Bios
Anna M Burgess
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Anna M Burgess (1928 - 1994)
Anna M Burgess was born on June 22, 1928. She died on April 20, 1994 at 65 years old. We know that Anna M Burgess had been residing in Johnson City, Washington County, Tennessee.
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Anna M Burgess lived 4 years shorter than the average Burgess family member when she died at the age of 65.
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Sanford Franklin Burgess, Tennessee
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Michelle Veronica Ellis (Burgess) Markowicz
1928 - In the year that Anna M Burgess was born, aviatrix Amelia Earhart, age 31, became the first woman to fly solo across North America and back in August. In June, she had been part of a 3 man crew that flew the Atlantic Ocean but since she had no instrument training, she couldn't fly the plane - she kept the flight log. The North American flight became one of her many "firsts" as a female pilot.
1933 - By the time she was only 5 years old, on December 5th, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The 21st Amendment said "The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed." Alcohol was legal again! It was the only amendment to the Constitution approved for the explicit purpose of repealing a previously existing amendment. South Carolina was the only state to reject the Amendment.
1937 - She was only 9 years old when on May 6th, the German zeppelin the Hindenburg caught fire and blew up. The Hindenburg was a passenger ship traveling to Frankfurt Germany. It tried to dock in New Jersey, one of the stops, and something went wrong - it blew up. Thirty-six people were killed out of the 97 on board - 13 passengers, 22 crewmen, and one ground worker. The reasons for the explosion are still disputed.
1948 - By the time she was 20 years old, on May 14th, the State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel's first Premier, and the U.S. officially recognized Israel. That evening, Egypt launched an air assault on Israel.
1994 - In the year of Anna M Burgess's passing, on May 6th, the Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel" was officially opened. The Chunnel is a railway tunnel beneath the English Channel that connects Great Britain to mainland France. Original plans for such a tunnel were developed in 1802 and approved by Napoleon Bonaparte but the British rejected the plan fearing that Napoleon would use the railway to invade.
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Anna M Burgess died on April 20, 1994 at 65 years old. There is no known cause of death. She was born on June 22, 1928. We have no information about Anna's family or relationships. We know that Anna M Burgess had been residing in Johnson City, Washington County, Tennessee.
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Genealogy Articles
Women In Dance In The Early 20th Century From skimpy costumes to being covered head to toe, dancers in the first half of the 20th century were a diverse lot. But they all focused on changing the form of dance and the way people viewed...
Presidents Like You've Never Seen Them Before While John Hanson (President of the United States in Congress Assembled) is considered by some historians as the first President of the U.S., General George Washington is generally recognized as...
These Crazy Photos of Our Ancestors Need Explanation Laughter is good for the soul - and as we now know, according to scientists and doctors, the body. Our ancestors intuitively knew this as well and they took advantage of new technology -...
The San Francisco Earthquake - April 18, 1906 Fire or quake? Quake or fire? Over a century later, the debate still rages about whether the SF earthquake caused more damage or whether it was the ensuing fires. No matter which was responsible...
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Other Anna Burgesses
Anna Maria Burgess (died 1868) Wiltshire, Australia
Anna Hogan Burgess Melbourne, Australia
Anna Mariah Cotter Burgess Preston, Australia
Anna Mary Holland Burgess Newstead, Australia
Anna Cynthia Burgess (1865 - 1866) Australia
Anna K Burgess (1932 - 1990)
Anna Mary Burgess (1912 - 1961)
Anna Rose Burgess (1969 - 1983)
Anna C Burgess (1880 - 1922) New York
Anna Burgess (1890 - 1926) New York
Anna (Smart) Burgess (born 1962) Texas
Anna N. (Owens) Burgess (born 1949) Texas
Anna v. (Taylor) Burgess (born 1924) Texas
Anna L. (Lowe) Burgess (born 1963) Texas
Anna Burgess (1894 - 1979) Silver Spring, Maryland
Anna Burgess (1895 - 1979) Washington, District Of Columbia
Anna Burgess (1883 - 1979) Oakland, California
Other Burgesses
Polly W Burgess (1922 - 1992) Morenci, Michigan
W C Burgess (1922 - 2002) Crossville, Tennessee
Irene F Burgess (1923 - 2002) Newport, Tennessee
Robert Burgess (1890 - 1986) Tellico Plains, Tennessee
Gladys Burgess (1929 - 1994) Pikeville, Tennessee
Margaret Burgess (1928 - 1979)
Laura D Burgess (1932 - 2002) Covington, Tennessee
Frank C Burgess (1931 - 1994) Dallas, Texas
Dorothy M Burgess (1906 - 1998) Lake Worth, Florida
Maury T Burgess (1929 - 2001) Columbia, Tennessee
Mable Burgess (1902 - 1983) Collinwood, Tennessee
James T Burgess (1906 - 1992) Fairfax, Virginia
Lawrence Burgess (1930 - 2003) Memphis, Tennessee
Dennis F Burgess (1934 - 2001) Plano, Texas
Waymond R Burgess (1937 - 1999) Lewisburg, Tennessee
Charles Burgess (1935 - 1968)
Arlin Burgess (1930 - 1969) Burbank, California
Peggy Burgess (1935 - 1983)
Claude L Burgess (1936 - 2005) Elyria, Ohio
Lue Burgess (1909 - 1987) Bell Buckle, Tennessee
Other Bios
Ruby E Arnold (1915 - 1997) Greeneville, Tennessee
Clarence E Hensley (1924 - 2006) Greeneville, Tennessee
Richard B Snapp (1931 - 2010) Kingsport, Tennessee
William Tweed (1894 - 1986) Greeneville, Tennessee
James J Roberts (1930 - 2002) Greeneville, Tennessee
Wilbur Carter (1925 - 1973)
James Morgan (1930 - 1974)
Kennith Christian (1931 - 1986)
Georgia M Freeman (1912 - 1990) Rogersville, Tennessee
Eulah P Manis (1929 - 2002) Rogersville, Tennessee
Robert S Pennington (1927 - 1989) Hudson, North Carolina
Della Bowman (1903 - 1986) Greeneville, Tennessee
Guy E Hartman (1930 - 1992)
Margaret A Payne (1898 - 1988) Rogersville, Tennessee
Sam Maness (1890 - 1969) Greeneville, Tennessee
Nell M Anderson (1921 - 2010) Taylor, Michigan
John J Collins (1911 - 2005) Chuckey, Tennessee
Ida Cutshall (1897 - 1969) Greeneville, Tennessee
Nell v Pitts (1899 - 1992) Mosheim, Tennessee
Robert E Lewis (1925 - 2008) Chuckey, Tennessee
Source(s): Social Security Death Index
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I never knew my biological family. My family is my mother and father who raised me. But, as I got older I got curious about my heritage. It took me years of investigation to finally discover my parents’ names. Well, I get goosebumps just writing this, I have found my biological family because of AncientFaces. Yes!! I did a search for my [parents' names] and was shocked to find a photo of them on AncientFaces! I cannot tell you the feeling that came over me when I saw this photo - to see the faces of my biological parents…JUST LIKE THAT. I left a comment on the photo and you won’t believe this - the owner of the photo is MY SISTER!!! Yes, I have a LITTLE sister! It turns out my parents were too young when they had me and had to give me up. My little sister knew I existed and wanted to find me but had no way of doing it. Thanks to you I am meeting my little sister for the first time next month. GOD BLESS YOU ANCIENTFACES. -Anonymous
We have found our missing relative entirely thanks to AncientFaces. We have received a much clearer photo of Captain Grant from his Son. The picture we on AncientFaces is an old yellowed newspaper photo. I am attaching the new photo and ask that you take the old one out and put the new clear picture in its place. With our Canadian Remembrance Day here in 2 days - the timing could not be better. Thank You, AncientFaces. My long lost Aunt is now 86 years old and her Son and I are talking by phone and e-mails. Captain Grant was his Father and died in France in 1944 and is buried there. By posting pictures of the visit to his gravesite - we connected through one of his brothers. Amazing that our prayers have been answered. Thank you -Beth B.
I came home for lunch yesterday and decided to look at my email before going back to work. The weekly newsletter that I subscribe to from the Logan Family History Center had this message in it about AncientFaces. I clicked on the link and the first search I did was for Woodruff, and Mamie was the first picture that came up. I could hardly stand it. I was late getting back to work. I had to add comments and write to you. Thank you for noticing her in the store and for the website. I can't help but wonder how many other family pictures may have ended up in that store and why. I also can't help but feel that it was meant to be and that there is a purpose that this picture is coming home as you say. What are the chances of this all just happening? It's amazing that you even picked it up at the store and then went to all the extra effort to post it. It makes me feel as though you have been my friend forever. It certainly has given me a connection to you, and I have a love for what you do. I just can't tell you how excited I am. I can't even hold it in. -Cathy K., Utah
I have previously submitted several pictures of my grandfather August Zemidat. I have tried for many years to find anyone with that name, and I have searched many genealogy web sites to no avail. Recently I was contacted by someone who saw my pictures on AncientFaces who may well be a cousin. She also provided me with information that seems to indicate her grandparents were my grandfather’s siblings. Considering the many years I have been searching for the name Zemidat, I find this is absolutely amazing that I have finally found a family member. Thank you AncientFaces -Ron D.
I love AncientFaces, a while back I saw that you had labeled Garcia surname pictures. At the time I didn’t have all my family facts for my research. Anyway, I wandered into your site just to check it out AND NOW 1 YEAR LATER I received a picture from an 87 year old aunt and guess what you had this very same picture on your site!! (They were my great aunts and my great-grandmother!). Thank you… -Angela M.
I have loved AncientFaces since I first found it, it's the first thing I check when I turn on the computer. There was a time when even in the most modest households there were three cherished possessions, a family Bible. a family album and a fancy lamp. It was usual for the family to gather in the parlour, generally on Sunday and talk, tell stories of family and friends with the photos in the albums as illustration. Sadly in our modern electronic age we have fallen away from the oral tradition and interest in history has waned. I was quite shocked on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic to see so many comments from younger people who were surprised to learn that the Titanic wasn't just a movie. This is why AncientFaces is so important, to me it's the electronic age version of the oral tradition on a global scale and the sheer volume of people who follow, comment and contribute seems to prove the point. We are all grateful to you all for providing us with this wonderful site. - Arba M.
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Posted on June 25, 2014 in Countdown
2014 Primaries: We Don’t Even Know Anymore
We’re bringing you six topics this week because we can’t neglect talking about the 2014 roller-coaster primary season. “Countdown” is a countdown to elections after all. This week’s takeaways? First the Tea Party was dead, then it wasn’t (but immigration reform apparently was), now it seems to be, again. Dave Brat may have pulled off a stunning “Tea Party” victory a few weeks ago, but establishment GOP candidates fared well yesterday. In upstate New York, Arab American Congressman Richard Hanna (R) defeated a Tea Party challenger that garnered some national endorsements from brand names on the right. Much was made of the mainstream Republican’s views, but voters ultimately rejected criticism of Hanna. In Mississippi, six-term incumbent Thad Cochran got through a close primary against Tea Party (and now bitter) challenger Chris McDaniel, apparently with a little help from African-American and Democratic friends, by manipulating an unenforced statute that is usually only seen in tough, partisan races. Talk about GOP “outreach.” On another note, the media apparently took a major course correction after failing to even think about Eric Cantor’s potential loss and decided to err on the side of caution by questioning whether or not 22-term incumbent, Rep. Charles Rangel, would win his race in Harlem. Some are still saying it’s “too close to call,” but it seems Rangel has squeaked through. While most of the attention across the country has been focused on the GOP primaries, the implications these races have on Democratic chances for securing more Congressional seats is becoming increasingly important. Are we the only ones who want to get off this roller coaster ride?
No-Fly List Tantamount to “Deprivation of Liberty”
In a long awaited victory mired by setbacks and challenges, a federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that the U.S. government’s process of placing people on the notorious no-fly list violates constitutional rights, since there is no way to adequately challenge their designation. U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown said that the process of contesting one’s placement on the list is “wholly ineffective.” Further, Judge Brown concluded the “plaintiffs’ inclusion on the no-fly list constitutes a significant deprivation of their liberty interest in international travel.” Who are we talking about in this case? Well, the 13 plaintiffs included veterans of the U.S. military and Arab Americans and American Muslims who have lost their jobs and business and have been separated from their families – all because they couldn’t get on a plane. This week’s seminal decision has been four years in the making – due process was definitely overdue. Even though the U.S. government is likely to appeal, the ramifications of the ruling are far-reaching. There is now renewed hope for change to the no-fly list procedures, which should pave the way to new cases from the 20,000 some people (500 U.S. citizens) deemed as having some sort of link to terrorism. And given that the ruling deemed international travel as a “necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society,” this opens new doors thousands of additional people not on the official no-fly list but who are regularly confronted with selective screenings and issues at border entries.
Islamophobia…Are We Making Progress?
While “unanswered questions” surrounding the 2012 attacks in Benghazi may have brought panelists together at the Heritage Foundation on June 16th, audiences left with some very clear answers about the pervasive presence of Islamophobia in the United States. During the Q&A, American University law student Saba Ahmed urged panelists to consider the dynamic voices of 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide—voices that are obscured when “we portray Islam and all Muslims as bad.” Controversy began (and didn’t end) when panelist Brigitte Gabriel cast peaceful Muslims as “irrelevant” in a four minute diatribe, propagating the incendiary rhetoric that fans the flames of Islamophobia. Gabriel may have rallied some to “throw [political correctness] in the garbage,” but at least she helped spur a debate that ranged from newspaper editorials to cable news. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who attended the panel to cover Benghazi, ended up writing on the “ugly Benghazi panel,” only to be quickly shot down by Dylan Byers in Politico, who argued that Milbank gave a gross misrepresentation of the panel. The fact that many, like Byers, would act so quickly to defend clear-as-day bigotry is unsettling. Still, if it we are going to get great debates that elevate the conversation on Islamophobia to the national level – like this one on CNN between Gabriel and Arab American Champion of Change Linda Sarsour – then maybe there’s hope. In the interview, Gabriel asked, “why aren’t [moderate Muslims] speaking out?” Well, the answer is right in front of you, Gabriel: in the voices of Saba Ahmed and Linda Sarsour. All you have to do is listen.
Hallelujah! Presbyterian Church Divests
Following the collapse of recent U.S.-led peace talks with the Palestinians and the recent escalation of excessive operations by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank following the kidnapping of three Jewish teens, we bring to you the doings of—wait for it—Presbyterian Church USA. In a historic and very close vote, PCUSA decided to divest its holdings from three U.S. companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories by selling bulldozers and surveillance technology – we wonder what those are used for. So what pushed the vote over? Maybe it was that last-ditch effort from Rabbi Rick Jacobs, leader of Union for Reform Judaism, who – no joke – proposed a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the measure was defeated. After all, who wouldn’t want a good sit-down with the man known for really listening and making progress on peace and ending the occupation? PCUSA unsurprisingly had to tiptoe all over the resolution’s terminology, firmly denying any association with the broader “boycott, divestment and sanctions” movement (BDS) against Israel and emphasizing that the decision was not against Israel, but rather the occupation. Still, the move shows that action can be taken by big institutions without them being derided and delegitimized. We are proud of the Presbyterian Church’s step in the right direction, and we must now ask what others can do to bring about concrete change and support for the Palestinians.
Is Rand Paul Paving a New Path for the GOP?
Not blaming Obama on Iraq? Increasing voting rights? Pressing for immigration reform? Must be a Democrat, right? Nope…it’s Rand Paul, potential 2016 GOP candidate, who has made some fascinating statements in the past week that deserve our attention. Sen. Paul is introducing a bill that restores voting rights to non-violent criminals and is also apparently considering drug sentencing reform and easing nonviolent criminals back into the job market. That’s not all: Sen. Paul also expressed concern over the GOP’s incessant focus on “amnesty” that will ultimately not fix our broken immigration system. The Senator isn’t shy about his intentions: while he says justice is a primary concern, he noted these are the important issues that can help get the GOP some votes. It’s definitely no surprise that the Republican Party has found it increasingly difficult to appeal to minority voters, but it is surprising that Sen. Paul would take some serious steps to help potentially gain a larger chunk of the minority vote as 2016 draws closer. And domestic issues aren’t his only concern. Over the weekend, Sen. Paul even defended President Obama’s position on Iraq, saying he “does not blame” Obama for not redeploying American troops because he claims there might not even be a good solution. The big question is whether or not other Republicans will fall in line with Sen. Paul’s unabashed outreach efforts.
Egypt’s Sisi Demands More Sacrifices
We know we’ve been covering Egypt a lot lately, but that’s because there’s just so much to say. After President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi declared that there should be “real sacrifices from every Egyptian man and woman” on Tuesday, the Egyptian courts apparently agree. In an abandonment of any semblance of a free and fair judicial system for the sake of stifling criticism against the regime, three Al Jazeera journalists and fifteen others are now faced with “draconian sentences” in Egyptian jails, as Secretary of State John Kerry described it. All this – despite the obvious lack of evidence against them. And lo, the cup of “sacrifices” runneth over – the courts also doled out death sentences to 183 Egyptians. If by “sacrifice” Sisi is asking the Egyptian people to give up things as valuable as their freedom of speech – and their very lives – then we definitely aren’t on board. However, don’t think that Sisi isn’t making sacrifices himself. He has apparently given up half of his salary “for the sake of the country.” What a guy! Speaking of giving back to Egypt, the US wants to fully restore the $650 million dollars of military aid for Egypt. At the same time, Kerry emphasized “our strong support for upholding the universal rights and freedoms of all Egyptians, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.” How this all makes sense, we’re still unsure. But at least we aren’t the only ones questioning things.
Voting rights Countdown Arab americans Arab americans in political life Policy Us arab relations Civil rights and civil liberties Bigotry Profiling Egypt Iraq Palestine Israeli palestinian conflict Yalla vote New york
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Graham Allison: I am More Worried about a Nuclear Attack Today than I was on 9/11
The following are excerpts from a series of interviews with some of the country’s top terrorism experts conducted by Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer in conjunction with the July 2008 volume of The Annals, “Terrorism, What the Next President Will Face.” This interview is with Graham Allison, who was special editor of a related Annals issue in September 2006 entitled “Confronting the Specter of Nuclear Terrorism.” Allison is the director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and author of “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.”
Trudy Rubin: Let me start by saying that you have been trying for years to alert the public to the danger of nuclear terrorism, which you and many others say is the single most serious threat to our national security. Do you think that threat is less or more dangerous today than when you wrote your book in 2004?
Graham Allison: The answer is complicated. But to start with the bottom line, I would say there is a greater risk of nuclear terrori st attack upon the U.S. today than there was on 9/11. Now, there are obviously many positives that have been done since 9/11 and there are some negatives, and trying to make a net judgment requires summing them all up and combining them and making a bottom line judgment. My bottom line would be, more dangerous than earlier, but let me say a word about the positives and the negatives.The answer is complicated. But to start with the bottom line, I would say there is a greater risk of nuclear terrorist attack upon the U.S. today than there was on 9/11. Now, there are obviously many positives that have been done since 9/11 and there are some negatives, and trying to make a net judgment requires summing them all up and combining them and making a bottom line judgment. My bottom line would be, more dangerous than earlier, but let me say a word about the positives and the negatives.
On the positive side of the ledger, obviously in the wake of 9/11 everyone is hugely more alert. It is impossible to imagine the day an agent for the FBI writing a report in Phoenix that says there are Arabs here wanting to learn to fly airplanes, but they are not interested in learning to land them; if that report gets back to headquarters lights start blinking whereas they did not on 9/11. Or if a person is captured, as Mr. Atta was before 9/11, and the question is, can the FBI go look at his computer and dump his hard drive and find out what is being plotted or planned, the answer is before 9/11 that was judged too hard to get through the bureaucracy; today that would get through in hours. Police departments, if they see suspicious activity, are much more alert today than they were before 9/11. And even citizens, all of us are more conscious and aware. So I would say that is a big positive, greater consciousness. Secondly, al Qaeda has been toppled from Afghanistan where it had its headquarters and actually was on the run and maybe even desperate in 2003 and 2004. So it has, in any case, had to move headquarters and it is now operating in effect “on the run” in a way that it was not before 9/11. So there are a lot of things in the positive column.
On the negative column I would mention three. First, the National Intelligence Estimate and the latest testimony from the National Intelligence officer tells us that al Qaeda has actually reconstituted its leadership and headquarters and training programs, so that the number one, Osama bin Laden, is still operating and the number two, Zawahiri, is still operating but they have moved across the border from Afghanistan to the ungoverned territories of Pakistan. They have reconstituted their headquarters. They provide a lot more public communication than they did before 9/11, explaining what they are doing and trying to rally their supporters. And they actually have reconstituted the training camps, so it is said by the National Intelligence Estimate. So the guys that hit us on 9/11 are still in business. I would say that is very bad news. Secondly, on 9/11 North Korea had, at most, two bombs’ worth of plutonium and had never conducted a test. In the period after we went to Iraq, North Korea proceeded to build up an arsenal of ten bombs’ worth of plutonium and to conduct a nuclear weapons test. So North Korea is a potential supplier of nuclear weapons to a terrorist state. And thirdly, Pakistan, which in 2001 was a fledgling nuclear enterprise, has today tripled the amount of nuclear weapons and materials since 2001 and has a government that is at risk of melting down. So when you take all those factors, positives and negatives, when I weigh them up I would say I am more worried about a nuclear terrorist attack today than I was on 9/11.
TR: When we look at the nature of the threat of nuclear terrorism, what exactly are we talking about? Is it potentially a bomb in a truck or a dirty bomb or a stolen weapon?
GA: Again, a good question. When I think of nuclear terrorism, I think of a nuclear mushroom cloud enveloping an American city or some other great city of the world, devastating its heart. So think of a nuclear bomb exploding in New York City or Philadelphia or Boston or Washington. Now, how would terrorists get a nuclear bomb? Two ways; the most likely way would be to get a bomb that had been stolen from a state that had made the bomb. In the Nuclear Terrorism book I tell the story of Dragonfire, which is an actual story that occurred in which a month after the attack on New York on 9/11 the President thought on the basis of an intelligence report, that al Qaeda might have a nuclear bomb in New York City and be about to explode it. It turned out to be a false alarm but in that case it was thought that al Qaeda had gotten a nuclear bomb made by the former Soviet Union and brought it to New York. And I would still say that is the most likely way to imagine nuclear terrorism. Secondly, if terrorists did not acquire a nuclear bomb but instead just a football-sized lump of highly enriched uranium made by a state, from that hundred pounds they could make an elementary nuclear bomb, what in the business is now called an IND, an improvised nuclear device analogous to these IEDs, the improvised explosive devices that are being used to kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. So they could, with a hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium and other materials available off the shelf, and the recipe or design that was basically the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, make a genuine nuclear explosion that would produce a mushroom cloud that could have a devastating effect upon a city. So that is what I mean by nuclear terrorism, a real bomb with a real mushroom cloud, devastating the heart of one of the great cities.
TR: Can a terrorist really get his hands on an actual weapon? We know that al Qaeda and the leadership have said they want to do that, but are they in any position to do it, or is anyone else actually in position to steal an actual weapon?
GA: We hope not and I do not think al Qaeda or another terrorist group would successfully conduct a raid upon Russian nuclear weapons or Pakistani nuclear weapons and succeed in stealing them, though obviously we need to worry about possible contingencies. And we have to remember that in the Russian case, a group of Chechen terrorists, including fifty armed fighters, took over a theater in Moscow just a couple of years ago. So I would not say it is a zero chance of them stealing a weapon successfully from a state, but I would say that it is the low chance. The much more likely chance is that a thief or crook inside the system of a nuclear weapons state, think A.Q. Khan, who was the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb program, decides to go into business for himself, just for money or maybe even for ideological reasons, but I think most likely just corruption; decides to steal a bomb or several bombs and sell them to terrorists. Now, what we do know is that there have been reports of thieves stealing nuclear bombs. We have never found a nuclear bomb outside of Russia that was successfully stolen, and I give thanks for that and I think the programs that the U.S. and Russia have worked on cooperatively over the period since the Soviet Union disappeared have contributed significantly to that. So, one would be thieves steal an actual nuclear bomb. In the case of Pakistan that is a much more frightening thought today than it was seven years ago. Secondly, thieves could steal the fissile material, highly enriched uranium or plutonium, that would provide this hundred pounds, this football-sized lump of material, from which terrorists could make an improvised nuclear bomb, and there we know of many cases in which materials have been stolen by crooks inside the system and sold to people outside of the country. We know actually of more than 1600 such cases that are reported in the IAEA database, including dozens of cases in which either highly enriched uranium or plutonium was stolen, and the person who stole it was eventually apprehended or the material was eventually recovered. Interestingly, none of the cases in which it was highly enriched uranium or plutonium had the material been reported missing before it was actually found. So this would lead one to believe that it is possible that a person working inside, for example the Russian system or the Pakistani system, could, if they chose to do so, successfully steal material from which a bomb could be made and sell it to terrorists. And if this seems an incredible idea, I know you personally are familiar with the story of A.Q. Khan, but maybe your listeners are not. A.Q. Khan is a hero in Pakistan. He is the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb. He has been under house arrest, though it has been loosened recently. And why under house arrest? Because he had set up what Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, calls the Wal-Mart of nuclear proliferation. He had set up a black market operation in which he sold to Libya, to take one specific example, centrifuges for making enriched uranium, he sold starter material, that is uranium hexafluoride, enough to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, and even advanced bomb designs for warheads. So he was providing a full-service operation to North Korea, where he was trading to Libya, where he was selling to Iran, where he was selling, providing nuclear materials and nuclear services. Now this is for a person who is the most famous person in Pakistan and who was the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb program. So this is for an extremely visible person; it is a story that if it was in a movie you could not believe it. But I worry about people much less known, much less notorious than A.Q. Khan who might engage in similar activity.
TR: Now, as you know after the A.Q. Khan scandal broke, the then-leader of Pakistan, General Musharraf, set up a system to safeguard nuclear materials and recently Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the U.S., who has gone out to Pakistan several times, said that he had confidence in this system of protecting Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and material. I have interviewed General Kidwai, the head of it, and they give a good slide show and many details about all the fail-safes and the lock systems and so forth. Is there reason to believe that this system could be penetrated? And do you think the biggest threat is from an inside colonel who is a secret Islamist?
GA: Well, that is a very good question and I do remember your interview, or I read the story about it, with Kidwai, the guy that runs the Pakistani program. I think that with American assistance, as well as themselves being shocked and ashamed by what was ultimately exposed about A.Q. Khan, that under Musharraf the Pakistani security arrangements, for their nuclear weapons in particular, improved significantly and I take Mullen’s comment to be a serious comment and a considered judgment. So that is mostly, though, about how secure is this system from people outside, and as you say the more worrying problem is the insider who is a colonel or maybe he is just a sergeant, who is in charge of a nuclear weapon or a set of nuclear weapons and who I would say, conceivably because he has Islamist ideological inclinations but maybe even more likely because he is just a crook and he thinks that things are going to hell in Pakistan and he worries about how he and his family are going to survive, and he thinks, “Well, gee, if I could get this bomb or this material from which to make a bomb and sell it to somebody for several million dollars, I can make sure that I am going to survive, whatever else happens.” And I think particularly as a political system goes through a stage of instability, and I do not think anybody would call the Pakistani government today anything other than highly unstable and even at risk of becoming dysfunctional, under those circumstances people begin to think, “How am I going to survive? How is my family going to survive?” And to the extent that there are hundreds of people in Pakistan who, by themselves or maybe with one other buddy, decided to steal either a bomb or more likely the material for which to make a bomb, they have an example in A.Q. Khan. What was the worst thing that happened to him? I think they took away a couple of his eighteen houses and kept him under house arrest for some period of time. So I think that is an extremely dangerous possibility.
Similarly, I think in Russia, even though the situation is improved significantly under Putin because the system has become somewhat more authoritarian, but in any case considerably more controlling, it is still the case that in Georgia in 2006 a Russian from one of the laboratories that contains hundreds of weapons, of material, brought a sample of highly enriched uranium to sell to what he thought was a buyer to demonstrate that he could produce the rest of the material if the money were to be paid. It turned out in this case that this sale had been penetrated by intelligence, and so the person was captured. But what about the cases in which we may not know that the sale actually occurred?
TR: I wanted to ask you more about Russia. The case that you just mentioned, by the way, that was smuggled via South Ossetia, wasn’t it?
GA: I guess that is right.
TR: And it was Georgian intelligence that penetrated. But speaking of Russia, we have been working with Russia for years on securing weapons and nuclear material under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, but our relations with Russia have sharply deteriorated over Georgia and other issues. Can we afford not to work with Russia on this?
GA: A very, very good question and hard to keep things in perspective. I mean, obviously the events in August in Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia were tragic. There is no doubt the Russians were cruel, brutal, heavy-handed, overreacting. I think there is little doubt that the Georgians actually provoked the fight by attacking, thinking they were going to seize the South Ossetian capital, again in an action that I regard as wildly irresponsible and even delusional. I mean, if you are a small, weak state, picking a fight with a large, resentful bully is a pretty predictable way to get quashed. And I think when we wished and hoped that the Russians would not have so overreacted, but if anybody had asked me to predict the consequences of a Georgian attempt to seize the capital of South Ossetia, I would have said, look for a huge Russian reaction, indeed overreaction. So that is life. But that event I think now will fester and is infecting the relationship overall between the U.S. and Russia, and you can see Americans huffing and puffing and every time we do, the Russians huff and puff even more. Now, where does Georgia rank relative to the securing of Russian nuclear weapons and materials, the prevention of Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state, the elimination of nuclear weapons in North Korea, so if we were standing back and thinking about American national interests first, I think we would recognize that we need, we are dependent upon, deep cooperation with Russia to succeed in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, that is proliferation, to places like Iran or North Korea or beyond, and similarly to prevent nuclear terrorism, that is the loss or theft of material, either in Russia or other places. Now, fortunately Russians should understand themselves that they have got a huge stake in preventing the loss of a nuclear weapon or material from which a bomb could be made. Back in 2005 after my Nuclear Terrorism book was published I went to Moscow and actually gave a briefing in the Kremlin on nuclear terrorism, in which I produced for them this target map that I did for the website that was put up in conjunction with the Nuclear Terrorism book, where you can put in your own zip code and see what the Dragonfire bomb would do in your own neighborhood. So I showed them a bomb in Red Square and told them, and I believe this is exactly right, that if the Chechen terrorists who took over the theater in Moscow or who killed the schoolchildren earlier, got a nuclear bomb in Russia they are not going to bring that bomb first to New York or Boston or Washington. Russians should think about Russian national interests first, and Russian national interests should drive them to do everything feasible to do to prevent terrorists getting a bomb or material. But the program that you refer to, the Nunn-Lugar program, has been one in which we have helped them over now sixteen years in an extremely successful program and one that has actually been very well executed by Secretary Sam Bodman, the current Secretary of Energy in the Bush Administration, to the point that if all goes well, by the end of this year, the end of 2008, the work plan that was agreed to by President Bush and President Putin will actually have been completed. And we are looking to a transition in this activity to the point where by 2012 Russia will be responsible for this entirely on its own. But I think this working cooperatively with Russia on the things that matter more, both to us and to them, should come first and we should try to look at the Georgian issue, not apologizing for Russia and not failing to criticize them for actions that we think are inappropriate, but we should nonetheless distinguish between things that matter more to us and things that matter less.
TR: Just a point of information, if the program is successfully concluded by the end of 2008, where does that mean Russia stands in terms of securing its fissile material and weapons? What percentage of them would be secure?
GA: The answer is slightly complicated, but at Bratislava at a summit of Putin and Bush in February of 2005, they agreed on a work plan that covered about 75 percent of the weapons and materials. That left out their nuclear weapons fabrication facilities where there is a huge amount of material and weapons, but where presumably, and I think on the basis of independent assessments we have reason to believe, the Russians have done a good job themselves of securing the material. So if the work plan is completed by 2008 for 75 percent of the sites the security will have been provided to a level of what is called comprehensive upgrades, which is not as good as the gold standard that I would urge, but which is quite good and certainly hugely better than it was way back in 1991 when I started working on this problem. So for the remaining 25 percent of the material, this is at sites which, as I say, we have reason to believe they are working on securing themselves, so I would say we cannot quite put a bow around the box and declare victory as this requires eternal vigilance. But I would say this would be a huge success and it is a huge success for initially the first Bush administration and then the Clinton administration and then, finally, this administration. Now where we need the Russians even more is in recovering material from which bombs could be made that was left in places outside of Russia but was provided by Russia back during the Cold War.
TR: You mean in former Soviet republics that became states?
GA: In former Soviet republics, so like Belarus. In Belarus there are thousands of bombs’ worth of material, which should not be in Belarus. Until the summer before last there were three bombs’ worth of material in Uzbekistan. There should be no material in Uzbekistan, so there is a program that the U.S. and Russia have been cooperating and working in which we together go to states and persuade them that material that was left at a research reactor or some other facility should be returned to Russia and, similarly, material that the U.S. provided to other states is being recovered and brought back to the U.S. That program, in both cases, has gone slowly and should be dramatically accelerated. But in any case, it is an area where it requires the cooperation of the two parties. And then finally, for states that are nuclear wannabes, like Iran, Russia’s cooperation is essential to a successful strategy for preventing Iran reaching its nuclear goal line.
TR: You have talked a little bit about prevention here in discussing Russia and the need to continue cooperation and even accelerate it. Let us talk a little bit more about prevention. Is there more that could be done in the case of Pakistan to safeguard materials?
GA: Yes, indeed, and actually let me take that as an opportunity to kind of put the big picture and then I will do the specifics of Russia and Pakistan. In this book Nuclear Terrorism, the most important part of the book is the second part and it refers to the subtitle, because the book is called Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. And the second proposition in the book is that this is a preventable catastrophe in the sense that there exists a feasible, affordable agenda of actions that, if taken, would reduce the likelihood of a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities to nearly zero. So if, God forbid, nuclear terrorism occurs, which I believe on the current trajectory it will, and there is a 9/11 Commission-like report that examines what we did and failed to do before this explosion, it will conclude that the nuclear terrorist attack occurred for wont of things that we could have done but that we simply did not do or did not do fast enough.
TR: So make a list.
GA: Now, I try to organize the strategy for prevention under what I call a doctrine of three no’s. No loose nukes, no new nascent nukes, and no new nuclear weapon states. Let me just say a word about each.
No loose nukes says all nuclear weapons and all nuclear material everywhere, in Russia, in Pakistan, everywhere, is locked up as good as gold in Fort Knox. How much gold does the U.S. lose from Fort Knox? Zero. I mentioned the briefing I gave at the Kremlin back in 2005, where I said to them with all the chaos, all the confusion, all of the corruption in Russia with the collapse of the Soviet Union, how many of the icons, the treasures that you keep in the Kremlin armory have gone missing? The answer is zero. So human beings know how to lock up things we do not want people to steal. All weapons and all materials should be locked up as good as gold. That is point one.
Point two: No new nascent nukes means no new national enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium. So only two things from which you can make the explosion that creates the mushroom cloud, highly enriched uranium or plutonium, only states can make these because they require multi-billion dollar large investments over many years. We should say no new national enrichment of uranium or plutonium. And that means Iran, which is trying now to reach the goal line of being able to enrich uranium, should be stopped. And I have a little bit of a suggestion about how to do that.
Then, thirdly, no new nuclear weapon states says draw a line under the current eight, do not count North Korea even though maybe it is eight and a half because North Korea is halfway across the list. North Korea is the only self-declared but unrecognized nuclear weapon state. I would not recognize them, I would say our objective has to be to roll them back, to get those ten bombs out of there, and to stop any further proliferation, not in order to grandfather the current nuclear weapon states forever but to stop the bleeding before we deal with the arsenals that we currently have.
So if we could imagine a world in which we had achieved no loose nukes, that everything was locked up as good as gold, in which there was no new national enrichment of uranium and plutonium and there were no new nuclear weapon states, I would say the chance of a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities would have been shrunk to nearly zero. Now, these are all easy things to say, very hard to do, and there is a long agenda of specific things under each one of these headings, but I think the main message to take away from this is this is a preventable catastrophe. Terrorists like al Qaeda cannot make a nuclear bomb if they do not start with highly enriched uranium or plutonium that was made by a state. So if we can prevent states making any new enriched uranium or plutonium, and lock up or eliminate the enriched uranium and plutonium and the weapons that are powered by these from falling into the hands of terrorists, we can prevent nuclear terrorism. So this is something we can do, and I would say actually we have been doing quite a lot and there is a lot more to do.
TR: Let me ask a specific question. We know that a lot more nuclear power plants are being built and are going online. Of course, Iran claims that that is what we are doing and the experts believe they are trying to create fuel for weapons. But if you are going to limit any new national enrichment or reprocessing of plutonium, then how do you deal with that issue of fuel? Fuel for nuclear reactors, fuel for Iran, which claims all it wants is a nuclear reactor but we do not want them to make their own fuel?
GA: Very well put. We have now an emerging nuclear renaissance, so it is called, of civilian nuclear energy generation by nuclear power plants. There are a hundred an
So the IAEA has addressed this problem and proposed a system in which one would have multinational fuel assurance for any state that has a peaceful, civilian nuclear power plant as long as it was in compliance with its nonproliferation commitments under the nonproliferation treaty, it would be assured to be able to buy fuel from one of the national producers, of which there are a half-dozen currently available, including the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, the Europeans.
TR: But there would be an international fuel bank, right?
GA: And then behind that you would have cross-guarantees so that if one of the parties did not deliver on the contract one or the others would, and then as a guarantee of last resort you would have a fuel bank controlled by the IAEA so that if worst came to worst, as long as you were complying with your nonproliferation treaty commitments you would be able to get fuel from IAEA. And that fuel bank idea, which was just a piece of paper a year ago, is now almost coming to fruition because it got jump-started by a fifty million dollar contribution from Warren Buffett and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Sam Nunn and Ted Turner’s initiative. The American government has matched that fifty with fifty of American money, and now it just needs to be matched by fifty from other international parties, of which the last time I looked I think there was ten from the Canadians and twenty from the Japanese, I cannot remember exactly the elements of it, but this is about to happen. And I think at the IAEA meeting in Vienna, which is in the last week of September, there will be more news about this actually coming into being so that what this does is it exposes or it takes away the fig leaf from a country like Iran that says, “Oh, we really want to build an enrichment facility just to be sure we can get fuel.” This says, “Nope, you can be 100 percent sure you can get your fuel, so if you are building an enrichment facility it is for other purposes,” and in Iran’s case I think there is no doubt about it, that it is for the purposes of giving it the infrastructure for its nuclear weapons program.
TR: So this kind of international fuel bank guarantee would be an important preventive measure to show up clearly countries like Iran, which would not accept that fuel bank as a source of fuel, to show them up as potential weapons manufacturers.
GA: Absolutely, and in particular because the way the economics works, thank goodness, making your own fuel for one power plant, or two or three or four or five, is economically stupid. So there is no economic rationale. Unless you have got a nuclear industry with dozens of nuclear power plants operating, you cannot make it financially as a business proposition with an independent enrichment facility.
TR: Would this be one of the most important preventive measures that the next president should try to work towards?
GA: I would say this is one, that in a strategy for prevention in which locking them up is probably the single-most important, and cleaning them out of places where you cannot lock them up. This second one of no new nascent nukes that is creating a global system in which states can meet their legitimate requirements for fuel for nuclear power plants through a system of companies selling at a market price, which turns out to be hugely cheaper than what states can make it for themselves, but in which then the IAEA plays a role in giving them a backup guarantee from another supplier in the case that the Americans decide they do not like your human rights record or have some other objection, but then in the case in which the Americans go and persuade even the French and the Russians not to supply, that is a pretty far-fetched example but still everything is possible, the IAEA itself would be the guarantor of last resort.
TR: Graham, you understand the seriousness of this problem and you have written about it as urgent and described the possibility of a bomb exploding in an American city as real. So why do some critics say you are exaggerating the threat, and if it is so real, why has it not happened already?
GA: Two good questions. I think on the first one, in the policy world there are always contrarians who come forth to argue that whatever is view A, they argue non-A or X and they argue Y or Z. So I think that the fact that both President Bush and his challenger in the 2004 campaign, Senator Kerry, gave the identical answer to the question in the first of the televised presidential debates when they were asked the question, “What is the single-most serious threat to American national security?” They both said nuclear terrorism; has led to then contrarians want to say, “Well, no, I do not really think so,” or “I disagree,” or “It is not as big as you thought.” So I have looked at all of the contrarian arguments presented, and I think they are just that. There is always, you can argue, on the other hand maybe the world is not round, but I would say that we have moved on mostly beyond the flat-earth society and I think most of the critics’ arguments are not much better than that. Now there is then the second argument, which says, “Well, if it has not happened already, it will not.” And I hear this argument from many people, that anything that has not happened will not happen, to which Warren Buffett has a good response in which he says, “Anything that can technically and feasibly happen will, given time enough, happen.” So he, who is certainly one of the world’s legendary odds-makers and the world’s most successful investor, disagrees with my view, and my view says this is 51 percent likely over a decade, and he says no, inevitable, inevitable. He says he cannot see any way that it is not going to happen. And I think for people for whom the notion is, or try to get comfort from the idea, that something that has not happened cannot happen should remember what they thought about an attack upon the U.S. homeland by terrorists, killing twice as many people as were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. So who could have imagined terrorists seizing four American airplanes, converting them into guided missiles, in effect, crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing 3000 people. It had never happened before, so maybe it would not happen. To which the answer is, “No, it was quite possible that it could happen and it did happen,” so I think if we go back to the 9/11 Commission report where this distinguished group of Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan basis reviewed the evidence and asked, “What did we fail to do before 9/11?” They say the greatest failure of the country was what they call a “failure of imagination.” Now if there was a failure of imagination to imagine that terrorists like Osama bin Laden, who had declared war upon the U.S. and had already attacked us five times, could conduct an attack on the American homeland, killing 3000 people, how hard is it to imagine that this same guy who says he wants to kill four million Americans, who has been working at this problem now for over a decade, might be planning and plotting a nuclear explosion in one of our cities. I would say that does not require a great deal of imagination, that requires just a little short step from what we have actually seen on 9/11 and what we have seen in terms of his intent and determination and efforts in the period since then. So I take it to be a clear, real, present danger, not one that should terrify us, but one we should focus on coolly and clear-eyed in order to mobilize and motivate the actions that we actually can take that would reduce the likelihood of this to nearly zero.
TR: Graham Allison, thank you very much for talking with me today.
GA: Thank you very much for having me.
Does Race Still Matter to African-American Children in Obama’s America?AAPSS, ANNALS
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Category Archives: The Internet’s Own Boy
History, PACER, The Internet's Own Boy
Aaron’s PACER Project Explained
Here’s a clip from the film “The Internet’s Own Boy” – Directed by Brian Knappenberger – which explains the PACER project in more detail. [This is background for our Next Raw Thought Salon on March 8th.]
Clip on the Internet Archive
Clip on YouTube
PACER is the name of the website that lawyers use to retrieve legal documents from current and past court cases. These documents make up the precedents that make up “the law,” yet to access documents on PACER you must have a credit card and pay per page. (Costing a dime or more for *each* page, so you can see how it can add up quickly. )
You can understand why this “pay to see the law” system could present a problem for anyone who doesn’t have a credit card or is unfamiliar with the details of legal proceedings.
Aaron learned of a program which enabled free access to PACER via a small group of libraries across the country, and coordinated with a friend to download millions of PACER documents.
The FBI didn’t like it, and investigated him for a while, including surveillance at his parent’s home. But ultimately it had to let it go, because Aaron hadn’t actually done anything illegal.
Below is a transcription of the PACER Section of “The Internet’s Own Boy“ (Directed by Brian Knappenberger)
Brewster Kahle – Founder, Internet Archive:
“How can you bring public access to the public domain? It may sound obvious that you would have public access to the public domain, but in fact, it’s not true. So, the public domain should be free to all, but it’s often locked up. There’s often guard cages. It’s like having a National Park but with a moat around it and gun turrets pointed out, in case somebody might want to come and actually enjoy the Public Domain.
One of the things Aaron was particularly interested in was bringing public access to the public domain. It was one of the things that got him into so much trouble.”
Stephen Shultze – Former Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard:
“I had been trying to get access to Federal Court records in the United States. What I discovered was a puzzling system, called PACER, which stands for “Public Access to Court Electronic Records.
I started Googling and that’s when I ran across Carl Malamud.”
Narrative: “Access to legal materials in the United States is a 10 billion dollar per year business.”
Carl Malamud – Founder, Public.Resource.org
“PACER is just this incredible abomination of government services. Ten cents a page. It’s this most brain dead code you’ve ever seen. You can’t search it. You can’t bookmark anything. You’ve gotta have a credit card. And these are “public records.”
U.S. District Courts are very important. That’s where a lot of our seminal legislation starts. Civil Rights cases. Patent cases. All sorts of stuff. And journalists and students and citizens and lawyers all need access to PACER and it fights em every step of the way.
People without means can’t see the law as readily as people with that American Express card. It’s a poll tax on access to justice.”
Tim O’Reilly, Publisher
“The law is the operating system of our democracy, and you have to pay to see it? That’s not much of a democracy.”
Stephen Shultze: “They make about 120 million dollars a year on the PACER system and it doesn’t cost anything near that, according to their own records.
In fact, it’s illegal. The E-government Act of 2002 states that the courts may charge “only to the extent necessary” in order to reimburse the costs of running pacer.”
Narrator: “As the founder of Public.Resource.org, Malamud wanted to protest the PACER charges.
He started a program called “The PACER Recycling Project.” People could upload documents they had already paid for to a free database, so others could use them.”
Carl Malamud: “The PACER people were getting a lot of flack from congress and others about public access. And so they put together this system in seventeen (17) libraries across the country, there was free PACER access. That’s one library every 22,000 square miles I believe. So it wasn’t like really convenient.
I encouraged volunteers to join the “thumb drive core” and download docs from the public access libraries and upload them to the PACER recycling site. People take a thumb drive into one of these libraries and they download a bunch of documents and then send em to me. And it was just a joke. In fact if you clicked on “thumb drive core,” the Wizard of Oz, ya know, the munchkins singing, video clip came up.
But of course, I get this phone call from Steve Shultze and Aaron saying “Gee, we’d like to join the Thumb Drive Core.”
Stephen Shultze: “Around that time, I ran into Aaron at a conference. So I approached him and said “hey, I’m thinking about doing an intervention on the PACER problem.”
Narrator: “Shultze had already developed a program that could automatically download PACER documents from the trial libraries. Swartz wanted to take a look.”
Stephen Shultze: “So, I showed him the code. And I didn’t know what would come next, but as it turns out, over the next few hours at that conference. He was off sitting in a corner, improving my code, recruiting a friend of his that lived near one of these libraries to go into the library and to begin testing his improved code, and at some point the folks at the court realized something’s not going quite according to plan.”
Carl Malamud: “And data started to come in, and come in, and come in. Soon there were 760 GB of PACER docs. About 20 million pages.”
Narrator: “Using information retrieved from the trial libraries, Swartz was conducting massive automated parallel downloading of the PACER system. He was able to acquire more than 2.7 million Federal Court Documents. Almost 20 million pages of text.
Carl Malamud: “Now, I’ll grant you that 20 million pages perhaps exceeded the expectations of the people running the pilot access project, but surprising a bureaucrat isn’t illegal.”
Aaron & Carl decided to talk to the New York Times about what happened.
They also got the attention of the FBI, who began to stake out Swartz’ parents’ house in Illinois.
Carl Malamud: “I get a tweet from his mother saying ‘Call me!’ And I’m like what the hell’s going on here? So, I finally got a hold of Aaron, and Aaron’s mother is like ‘oh my god FBI, FBI, FBI’ ”
Noah Swartz
Noah Swartz: “An FBI agent drives down our home’s driveway trying to see if Aaron is like, in his room. And I remember being home that day and wondering why this car was driving down our driveway and just driving back out. That’s weird. Like five years later I read the FBI file and I’m like my goodness – that was the FBI agent, in my driveway.”
Carl Malamud: “He (Aaron) was terrified. He was totally terrified. He was way more terrified after the FBI actually called him up on the phone and tried to sucker him in to coming down to a coffee shop without a lawyer. He said he went home and laid down on the bed, and was shaking.
Narrator: The downloading also uncovered massive privacy violations in the court documents. Ultimately, the courts were forced to change their policies as a result.
And the FBI closed their investigation without bringing charges.
Cory Doctorow: “To this day, I find it remarkable that anybody, even at the most remote podunct field office of the FBI, thought that a fitting use for taxpayer dollars was investigating people for theft on the grounds that they had made the law public. How can you call yourself a “law man,” and think there can possibly be anything wrong in this whole world with making the law public.”
Brewster KahleBrian KnappenbergerCarl MalamudStephen SchultzeTim O'Reilly
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Syracuse Updates
Demand that police stop cooperating with ICE!
posted by Answer Coalition | 7pt
Send a letter to Frank Fowler!
Syracuse police officers have taken it upon themselves to enforce Federal immigration laws and, in doing so, have engaged in racial profiling and have abused their authority, instilling fear in the immigrant community.
These communities are aggrieved that some of their own, their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and other relations and friends, have been torn from them, and deported, sometimes after routine traffic stops, and other matters in which the deportees were not charged, let alone guilty of any infraction against the city of Syracuse, or the state of New York. Others still, are aggrieved to find their immigration status questioned officially on account of their appearance or accent.
Activists from the Workers' Center of Central New York, League of United Latin American Citizens, ANSWER Syracuse and others have been fighting against this practice for months. Police chief Fowler has agreed to meet our demands but so far has taken no action.
Take a moment to demand that the following department policy be implemented effective immediately: "It shall be the policy of the Syracuse Police Department not to inquire about the national origin or immigration status of suspects, crime victims, witnesses, or others approached by police during routine police investigations or encounters and/or to detain such persons for the sole purpose of making inquiry or gaining clarification about their immigration status."
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BP Pedestrian Bridge
Infrastructure | Urban
More in: Infrastructure
Jackson Hole Airport Expansion & Renovation 11/04/2018
Montornes Footbridge 08/05/2018
Trieste Airport 03/31/2018
Address: BP Pedestrian Bridge | CHICAGO-ILLINOIS | United States
Latitude/Longitude: 41.88260, -87.62017
Architect(s):
Gehry Partners
Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM)
The BP Pedestrian Bridge is a girder footbridge in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It spans Columbus Drive to connect Maggie Daley Park with Millennium Park, both parts of the larger Grant Park. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, it opened along with the rest of Millennium Park on July 16, 2004. Gehry had been courted by the city to design the bridge and the neighboring Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and eventually agreed to do so after the Pritzker family funded the Pavilion.
© Russell Mondy | CC BY-NC 2.0
Named for energy firm BP, which donated $5 million toward its construction, it is the first Gehry-designed bridge to have been completed. BP Pedestrian Bridge is described as snakelike because of its curving form. Designed to bear a heavy load without structural problems caused by its own weight, it has won awards for its use of sheet metal. The bridge is known for its aesthetics, and Gehry’s style is seen in its biomorphic allusions and extensive sculptural use of stainless steel plates to express abstraction.
© Steve Silverman | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The pedestrian bridge serves as a noise barrier for traffic sounds from Columbus Drive. It is a connecting link between Millennium Park and destinations to the east, such as the nearby lakefront, other parts of Grant Park and a parking garage. BP Pedestrian Bridge uses a concealed box girder design with a concrete base, and its deck is covered by hardwood floorboards. It is designed without handrails, using stainless steel parapets instead. The total length is 285 m, with a five percent slope on its inclined surfaces that make it barrier-free and accessible. Although the bridge is closed in winter because ice cannot be safely removed from its wooden walkway, it has received favorable reviews for its design and aesthetics.
Text © 2016 Wikipedia | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
© Torsodog | CC BY-SA 3.0
© Tom Rolfe | CC BY-NC 2.0
⇒ Architecture Guide to CHICAGO-ILLINOIS
⇒ Learn more about:
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Austin Art Home Series 1: The Tilted Home
A Peek Inside an Inspiring South Austin Space
Written by Alexis Moritz
Photographed by Jonathan Garza
for Art & Soul Design's Austin Art Home Series
Fairly inconspicuous on the outside, this South Austin home that belongs to Roland Huettel and Esther Mizrachi is an ever-changing work of art in which installations are created as inspiration strikes. The art installations are not the only thing that make this house unique, it is also characterized by it’s noticeably tilted floor. Roland first purchased the house in 2003 after falling in love with the beautiful yard, which backs up to a creek.
When he first purchased the house Roland’s vision for it was bigger than his budget, “The whole thing became a total remodel that I never planned. . . I wanted to fix a few things and then, eventually, tear it down. I had this elaborate plan in my head of building a compound with several Sukiya-styled pods that connect to each other with breezeways. But it’s very expensive and so first off I just had to have a non-leaky roof over my head.”
Although he didn’t end up building an entire compound, the inspiration of Japanese Architecture in his work is plain to see. The living room features a “Japanese Sitting Area,” his concession on the Sukiya style architecture. He had traditional mats imported from Japan and constructed a frame with plywood. He used a pecan tree that had died in his backyard and some metal to build the light fixture in the corner.
Roland, born and raise in Germany, always had an affinity for the arts. “Art was the only thing I wanted to do,” he says, “I was just scared that I wouldn’t make money that way.” He knew that he wanted to get out of Germany and after high school he learned how to make custom-shoes by hand. From that experience he developed a deep passion for quality workmanship, which he knew would be appreciated in America, so he came here with a bag of tools, ready to make a new life for himself.
“America is a throw-away society, things aren’t repaired but replaced. Everything is new, you don’t fix stuff, but it doesn’t really matter to me. I like fixing things. More and more this house grew on me and I thought, ‘okay, I can fix this’. Little by little I fixed everything, and every time I had to fix something I thought to myself how it was an opportunity to do something a little creative, and artistic, and just have fun doing it. So, that’s how this all came about, and in the end, you have this kind of sloping, beautiful house.”
On his first night in the house Roland slept on the floor in the workshop in the garage. His earliest project was to convert the 600 sq ft garage space into an apartment. He designed a bathroom and kitchen, installed them with a friend’s help, and lived in the garage apartment while renting out the rest of the house for the first few years he owned it. Later on, in 2010 when Esther moved in with her son Jesse, he further updated the garage apartment to include a moving wall; which gave the option to separate the “living room/guest bed area” from Jesse’s bedroom area. The men in Roland’s family were all inventive, creative, engineer types and he took joy in sharing that tradition with Jesse when they built the flexible wall together. It was a sweet bonding experience.
In 2008, after breaking down a wall that separated the kitchen from the living room and dining room and assembling one of his first installations; the stackable metal skeleton around the beam from the counter top, Roland began to work on his living room floor. Designed to be in the exact center of the house is his take on Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” featured originally on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
“As a kid, I would always walk around with my head down and never look up. I was just totally enamored with what was right in front of my feet and so that, I like. I also just wanted to incorporate all the cracks because the cracks in the slab, to me also have a beauty. I filled a lot of the cracks with gold leaf, and that’s just a way of loving the house. I really discovered the process of an artist which is to get real close to your subject and be patient and loving. I think that made me feel more at home.”
He enjoys the somewhat sacrilegious irony of having this piece on the floor. The piece was made almost entirely out of samples from various tile stores. This was one of the earlier major art installations to take place in the house. More recently Esther and Roland collaborated to create a mosaic interpretation of Matisse’s “The Dance” on their kitchen floor.
The master bathroom is Puebla inspired. It features a Talavera sink and shower designed by Roland. He felt it very important to have a shower that featured a lot of light and color so that when he got up in the morning to take a shower it would feel bright and exciting.
A large part of Roland and Esther’s inspiration for the projects in the house come from their love of travel. He says, “One of the beauties is that we love going on vacation and always seeing what it is that we could bring home.”
The table Roland built on the porch was based on a design by artist Donald Judd that’s located in Marfa, TX. A bed on the beach that they enjoyed on a trip to Mexico inspired the idea for the swinging bed, which takes up the other half of the porch. Roland screened in the porch and added a roof a few years ago.
The studio in the backyard is equipped with a bay window, a glass wall (with sliding doors), and is adorned with red and gold Greek Meander. This is a special space for Esther, her own private sanctuary. “Roland can be very noisy sometimes and I like to have quiet. I like to be able to write, to think, and to meditate so I wanted a room of my own. Roland built that for me as a labor of love, it was a gift.”
A light installation is the most recent piece added to the living room. The galaxy inside of a tree trunk invites an intimate encounter. Roland was hiking after a storm and saw a dead tree laying on the ground.
“The trunk was lying in the sun and there was this hole in it that was just perfectly shaped and sun was falling through it. I just fell in love with the hole itself. And then, to make it a micro-universe was just again kind of loving. I really like the back of it with all those nails because it has a certain primitive aspect to it. Marrying the primitive with the grand and superhuman, that’s very intriguing.”
He went back to the woods with a handsaw and strapped a piece of the trunk to his back for a 3-mile hike out.
In the master bedroom, Roland built a bed frame and chest out of red cedar and black steel piping. The contrast between the soft cedar and the hard steel creates a minimalist yet solid aesthetic. He also built the porch and stairs leading down to the studio outside of the bedroom, which proved to be really difficult because of his reluctance to start with a plan or ask advice, “I could save myself a lot of trouble if I just got the tricks and how to do it but somehow I just prefer making my own mistakes. It seems like a wasted effort when I could have just asked somebody to give me the answers but in the process I discover and learn so many things, it feels well worth it.”
“I’m always intrigued by form and function, so first, something needs to work long-term and should be really simple. But then, I want it to look intriguing and inspiring so that’s always a great challenge,” says Roland about his work. “About 20 years ago I had a discussion with a wonderfully eccentric friend and we both decided that we would want to build a church. That always stayed with me. I am very much inspired by spaces and I am very sensitive to the energy of a space. Whenever I enter a new space I’m trying to tune into it and see, does this feel like it’s whole? I’m not religious but churches are sacred spaces and they inspire. That’s always on my mind too.”
Roland likes to create art that’s site specific and unmovable. “My installations are permanent. Of course, they are built into a house with a less than stable foundation so, in the end, it is all temporary.”
Melissa Hargus December 28, 2017
Slow Design for Mindful Living
Melissa Hargus January 26, 2018
WCFA Exhibit: Meet the Artists
Melissa Hargus September 6, 2017 Art & Soul Design
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Knowing New India - English
It is a work aimed at using the Transforming Governance in India from 2014, as a model for educating a common-man about the fundamentals of Governance, the work of a progressive Government and the larger issues that confront a Government, using the present Indian Government, as a good example of a forward looking, democratic Government in the present world and in the present state that India is in.
This work is a narration of the transformation of India into a New India, which was set into motion from 2014. It is about a New India that looks likely to emerge, changed in many respects, from around 2020. Many a time, work done by successive Governments, are seen in disconnect from one another. Likewise, different steps taken by different ministries of the same Government, are also seen in isolation. The vision, the purpose and the impact, behind the various steps taken by a Government are not known to the common man due to various reasons such as the size and scope of the entire system being as big as the Government and the country, the lack of "socially minded" people / bodies without political and commercial media agenda to speak about the work of a Government in a wholesome manner to the common man, the lack of steps to educate the people on the knowledge and information needed to understand the rationale behind the steps taken, the lack of efforts to rationally connect the decisions being taken by the Government of the day, with the happenings of the larger past which is the legacy and at times, baggage of the nation, that is actually carried by the Government of the day, and the absence of steps to place a Government’s action vis-à-vis the ethos, character and assets of the nation, to enable people to emotionally relate to the Government’s policies and actions. For, each step taken by the Government, affects mainly people and their progeny in the short and long run and This work looks at the schemes and programs launched by the Indian Government of 2014, in the context of the progress of India. For, it is context, which can help in gaining an understanding of anything in a wholesome manner.
Author: Dr. D.K Hari, Hema Hari
Product Dimension: 8.5"X5.5"
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Reports: Mkhitaryan Could Be Banned From Playing Against One Of Europa League Opponents Due To His Nationality
Henrikh Mkhitaryan could be banned from playing against one of Arsenal’s Europa League group stage opponents after the draw was made today (via Arsenal.com).
It’s a competition which the Gunners came close to winning last season.
Now, the Gunners have learned who they will be facing in the group stages of the tournament after being drawn against Sporting Clube de Portugal, Qarabag FK and FC Vorskla Poltava.
Portuguese side Sporting CP have been marred by off-the-pitch turmoil in recent months but have since reorganised and will be stiff competition.
Also in the group are the Ukranian side FC Vorskla Poltava and Qarabag FK, a fixture which has already been marred in controversy.
Reports suggest that Arsenal’s Henrikh Mkhitaryan could be unable to play the away fixture as Armenian people are currently banned from entering Azerbaijan.
Uefa has already responded to these claims, issuing a statement stating the following:
“It is a standard procedure for UEFA to send letters of support to associations, clubs or embassies in order to obtain visa for players in order to be able to travel to another country and play in UEFA competition matches.”
UEFA: "It is a standard procedure for UEFA to send letters of support to associations, clubs or embassies in order to obtain visa for players in order to be able to travel to another country and play in UEFA competition matches."
— Chris Wheatley (@ChrisWheatley_) August 31, 2018
Mkhitaryan has a history with this matter and was left out of Borussia Dortmund’s squad to play against the Azerbaijani side, Gabala back in 2015.
It’s a strange situation and hopefully, one which will be resolved fairly quickly. It’s obviously going to cause UEFA, Qarabag FK and Azerbaijan considerable embarrassment which could lead to a quick resolution. However, it is baffling to think that this law exists in the country. Aside from that, it’s a good draw for Arsenal.
More Stories: Arsenal, Europa League, Henrikh Mkhitaryan
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→Stories
Story Details
Information-Journals and Magazines
Communication-Communication Intention and Meaning
Psychology-Personal Characteristics
Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine has spent his life taking on the Establishment. So what did he hope to accomplish at Harvard Business School?
Photo by Arnold Newman/Getty Images
Call it what you will — the conventional wisdom, the status quo, the official line — and chances are you’ll find Victor Navasky (OPM 25, 1997) manning the barricades against it. Navasky, who stepped down last month as publisher of The Nation magazine, is an unapologetic gadfly and afflicter of the comfortable. But that doesn’t mean he’s obnoxious or cranky. Indeed, this genial, self-deprecating, lifelong progressive puts the lie to one piece of right-wing cant: Liberals are humorless drones. Truth be told, Navasky is more mensch than menace, an old-school crusader for social and economic justice who can’t bring himself to say anything mean about anybody. That includes those benighted souls at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Those people, Navasky says, “just see things differently than I do.”
Today, the growing list of subscribers to The Nation, America’s oldest weekly magazine, suggests that more and more of the republic is seeing things Navasky’s way. Munching on a lunchtime sandwich at the magazine’s Manhattan headquarters, Navasky quips, “If it’s bad for the country, it’s good for The Nation.” And so it seems to be: In late 2005, with nearly 70 percent of citizens saying the country is going in the wrong direction, The Nation, his beloved “journal of opinion,” has never been stronger.
Victor S. Navasky was born in 1932 in New York City, where his father ran a small clothing-manufacturing business in the Garment District. After attending progressive city schools, Navasky graduated from Swarthmore College in 1954 with Phi Beta Kappa honors in the social sciences. Next came Army service in Alaska, where he dabbled in military journalism (as much a misnomer, Navasky says, as military music), after which he enrolled at Yale Law School. At Yale, he cofounded and spent much of his time working on Monocle, a magazine of political satire that achieved something approaching cult status among East Coast lefties. Eventually, journalism would trump the law entirely: Navasky received his law degree in 1959, married in 1966 (he and his wife, Anne, have three children), and went to work for the New York Times, from 1970 to 1974. He then taught journalism at Princeton before becoming editor of The Nation in 1978.
Founded in 1865, with roots in the abolitionist movement, The Nation has, ironically, enjoyed fairly constant support from wealthy benefactors. This despite its anti-establishment posture, although the magazine’s politics, Navasky contends, actually have “sometimes zigged and sometimes zagged” over the years. To Nation contributor Calvin Trillin, who claims Navasky originally hired him for a salary in the “high two figures,” The Nation is “a pinko sheet on cheap paper.” (Trillin adds that it’s the only magazine whose pages look better xeroxed than in the original.) Former star columnist Christopher Hitchens, a surprising Iraq war advocate, quit in a huff in 2002, accusing the magazine of being soft on Saddam. Firebrand columnist Alexander Cockburn remains on board, but derides The Nation as only “slightly left of center…there was a period when it had crackle.” So it goes at The Nation.
After sixteen years at the editorial helm, Navasky became the magazine’s owner in 1994 thanks to a $1 million transaction largely funded by supporters including Paul Newman and E.L. Doctorow. As The Nation’s publisher, he then turned to a fellow Swarthmore College board member, HBS professor Samuel Hayes, for advice on how “to think like a businessman.” Hayes encouraged Navasky to consider the Owner/President Management Program (OPM), an HBS Executive Education offering for family- and small-business executives.
Navasky was an unlikely candidate for HBS. After all, this is a man who claims muckraker Lincoln Steffens as a personal hero and who confesses that his heart still quickens when he hears the songs of the International Brigade. At OPM, Navasky wrote later, “My Nation self still tended to regard the profit motive as avaricious indifference to social consequences.” But the experience opened his eyes to the fact that “many different reasons bring people to the School, not just the lure of making money. One of my more conservative classmates said the purpose of business is to give people value for their money, put out a decent product, make a fair profit, and improve the lives of one’s employees. That’s pretty good!”
That classmate, David Karam, who operates 135 Wendy’s restaurant franchises in five states, says of Navasky, “Vic really ventured into the lion’s den at OPM — we were a pretty conservative bunch. But he’s such a wonderful guy, full of warmth and genuine respect for others, that despite being a bit outnumbered by the rest of us, he never lost his grace or dignity.”
Navasky describes his time at the School as “my own delicate balancing act — the attempt to absorb HBS know-how without succumbing to HBS values.” After OPM, he did return to The Nation with a much stronger grasp of business fundamentals, such as how to read a balance sheet, apply price-earnings and other ratios, and be an effective manager generally. One insight he gained was that a Nation reader was really a potential “customer” for life, with “value” far exceeding a year’s subscription rate. Another was classic HBS: His venerable product was much more than just a magazine. As his classmates and professors assured him, The Nation was a “brand.”
“We’re now a $10 million operation that’s been profitable the last two years,” Navasky says. “Three-quarters of our revenues come from our readers. We had 20,000 subscribers when I started as editor, and we now have 185,000, which puts us ahead of the New Republic and National Review.”
Navasky believes that The Nation and other journals of opinion, because of the quality and intensity of their readership, have influence beyond their numbers and play an increasingly important role in public discourse. “According to one definitive study,” Navasky says, “in the 1980s, fifty corporations dominated more than half the information/entertainment/knowledge companies. Today, it’s down to about six corporations. The more homogenized the dominant culture becomes, the more our perspective is limited.”
As for business, Navasky thinks it too has a conventional wisdom that holds, for example, that all taxes, regulation, and labor unions are always bad. “Those kinds of assumptions,” he asserts, “can be counterproductive to achieving larger business goals. And it’s surprising how accepting business is of dangerous elements of the status quo, such as the extent to which our economy is dependent upon foreigners. I do think HBS professors, for their part, have absorbed conventional business wisdom and rejected it or put it in context, which is invaluable for HBS students and for people outside the School.”
In addition to his Nation duties, Navasky has been teaching at the Columbia School of Journalism and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s Marketplace. His occasional pieces for the magazine in recent years have added to a distinguished writing career that includes decades of articles and several books: Naming Names, a 1982 National Book Award–winner about the McCarthy era and the Hollywood blacklist; Kennedy Justice, on Robert Kennedy’s years as U.S. attorney general; The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (with Christopher Cerf), whose title is self-explanatory; and, in 2005, A Matter of Opinion, an account of Navasky’s life and times in publishing and beyond.
Going forward, Navasky sees a secure future for print journalism. “Last year, we had 28,000 new subscribers come to us through our Web site,” he says. “In the way that paperbacks turned out to be an extension of the market for hardcover books, I think the Internet is an extension of the print audience rather than a replacement.” As for his own future, Navasky remains a major shareholder of The Nation and a member of its editorial board. He will now spend more time at Columbia, including overseeing the Columbia Journalism Review. “I’ve turned over day-to-day editing to The Nation’s current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and in November, financial and legal responsibility went to her as well.”
While formulating that passing of the torch at the magazine, Navasky acknowledges that he experienced a pang of capitalist conscience: “In thinking about that succession process, the HBS voice in me said, ‘Hey, hold on there, Victor…you can’t just give away something that’s worth big money in the marketplace!’ For a moment, I felt that if I didn’t milk it for all it was worth, I’d be letting down my OPM classmates.”
Vic Navasky
Class of OPM 25
✉ Send a Message
The Washington Post Online
The Atlantic Finds a New Home
Re: David Bradley (MBA 1977)
HBS Alumni News
David G. Bradley, MBA 1977
Re: Mel Saslow (MBA 1951) ; Bill MacDowell (MBA 1955) ; Perry Miles (MBA 1972) ; Denise Dampierre (MBA 1988) ; Ken Workman (PMD 35)
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23 books in series
4 out of 5 stars 2,305 ratings
The War of the Worlds Publisher's Summary
First published by H. G. Wells in 1898, The War of the Worlds is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator intones, "No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's."
Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first, the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity, even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100 feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat.
With horror, the narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much as corralled.
Public Domain (P)2009 Tantor
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By: H. G. Wells
By Janice on 03-30-14
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By: H.G. Wells
Narrated by: Philippe Duquenoy
Length: 6 hrs
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is an action-packed, science fiction novel that was written in 1897 and is told through the eyes of two brothers who live through an alien invasion. The story is an unbiased account and observation of the alien invasion, and has led to the creation of hundreds of books and movies. H.G. Wells is one of the first authors to tackle the "what if" scenario of an alien invasion.
Truly fantastic
By Loren on 08-08-16
5 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
Narrated by: John Banks
A meteor-like alien object lands on Earth, spearheading an apocalyptic chain of events. Earth has been watched, and now the aliens have landed and their intent is conquest and war...H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, the first story to speculate about the consequences of aliens (from Mars) with superior technology landing on earth, is one of the most influential science fiction books ever written.
The founding father of science fiction
By Mossias on 09-13-18
Narrated by: Blair Mellow
It is an INVASION! H. G. Wells' classic story of Martians invading an unsuspecting and unprepared world continues to thrill and terrify listeners around the world. Following strange explosions on the surface of Mars, metallic cylinders crash in the English countryside - objects that carry hideous aliens possessed of deadly weapons and a rabid hunger for human flesh. No army can stop these monstrous hordes, no weapons can harm them - a terrified humanity watches helpless as cities are reduced to cinders and ash. There is no hope...here is no future...our world is lost - unlessa?S
I raised my hands muttering "Yes!"
By Anonymous User on 04-07-08
Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
The War of the Worlds has been both popular and influential. It has never gone out of print. It has spawned half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, various comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It has even influenced the work of scientists. It is one of the earliest stories that details a conflict between mankind and an alien race.
Classic Story-Despite the Reader
By Joseph on 09-08-12
4 out of 5 stars 106 ratings
Narrated by: Bill Weideman
So begins The War of the Worlds, the novel that made Wells famous and has enthralled and terrified readers and listeners for almost 100 years. Ten huge and tireless creatures land in England and, using their deadly rays and crushing strength, threaten the very existence of humankind. Wells' classic is not just groundbreaking science fiction, it is a shocking social parable about man's inhumanity to man.
4 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
Narrated by: Alexander Spencer
Written at the turn of the 19th century, before "science fiction" existed as a genre, H.G. Wells' creation was a new departure in literature. The author's deep devotion to social reform led him to use the idea of an extraterrestrial invasion to theorize about a possible violent upheaval in society - instead of "Martians" think "Bolsheviks."
Brilliant, tight and prescient.
By Darwin8u on 02-02-13
Narrated by: Daniel Avrahams, Steven Davis
War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells) was published in 1898 at a time when he wrote a series of novels related to a number of historical events of the time. The most important of these was the unification and militarization of Germany. The story, written in a semi-documentary style, is told in the first person by an unnamed observer. It tells of the events, which happen mostly in London and the county of Surrey, England, when a number of vessels manned by aliens are fired from Mars and land on Earth.
So many narrators!
By Grey Beard on 09-18-17
Narrated by: Greg Wagland
H. G. Wells' classic science fiction work, first serialized in 1897, is one of many invasion narratives prevalent in British literature towards the end of the 19th century. However, The War of the Worlds not only introduces the extraterrestrial element of brutal Martian forces on the rampage but also explores many other contemporary issues and themes.
Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
This classic chiller, when adapted for radio in 1938 by Orson Welles, was realistic enough to cause widespread panic throughout the United States.
Awesome Audio
By W on 08-29-05
Narrated by: Flo Gibson
Hostile invading Martians wreak havoc and destruction in England. This science-fiction classic has terrified generations of readers!
Awesome classic!
By JBRIGHTSHADOWS93 on 02-07-18
Narrated by: Michael Ward
This is the timeless science fiction classic, depicting man's struggle against technologically superior invaders from Mars.
Narrated by: David Gilmore
Experience the terror again! Veteran narrator David Gilmore takes you through the suspense-filled invasion of the creatures from Mars in this classic H. G. Wells story from 1898. One by one the Martians build their war machines and lay waste to the English countryside while the human population is powerless to fight back against the awesome heat ray.
Narrated by: Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot
Professor Ogilvy spotted the projectiles as they were launched from the planet Mars. Even so, when they landed and the aliens emerged, mankind was not ready. Using superweapons and massive walking robots of war, the aliens trampled the forces arrayed against them and caused the rout of mankind. In this first-person narrative, one of the survivors who came face-to-face with the aliens tells his own true story.
Narrated by: Mike Vendetti
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction and a horror story. Published in 1898, the story is still frightening. Imagine your government not being able to protect you, or a nuclear holocaust making you suddenly, should you survive, a refugee with no home, no community services, and very little hope, as you watch the conqueror decimate your country.
Great book BUT!!!
By Dr.D on 06-13-17
This spellbinding tale describes the Martian invasion of Earth. Following the landing in England of ten huge and indefatigable creatures, complete chaos erupts. Using their fiery heat rays and monstrous strength, the heartless aliens threaten the future existence of all life on Earth. This classic chiller, when adapted for radio in 1938 by Orson Welles, was realistic enough to cause widespread panic throughout the United States. H. G. Wells (1866–1946), born in Bromley, Kent, England, is known as the father of science fiction.
Narrated by: Roger Watson
Beginning with a series of strange flashes in the distant night sky, the Martian attack initially causes little concern on Earth. Then the destruction erupts—ten massive aliens roam England and destroy with heat rays everything in their path. Very soon mankind finds itself on the brink of extinction.
I don't like this narrator
By lindsey on 03-18-13
Narrated by: Scott R. Pollak
Experience the horror when 19th-century London is invaded by an alien race from the red planet Mars. This 1898 science-fiction novel comes to life as narrated by Scott R. Pollak, the voice of NPR radio's WABE-FM, Atlanta. Scott's talents as an actor and narrator come to the forefront as he brings us The War of the Worlds.
timeless classic, excellent narrator
By jeff evans on 03-14-11
Narrated by: Shane Sody
It was 1898 when Wells crafted his seminal tale of grotesque tentacled Martians and their terrifying tripod fighting machines commencing their invasion of Earth from a landing site in a sandpit at Horsell Common, southwest of London. It is a suspenseful, entirely believable account of how one man and his family react and survive amidst the initial incredulity, and then the awakening terror, panic, and despair, that overtakes millions of Londoners as the Martians slowly advance.
Narrated by: Dick Hill
Originally published in 1897, H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was the first novel of alien invasion. Wells' most popular book, it inspired several unauthorized sequels, including Orson Welles' 1938 radio play, several movies, a television show, and many comic book and graphic novel adaptations. Wells' classic story remains one of the most popular Victorian novels to this day, and it set the tone for all stories of alien invasion that have followed.
By Carl Douglas Tidwell on 06-11-10
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AUDIO-TECHNICA INTRODUCES AT-LP2Da LP-TO-DIGITAL RECORDING SYSTEM
— Company offers cost-effective solution for transferring classic LPs to digital files —
Neilson/Clyne
Stow, OH 12-11-2006 – Audio-Technica, a leader in the design and manufacturer of consumer and professional microphones, headphones, phono cartridges and accessories for over 40 years, has introduced the AT-LP2Da LP-to-Digital Recording System. Ideal for creating CDs and MP3 files, the AT-LP2Da system includes everything needed to transfer classic LPs to digital media files.
The system consists of the AT-PL50 Automatic Stereo Turntable, Cakewalk PYRO software, and interface cable. The AT-PL50 turntable features a built-in switchable phono preamp for direct connection to a computer, fully automatic operation, 33-1/3 and 45 RPM speed selector, aluminum platter, audiophile Dual Magnet™ stereo cartridge with replaceable stylus, and a balanced tone arm with soft damping control. Also included is Cakewalk’s PYRO Software which allows creation of MP3, WAV and WMA files. The PYRO Software features a DeClicker and a DeNoiser tool for removing clicks, pops, crackles, hiss and hum from LPs, and design software that allows the user to create a full-color CD label with jewel-case insert. In addition, the AT-LP2Da LP-to-Digital Recording System adapter cable interfaces the system with most popular computer audio inputs.
The Audio-Technica AT-LP2Da LP-to-Digital Recording System is available December 2006 with a U.S. MSRP of $199.00.
Celebrating over four decades of audio excellence, Audio-Technica is renowned worldwide for a broad range of professional and consumer audio products, including high-performance microphones, headphones, wireless systems, turntables and phono cartridges. Winner of numerous industry awards, Audio-Technica designs and manufactures products that set quality, durability and price/performance standards for major concert tours, broadcast and recording studios, corporate and government facilities, theaters and house-of-worship venues. Learn more at www.audio-technica.com.
—For further information regarding product availability and pricing in Europe, please contact Denise Burnage, marketing, Audio-Technica Ltd., Old Lane, Leeds LS11 8AG England. Tel: +44 (0) 113 277 1441,
Audio-Technica is exhibiting at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, Booth #71137 during the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV.
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Third party Interests in family court proceedings
Alan Weiss | Aussie Divorce | 16th March, 2018
family court orders and third parties
Family Law Courts can join third parties in a family law proceeding to protect the interests of both divorcing parties and third parties. A divorcing husband and wife, or separating de facto partners, are the most keenly interested parties in family law proceedings. There are times, however, when third parties also have an interest in the proceedings.
In financial matters, third parties might be creditors, landlords, business partners, and others whose interests are entwined with those of the divorcing or separating parties. If the rights of third parties might be affected by any order the court makes, it may be necessary to join them as parties to the family law proceedings. It may also be necessary to join a third party in order to protect the rights of one of the divorcing or separating parties.
Sham Transactions and Alter Egos
In some cases, the court will be asked to decide whether a third party is being used to defeat the court’s ability to make a fair property settlement. Suppose, for example, that just before the divorce, one party transfers all of his or her interest in a business to the party’s business partner. The party may be trying to keep the business out of the property pool so that the other spouse will not be awarded any share of it. The party may plan to reacquire the property after the property settlement has been finalized.
By joining the third party business partner in the family law proceedings, the court can decide whether the property transfer was a sham. If so, the court can set aside the transfer to assure that the other spouse is not defrauded.
The court may also decide that a third party is the divorcing party’s alter ego. That means the third party is subject to the divorcing party’s direction and control. The court might conclude that property held by an alter ego should be included in the property pool and subject to division.
Orders Against Third Parties
Examples of orders involving third parties that a court can make include:
Directing a creditor to relieve one party of the obligation to pay a marital debt and to hold the other party entirely responsible for it, or designating the portion for which each party will be responsible.
Directing the third party to transfer ownership of the property to one or both parties of the marriage.
Cancelling or voiding a sham transaction, such as a property transfer or a nonexistent debt.
Directing a company to transfer shares from one spouse or partner to the other party.
In all cases, the third party has the right to procedural fairness, including the right to challenge the proposed action. Third parties should obtain legal advice to protect their rights if they will be joined in a family law proceeding.
Tax ruling changes consequences of some property settlements
Protecting your property-injunctions under the Family Law Act
A privilege against self incrimination
Use of conversation recordings as evidence in a family law case
Service of divorce documents
Property financial questionnaire
A subpoena is a legal document issued by a court
Rules of evidence family court in a proceedings
Value of the home in a property settlement case
Understanding Legal Fees
Giving evidence in family court
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Self-Publishing Packages
Writer Wisdom
Home \ About Us
About Balboa Press
Balboa Press is a self-publishing company specializing in self-help titles that inspire and enlighten the reader. We offer a full suite of publishing, design and marketing services, enabling a greater number of authors to publish their works.
As a division of Hay House internationally Balboa Press titles are monitored regularly by the parent company. Hay House is one of the fastest-growing self-help and transformational publishers in the world and hopes to find through Balboa Press new inspiring author to add to their catalogue.
While Balboa Press is a self-publishing company, there's no need for authors to rely solely on their own knowledge or skill set to get published. The experience and connections provided through Balboa Press give authors everything they need to create and publish their books while allowing the author to maintain control of the content.
Our books are printed using print-on-demand technology so we print each book to order. Not only is this method of printing mindful of our planet because no books go to waste, but it is mindful of our authors too. As an author, you are never required to shoulder the cost and hassle of printing, storing and transporting large quantities of your book. When a book is ordered by a reader, a retailer or the author, it is printed and dispatched in a matter of days.
Balboa Press authors publish books on a wide range of topics, concentrating in positive themes, including the following: self-help, transformational, astrology, alternative health, angels, pet care, finance, nutrition, parenting, psychology, sociology, meditation, spirituality, numerology, colour therapy, feng shui, business, autobiographies, social commentary, memoirs, children's books, cookbooks and more.
Balboa Press has launched publishing opportunities in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The Publishing Company Name: Balboa Press
The name Balboa Press was inspired by Balboa Park in San Diego, Calf., U.S., a true source of joy for founder Louise Hay, as well as all those who visit it. Named after a Spanish conquistador, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Balboa Park is the largest urban cultural park in the United States and is home to 15 major museums, nine performing arts venues, gardens covering 1,200 acres and the world-renowned San Diego Zoo.
The Balboa name reminds us to continue to look for new and marvelous discoveries in the world around us and within ourselves. Our publishing company is committed to doing just that – helping new talented writers explore and find their own paths, get published and share their insights.
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Entry from August 07, 2012
“Consulting: If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money in prolonging the problem”
“You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem” is a famous 1968 quotation by writer and political activist Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998). The line has been frequently used in business.
Despair, Inc. has produced a jocular demotivational poster since about 1998:
“Consulting: If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”
The popular poster jokes that consultants are more concerned about their fees than in solving problems.
Despair, Inc.
If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs
Edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder and Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Pg. 190
If you’re not part of the solution (answer), you’re part of the problem.
1937 John R. Alltucker, “Guidance in a Medium-Sized High School,” California Journal of Secondary Education 12:158: “Does the individual citizen so live, act, and react that he becomes a part of the problem or a part of its solution?”
1941 Harry Emerson Fosdick, Living under Tension (New York: Harper & Brothers) 120: “We need CHrist’s radical remedy...by which, one by one, men and women are transferred from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.”
1947 Ashley Montagu, “The Improvement of Human Relations through Education,” School and Society 65: 469: “We know the problem, we know the solution. Let us ask ourselves the question: Are we part of the problem or are we part of the solution?”
In recent decades, the proverb has been associated with Eldridge Cleaver, who said in a 1968 speech, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.”
23 October 2001, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “A year of DARK HUMOR Calendar pokes fun at workplace motivational themes” by Michael Precker:
“If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem,” the caption proclaims.
Soul Assassins
By Jamie Malanowski
Employees are probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to a company, say the misanthropes at Despair.com, who have built a business on some very nasty ideas.
The posters started appearing in 1998 or so, parodies of classic inspirational motivational kitsch. They were sly, mordant pinpricks aimed at corporate America’s healthily inflated self-image. Under a photo of two executive-class hands gripped in a manly handshake, there appears an aphorism—Consulting: If You’re Not Part of the Solution, There’s Good Money to Be Made Prolonging the Problem.
That voice is the product of three men: two brothers, Justin and Jef Sewell, and E. Lawrence Kersten, all now of Austin and its environs. They are the founders of Despair Inc., purveyors of novelty items of insidious intent.
RadioNational (Australia)
The art of demotivation (transcript available)
Broadcast: Monday 20 March 2006 4:07PM
Michael Duffy: Last year a breakthrough management book was published in America. It’s called The Art of Demotivation, and we’re now joined by its author, Dr EL Kersten.
Michael Duffy: The one I like very much is ‘Consulting: If you’re not part of the solution there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem’. And you have these lovely pictures on them, don’t you, of waves crashing or seagulls flying across beaches.
EL Kersten: Yes. In fact, if you looked at one of our products...just aesthetically it looks very similar to a motivational product, but then once you look at it and you read the title and the quote you recognise it’s actually quite satirical. And I think one of the things that’s also true of our products is...we’ve got 84 designs now and many of them are really quite insightful and they’re not just funny but they are quite insightful. So you brought up the ‘Consulting’ poster...anybody who has spent time hiring one of the big consulting firms recognises that they don’t necessarily solve your problems but there’s a good chance you’re going to spend an awful lot of money on them.
Roadmap to Information Security:
For IT and InfoSec managers
By Michael E. Whitman and Herbert J. Mattord
Boston, MA: Course Technology/Cengage Learning
Unfortunately, too many consultants prefer the quote “if you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”
Complex IT problems, meet old-fashioned work ethic.
Honesty is Highly Efficient
I want Concord to be known as an honest and direct consulting company. I never want us to be part of the Demotivator poster: Consulting – If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
New York City • Work/Businesses • (0) Comments • Tuesday, August 07, 2012 • Permalink
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Life in Israel camp is a 'waste of time'
The BBC has gathered evidence that Israel is sending unwanted African migrants to third countries under secretive deals, which may be in breach of international law.
Adam is originally from Darfur, but came to Israel in 2011.
He was summoned to Holot, an open detention centre in Israel's Negev desert, in October last year.
At the end of his detention here he will face a choice, either to return to Sudan, or to go to a third country in Africa. If he refuses to leave he could face indefinite detention in Israel.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-35475803/life-in-israel-camp-is-a-waste-of-time
Video Top Stories
More from BBC Reel
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Science selected
The environmental costs of Heathrow expansion
Matt McGrath Environment correspondent @mattmcgrathbbc on Twitter
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37762099
Image caption There are environmental concerns about noise, air pollution and climate change
Significant questions about the environmental impacts of Heathrow's new runway remain unanswered in the wake of the government's announcement.
Opponents say that the expansion will make air quality and noise pollution much worse.
It makes a complete mockery of the government's commitments on cutting carbon emissions, they say.
But supporters of the airport say that developments in technology will mitigate many negative consequences.
Third runway at Heathrow cleared for takeoff
Why expansion is taking so long
Is new runway more important post-Brexit?
The green price of Heathrow expansion
Death sentence for Heathrow villages
In its final report on Heathrow last year, the Airports Commission was clear that an extra runway at the UK's biggest flight centre would be an opportunity to right some of the environmental wrongs that have developed through ad hoc expansion over the years.
These include increased levels of noise for local residents, consistent breaches of air pollution safety levels and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Perhaps the easiest of these issues to tackle is noise.
The Airports Commission suggested that a "noise envelope" should be agreed and Heathrow would be legally bound to stay within these limits.
There should also be an increased noise levy to benefit local communities - and an independent aviation noise committee should be established with a statutory right to be consulted on operating procedures.
Image caption Campaigners say they will attempt to mount legal challenges against the expansion
In their statement announcing the airport's expansion, the government gave some clear indications of how it will tackle this question.
It will propose a six-and-a-half hour ban on scheduled night flights for the first time. It will also propose new legally binding noise targets that will encourage the use of quieter planes - and there will be a pot of cash, some £700m, to pay for noise insulation for local residents.
On the other two key environmental impacts the government is on far trickier ground.
When it comes to dirty air, the UK has been breaching EU limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) since 2010 in a number of different regions and cities. This pollutant is produced from diesel engines and is linked to a range of respiratory illnesses.
Heathrow has long been a hot spot for this type of air pollution due to heavy traffic in the vicinity - so much so that the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) projected that even without expansion, the A4 running north of the airport would still exceed EU safety limits for nitrogen dioxide in 2030.
The airport points to recent independent research that says the expansion would only lead to a "marginal" increase in NO2 from Heathrow as there would be significant reductions elsewhere thanks to changes in diesel engines and greater use of electric vehicles.
Campaigners are not impressed with this conclusion.
"The measures that people have put forward seem fairly far fetched in terms of implementation," said Tim Johnson, from the Aviation Environment Federation.
"Ideas like taking diesel cars off the road are indeed potential solutions, but how do you get consumer change that makes that happen in the time scale?"
Perhaps the biggest environmental challenge of the expansion is the impact on climate change goals.
Existing UK legislation commits the government to cut CO2 levels by 80% of 1990 levels in 2050.
Image copyright CLEANAIRLONDON
Image caption In 2010 this image shows both central London and the area around Heathrow exceeding EU safe levels for nitrogen dioxide
Aviation right now accounts for around 6% of UK emissions. To meet the legal target, emissions from this sector would would have to stay below the 2005 mark.
This could be partly achieved with improvements in fuel and aircraft operational efficiency and the wider use of biofuels, says the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
They are calling on the government to publish a strategic policy framework for UK aviation emissions to limit them to 2005 levels.
To keep below the target, the CCC says that "this could imply limiting the growth in demand to around 60% above 2005 levels by 2050 (45% above current levels)."
That could mean the government having to cut airport capacity in regional airports or have other sectors of the economy make deeper emissions cuts.
"You only have so much carbon to go round," said Tim Johnson.
"The government will have to decide how best to distribute that, if they decide to use that for a new runway then there will have to be a hit elsewhere."
But speaking in the House of Commons, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling refuted the suggestion that the expansion of Heathrow was bad for the climate.
"We take the issue of climate change very seriously and this government has a whole raft of measures in place to address the issue, but we also have to make sure that we have the prosperity in this country to do things like funding our NHS and funding our old age pensions, and having a thriving modern economy with strong links around the world is an important part of that."
Other campaigning groups believe the lack of a clear plan on how to mitigate increases in CO2 make the third runway a very bad idea.
"With the government poised to sign the Paris climate agreement, it's decision to expand Heathrow - shortly after forcing fracking on the people of Lancashire - looks deeply cynical," said Andrew Pendleton, from Friends of the Earth.
"However this is only the first step on a long journey that will see communities, councils and climate campaigners continue the battle to reverse this misjudged and damaging decision."
One area in which there is a little dispute over the benefits of Heathrow's expansion is in regard to wildlife. The airport has committed to a £105m plan to transform a green area near the airport, into a haven four times the size of Hyde Park.
Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathBBC and on Facebook.
UK air pollution
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Jean-Pierre Leloir - Jazz Images
Harcover Book
French photographer Jean-Pierre Leloir (1931-2010) captured some of the most iconic images of jazz life in France from the 1950s to the 1960s. This book gives ample proof of Leloir’s amazing ability to immortalize performers and to capture candid moments at the airport, backstage, and in the dressing rooms of the most legendary Paris jazz and concert venues.
Among the multiple artists portrayed are Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, Sonny Criss, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Lee Morgan, Barney Wilen. Most of the photos are never seen before.
All photographs have been carefully selected from Leloir’s immense catalogue. Many had never been published before in any format. All photos demonstrate Leloir’s amazing ability to immortalize performers and to capture candid moments at the airport, in the dressing rooms and at the corridors of the most legendary Paris jazz and concert venues. “I loved the people I photographed, so I made myself as available, yet as discreet as possible,” he said. “I never wanted to be a paparazzi. I wanted them to forget my presence so I could catch those little unexpected moments.”
Special introduction by the legendary Quincy Jones. Prefaces by French jazz musicians Michel Legrand and Martial Solal, and by jazz historian and critic Ashley Kahn.
Text in English, French and Spanish
Jean Pierre Leloir was the most important photographer covering France’s musical scene during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Hard work and talent made an explosive combination: he did an in-depth coverage of the artists on stage and also built a unique body of work capturing them on their intimacy. To pay homage to Leloir’s work, Jazz Images has selected the most important classic jazz albums to match with his visual genius. The result is this groundbreaking collection consisting of 50 LPs and 50 CDs, beautifully presented all in fold open editions, showcasing the photographer’s work as the common denominator.
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr., also known as "Q", is an American record producer, actor, conductor, arranger, composer, musician, television producer, film producer, instrumentalist, magazine founder, entertainment company executive, and humanitarian.
Publisher: Brock Book
Photography / Subjects & Themes
(84353955016588)
SKU 84353955016588
Barcode # 84353955016588
Brand Brock Book
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch - SHM SACD
Howlin' Wolf - This Is Howlin' Wolf's New Album -
Janis Joplin Kozmic Blues - Coffee Mug
Eric Dolphy - Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 N
Birdland Album of the Month Club
Albert King / Born Under a Bad Sign Coffee Mug
Kim Hiorthoy - Let's Put It to Music: 20 Years of
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems
Lord Buckley - Blowing His Mind(and Yours Too)
Vintage Record Coasters
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You are here: Home > Resources & Training > Good Work for All: Raising confidence and ambition amongst frontline female workers at Royal Mail
Good Work for All: Raising confidence and ambition amongst frontline female workers at Royal Mail
After a company survey revealed a lack of confidence amongst female employees preventing them from seeking new responsibilities, Royal Mail decided to try and help frontline female workers to identify and overcome barriers to progression.
The company put in place The Springboard Women’s Development programme and 1,600 employees have now taken part. Royal Mail has seen a 10 per cent increase in women going into junior and middle management roles and also taking on further responsibilities within their workplace, A further 15 per cent have taken on roles as women union representations, workplace coaches and deputy managerial roles within the operation
Royal Mail is the UK’s sole designated Universal Postal Service Provider, connecting customers, business and communities across the country. We are proud to deliver a ‘one-price-goes-anywhere’ service on a range of letters and parcels to around 30 million addresses, six days a week. Royal Mail is one of the UK’s major employers, employing more than 140,000 people. One in every 185 jobs in the UK is provided by Royal Mail.
Royal Mail strives to employ a diverse mix of people that reflects the communities that we serve. We recognise that a diverse workforce is more likely to attract a wider customer base, have the ability to recognise new potential markets and to provide a better, more tailored service to meet individual needs.
In 2005, a company survey revealed a lack of confidence amongst female Royal Mail employees. It seemed that this issue was preventing them from seeking new responsibilities, which was reflected in the figures - at that time only 13% of managers in the business were women.
This is when Royal Mail began working with The Springboard Women’s Development programme developed by the Springboard Consultancy Ltd, a world-leading international training and development consultancy. The company wanted to help frontline female workers to identify and overcome barriers to confidence and progression. The programme is delivered over four one-day workshops in a three-month period and combines these sessions with ongoing self-paced learning via a workbook, support networks and female role models.
It aims to help women
Assess their current situation
Decide their next steps for personal and work development
Equip individuals with the positive attitude, confidence and skills to take these steps
Encourage participants to take responsibility for their own development
From 2005 to 2012 Royal Mail ran 50 Springboard programmes, reaching over 700 women, 10% of whom progressed to take up management roles, or Workplace coach roles and representative roles within our main union, the Communication Workers Union (CWU). Recognising the value delivered by the Springboard programme, in 2013 Royal Mail set a new target to support another 1,000 women through the programme, to continue to address the gender balance in frontline operational roles and junior managerial roles.
Since then, more than 1,600 women have been through the programme. As a result, Royal Mail has recently seen a rise of another 10% going into junior and middle management roles and also taking on further responsibilities within their workplace and a further 15% choosing roles as women union representations, workplace coaches and deputy managerial roles within the operation.
As part of the programme we now coach for CV writing and 60% the of the women involved now have a current CV. Royal Mail is looking at further development following the programme with coaching and mentoring alongside interview techniques training and access to the Royal Mail job site from their home computers/laptops and tablets.
The business benefits for Royal Mail are clear. 88% of the programme members say that they are now likely to remain at Royal Mail. Royal Mail is increasingly seen as a female-friendly organisation and is now one of The Times’ Top 50 Employers for Women.
Andreyana Ivanova, Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Royal Mail Group, explains why the programme is so important:
“The Springboard programme at Royal Mail aims to empower our female colleagues and provide them with the confidence to be able to achieve their full potential. Along with other targeted programmes, it supports our commitment to increasing women’s representation and their move to management levels in Operations. Springboard is not only about supporting our colleagues’ career aspirations but also their lives and passions outside work.”
£2m National Lottery funding for older workers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales
Good Work For All: Five steps companies should take to provide good jobs
The secret to innovation? Your workplace culture
Adnams - Understanding our water footprint
Elan Hair Design - The UK’s most eco-friendly hair salon
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Music of the Americas
The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series, recipient of the 2014 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, fulfills an essential part of the cultural mission of Americas Society, annually showcasing dozens of talented artists hailing from across the hemisphere. Presented year-round, the concerts include a wealth of diverse music and performers, ranging from contemporary classical to folk-roots to reggae and jazz. The primary venue for the series is Americas Society’s own Salon Simón Bolivar, an expansive room in the organization’s neo-federal-style headquarters. Music of the Americas has collaborated with other presenters, including Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the National Museum of the American Indian, and has also presented artists at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall and Symphony Space.
Music of the Americas seeks to further Americas Society’s mission by engaging artists and concertgoers alike in meaningful dialogue through a shared love of excellent music. The series aims to present artists that are both superb musicians in their own right and cultural ambassadors of myriad social and musical traditions, creating a vibrant space and a unique opportunity to hear distinctive and significant music.
Want to attend Music events for free and gain other membership benefits?
Sign up for an Americas Society membership today!
Connect with Music of the Americas:
ASSISTANT TO THE MUSIC DIRECTOR Gina Portale: gportale@as-coa.org | (212) 277-8379
PRESS CONTACT: mediarelations@as-coa.org
TWITTER @MusicAmericas FACEBOOK Music of the Americas
INSTAGRAM @MusicAmericas YOUTUBE Music of the Americas
The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concert series is made possible by the generous support of Presenting Sponsor MetLife Foundation.
The Spring/Summer 2019 Music program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Additional support is provided by the Export Promotion Agency of Costa Rica, PROCOMER, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music,
The Amphion Foundation, Inc., and The Augustine Foundation.
Since 1965, the Music of the Americas Concert Series has presented musical luminaries such as Plácido Domingo, Antonio Meneses, Mercedes Sosa, Hermeto Pascoal, Continuum Ensemble, Larry Harlow, Inti-Illimani, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, and many others.
All MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concerts take place at Americas Society’s headquarters and partnering organizations across New York City. By presenting diverse artists in an intimate and acoustically superb venue, the concert series brings together an ever-expanding urban audience with consistently high-caliber musicians from across the hemisphere, showcasing oft-underrepresented music and rendering it immediate and accessible. The events are open to the public and Americas Society members enjoy FREE admission. Click here to become a member today!
Music Department articles offering insight into the performances showcased by the Americas Society. Learn more about music from South and Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada.
Visit the Music of the Americas store to view and purchase releases from artists who have performed as part of the Music of the Americas concert series.
Music of the Americas has released its first ever CD available under the Live at Music of the Americas label! Recorded live at Americas Society in 2009 and produced by Americas Society's own Sebastián Zubieta, the CD features Eddy Marcano Cuarteto Acústico and is available for download on iTunes, Amazon, and other stores. Listen to excerpts, read the liner notes, and see photos from the 2009 concert at Americas Society below.
Americas Society Amazon Store
Yarn/Wire: New Music from Colombia
Friday, May 26, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
Two-piano, two-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire has their Americas Society debut in a program focusing on living composers from Colombia. ... Read More
Maithuna: Portrait of Mario Lavista
Monday, May 22, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
In collaboration with the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón, Music of the Americas presents the U.S. premiere of Mexican composer Mario Lavista’s Maithuna, among other works. ... Read More
Film screening: André Midani — An Insider’s Story of Brazilian Music
Thursday, May 11, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
Based on the autobiography of noted music executive André Midani, André Midani — An Insider’s Story of Brazilian Music explores Brazilian music throughout his career. ... Read More
Film screening: Redes
Thursday, May 4, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
A singular coming together of talents, Redes, commissioned by a progressive Mexican government, was cowritten and shot by photographer Paul Strand, with a recently recorded score by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. ... Read More
Armonía Concertada
Thursday, April 20, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
Argentine lutenist/vihuelist Ariel Abramovich and soprano María Cristina Kiehr, who form Armonía Concertada, imagine a lute and voice program drawn from existing polyphonic music, a common practice in the Renaissance. The concert features works by Juan Vásquez, Adrian Willaert, Jacques Arcadelt, and Mateo Flecha. ... Read More
Experiential Orchestra: Three Centuries of Latin American Music
Friday, April 7, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
Experiential Orchestra, led by James Blachly, highlights over three centuries of Latin American music for chamber orchestra. ... Read More
Meridionalis Tour: Havana and Quito
Saturday, April 1, 2017 - Wednesday, April 5, 2017 |
In April, Meridionalis tours to Latin America, performing choral music in Havana, Cuba, and as part of the Música Sacra festival in Quito, Ecuador. ... Read More
New Docta: Language of Discovery
Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - 7:00pm | New York
The New Docta Festival was cofounded in 2013 by Argentine musicians Solange and Sami Merdinian with French cellist Yves Dharamraj to bring classical music to their hometown of Córdoba. This performance spotlights their work in Argentina, featuring all three cofounders, along with pianist Philip Edward Fisher. ... Read More
Tribute to Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America
Thursday, March 2, 2017 - 7:00pm | Brooklyn
Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera, one of the 2016–2017 curators at Brooklyn's National Sawdust, assembles an all-star cast of musicians, including Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon’s trio alongside Argentine musician Pedro Aznar, in tribute to Argentine singer-songwriter Mercedes Sosa. ... Read More
Ars Longa: New York Debut
Sunday, February 26, 2017 - 4:00pm | New York
Cuban early music group Conjunto de Música Antigua Ars Longa de La Habana performs their New York debut with a program that draws on their 2013 CD “Gulumbá gulumbé. Resonancias de África en el Nuevo Mundo,” which highlights the African presence in Baroque music from the New World. ... Read More
Doug Fitch Video
More In: Music Notes
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University of Texas, Texas A&M open joint library space
Mike Kennedy Blogger | May 24, 2013
The Texas A&M University System and The University of Texas System have opened a Joint Library Facility at Texas A&M University’s Riverside Campus. The $6.3 million, 18,000-square-foot library facility will enable both university library systems to store print books and journals using high-density shelving, and minimize the physical requirements and costs of print storage. The building can accommodate more than a million books; the universities will make them available for use by other academic or medical institutions. The Riverside Campus is near Bryan on the former Bryan Air Force Base, about 10 miles northwest of the main Texas A&M campus.
Technology Transformation
University of Chicago unveils new library
New library to open at North Carolina State University
New library under construction at Grand Valley State University
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In the News: Elected Women Against the Burquini
Burkini : l’Association des femmes élues de l’Isère “lance un cri d’alarme” (Burkini: The Association of Elected Women of Isère Sounds the Alarm), ledauphine.com, 2019-07-06.
An association of elected women from the French region of Isère, which includes the city of Grenoble, has sounded the alarm about the burquini issue. Grenoble has been the scene of a recent push by Islamists and their allies to allow the burquini in swimming pools. In defiance of basic rules of hygiene, the Islamists demand the privilege of a religion exemption (although they and their allies disingenuously call it a “right”).
The association asserts that gender equality, although inscribed in the French constitution, is under threat. Attempts to impose veils and ultra-covering outfits in municipal swimming pools in defiance of regulations is an example of that threat.”
“Religion should be lived in the private sphere. Whenever it exhibits itself, it does so for political purposes.”
The elected women further assert that the purpose of these attacks is to destabilize and weaken the principles and laws of the Republic, which have allowed women to attain the status of full citizenship, equal to men. “Religion should be lived in the private sphere. Whenever it exhibits itself, it does so for political purposes.” The association calls for mayors and other local and national elected officials to be vigilant in exercising their duties.
The women of this association have understood that the campaign to impose the burquini has a purely political goal: to trivialize and normalize the practices promoted by political Islam with the purpose of weakening both secularism and women’s rights.
The word “burkini” is sometimes written “burqini” or “burquini” in order to clarify that this accoutrement promoted by Islamists is a close derivative of the burqa. Indeed, the burquini is an aquatic version of the burqa. It is a bathing burqa.
Laws Restricting Face-Coverings and Religious Symbols, Updated 2019-07-07.
In the News: Tunisia Bans Face Coverings in Public Buildings
Tunisia bans niqab in government buildings, France 24, 2019-07-06
Tunisia’s premier on Friday banned the niqab face covering in government offices, citing security concerns after attacks in the North African country. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed signed a government circular “banning access to public administrations and institutions to anyone with their face covered… for security reasons”, his office said.
The ban on the niqab, which covers the entire face apart from the eyes, comes at a time of heightened security following a June 27 double suicide bombing in Tunis that left two dead and seven wounded.
The niqab and other outward shows of Islamic devotion were not tolerated under the regime of longtime autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali but have made a comeback since he was toppled in Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. After bloody attacks in 2015 that targeted security forces and tourists, there were calls in Tunisia to re-impose the ban. A female suicide bomber, her face covered, wounded nine people, mainly police officers, in an October attack in downtown Tunis.
Tunisia bans face-covering veils in public institutions ‘for security reasons’ after terror attacks, Conrad Duncan, The Independent, 2019-07-06
In the News: Quebec is Secular!
An Historic Date and a Great Victory!
The National Assembly Adopts Bill 21
An Act respecting the laicity of the State
Quebec Becomes a Secular State!
In the News: Open Letter to the Prime Minister of New Zealand
Public Letter To the Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2019-03-31.
Given the importance of this petition, we reproduce it below in its entirety.
To the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
Mrs, We wish to send our deepest sympathies to you and your countrymen in the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorist attack. Having suffered, like so many other countries, from several terrorist attacks that have plagued us, we can deeply feel your pain and suffering, and send you our support in this difficult time.
However, we were puzzled by the response to this tragedy by you and your country citizens. You have chosen to express your sympathy for the Muslim victims by donning a hijab, which is widely (and we believe, rightly) considered a symbol of religious oppression.
While these actions have earned you wide-scale global media applause, they are also sowing a combination of misunderstanding and desolation among all people who fight against theocratic oppression. you have chosen to symbolize, represent and embody the Muslim religion by a so-called Islamic veil that is a proselyte symbol of inferiorization, marking women living in countries and communities governed by political Islam.
We understand that to express your solidarity with Muslims and to send a strong signal to the Muslim community of New Zealand, you wish to make a spectacular gesture. But why not do it in your name, as a human being in solidarity with his human brothers and sisters?
Why must you show your empathy by utilizing a symbol which is fundamentally liberticidal and sexist, as is demonstrated by the fate of the Iranian, Afghan or Saudi women who are forced to undergo it and who suffer the whip and prison when they refuse it? How to forget the murders of sad memory, the vitriolic attacks of Muslim women disfigured for life because they had refused the veil?
Whereas they are fighting this tool of oppression, you are asserting to the world the high symbolic value of the Islamic veil. What a shock for the Eastern women disavowed in their fight by Western women!
What a shock for those Muslim people who try to reform and secularize their religion by dissociating it from political Islamism, what a scandal for the ex-Muslims persecuted for having apostatized who are threatened with death, live protected and hidden, and bravely fight for the right to absolute freedom of conscience!
As you, a western woman enjoying the rights granted to women, are petitioned to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize while donning the hijab, remember the fate of Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Irani lawyer unjustly sentenced to 33 years in prison for fighting for the right of women to refuse the hijab. We understand you are put in a difficult position in a trying time. But the eyes of the world are upon you, and We urge respectfully you to consider the consequences of your actions on millions of persons.
In the News: AQNAL Writes to the Prime Minister of New Zealand
In the News: Betraying Women and Free Thought in the Name of Christchurch
To the attention of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, AQNAL, 2019-03-27.
Given the importance of this letter, we reproduce it below in its entirety.
To the attention of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
Madam Prime Minister,
It is with great sadness that we learnt of the tragedy that struck your Country resulting in the slaying of fifty New Zealand Muslims in the two mosques in Christchurch. A heinous crime that horrified the whole World. This dramatic ordeal that you share with your fellow citizens will take time and courage to overcome and start the healing process.
But no tragedy can justify ignoring universal values of equality and freedom. As citizens of Canada of Muslim faith and /or culture, we find it crucial to inform you of the disastrous fallout of the pseudo-religious parody that you exhibited along with women in your Country, no doubt because of ignorance, and as a sign of solidarity, wearing an Islamist and not a Muslim veil. This veil symbolises the de-facto inferioritization of women. In its most degrading form, it serves as a banner for Islamist Groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram and Chebab who kidnap, rape, murder and unscrupulously imprison women in the countries where they rule. Doing so, New Zealanders seem to be unconscious about an extreme Religious Right which instrumentalises women in advancing a totalitarian political agenda.
What about Solidarity with Muslim women who are struggling to free themselves from the oppression of the veil? How, in a country as egalitarian as New Zealand, can one choose to express compassion by wearing a symbol of women’s marginalization and sexual segregation? The most degrading is that this initiative emanates from women, who wear the veil symbolically for a few hours but who, in so doing, help to normalize misogynistic practices of which women are victim all their life.
Let’s recall some facts. The Islamic veil is not a requirement in the book of Islam, the Quran. It was imposed in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and spread in the Arab countries towards the end of the 1980s with the rise of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood organisation, Saudi Wahhabosalafism, and large financing by the petrodollars of the Saudi Monarchy and Gulf countries. The Islamic or Islamist Veil is associated with political Islam, and represents its means of proselytizing and its the most effective Territorial Marker.
There is no need to discuss the abuses committed by the various Islamist factions around the world, to impose their vision of an Islam full of hate and ressentment. Algerian women who have experienced the atrocities of a war waged by Islamists against civilians, many of whom were murdered because they refused to wear veils, are now marching in the streets of Algeria for demanding Democratic rule in their country, but also Equal Rights, Emancipation of women and the repeal of the Code de la famille, a set of social rules inspired by Sharia law.
How do you reconcile that while Iran lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh is sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 whip lashes for defending women who refuse to wear a veil, New Zealanders participate in normalizing the Islamic veil as symbol of Islam?
Madam Prime Minister, we appeal to your sense of responsibility to stop trivializing the veiling of women and girls. As our compatriot Tarek Fatah says, compassion with the fallen Muslims in Christchurch is an absolute duty, whether they are men or women, wearing a veil or not. Consenting to become a living bilboard for this symbol of political Islam is an unconsciousness towards the Islamic agenda.
It is by focusing on Universal Values of freedom and equality, beyond our religious differences and our philosophical convictions, that we can build solidarity between humans.
The Quebec Association of North Africans for Secularism (AQNAL)
Mohand Abdelli, retired engineer
Nora Abdelli, chemical engineer
Radhia Ben Amor, associative activist
Djemila Benhabib, political scientist and writer
Leila Bensalem, high school professor
Nawal Bouchareb, school organization technician at the CSDM
Fares Chargui, doctor of medicine, resident in Psychiatry
Ferid Chikhi, employment Consultant
Yasmina Chouakri, Consultant
Nadia El Mabrouk, professor at the Université de Montréal
Hassiba Idir, manager
Nacer Irid, engineer
Hassan Jamali, retired professor
Ali Kaidi, activist for secularism
Karim Lassel, organizational analyst
Leila Lesbet, special education technician
Nacera Zergane, financial advisor
Betraying women and free thought in the name of Christchurch massacres, Marieme Helie Lucas, Secularism is a Womens Issue, 2019-03-24.
In response to massacres perpetrated by extreme-right white supremacists in 2 mosques in New Zealand on March 15 2019, several symbolic actions took place that aimed at conveying to Muslims – who were attacked as such, since they were praying in the mosque when it happened – that they could count on their fellow citizens’ solidarity. New Zealand’s Prime Minister was praised the world over for her humane response to the massacres. While being moved by the generous intentions which motivated these symbolic actions, we nevertheless take distance from some of these which, in fact, will further increase the alas already prevaling confusion between personal religious faith and communal identity politics.
Here are two exemples.
New Zealand Prime Minister Ms Jacinda Ardern, followed by other officials (and then by ordinary citizens as well) saw it fit to wear a so-called Islamic head covering during their public functions. We believe that there were many other symbols that could have been chosen in order to comfort Muslim believers, than one which is contested the world over by women of Muslim heritage, – believers and unbelievers alike. Rather, it comforts fundamentalists in their efforts to gain political visibility through their wide spread promotion of the veil, thus also asserting their grip over Muslims and over Islam itself.
Meanwhile – under the same pretext of respect for Christchurch victims, – the Mount Royal University’s autorities in Calgary, Canada, just de-invited Mr Armin Navabi, an Iranian-Canadian ex-Muslim atheist, who was scheduled to deliver a talk a couple of days ago. Mr Navabi had been invited by the Atheist Society of Calgary. He was persecuted in his country of origin for being an atheist; he is the founder of Atheist Republic, an online news and information site designed to provide support to “non-believers around the world.” Said Navabi after being de-programmed:“ “What do they want? Do you want to have less conversation? Isn’t less conversation exactly what leads to people having extreme radical positions? I mean the less words exchanged between us, the more fists and bullets are going to exchange between people. Having more conversations is exactly what you need in the face of some tragedy like this”. That seems a pretty reasonable and dispassionate view, certainly not one which should be censored. De-programming Mr Navabi is clearly taking side against those of us who fight for freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, and for Muslim fundamentalists who deny us these rights. The University authorities hinted at the fact that they were pressured by students and staff.
Rather than solidarity with victims, in both these exemples we see, alas, government and intellectual authorities taking – witingly or un-witingly – a political stand in favour of the Muslim extreme-right ; a stand that is also conforting the fundamentalist claim to be the only ones who truly represent Islam, Muslim believers and all citizens of Muslim descent.
While indeed solidarity is very much needed, we call on well-meaning people to select other symbols when showing solidarity with the Christchurch massacre’s victims. Symbols which would not lead to ideological compromising with the Muslim far-right, under the pretext of fighting the anti-Muslims xenophobic far-right. One extreme right is not any better or worse than the other; both commit crimes against the lives and the fundamental human rights of people, women included. Both reinforce each other, the crimes committed by one legitimizing – in their own eyes – the crimes committed by the other. It would be a major disaster if the racist homicides perpetrated in Christchurch against Muslim believers would, in the end, benefit the Muslim extreme-right. Let’s make sure it does not happen.
In the News: Canton of Geneva Bans Religious Symbols
Geneva votes to ban religious symbols on public employees, Agence France-Presse, The Local (Switzerland), 2019-02-11.
Geneva residents on Sunday voted for a controversial new “secularism law”, which will among other things ban elected officials and public employees from wearing visible religious symbols. More than 55 percent of voters in the Swiss canton backed the law, final results showed,[…]
Teachers in Geneva are already banned from wearing visible religious symbols, including the hijab. The new text would extend this ban to elected officials and any local or cantonal public employees who comes in contact with the public.
Excellent news. We need similar legislation here in Quebec and Canada. In fact, all jurisdictions should apply a similar ban for all public servants while on duty, so that they display no partisan symbols other than symbols of the state which they represent.
In the News: FEMEN supports Zineb El Rhazoui, target of death threats after calling to defy Islam
FEMEN supports Zineb El Rhazoui, the journalist who receives death threats after calling to defy Islam.
SUPPORT ZINEB EL RHAZOUI!
Who will dare to be Zineb today?
Why is important to be Zineb El Rhazoui today, after all the predictable threats and insults of which she has become the target after appearing on television where she called on our society and political leaders to face Islam with humour and criticism, and to subject it to the laws of the republic.?
It will soon be four years since the #CharlieHebdo massacre astonished the French. Since then, there have been so many more tragedies perpretrated for the same cause, and beyond our borders as well, that it would be indecent to pretend to be surprised. […]
Facebook page of the FEMEN movement.
In the News: Google Software Reports Blasphemy and Heresy in Indonesia
Google Hosts Sharia Law App Enabling Muslims to Report Blasphemy and Heresy to the Police, Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media, 2018-12-12.
On December 7, 2018, the Google Play Store approved the latest version of “Smart Pakem,” an app that allows Muslims in Jakarta, the capital of the largest Muslim country on earth, to report violations of Sharia law such as blasphemy and even heresy. The app allows users to report people who practice unrecognized religions or unorthodox interpretations of Indonesia’s six officially recognized faiths: Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Protestant Christianity, and Roman Catholic Christianity.
According to Google’s translation on the Google Play Store, “Smart Pakem” intends “to make it easier to find information and manage religion, belief flow and community organizations in the jurisdiction of DKI Jakarta,” the capital of Indonesia. The app, which has more than 1,000 installs, claims to provide a list of “laws and regulations that regulate the activities of the flow of beliefs in the community.”
While most areas of Indonesia do not enforce the entirety of Sharia (Islamic law), the national criminal code prohibits blasphemy, which it defines as “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things.” Article 156(a) makes it illegal to “express feelings of hostility, hatred, or contempt against religion,” with a penalty of up to five years in prison.
As Laura Loomer reported at BigLeaguePolitics, Google’s vice president in Southeast Asia, Rajan Anandan, has not shown any resistance to the app. The National Secular Society (NSS) has protested the law in letters to Anadan. The organization’s chief executive, Stephen Evans, wrote that Google’s decision to stock the app was “incongruous with Google’s mission statement” and “runs directly contrary to the democratic ideals which Google says it stands for.” […]
While the latest version of “Smart Pakem” came out on December 7, the original version came out on November 25. The app was created by the Jakarta prosecutor’s office, which told Agence France Presse (AFP) it would help educate the public and modernize the reporting process. […] The app lists religious edicts and blacklisted organizations and will allow users to file immediate complaints, instead of submitting a written accusation to a government office.
Google is thus capitulating to religious fanaticism. Indonesia’s use of a short list of approved religions is obviously a violation of freedom of conscience. Furthermore, it is atheophobic, because non-belief is not approved.
In the News: Canadian Anti-Blasphemy Law Repealed
C-51, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Department of Justice Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act, 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, Parliament of Canada, Senate, 2018-12-13.
The Canadian Senate has just announced that the Canadian anti-blasphemy law, i.e. Section 296 of the Criminal Code, has finally been repealed. However, Motion M-103 which condemns so-called “Islamophobia” remains on the books.
Anti-Blasphemy Laws Tumble, but Islam Remains Unscathed
Criminal Code of Canada, Justice Laws Website.
296 – Blasphemous Libel
Motion M-103, a Major Step Towards the Recriminalization of Blasphemy
Motion M-103, Systemic racism and religious discrimination, Parliament of Canada, House of Commons, 2017-03-23.
In the News: NSS Opposes Formal Definition of “Islamophobia”
Home secretary urged not to adopt definition of ‘Islamophobia’, National Secular Society (NSS), 2018-12-09.
The National Secular Society has urged the home secretary to resist calls to adopt a formal definition of ‘Islamophobia’ which have been put forward by a parliamentary group. NSS chief executive Stephen Evans co-ordinated a letter to Sajid Javid on the subject after a high-profile reportfrom the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on British Muslims.
The APPG’s report recommended that the government define ‘Islamophobia’ as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. […]
Explaining his decision to write and coordinate the letter, Mr Evans said: “Racism and anti-Muslim bigotry need to be confronted, but proposals to promote the vague concept of Islamophobia seriously risk restricting public discussion and making matters worse. […]
The letter called the APPG’s definition “vague and unworkable” and said it “conflates hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims with criticism of Islam”. “While we believe that in a liberal secular society individuals should be afforded respect and protection, we are clear that ideas should not.”
“Far from combatting prejudice and bigotry, erroneous claims of ‘Islamophobia’ have become a cover for it. LGBT rights campaigners have been called ‘Islamophobes’ for criticising the views of Muslim clerics on homosexuality. Meanwhile, ex-Muslims and feminist activists have been called ‘Islamophobes’ for criticising certain Islamic views and practices relating to women. Even liberal and secular Muslims have been branded ‘Islamophobes’.”
The National Secular Society (NSS) in the UK has fortunately begun to question the use of the highly tendentious expression “Islamophobia.” However, the NSS fails in its letter to criticize the unacceptable conflation of race and religion which typically accompanies the use of this expression.
The NSS has, on several occasions, opposed bans on religious symbols or face-coverings such as the burkini or the niqab, but without specifying (to the best of our knowledge) where they might consider such bans to be justified, if anywhere.
One of the co-signers of the letter is Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, who apparently coined the phrase “regressive left” to describe those who claim to be leftists but nevertheless pander to reactionary ideologies such as cultural relativism and Islamism.
Islamophobia: There Is No Such Thing
NO to a Day Against “Islamophobia”
Islamophobia, What is Wrong About It
Rethinking “Islamophobia”
Banning Face-Coverings is Both Necessary and Beneficial, A Response to Stephen Evans of the NSS, August 2018.
In the News: Asia Bibi’s Lawyer at London Conference
Asia Bibi: Lawyer defies death threats over Christian’s case, Monidipa Fouzder, The Law Society Gazette, 2018-11-27.
The lawyer for a Christian woman who faced a death sentence for eight years after being convicted of blasphemy says he has no regrets about defending her – despite facing death threats himself. Last month Pakistan’s most senior judges overturned Asia Bibi’s death sentence, defying personal death threats and the promise by an Islamist political party to ‘paralyse the country within hours’ if Bibi was set free.
Bibi’s lawyer, Saif ul-Malook told an International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism in London on Sunday that, in his 38 years of practice, he had never heard of a situation ‘where a group of people come with such a demand that they will kill the highest constitutional court judges if the verdict does not come to their wishes’. ul-Malook stressed that it was a ‘small group of people in Pakistan, not Pakistan’.
Explaining the case, ul-Malook told the conference that Bibi was working in a field for £1 a week: ‘You can imagine what was her status. She had never gone to school… She cannot write her name.’ Bibi offered water to two Muslim girls who refused, which led to ‘hard words exchanged between them’. The imam of the village mosque called the district imams. After five days, Bibi was arrested.
The conference heard that ul-Malook worked on Bibi’s case for four years. Her appeal was heard in the Supreme Court on 8 October and judgment was reserved. The court’s 56-page judgment, overturning Bibi’s sentence, was published on 31 October.
The conference urged the UK government to grant Bibi protection and asylum. Its resolution supporting Bibi states: ‘Whilst Asia Bibi has been released on appeal in November 2018 after eight years on death row, her life is in danger and she is living in hiding. Islamist groups have been calling for her death as well as the death of her lawyer Saif ul-Malook and the judges who acquitted her […] Despite her urgent need for refuge, the UK Foreign Office has urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi political asylum in the UK out of safety concerns. This decision amounts to a gross violation of the very idea of asylum as a human right.’
Islam’s overwhelming obsession with blasphemy has caused and continues to cause great damage. The case of Asia Bibi and the protests by Islamists against her acquittal are a vivid and painful example of that fanatical obsession. We salute the courage of her lawyer Saif ul-Malook, the Pakistan Supreme Court judges who acquitted her, and her other supporters, in that embattled country, all of whom have risked their lives by standing up against the worst elements of political Islam. Already, two prominent Pakistani political figures have paid with their lives: Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and former Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, both assassinated in 2011.
2018 Resolution in Support of Asia Bibi, International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism, London, 2018-11-25.
British activists examine Shariah law, Pakistan’s Asia Bibi case, Adeel Khan, Deutsche Welle, 2018-11-26.
“The case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was recently freed from a blasphemy death sentence, was discussed at a conference in London, prompting activists and scholars to analyze Shariah law in general.”
The Betrayal of Asia Bibi, Hardeep Singh, Quillette, 2018-11-21.
European Muslims’ support for Asia Bibi falls short, Shamil Shams, Deutsche Welle, 2018-11-16.
“Islamic organizations in Germany and Britain have expressed support for the Pakistani woman who was recently freed from a blasphemy death sentence. However, experts say more Muslims should oppose the idea of blasphemy.”
In the News: Québécois Solidly Support Banning Religious Symbols
Nearly two-thirds of Quebecers support public-sector ban on religious symbols, poll finds, Jonathan Montpetit, CBC News, 2018-11-26.
Most Quebecers are in favour of banning public-sector workers from wearing religious symbols, according to a CROP poll released ahead of the first legislative session under a Coalition Avenir Québec government. […]
Premier François Legault indicated after last month’s election that he will seek to bar civil servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols such as the kippa and hijab. Not only would this apply to police officers, judges and Crown prosecutors, but also to school teachers, Legault said. […]
The CROP poll, taken between Nov. 14 and 19, estimated that 72 per cent of Quebecers supported banning visible religious symbols for judges, 71 per cent supported banning them for prosecutors and police officers and 65 per cent backed extending the ban to public-school teachers.
This is the lastest in a series of polls done over the years which indicate that the Quebec population is solidly in favour of secularism, including the necessary ban on religious symbols worn by public servants.
The graph indicates the percentage of those polled who are
strongly for, somewhat for, somewhat against, strongly against or express no opinion about
a ban on the wearing of religious symbols by
judges, police, crown prosecutors, prison guards and teachers.
Summary of poll results: CROP Poll: Opinions of Québécois about Secularism & Immigration
The CROP report: Questions sur la laïcité et l’immigration (Questions on Secularism and Immigration), CROP, 2018-11.
In the News: The Missionary and His Indoctrination
La bêtise religieuse (Religious Stupidity), Loïc Tassé, Journal de Montréal, 2018-11-25.
The attempt by John Allen Chau to convert the Sentinelese tribe was particularly stupid, illustrating once again the unhealthy role which religion plays in our societies.
Chau’s decision was stupid because his mere contact with that isolated island population could have decimated it. […] His action is inexcusable. Even from the point of view of a missionary, his behaviour was inappropriate. He should never have defied the laws of India which forbid visiting the island. […]
[…] in his case, religious belief was obviously a consequence of indoctrination. Indoctrination similar to that of radical Islamists who seek to convert the world using violence. Indoctrination like that of Hindu nationalists who refuse women entry into certain temples and who are prepared to kill to defend their beliefs.
What is extraordinary here is that practically no-one has discussed Chau’s indoctrination. Readers’ reactions have often been virulent. Many people condemn Chau. But who condemns those who put such ridiculous ideas of conversion and belief into his head? No-one dares to do so.
All this religious stupidity is unfortunately increasingly present in politics. Many people push the idea of freedom of conscience so far as to defend religious groups which indoctrinate their members with the most enslaving and deadly beliefs. This is unacceptable. That is the lesson which we must learn from the pathetic death of Chau.
[Translation: D.R.]
It is rare for the mass media to publish a text so lucid, so frank, so forthright, which denounces religious lunacy and all the harm it does. Bravo Monsieur Tassé !
In the News: Tunisia: Gender Equality in Inheritance Law
Tunisian cabinet approves controversial gender equality in inheritance law, Al Arabiya English, 2018-11-24.
The Tunisian cabinet has approved on Friday the law of gender equality in inheritance, to be discussed in the parliament dominated by Ennahda Movement before being effective in the country. The Tunisian president, Beji Caid Essebsi, had suggested the law in August 2017, on the occasion of national women’s day.
The controversial law entitles women and men an equal inheritance, disagreeing with the Qura’anic verse stating that males should inherit what two females should. The law will also ensure freedom of choice between following the constitution or the Sharia Islamic law.
In the News: Federal FGM Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
Posted on 2018-11-21 by jean.meslier Posted in In the News — 1 Comment ↓
Federal Ban on Female Genital Mutilation Ruled Unconstitutional by Judge, Pam Belluck, New York Times, 2018-11-21.
The case, the first to be brought under the 1996 law that criminalized female genital mutilation, has been closely followed by human rights advocates and communities where cutting is still practiced and whose members have moved in growing numbers to the United States and other western countries.
On Tuesday, Judge Bernard Friedman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that Congress did not have the authority to pass the law against female genital mutilation and he dismissed key charges filed against the doctors and removed four of the eight defendants from the case.
“As laudable as the prohibition of a particular type of abuse of girls may be,” he wrote, prosecutors failed to show that the federal government had the authority to bring the charges, and he noted that regulating practices like this is essentially a state responsibility.
Genital mutilation is a barbaric practice. If the federal law banning FGM is indeed unconstitutional, then that simply underlines the urgency of adopting similar legislation at the state level in all of the United States.
In the News: Religious Headwear to be Allowed in U.S. Congress
New Muslim congresswoman will seek to allow religious headwear in the House, AJ Willingham, CNN, 2018-11-19.
Last week, Democrats announced a proposal to end a rule that bans headwear on the House floor. Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim congresswomen, vocally supported the move on social media this weekend. […] Omar wears a religious headscarf, and under the current 181-year-old rule, a House member must be “uncovered” in order to address the floor, and cannot even enter the House “with his head covered.”
Granting this religious privilege is obviously a step backwards for the U.S. Congress. But what is worse is the naïveté and complacency of so-called liberals who support such religious accommodations. Worse still is their arrogance, their claim to be morally superior to those who oppose it.
In the News: Supreme Court Upholds Kirpan Ban in Legislature
Supreme Court upholds National Assembly’s ban on kirpans, The Canadian Press, CTV News Montreal, 2018-10-25
OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear the appeal of a Sikh man and woman who were prohibited from entering Quebec’s legislature while wearing kirpans. Thursday’s decision upholds previous decisions from the Quebec Superior Court and Quebec Court of Appeal that found the legislature had the right to establish its own rules.
Balpreet Singh and Harminder Kaur did not want to part with their ceremonial daggers as they headed into a legislature hearing to submit a brief in January 2011.
The pair are members of the World Sikh Organization of Canada […]
Thus, it is possible to ban religious symbols in some contexts. And the sky will not fall!! However, Sikh fundamentalists will keep up the pressure in an effort to maintain their religious privileges. They must not be allowed to win.
In the News: ECHR Condemns “Defaming” Muhammed
Defaming Prophet Muhammed not free expression: ECHR, Such defamation could stir up prejudice and risk religious peace, says European Court of Human Rights, Anadolu Agency, 2018-10-25
STRASBOURG – Defaming the Prophet Muhammed “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate” and “could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace” and thus exceeds the permissible limits of freedom of expression, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, upholding a lower court decision. […]
According to a statement released by the court on Thursday, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court found that these statements implied that Muhammad had pedophilic tendencies, and in February 2011 convicted Mrs. S. for disparaging religious doctrines. […]
The court held “that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.” […]
Thus, the court grants priority to religious doctrines and to so-called “religious peace” to the detriment of freedom of expression. Very disturbing. This is the equivalent of banning blasphemy.
In the News: Poland: KŁF Denounces Judgment Against NIE for Blasphemy
Statement of the Kazimierz Łyszczyński Foundation on the judgment concerning the caricature of Jesus in the weekly “NIE”, Kazimierz Łyszczyński Foundation, 2018-10-16.
Jesus is amazed because statistics show that believers are leaving the faith.
The Kazimierz Łyszczynski Foundation expresses its outrage over the unjust judgment concerning publication of the caricature of Jesus in the weekly newspaper “NIE” (NO). The fine of 120,000 pln (more than US$30,000) plus legal costs total 150,000 pln, which is many times higher than any fine ever ordered by a court for the offense of religious feelings (article 196 of Penal Code).
The judgment’s reasoning is bizarre, because it is difficult to find any criticism of an object of religious worship, expressed in an “abusive, derogatory and degrading” way, when we look at a gentle cartoon depicting an amazed Jesus. Such an interpretation was given to this law by the Constitutional Court in 2015 on the request of another “blasphemer” Dorota Rabczewskiej (Doda) to examine the conformity of article 196 with the Constitution.
It is therefore an unfair judgment and a disproportionate punishment even if we assume the decision of the Constitutional Court to be fair. However, from the atheist viewpoint, it is difficult to consider this law to be fair and in conformity with article 25 (2) of the Constitution, as pointed out by many experts. It is a scandal that while practically all European countries are getting rid of this bastard of medieval canon law (i.e. United Kingdom, Denmark, the upcoming referendum in Ireland), the Polish state in alliance with the Church try to return Poland to the darkness of a bygone era.
The adoption of this law in 1997 was inconsistent with democracy, while its current application is a blatant mockery of democracy.
It is a political judgment, which aims not only to condemn the independent satirical and anticlerical magazine to bankruptcy and to provoke a “chilling effect,” but also to intimidate both media and society. We shall not let Polish law become an instrument of religious oppression as is the case for the Shiite regime of the Ayatollahs or the Sunni theocracy in Saudi Arabia! We shall not allow the state authorities to condemn free media to death, acting like the fundamentalist attackers of Charlie Hebdo!
Regardless of one’s sympathy or antipathy for Jerzy Urban and his weekly “NIE” we call for the defense of freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of the media, because without them there is no democracy.
Jerzy Urban, owner and chief editor of “NIE”
In the News: Nadia El-Mabrouk: Secularism is Necessary for the Emancipation of Women
Dans un monde réel près de chez vous (In a Real World in your Neighbourhood), Nadia El-Mabrouk, La Presse, 2018-10-11
For Nadia El-Mabrouk, secularism is a the first and foremost condition necessary for the emancipation of women and development.
While the former Miss Irak Tara Fares and other Iraqi women have been murdered for daring to defy the rules of the patriarchy, by appearing in public in Baghdad wearing jeans, here in Quebec, some people would have us believe that the Islamic veil is a symbol of freedom.
In Morocco, on September 15, women marched without veils, in silence and with their heads held high, to claim their right to public space without aggression or harassment. Meanwhile, here in Quebec, in one of the most egalitarian countries anywhere, Ève Torres, the veiled candidate of the Québec solidaire party, claimed to have adopted the veil as a form of protection. Meanwhile, anyone who questions the Islamic veil is accused of “Islamophobia.”
The most bizarre case is that of Jamil Azzaoui, a singer of Moroccan origin who was a candidate for the Green Party in the recent elections, but was expelled because of his friendship with the secular activist Djemila Benhabib! Have secular Muslims become pariahs in Quebec? Have they become invisible?
We are beginning to see pressure groups react to the CAQ’s secularism plans with the same strategy of vilification and demonisation which they once applied to the Parti québécois. Will they claim, once again, that secularism is a program which is racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim? But as Ali Kaidi of the Association québécoise des Nord-Africains pour la laïcité (AQNAL: Quebec Association of North-Africans for Secularism) explains, racism is rather the refusal to discuss secularism with Muslims, the denial that they are incapable of undertanding it, and that secularism is incompatible with their religious and cultural values. The real racism is to condemn Muslims to isolation and captivity in their community.
In the News: Profs Against Religious Symbols
Des enseignantes contre les signes religieux (Teachers Against Religious Symbols), Yves Poirier, Journal de Montréal, 2018-10-10
The new premier of Quebec, François Legault, and his CAQ party, have received the support of several public school teachers. Several teachers orginally from Algeria and now living and working in Quebec have expressed their support for a ban on religious symbols worn by public servants, such as themselves, in a position of authority. These employees of the Quebec state have a similar opinion of the veil, the kippa and the crucifix: they should not be worn by school teachers while on duty.
In the News: Djemila Benhabib Calls for Decisive Action on Secularism
Laïcité: le nouveau gouvernement doit agir avec rigueur et diligence (Secularism: The New Government Must Act With Rigour and Diligence), Djemila Benhabib, leNouvelliste, 2018-10-06
Djemila Benhabib is a writer,
secular activist and recipient of the
Prix international de la laïcité 2012.
Djemila Benhabib urges the new Quebec government of François Legault and his CAQ party to act with rigour, decisiveness and consistency. In particular, they must not be distracted by the anti-secular forces who have already begun to mobilise against the government, as if planning a putsch!
This long debate must be resolved by adopting legislation to implement a truly secular state. As for religious symbols worn by state employees, to ban them will establish parity between political convictions (whose symbols are already banned) and religious, spiritual and philosophical beliefs. Thus, the requirement of political neutrality will be extended to include religious neutrality.
Given the strong majority which it won in the recent election, the new government has a solid mandate to proceed. It must act decisively where the Parti québécois failed—and where the Quebec Liberal Party had neither the courage nor the will to act.
Secularism puts believers and non-believers on an equal footing. It applies the same requirements to both the majority and minorities.
In the News: Legault Advances Secularism Measures
François Legault would invoke notwithstanding clause to ban hijabs from civil service, Benjamin Shingler, CBC News, 2018-10-02.
Quebec’s premier-designate says he is prepared to invoke the notwithstanding clause to enforce a prohibition on any public employee from wearing a religious symbol such as a hijab or kippa in the workplace.
“I think that the vast majority of Quebecers, they would like to have a framework where people in an authority position must not wear a religious sign,” Legault said.
Legault said Tuesday he would offer those affected, including teachers, “jobs in offices for people who want to keep wearing a religious sign.” His pledges to ensure the religious neutrality is one of several significant changes Quebecers can expect under a CAQ government.
Almost immediately after being elected on October 1st, the new premier of Québec, François Legault, leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) is already acting decisively on secularism issues, promising to ban religious symbols worn by public servants in positions of authority, i.e. judges, prosecutors, police, prison guards and teachers. Furthermore, he is committed to invoking the notwithstanding clause if necessary to make sure that such legislation cannot be struck down by the courts. These secular measures are widely supported by Quebeckers.
La CAQ veut imposer la laïcité de l’État (The CAQ Would Impose State Secularism), Alain Laforest, Journal de Montréal, 2018-08-19.
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Home › Blog 060: Gay Marriage and Hate Speech, Part II
Blog 060: Gay Marriage and Hate Speech, Part II
Posted on 2015-07-03 by jean.meslier Posted in — No Comments ↓
This is a continuation of Part I: Hate Speech Legislation in Canada
Part II: Hate Speech Legislation in Canada
David Rand
Considering the danger inherent in hate propaganda legislation, it is obviously important to make such legislation as fair and reasonable as possible. Canada’s law has the merit of distinguishing appeals to genocide from less serious forms of hate speech, and it provides for greater penalties for the former. However the same law has at least one major flaw: its religious exception. Indeed, §319 lists several “Defences” which provide impunity; in particular, §319(3)(b) states that no conviction will be made “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.” In other words, religiously motivated hate speech is apparently not prosecutable. Thus, even in Canada, the statements discussed above would probably not be prosecutable because they are based on religious belief, with the possible exception of the pastor’s call for killing gays, which could be interpreted as advocating genocide.
The religious exception in Canada’s hate propaganda legislation is especially disturbing given that hate speech is very often based on religion. Indeed, of all causes, religion may be the primary motivator of hate speech.
The religious exception in Canada’s hate propaganda legislation is especially disturbing given that hate speech is very often based on religion. Indeed, of all causes, religion may be the primary motivator of hate speech. Consider the misogyny and homophobia actively promoted by at least the fundamentalist tendencies within the three monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as other religions. Consider fundamentalist Islamists who malign and persecute women who refuse to wear the veil. Consider the use of scriptures such as the bible or the quran to legitimize slavery. Consider the religiously motivated demonization of atheists, apostates, dissidents and adherents of competing religions.
Now enter the Quebec Liberal Party and its recently proposed legislation: draft Bill 59 which would “prevent and combat hate speech and speech inciting violence.” First the good news: after a quick reading I could find no religious exception in draft Bill 59. If it is adopted, could we envisage the possibility of a complaint to ban distribution of any bible containing the book of Leviticus because it constitutes hate speech against homosexuals? And while we are at it, would it be possible to lodge a complaint with the federal human rights commission, seeking a similar ban, based on the idea that Leviticus advocates genocide (given that only §319 contains the religious exception, while §318 which bans advocating genocide does not)?
However there is some seriously bad news as well: draft Bill 59 contains provisions which would allow the Quebec Commission (Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse or CDPDJ) to launch an investigation into allegedly hateful speech, directed against any of the groups identified as prohibited grounds for discrimination, without having received a complaint, i.e. on its own initiative. Furthermore, the CDPDJ would have the power to ban such speech by court order during an investigation, before it is completed! These powers appear draconian, an invitation to abuse of power.
Consulting the action plan against “radicalization” (La radicalisation au Québec : agir, prévenir, détecter et vivre ensemble) which the Couillard government released alongside Bill 59, we find no reassurance. The plan fails to address the problem of Islamist rhetoric which nourishes jihadism. There is no mention of fundamentalism, yet “Islamophobia” is mentioned repeatedly in association with racism and as if it were the primary example of hate speech. Clearly the authors of the document are obsessed with “Islamophobia” and tend to confuse it with racism, which is irrational because Islam is a religion, not a race. One can quite legitimately be concerned about the dangerous nature of a religion without being prejudiced against some particular ethnic group. Indeed, the document evidently blames radicalization on “prejudice” in general and “Islamophobia” in particular, while not even mentioning the obvious cause which is the extremist politico-religious ideology of Islamism. This is completely backwards: if prejudice against Muslims exists, it is caused by Islamist radicalism more than the other way around.
Draft Bill 59 is a threat to freedom, because it is roughly equivalent to an anti-blasphemy law at the provincial level… It is legislation which can be used to censor criticism of religion…
Does the Couillard government really care about the problem of hate speech, if indeed it is a problem, or are they more concerned about garnering votes by currying favour with Islamists — who would like us to believe that they represent Muslims in general — and with the numerous multiculturalists who are the dupes of those Islamists? Take a look at this graph of police-reported hate crime in Canada in 2012 and 2013, as compiled by Statistics Canada. According to that data, blacks, Jews and gays are targets of hate crime far more often than Muslims. It must also be pointed out that, during the controversy over the PQ’s Charter of Secularism, Islamists and multiculturalists themselves indulged in what can only be called hate propaganda against secularists by repeatedly making ridiculous accusations of racism, xenophobia and intolerance when what we were proposing was a public service free of religious interference. Clearly the PLQ does not care about that; on the contrary they got themselves elected by pandering to it!
Draft Bill 59 is a threat to freedom, because it is roughly equivalent to an anti-blasphemy law at the provincial level (whereas what is required is to repeal the federal anti-blasphemy law). It is legislation which can be used to censor criticism of religion in general and whose intent, judging from the accompanying action plan, is to stifle criticism of Islam in particular.
In conclusion, both the Christian homophobes who lament the recent US Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, and the Islamists who complain about “Islamophobia” at every occasion, are like spoilt children determined either to maintain an existing religious privilege, i.e. a restricted definition of marriage, or to gain a religious privilege, that of inundating public spaces, including state institutions, with ostentatious symbols of their ideology. They both seek to “own” their target. And they both attempt to mislead the public by using the concept of “religious liberty” as a misnomer for that coveted privilege.
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NJSIAA Eyes Raising Member Dues, Tournament Fees
by Paul Steinbach
As expected, New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association finance director Colleen Maguire unveiled potential increases to membership dues and tournament fees Wednesday during the Directors of Athletics Association of New Jersey state conference in Atlantic City.
If approved, membership dues would climb from $2,150 to $2,500 for all schools beginning in 2020-21, according to northjersey.com. The fee for a golf team that qualifies for the state tournament will rise from $85 to $150. Tennis and bowling teams would have fees rise from $80 to $120. For the individual bowling, cross country and tennis tournaments, fees would rise to $20 per athlete. The NJSIAA is unable to charge for attendance at certain state championships, and attendance is trending downward in others.
Other sports would see tournament fees upped to $90, with the current standard for most being $80. Maguire singled out golf as needing a large increase because of the difficulty and expense of finding courses to host NJSIAA events.
From AB: As Attendance Falls, How Much to Charge for HS Sports?
Sixty percent of the NJSIAA’s revenue comes from dues, tournament fees and ticket prices, northjersey.com reported. The NJSIAA has been limited in its ability to raise any of those because of legislation initiated by John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester) in 2010. By law, those fees can’t increase more than one percent over the Consumer Price Index.
However, New Jersey Commissioner of Education Dr. Lamont Repollet has the power to implement changes he deems necessary. Repollet was present for McGuire's presentation Wednesday and is expected to decide whether to approve the changes next month.
"Hopefully in April we can hear," Maguire said. "I want to get it out as soon as possible to the school administrations."
Maguire added that this proposal is preferable to cutting staff or sports. The NJSIAA currently offers championships in 32 different sports, having just added girls wrestling. The state ranks ninth in the nation in terms of high school sports participation, but the NJSIAA operates with a smaller budget (by at least $1 million) than two schools below New Jersey in the participation rankings.
"I would hope people understand, it's going to be 2020 and it's been 10 years where [prices] have been fixed," Maguire said. "They also know that their conference fees and entrance fees for county tournaments are a lot more. I hope they appreciate that we need to spread our issues across all our member schools."
Tags: New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association NJSIAA state tournaments participation fees
Paul Steinbach is Senior Editor of Athletic Business.
Following Death in Family, Lacrosse Team Forfeits Game
Members of the Pascack Hills High School girls' lacrosse team decided to forfeit their New Jersey state quarterfinal game against Mahwah on Friday afternoon, after the death of a Pascack player's family member that morning.
Wrestling Ref Readies Suit Following Dreadlocks Controversy
The wrestling referee at the center of what became a national controversy has reportedly taken the first steps toward filing a lawsuit for defamation and emotional distress.
As Attendance Falls, How Much to Charge for HS Sports?
The California Interscholastic Federation will raise sports fees the next two years in response to declining attendance at high school championship events, and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association may soon follow suit.
NJSIAA to Require Student-Athletes View Opioid Video
Beginning next fall, high school student-athletes in New Jersey — and the parents of players under 18 — will be required to watch a video raising awareness that high school athletes face a higher risk of becoming addicted to prescription pain medication.
Officials at East Carolina University unanimously approved alcohol sales at athletic events, which they say will proceed alongside a push to promote responsible drinking.
College hockey in the state of Alaska faces unprecedented uncertainty, with budget cuts and conference realignment threatening the future of the sport at Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Fairbanks.
The summer recreation program in Gardner, Mass., has relocated to Gardner High School for the first time ever, and the program's administrator — who happens to double as both the school's athletic director and the town's recreation director — is calling the move a success.
District Settles Softball Gender Discrimination Suit
A Georgia school district has agreed to provide equitable funding to girls’ and boys’ sports as part of a settlement agreement of a federal lawsuit of alleged gender discrimination.
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CATCH THE BUZZ – President Donald Trump Calls Climate Change A Hoax, But Ag Crops Will Suffer
By: Alan Harman
(NOAA photo)
Climate change promises rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, rangeland wildfires, and heavy downpours that will increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the United States.
That’s the bottom line in a National Climate Assessment from the U.S. government that says increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality, and changes in extreme events in the U.S. and abroad threaten rural livelihoods, sustainable food security and price stability.
President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, promptly dismissed the 1,600-page report prepared by 300 scientists as a worse-case scenario.
But the researchers say Earth’s climate is changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization.
They say this presents challenges to sustaining and enhancing crop productivity, livestock health, and the economic vitality of rural communities.
“While some regions (such as the Northern Great Plains) may see conditions conducive to expanded or alternative crop productivity over the next few decades, overall, yields from major U.S. crops are expected to decline as a consequence of increases in temperatures and possibly changes in water availability, soil erosion, and disease and pest outbreaks,” the report says.
Increases in temperatures during the growing season in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in agricultural productivity.
Extreme heat conditions are expected to lead to further heat stress for livestock that can result in large economic losses for producers.
“Climate change is also expected to lead to large-scale shifts in the availability and prices of many agricultural products across the world, with corresponding impacts on U.S. agricultural producers and the U.S. economy,” the report says.
“These changes threaten future gains in commodity crop production and put rural livelihoods at risk.”
The report offers adaptation strategies for agriculture.
These include altering what is produced, modifying the production inputs, adopting new technologies and adjusting management strategies.
“However, these strategies have limits under severe climate change impacts and would require sufficient long- and short-term investment in changing practices,” the report says.
Climate change is already being felt – more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events – as well as changes in average climate conditions.
These are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.
Regional economies and industries that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable.
The geographic range and distribution of disease-carrying insects and pests including ticks that carry Lyme disease and mosquitoes that transmit viruses such as Zika, West Nile, and dengue, are expected to widen.
Extreme weather events are seen increasingly disrupting energy and transportation systems, threatening more frequent and longer-lasting power outages, fuel shortages, and service disruptions, with cascading impacts on other critical sectors.
“While mitigation and adaptation efforts have expanded substantially in the last four years, they do not yet approach the scale considered necessary to avoid substantial damages to the economy, environment, and human health over the coming decades,” the report says.
Ag CropsChinese HoaxClimate ChangeCommodity Crops
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Sabine Creek Honey Farm
by- Kim Flottum The city of McKinney, Texas, is north and a tad east of Dallas and sits smack in the middle of Collin…
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Underland Wine & Music Fest
Back in 2013 when we choose the name Besarabia for our group (Besarabia was the name of a region in the Southeast of Europe, know for it’s wonderful Klezmer music, that had disappeared) we couldn’t have imagined that 6 years later we would be invited to play at the Underland Fest, a very successful festival of music and wine in Cricova, Moldova (exactly the zone that used to be called Besarabia!). It’s a festival that they celebrate every year in the underground winery that is 120 km long. The winery is a converted limestone mine which goes down as deep as 100 metres below ground and is the perfect place to store wine and, of course, hold a very special festival there!
Theatre, traditional Moldavian music, pop music, folk, indie, a craft market, wine tasting … and Besarabia from Valencia; with our sound, inspired by the land and the public that welcomed us with such enormous enthusiasm.
But before the festival we had to present our music on “Prima Ora”, the most famous morning TV show in the Republic of Moldova, and later there was a radio interview during the sound check at the stage. In this link you can see part of the TV interview and the piece that we interpreted live, very early in the morning!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJKYZGDrKs&t=289s
An unforgettable experience for Bessarabia. It was as if the day we thought of naming ourselves as a group Besarabia, we dreamt of playing in this distant place …. and feel at home.
Here are some images captured during the trip:
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Below, you'll find a list of the terms found in the novel that don't fit into any of the other encyclopedia categories.
Pilot slang for enemy aerospace craft.
Blanked
Pilot slang for killed or destroyed. In her last sortie, Brooke blanked four bandits.
Slang for exobeing (alien). See "exobeing" for more details. By definition, the prefix "exo" means something outside of or external to something else. For example, an exoplanet is a planet outside of Earth's solar system.
Exobeing
The 23rd century term for alien or extraterrestrial. Centuries ago, the word "alien" was used to refer to life outside of Earth's solar system. Through overuse of the term "alien" in fiction, and with increased knowledge of other solar systems, the term "alien" gradually took on a different meaning. In the 23rd century, when someone uses the term "alien," they're specifically referring to fictional extraterrestrial life portrayed in books and vidsims (interactive holographic movies). An "exobeing" is a real extraterrestrial life form and typically denotes an intelligent life form in colloquial speech.
An exoplanet is a planet outside of Earth's solar system. See "exo" for details.
The prefix "extra" means outside of or external to something else. So, an extrasolar threat is a threat from outside of the solar system.
The 23rd century term for data channel or stream. A feed is a continuous stream of data. Marie checked the news feeds for her latest scoop.
Fruity Planets
A delicious breakfast cereal consisting of blinking marshmallows shaped like planets and other celestial objects. The closest 21st century equivalent is Lucky Charms.
Acronym for Intrasolar Military Police.
Jovian is an adjective that refers to anything related to the planet Jupiter. The Jovian system consists of Jupiter and its moons, just like the Terran system is comprised of Earth and Luna (The Moon). When someone refers to someone as as "Jovian," they mean that the person in question is from the Jovian system.
Luminosity, Project
Project Luminosity is the U.N.'s multi-tiered approach to implementing phase (faster-than-light) technology. The tiers are:
1) Roll out FTL communications systems to key U.N. installations
2) Build, test, and fly unmanned FTL probes
3) Build, test, and fly the first manned FTL spacecraft (the phase shuttle). Train and select qualified pilot candidates.
4) Build, test, and fly the first manned phase fighter (the PF-1 Quasar)
5) Mass produce phase fighters and install phase drives in all U.N. spacecraft
Obaa-chan
Japanese for grandmother.
Pilot slang for a team member, ally, or any friendly force.
Separatist
A term ascribed to political parties, geograhic regions, and entire nations and colonies that have chosen to secede from their parent nations or leave the U.N. More extreme separatist groups seek to acquire antimatter weaponry in order to ensure their independence. Separatist militias acquire patchwork star fighter craft and other weapons on the black market. The number of separatists is increasing exponentially, and the separatist movement threatens to destroy the solar economy and usher in all-out war. As far as the U.N. Secretary-General is concerned, the word separatist is synonomous with terrorist.
An attack from a defensive position. In 23rd century speech, sortie has become synonymous with "mission" or "assignment." After all, U.N. Aerospace Defense is a institution for defense, not offense.
A U.N. spacecraft carrier. Terminus is the Jovian (Jupiter) system flagship.
The proper name given to the phase shuttle, the first crewed faster-than-light spacecraft. Viking is named after the 20th century space probe of the same name. The naming of Viking also pays tribute to the Norse Vikings who first discovered the American continents.
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Meaning of Numbers in the Bible
The Number 666
Biblical Meaning of Numbers
12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20
21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25, 27, 28, 29 - 30, 31
33, 34 - 40 - 42 - 44 - 50, 65 - 70 - 120 - 153
200, 390 - 400, 430 - 444 - 490 - 666 - 1000
The Meaning of Numbers: The Number 666
As anyone who is a new Bible student quickly learns, the symbolism of six hundred sixty six (666) is derived from the number and mark of the Beast Power discussed in the book of Revelation.
The number 666 symbolizes the perfection of man's overall system that is separated from God and under the constant influence of Satan the devil. Six in the Bible represents, by itself, incompleteness or imperfection, as it is one less than seven (which symbolizes completeness). Man's system on earth is made up of three parts, each represented by a six in the numeric 666.
The first six of the number 666 represents the perfectly false religions of man under Satan's lead. The devil is the god of this world, and allowed to deceive mankind, until the return of Jesus Christ (2Corinthians 4:3 - 4). The second six is for the deceived false governments of this world. The third six of 666 is symbolic of mankind's self-centered economic system.
Why did the devil attack God?
How powerful is Satan's army?
What is the Mark of the Beast?
The number 666 represents the world and all that it does to appease and gratify human nature. The book of 1John (written by the apostle John who also wrote Revelation) contains an often-overlooked set of three verses that uses a subtle form of 6. This hidden form of six, found in the total times the word 'world' is used, warns believers to separate themselves from man's system which is soon to DIE (John 2:15 - 17).
Appearances of the number six-hundred sixty-six
In order to show that the book of Revelation was inspired, Ireneaus (120 - 202 AD), an early church apologist, noted that he had consulted the 'most approved and ancient copies' of Revelation for verification of this mystical numeric.
How is the number 666 related to wealth?
King Solomon, after assuming the throne of Israel upon his father David's death, soon became wealthy. Although money streamed to him due to the heavy taxation of the Israelites (see 1Kings 4:24), it was the gold that came to him through a variety of other ways that made him the richest man alive. Every year he received 666 talents of gold (1Kings 10:14 - 15), a figured confirmed by the first century historian Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 8, Chapter 7).
Additional info on the Biblical Meaning of 666
Three people in the Bible stand out as special adversaries of God and his people. They are Goliath the giant who fought King David, King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonian Empire and the End Time Antichrist. Each, in one way or another, has the mark of this special numeric.
Goliath, who fought David when he was quite young, had a height of 6 cubits, had 6 pieces of armor, and his spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron (1Samuel 17:4 - 7). Nebuchadnezzar, the great King of Babylon, set up a "golden image" in the plain of Dura. He commanded all who he ruled over to worship it or else be thrown into a furnace of fire. The idol was 60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide (Daniel 3:1). The last special adversary is the Antichrist, whose name numbers to 666 (Revelation 13:18).
Did God create the devil?
Who or what are false Christs?
How is Satan's head bruised by Christ?
Biblical names used for demons
9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15
16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22
65 - 70 - 120 - 153 - 200
490 - 666 - 1000 - 144000
Number in Scripture:
Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance
Some information on the
meaning of the number 666 derived from
The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, Second Edition
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News Spotlight | Contact Us | Sign In | Register
James L. German
Obituary (New York Times)
Biography (prabook.com)
2016 tribute by Eberhard Passarge (member access)
Summary of 2016 tribute
The Bloom’s Syndrome Association is an international family support and patient advocacy organization for persons affected by Bloom's syndrome—a rare genetic disorder with major medical complications, of which cancer is the most prominent. The Association comprises persons known to have a diagnosis of Bloom's syndrome, their families and friends, medical and scientific researchers, healthcare professionals, educators, and other supporters.
The mission of the Association is to foster interactions among its members, so that they might learn from and support one another; to raise funds for research to advance treatments and a cure for Bloom’s syndrome; and to raise public awareness about the syndrome and its importance to worldwide cancer research.
The Bloom’s Syndrome Association (BSA) is a chartered, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization supported by member contributions, corporate grants and sponsorships, and outright gifts. Donations are 100% tax-deductible. The Association's Employer Identification Number (EIN) is: 80-0813615.
More about the BSA
"It is a misconception that rare disease research only helps a small number of patients. Finding a treatment for a rare condition often informs treatment for a more common disease."
Jakub Tolar, M.D., PhD., Director, Stem Cell Institute, University of Minnesota
Contact the BSA | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Disclaimers
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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed,” Mitchell continued.
He told the crowd, using a King quote, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” To truly pay tribute to King’s life and work, Mitchell told the people they must follow King’s lead and do the work that he did, be the voice for the voiceless and reach out to others and lend a hand ... all to make a difference.
Mitchell encouraged the people who sat in his audience to do things like write a check to the United Negro College Fund, make a presence in the life of a child, or to use their lifestyle as an example to others.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.
The Rev. Damon Mitchell, pastor of St. Luke’s A.M.E. Church, East St. Louis
Speaking to the violence that is occurring, Mitchell said, “We’ve fallen in love with violence. I don’t understand people who share videos of violence. There’s nothing cute about somebody being beaten.” Mitchell said, citing the violence cast upon Jesus.
“Like Jesus, we all have a cross to bear,” Mitchell told the people. “When people need help, we ought to help them,” Mitchell said.
“Where is the church in the face of injustice and all that is going on? We’re busy building our own empire instead of helping people,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell also recognized the outgoing 44th president, Barack Obama, and the work he did to make a difference.
Ulysses Little, one of those in the audience, said the message was “thought-provoking.”
“He used the analogy of lifting Jesus up because that’s what Jesus was about ... lifting people. All Jesus did was for humanity,” Little said.
Keenon Hamburg, 11, a sixth-grader at Sister Thea Bowman, was delighted to talk about what King means to him.
”He’s a great man because he thought black people should be able to do what white people can do and he fought for equal rights for everybody. Everybody is equal,” Keenon said.
Taylor Ballard, 17, a student at Belleville East, said King “fought for our rights to be equal. He had a dream that one day there would be no segregation and discrimination and that each of us could walk together as brothers and sisters. We all need to do our part to keep the work he did going and make a difference.”
Vernon Wells, 14, an eighth-grader, said King means a lot to him.
“He taught that segregation is wrong. He felt kids should grow up unafraid of whites and we all should have the right to vote and sit anywhere we want. We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to police about things,” he said.
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REVIEW: CANARIES ON INTERNATIONAL DUTY
Three City players find the net
A total of eight Norwich City players spent time on international duty over the past week, with the vast majority enjoying a successful time while representing their respective countries.
Kyle Lafferty scored twice for Northern Ireland on Sunday as they secured a crucial 2-1 victory over Finland in their UEFA Euro 2016 Qualifier, leaving them well-placed in Group F with 12 points from five matches.
The striker, who is currently on loan at Turkish side Rizespor, had previously been an unused substitute in the 1-0 friendly defeat to Scotland four days earlier.
However, two City players did feature in that match, with Russell Martin and Steven Whittaker completing 45 and 78 minutes for the Tartan Army respectively.
Martin then played the entireity of Sunday's 6-1 win against Gibraltar at Hampden in Group D, although defensive colleague Whittaker was not involved in the matchday squad.
The same group also saw Wes Hoolahan's Republic of Ireland collect a crucial point in dramatic circumstances as Shane Long netted late on at home to Poland in a 1-1 draw.
City's talismanic midfielder was a key figure for Martin O'Neill's side throughout, and provided Long with the headed assist by calmly nodding across goal from a corner to keep their qualification hopes alive.
Just one Canaries representative came out on the wrong side of a competitive result over the course of the week, with Alex Tettey's Norway going down 5-1 to Croatia in Zagreb on Saturday evening in Group H.
Despite the defeat, there was some personal consolation for the 28-year-old as he was able to register his maiden international goal eight years after his first appearance for the Scandinavian outfit.
The final City player involved in Qualifying matches for the 2016 tournament to be held in France was Martin Olsson, who played the full game as Sweden won 2-0 in Moldova on Friday.
A brace from Zlatan Ibrahimovic ensured victory for the visitors, who currently sit second in Group G behind Austria.
Olsson was then an unused substitute on Tuesday evening as the Blagult wrapped up a 3-1 friendly win over Iran.
At youth level, Nathan Redmond racked up 180 minutes of action as England Under-21s registered successive non-competitive wins away to the Czech Republic and at home to Germany.
Gareth Southgate's team edged to a 1-0 victory in Prague on Friday, before being involved in an enthralling encounter at Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium four days later to continue their excellent recent form.
City's winger played a key role in the latter match especially, producing an excellent finish to level the game at 2-2 with 10 minutes remaining following a brace from Germany's Philipp Hoffmann.
That goal was soon followed by a winner from James Ward-Prowse as England completed the turnaround against a team they may yet face in this summer's European Championship Finals to be held in the Czech Republic.
Finally, Harry Toffolo made his England Under-20s debut on Sunday by helping The Three Lions to a 2-1 friendly success over the USA at Plymouth's Home Park.
The young defender was given the full match to impress by manager Aidy Boothroyd, having been left on the bench for the 1-1 draw with Mexico the previous Wednesday.
Alexander Tettey
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CCT’s 1Q 2018 distributable income grew 7.5% year-on-year
Secures anchor tenant for CapitaSpring, the upcoming skyscraper in Raffles Place
Artist's impression of the upcoming CapitaSpring
Green Oasis - a four-storey high botanical promenade at the upcoming CapitaSpring
Singapore, 24 April 2018 – CapitaLand Commercial Trust Management Limited, the Manager of CapitaLand Commercial Trust (CCT or Trust), is pleased to report a distribution per unit (DPU) of 2.12 cents for 1Q 2018. This is 7.6% higher year-on-year, after adjusting for the enlarged total units base. Based on an annualised 1Q 2018 DPU and CCT’s closing price per unit of S$1.82 on 23 April 2018, CCT’s distribution yield is 4.7%.
The Trust’s distributable income of S$76.6 million in 1Q 2018 was 7.5% higher than the S$71.3 million in 1Q 2017. Year-on-year, 1Q 2018 gross revenue increased 7.7% to S$96.4 million and net property income (NPI) grew 10.5% to S$77.2 million. The positive results are due to higher income from CapitaGreen, Capital Tower and Six Battery Road, as well as a full quarter contribution from Asia Square Tower 2. This was offset by lower contributions arising from the divestments of One George Street (50.0% interest), Golden Shoe Car Park and Wilkie Edge in 2017.
As at 31 March 2018, the Trust’s total deposited property value including other assets was S$10.7 billion; while the net asset value per unit was S$1.74, after adjusting for 1Q 2018 distributable income.
The Trust’s unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements for 1Q 2018 results are available on its website (www.cct.com.sg) and on SGXNet (www.sgx.com).
SUMMARY OF CCT GROUP RESULTS
1Q 2018
Gross Revenue (S$’000)
Net Property Income (S$’000)
Distributable Income (S$’000)
DPU (cents)
No. of units in issue at the end of the period (million) 3,612 2,969 21.6
Adjusted DPU (cents)
No. of units in issue as at 31 March 2018 (million)
Mr Kevin Chee, Chief Executive Officer of the Manager, said: “We are pleased to maintain a high portfolio committed occupancy rate of 97.3% in 1Q 2018. With a focus on achieving a balance between higher rentals and lower vacancy, we will also leverage the momentum of rising office market rents to manage our lease expiries in the upcoming years. CCT has built a portfolio of quality assets in Singapore and is currently the largest commercial landlord in Singapore’s CBD by net lettable area. The timely acquisition of Asia Square Tower 2 has contributed significantly to CCT’s strong performance this quarter and we will continue to market the remaining vacancy to deliver higher income. To continue delivering sustainable distribution growth, CCT will also look at core assets in select global gateway cities across developed markets, in addition to exploring opportunities in Singapore.”
Mr Chee added: “We are delighted that our upcoming integrated development in Singapore’s CBD – now known as “CapitaSpring” – has secured its first anchor tenant, J.P. Morgan, taking up close to a quarter of the development’s net lettable area. The extension of our partnership with J.P. Morgan from Capital Tower to CapitaSpring reflects the development’s strong appeal to progressive companies seeking a prestigious address with modern future-ready facilities. Scheduled for completion in 1H 2021, we aim to replicate the successful value creation achieved with CapitaGreen.”
Asia Square Tower 2, Singapore
The Trust has a healthy balance sheet with an aggregate leverage of 37.9%3, well below the regulatory limit of 45.0%. The Manager has successfully refinanced borrowings due in 2018 and 2019, and extended the debt portfolio’s average term to maturity4 from 2.4 years to 3.9 years. The Trust’s average cost of debt inched up slightly to 2.7% as at 31 March 2018. This is expected to increase in view of the higher weighted average interest cost committed for the aggregate S$1.1 billion of borrowings secured to refinance the Asia Square Tower 2 borrowings.
CCT has also received confirmation from the Singapore authorities that it will take back Bugis Village on 1 April 2019. When Bugis Village is returned, CCT will receive compensation based on an amount of S$6.6 million plus accrued interest compounded from 1989. Bugis Village accounted for about 2.2% of CCT’s 1Q 2018 NPI.
In 1Q 2018, CCT signed approximately 96,000 sq ft of leases, of which 37% were new leases. Leasing was largely driven by relocation and expansion by existing tenants and demand for space came from companies in the Financial Services, Retail Products and Services as well as Business Consultancy, IT, Media and Telecommunications sectors. New and renewed tenants in 1Q 2018 include Allfunds Singapore Branch, CPC International Trading Pte. Ltd., Equis Services (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Pinebridge Investments Singapore Limited and Rippledot Capital Advisers Pte. Ltd.. Most of the leases due in 2018 have been renewed or committed, with only 5% expiries remaining based on monthly gross rental income. Approximately 31% of office leases by monthly gross rental income is due in 2019 – one of which is the lease with The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited for HSBC Building; parties are in advanced negotiations. CCT’s monthly average office portfolio rent eased by 0.4% quarter-on-quarter to S$9.70 per square foot in 1Q 2018.
Based on data from CBRE Pte. Ltd., Singapore’s Core CBD office occupancy rate increased quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) by 0.3% to 94.1%. Grade A monthly office market rent was S$9.70 per square foot in 1Q 2018, an increase of 3.2% q-o-q. With higher committed occupancies in the newly completed office buildings and limited new supply in the CBD from 2018 to 2020, market rents are expected to continue to grow steadily over the next few years. In relation to CCT, the potential rise in market rents will narrow the gap between committed and expiring rents for its leases due for renewal in 2018.
1In 1Q 2018, CCT retained S$1.6 million of its taxable income available for distribution to Unitholders, to be paid out later in FY 2018. CCT is committed to distribute 100.0% of its taxable income available for distribution to Unitholders for the financial year ending 31 December 2018.
2DPU for 1Q 2017 of 1.97 cents was adjusted for the enlarged 3,611.7 million CCT units (1Q 2017: 2,969.0 million CCT units).
3The aggregate leverage of 37.9% takes into account CCT’s proportionate share of its joint venture borrowings and deposited property value.
4Average term to maturity excludes joint ventures’ borrowings.
For media queries, please contact us at:
media@capitaland.com
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Figuring out Risk Factors
Advancing Patient Welfare
CMRG Articles
Stellenbosch experts positive on World Aids Day
by CMRG | Nov 29, 2017 | Articles, Story | 0 comments
“The Right to Health” is this year’s theme for World Aids Day, which is on Friday 1 December.
This 29th annual campaign, initiated by the World Health Organisation, raises awareness of the Aids pandemic caused by the HIV infection and mourns those who have died due to the disease.
An estimated 7.1 million people in South Africa live with HIV, says a 2016 study by UNAIDS. This, the study found, is paired with approximately 10 000 Aids-related deaths each year.
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Although there is still much to be done, Stellenbosch University experts feel positive on this World Aids day, due to new developments in their research fields.
Professor Faadiel Essop of the department of Physiological Sciences says that “we have come a long way in terms of managing this condition”.
He is positive about the number of antiretroviral treatments that people have received access to over the last decade. Essop is also happy that HIV and Aids are now treated as a chronic condition, “whereas previously it was seen as a death sentence”.
Essop and a PhD student are excited about their findings that certain HIV positive individuals show inflammation and the risk of blood clotting. This combination may lead to cardiovascular diseases, which is why Essop believes their research is significant.
“This could be important to look at how one would device co-treatments to ultimately improve the welfare of the HIV patient,” he says.
Professor Mark Tomlinson from the department of Psychology says that the real positive is that huge amounts of people are getting tested and are getting antiretroviral treatments.
“One huge benefit of [this] is that the transmission of HIV from mother to child is reducing enormously.” His research mainly focusses on the psychosocial and behavioural aspects of AIDS.
Professor Gert van Zyl from the faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences says that “the announcement of a new first line treatment for HIV in South Africa is very exciting.”
In February, his researched found that the infection of new cells can be largely prevented if a child uses therapy effectively. “My interest is achieving greater therapeutic success in patients,” he says.
As of 2017, HIV home test kits are available at certain pharmacies. Nurse Linda Blignaut, however, still encourages people to get tested for the virus at pharmacies or testing centres.
“There is a psychological connection when undergoing the test, which is why we want to counsel the patients before and after.” She adds that people might be embarrassed to go for testing, in which case they should use the home test.
Home tests are available at major pharmacies, of which Clicks pharmacy sells it for R199. An HIV test at a pharmacy is about R60. The National Aids Helpline is 0 0800 012 322.
Award winning professor of physiology and Fulbright scholarship recipient Faadiel Essop excitedly explains his newest venture
Professor of science aims to improve society
Diabetes article Men’s Health June 2017
Urgent need to address devastating burden diabetes places on societies
Diabetes a result of a sweet lifestyle
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Texas mom hits, kills 3-year-old son while playing chicken with her SUV, police say
By Gary Dinges gdinges@gatehousemedia.com
Jun 25, 2019 at 2:44 PM Jun 25, 2019 at 2:50 PM
A Houston mother is facing criminal charges after police say she allegedly ran over and killed her 3-year-old son during a game of chicken.
Lexus Stagg, 26, reportedly drove her car towards her three children in their apartment complex parking lot June 11, hitting the boy, ABC News reports.
Surveillance video from the complex reportedly shows the accident happen. In it, ABC News says a Lincoln Navigator can be seen reversing and driving forward as part of the game. Two of the children were able to jump out of the way, but not the 3-year-old. Two of the SUV's tires rolled over the small child.
The boy, Lord Renfro, died a short time later at a nearby hospital.
Initally, police believed the death was a tragic accident, but further investigation ultimately led detectives to reach a different conclusion, resulting in a charge of criminally negligent homicide.
Stagg was arrested and later released on $1,500 bond, far below what prosecutors had requested.
"Every parent has an obligation to protect their children, even from themselves," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told ABC News. "Cars aren't toys and playing chicken with your kids isn't a game."
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Hub helps Lankem to clear the air
The Overview
Support from GC Business Growth Hub’s innovation team helped Ashton-based chemical manufacturers Lankem to test and develop a new fuel additive that reduces dangerous emissions from diesel engines.
Our innovation specialists are here to help identify new opportunities and overcome common issues, accelerating the time it takes to bring new products or services to market.
Lankem specialises in developing and manufacturing surfactants, products which can break down the interface between water and oils and dirt, holding them in suspension and allowing them to be removed. The company works with sectors that include agriculture, industrial cleaning and metal working.
Through its own product development Lankem identified that one of its commodities might affect harmful particulate emissions from diesel combustion. These particulates are small enough to be suspended in the air and when inhaled can cause major respiratory problems. The dangerous effects from diesel emissions are well documented and are a major issue around the world. If the product could be developed and proven, it could have a major impact on both the company and the environment.
“This was a new area for us,” explains sales director Sean Hodgkinson. “We knew we were onto something new, and were confident we had developed a product that could have a major impact on harmful emissions from diesel fuels, but we needed to test it and prove it, and that’s where we needed support.”
The Hub’s innovation team has a strong working relationship with all four of the region’s universities, and circulated a draft collaboration project to gauge interest in Lankem’s new additive.
The University of Manchester came forward to offer their expertise and launched a six-month research and testing project which focused on the extent to which harmful particles were reduced, and also the effect the additive had on engine performance.
The research used the University’s testing facilities and Lankem was also given the opportunity to test the product in collaboration with the transport department at Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, which helped to identify the best route forward with the product.
“As a result of the testing, we now have a much better understanding of the chemistry and impact of the fuel additive,” adds Sean. “It became clear that rather than using it in the automotive industry, it would be more effective used in larger engines, such as those used by ships and tankers. So, through the links we’ve made at the University of Manchester, we’re now working with experts at Southampton University, who have experience of shipping and marine technology.”
The development has helped to safeguard all 21 jobs at Lankem.
And Sean adds: “The project has allowed knowledge and research from the University to be transferred into the skill base of the company, and hopefully it’s just the first of many collaborations.”
It worked for Lankem, it can work for you
We can help you access leading knowledge, facilities and equipment. To find out more, click the button below.
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'Life' is an alien horror movie that riffs on some eerily plausible science
Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from the alien sci-fi thriller "Life".
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.
Warning: Some spoilers for "Life" are ahead if you haven't seen the movie.
"Life" is a space horror movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, and more.
The plot is about a Mars sample return mission gone terribly wrong.
The film's creators worked with real scientists to make it more believable.
NASA is actually working on getting a Mars sample to Earth and is worried about contaminating the planet.
Big-budget science-fiction movies aren't supposed to be documentaries.
They are, however, supposed to take us on journeys to far-flung places, immerse us in vivid alternate realities, and make us wonder "what if?"
But reality itself is a powerful filmmaking spice that, justly applied, helps suspend our disbelief — and sometimes scream our guts out.
Such is the case with the new movie "Life", whose makers consulted a NASA-trained medical doctor, a Mars spacecraft engineer, and a geneticist to help produce their horrifying spectacle.
While the film, directed by Daniel Espinosa, whiffs on quite a lot of science, it does go far enough to be wildly entertaining. In fact, Business Insider's Jason Guerrasio even argues it may be a cult classic in the making.
We join the story just as a Mars sample return spacecraft is being caught by a small crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). With red dirt in hand, NASA astronauts go about analyzing the grit behind several "firewalls" of protection.
After an extraterrestrial microbe is discovered in the soil, it's revived in a soup of water and nutrients. Then, to the astonishment of the crew, it springs to life. "Calvin," as the life form is soon called, quickly divides and grows into a starfish-size creature with incredible strength and intelligence.
To understand what doses of reality went into the movie, we called up Dr. Kevin Fong― a medical doctor, space medicine expert who's trained with NASA and ESA for about a decade, and a paid science consultant for the new Sony Pictures film.
And to answer some of those "what if?" questions on aliens, we spoke to Catharine A. Conley, a planetary protection officer for NASA who gets paid to help humankind avert extraterrestrial disasters in the real world.
Astronaut doctor on set
Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role of Dr. David Jordan in "Life".
"Life" features not one but two characters who are doctors, so filmmakers brought Fong on board to answer their pressing questions.
A lot of the early work happened by email, he says, but soon enough Fong was invited to join the set: an elaborate and modular reconstruction of the space station inside a giant green-screen studio.
"They paid more attention to detail than I'd seen in the space agencies," Fong told Business Insider. "Although the modules are different than what they actually are on the space station, it was very close."
The producers occasionally asked Fong to lend his expertise in physiology and emergency care to actor Jake Gyllenhaal (who plays long-duration astronaut David Jordan), actress Rebecca Ferguson (who plays Center for Disease specialist Miranda North), and others in various scenes.
Rebecca Ferguson in "Life".
"There are a couple of quite dense medical scenes, where I'd say, 'I'd hold this tool like that,' or 'I wouldn't hold that in the way you are,' and 'here's some terminology I'd use in this situation.' On the set, it came across as a very believable," Fong says.
He was especially impressed with a cardiac arrest scene, saying it was "about as faithful as one could be" in a movie.
While he hadn't seen the movie, at least at the time Business Insider interviewed him, Fong didn't walk away thinking it'd be a documentary.
"I think it pays dividends to any movie producer to go as far as you can in suspending disbelief," he says. "But I'm not expecting 'Apollo 13.' You have to make the drama more realistic without getting in the way of the story."
Fong also said that while there are definitely parallels to the "Alien" space horror movie franchise, "Life" is imminently more believable.
"Around the time 'Alien' was made, you needed to imagine some far-flung place," he says. But with the ISS floating just 250 miles above Earth, he added, "this is happening right on your back door."
Fortunately for us, NASA has put decades of thought into protecting planet Earth.
Defending the planet from real-life Martians
Ryan Reynolds in "Life".
At first blush, the idea of a Mars sample return mission might seem far-fetched. But NASA researchers hope to do just that in the future.
In fact, both Congress and President Trump essentially codified that mission for the space agency by passing the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 into law in March.
The first line of defense for a Mars sample is Catharine Conley, who is NASA's sole planetary protection officer. She has worked in that role since 2006, and helps ensure Earth's microbes don't reach other worlds — and other worlds' microbes don't reach Earth, at least in an uncontained way. (And that includes keeping dead bodies off of other worlds.)
"The phrase that we use is, 'break the chain of contact with Mars,'" Conley told Business Insider.
Catharine "Cassie" A. Conley, NASA's sole planetary protection officer.
Paul E. Alers/NASA
Conley also hadn't seen the movie, but said if a Mars sample was flying toward Earth, it would be aimed slightly off-course from the planet. That way if something goes wrong, the capsule full of red dirt (and maybe a harmful microbe) wouldn't enter our atmosphere in an uncontrolled way, break open, and induce panic.
Yet before such a capsule would ever leave Mars, she says, international guidelines require that an multi-governmental, multi-space agency committee convene to review the mission and make a recommendation on what to do.
"You'd want the international community to weigh in because it's a of a high-enough concern," she said. "There's a lot of checks and balances."
A Mars sample return mission — ostensibly to seek fossilized signs of ancient life, not actual microbes — wouldn't be the first to test the mettle of protections for Earth: Apollo 11 astronauts had to stay quarantined for three whole weeks in a trailer before emerging.
Apollo 11 astronauts quarantined in their "Hornet 3" trailer meet then-President Richard Nixon.
In fact, she says, planning for a Mars sample return mission started with the nuclear-powered Viking landers of the 1970s and has been going ever since.
Plans "got the most carefully laid out" in the early 2000s, she said, but by then, bringing a sample to the space station had long been ruled out.
Thereason? It seemed far too expensive to ship equipment and experts into space, where they'd be ask to excel in a free-floating (and very foreign) environment). Also, containing a disastrous microbe inside the ISS seemed like a pointless step.
"The space station is going to fall down at some point," she said.
Instead, Conley says scientists would make sure an extra-robust capsule carefully reenters Earth's atmosphere, is quickly retrieved, and hurried away to a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory — the most high-security grade of research facility on the planet. There, scientists could meticulously analyze their invaluable prize to no end.
"I would love to find life elsewhere," Conley said — if for no other reason than to compare it to life here on Earth, where the only organisms we know of exist. "If Earth and Mars life are related, that makes things a lot more complicated."
SEE ALSO: Potatoes can grow in 'extreme' Mars-like conditions, a new NASA-backed experiment shows
DON'T MISS: Astronomers have found 7 Earth-size planets circling a dwarf star — and some might be able to host life
NOW WATCH: Watch a scene from the new 'Alien' movie that's eerily similar to the original's shocking reveal
More: Movies LIFE movie Aliens Science Fiction
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Michael Avenatti is building up his policy platform as he becomes 'more bullish than ever' about running for president
Allan Smith
Aug. 27, 2018, 3:43 PM
Michael Avenatti.
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for MTV
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, released a policy platform on Monday.
He told Business Insider that he is "more bullish than ever" about running for president.
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, told Business Insider on Monday that he is "more bullish than ever" about a potential run for president in 2020, after his release of a policy platform he believes is "the most substantial" released by a 2020 contender so far.
In the document, titled "What I Believe," Avenatti laid out his positions on a number of issues, ranging from climate change and criminal justice reform to taxes and trade. Avenatti's platform is built up of mainstream Democratic Party views on the subjects he lists:
For instance, he supports the expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans.
He expressed disapproval of the Republican-led tax law.
He said he fully supports union rights.
He has also pledged to accept no donations from corporate political action committees if he were to run.
( You can read the full platform here.)
Avenatti told Business Insider that this platform serves to put "some meat on the bones relating to where I line up on various issues."
"I think it's the most substantive policy platform that's been put forth by anyone who is potentially considering running," he said. "I'm hopeful that other candidates will follow it because I think it's fairly clear and concise."
Last week, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released an ambitious anti-corruption platform that observers felt was an effort to help better define a major policy initiative she would promote as a possible 2020 candidate. As part of the announcement, Warren also released 10 years of her tax returns.
But other major potential Democratic contenders haven't yet provided a list of policy prescriptions, mostly because the primary process has yet to really take off.
Avenatti called his list of proposals "a working document that we're going to continue to disseminate from time to time."
"And we're going to provide updated deep dive policy proposals in the coming weeks and months," he said.
He is providing the list of policy stances as a response to those who have recently asked about his potential candidacy.
"I haven't decided about whether I'm going to run, that's the honest to god truth," Avenatti said. "I'm certainly considering it as I've stated."
'I've been welcomed with open arms by the party'
Avenatti has become a major presence on the left as he serves as Daniels' attorney while also wading into the family-separation crisis at the US-Mexico border. Already, Avenatti has made trips to early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire as he explores a possible bid.
On Friday, BuzzFeed reported Avenatti is launching his own political action committee to support Democrats. The group is called Fight PAC.
That announcement came as Avenatti took meetings and met with party officials at the Democratic National Committee's annual summer meeting.
"I'm more bullish than ever," Avenatti said about his feelings on running for president after attending the summit. "I've been welcomed with open arms by the party."
Avenatti said some in the party encouraged him to seek office, adding that he received plenty of "enthusiasm from a number of superdelegates and others in attendance at the convention."
"So the level of support has been significant," he said.
Asked about how the move to limit the power of Democratic superdelegates, which the DNC voted to do during the summer meeting, could further help a possible candidacy such as his own, Avenatti said it wouldn't be too big of a deal.
"I don't know at the end of the day that it's going to matter, frankly," he said.
SEE ALSO: Steve Bannon's message to Trump voters: It doesn't matter if your congressman is a 'RINO' — vote for them, or else Trump gets impeached
More: Michael Avenatti 2020 Presidential Election Donald Trump Democrats
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Rick Perry signals the Trump administration's continued issues with the Paris climate deal
Rebecca Harrington
Apr. 21, 2017, 3:26 PM
Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images
DALLAS - Energy Secretary Rick Perry said at an Earth Day Texas event on Friday that the Paris agreement was "not just a document that a bunch of folks got together and signed," signaling the Trump administration's continued division on the landmark climate deal.
President Donald Trump — who has called climate change a " hoax" — said on the campaign trail that he would cancel the deal.
But his administration has discovered that the diplomatic and political ramifications of stepping away from the 196-country accord could be too costly.
Speaking on Friday, Perry touted the environmental progress Texas achieved under his 14 years as governor, arguing that it was possible to do without "over taxation, over litigation, or over regulation."
The anger growing in his voice, he said his counterparts at the G7 summit he attended in Italy last week "lectured" him on continuing the US's leadership on renewables, but they could learn a lesson from his tenure as governor.
"My point with the rest of the world is that America will continue to lead. America will continue to find the innovative ways to make sure that our air, and our water, and the globe that we live on is taken care of, that it's in good shape for the next generation," Perry said. "That it's not just a bunch of talk. It's not just a document that a bunch of folks got together and signed. It's reality."
Every other nation released a statement doubling down on their support for the Paris agreement at the G7 meeting, but Perry neglected to add the US's support.
On Friday, he joked to the Texas crowd that he was tempted to tell "the lady from France" — French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Segolene Royal — at the meeting that Texas was bigger than her country, but decided not to.
Earth Day Texas, which Republican Trammell S. Crow founded in 2011, is expected to draw 150,000 attendees this year. Perry offered an optimistic tone to its audience on the Trump administration's possible environmental legacy.
"I'm proud to work with a president who believes he needs people like me around him to help develop the policies to protect our people, to protect our resources, to protect our planet," he said.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misquoted Rick Perry in the first paragraph. The quote has been corrected.
More: Rick Perry Earth Day Texas President Donald Trump
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Lawsuit plaintiffs say Monsanto ghostwrote Roundup studies
Asbestos & Environmental General liability Regulation More + Less -
(Reuters) — Employees of Monsanto Co. ghostwrote scientific reports that U.S. regulators relied on to determine that a chemical in its Roundup weed killer does not cause cancer, farmers and others suing the company claimed in court filings.
The documents, which were made public on Tuesday, are part of a mass litigation in federal court in San Francisco claiming Monsanto failed to warn that exposure to Roundup could cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer.
The company has denied that the product causes cancer.
Plaintiffs claim that Monsanto's toxicology manager ghostwrote parts of a scientific report in 2013 that was published under the names of several academic scientists, and his boss ghostwrote parts of another in 2000.
Both reports were used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine that glyphosate, a chemical in Roundup, was safe, they said. They cited an email from a Monsanto executive proposing to ghostwrite parts of the 2013 report, saying, "we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing" while researchers "would just edit & sign their names so to speak."
In an email, a Monsanto spokeswoman denied that Monsanto scientists ghostwrote the 2000 report but did not directly address the 2013 report. She said the ghostwriting allegations were based on "cherry-picking" one email out of 10 million pages of documents.
Another filing focused on Jess Rowland, a former deputy director at the EPA who chaired a committee on cancer risk and who plaintiffs say worked with Monsanto to suppress studies of glyphosate.
The filing includes an email from a Monsanto employee recounting how Mr. Rowland told him he "should get a medal" if he could "kill" a study of glyphosate at the Department of Health and Human Services, a separate federal agency.
Mr. Rowland, who is retired, is not a defendant in the litigation. He could not immediately be located for comment.
The EPA had no immediate comment.
The federal mass litigation includes about 60 lawsuits, according to Aimee Wagstaff, an attorney for the plaintiffs. Several hundred more lawsuits are pending in state courts, she said.
A California state court judge on Friday in a separate lawsuit ruled that California could classify glyphosate as a cancer risk. The case is In re Roundup Products Liability Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 16-md-02741.
Republicans take aim at federal regulators
Legislation introduced earlier this month seeking to overhaul the ability of government agencies to interpret the statutes they enforce could undermine the agencies’ independence and limit their ability to apply their expertise, observers say.
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Three Women Have Accused Harvey Weinstein Of Rape In A New Yorker Exposé
Ronan Farrow's investigation includes a number of new allegations against the once powerful studio executive.
By Kate Aurthur
Kate Aurthur BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 10, 2017, at 2:05 p.m. ET
Andrew Kelly / Reuters
In an expansive story in The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow has further chronicled allegations of sexual malfeasance on the part of the former movie executive Harvey Weinstein. The story details allegations of harassment and, for the first time, rape.
Weinstein's spokesperson, Sallie Hofmeister, issued the following statement to The New Yorker:
Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual. Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.
In response to an email asking whether Weinstein had further comment after reading the story, and whether he planned to sue the New Yorker (as he has threatened to do to the New York Times), Hofmeister responded, "Nothing to add at this time."
It's been a week of reckoning for the once indomitable studio executive, whose success in the independent film business in the '90s was only outmatched by his sovereignty over Oscars campaigning. After last week's Times story, which exposed allegations of sexual harassment of employees as well as Ashley Judd, and a $100,000 settlement with Rose McGowan after what the Times called an "episode" in a hotel room in 1997, Weinstein was fired from his job at The Weinstein Company, which he cofounded in 2005 with his brother, Bob.
Loic Venance / AFP / Getty Images
Asia Argento on a red carpet at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
The New Yorker story focuses more on sexual assault than harassment. Actor-director Asia Argento alleged that Weinstein raped her in 1997 when she was 21 and they were working together on the movie B. Monkey. Argento alleged she was brought to Weinstein's hotel by a producer under the pretext of a party; instead, she said, it was Weinstein's hotel room, and they were alone. Argento alleged that after she "reluctantly agreed to give Weinstein a massage," he forcibly performed oral sex on her though she "repeatedly told him to stop." She has not come forward until now, Argento told Farrow, out of fear Weinstein would "crush" her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” she said.
Over the years, Argento said she developed a complicated relationship with Weinstein. According to the story: "She said that she had consensual sexual relations with him multiple times over the course of the next five years, though she described the encounters as one-sided and 'onanistic.'" Argento also depicted the alleged rape in her 2000 movie Scarlet Diva, in which a "heavyset producer" tries to assault her character, but she escapes. In response, Argento said Weinstein told her, "Ha ha, very funny."
In another account in the New Yorker story of alleged rape, an aspiring actor named Lucia Evans who was about to be a senior in college went to Weinstein's office in Tribeca in 2004 thinking it would be a routine meeting with him and then a female casting executive. Evans found herself meeting with Weinstein alone. He told her that she could be on Project Runway, a Weinstein production, "but only if she lost weight," Evans said. He mentioned two movies as well. And then, Evans alleged, he forced her to perform oral sex on him. "I said, over and over, 'I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t.'"
There is a third account of rape in the story, this one anonymous. A colleague of Weinstein's alleges that she went to Weinstein's hotel room for a work meeting, when he "forced himself on me sexually." This woman continued to work with Weinstein, she said, because she feared his retaliation and needed the job.
Arun Nevader / Getty Images
Mira Sorvino at New York Fashion Week's Art Hearts Fashion in 2017.
Both Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette told Farrow that they found themselves in hotel rooms with Weinstein also, and turned him down. They alleged that their careers suffered repercussions as a result. In Sorvino's case, she described the alleged harassment to a female employee at Miramax, who reacted with "shock and horror" that Sorvino had said something.
Arquette said when Weinstein allegedly forcibly tried to put her hand on his erect penis, she told him, "I will never do that." According to Arquette, Weinstein took revenge on her professionally. She appeared in a small part in Miramax's Pulp Fiction because Weinstein deferred to Quentin Tarantino, but, she said, “He made things very difficult for me for years."
The New Yorker story is more than 7,500 words, and includes accounts from several other women of alleged harassment. Farrow also obtained the recording made by Ambra Battilana Gutierrez at the behest of the New York Police Department after she alleged that Weinstein had touched her breasts and reached under her skirt at a meeting at his office in 2015. No charges were brought against Weinstein after information about Gutierrez began coming out in the New York tabloids. "Yesterday was kind of aggressive for me," Gutierrez can be heard saying. Weinstein apologizes repeatedly while begging her not to embarrass him in the hotel. She asks why he touched her breast: "I'm used to that," Weinstein replies.
Weinstein's professional downfall came swiftly after the publication of the Times story on Thursday. In his rambling response to the article, Weinstein said he would go on leave. On Friday, the Weinstein Company board announced it had hired an independent investigator to look into the Times' allegations, adding that "we strongly endorse Harvey Weinstein’s already-announced decision to take an indefinite leave of absence from the Company, commencing today ... Next steps will depend on Harvey’s therapeutic progress, the outcome of the Board’s independent investigation, and Harvey’s own personal decisions." On Sunday, he was fired.
Since the Times story was published, other women have come forward, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie in a new Times story published on Tuesday. According to Paltrow, when she was starring in Miramax's Emma at 22, she went to Weinstein's hotel as arranged by CAA, her agency. Once there, she alleges Weinstein tried to give her a massage, at which point she left. She told Brad Pitt, whom she was dating at the time, who confronted Weinstein. According to Paltrow, Weinstein called and "screamed at me for a long time."
Mike Blake / Reuters
The producers of the Miramax film Shakespeare in Love hold their Oscars with the film's star and Best Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, after their film won Best Picture at the 71st Annual Academy Awards ceremony March 21, 1999.
Jolie told the Times in an email: “I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did. This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”
Five other women, including Arquette, talked to the Times as well.
They're not alone. Lauren Sivan, a former reporter for a local news channel in New York, told HuffPost that 10 years ago, Weinstein forced her to watch him masturbate in a restaurant over her objections. The actor Romola Garai told The Guardian that when she was 18, Weinstein made her come to his hotel room in London to meet with him over the lead role in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. He answered the door in a bathrobe, she alleged: “The point was that he could get a young woman to do that, that I didn’t have a choice, that it was humiliating for me and that he had the power."
Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Kate Winslet, Kevin Smith, Jessica Chastain, Seth Rogen, and others have issued statements and tweeted against Weinstein.
Weinstein's career and legacy has crumbled. On Monday, a desperate email he sent to entertainment industry moguls on Sunday before his firing leaked out through Janice Min, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter. "Just give me the time to have therapy," Weinstein begged a group that apparently included Jeffrey Katzenberg and Ron Meyer. "Do not let me be fired."
After he was indeed fired, the aftereffects of Weinstein's disgrace continued to pile up. Apple killed a 10-episode scripted series about the life of Elvis Presley that The Weinstein Company was producing. The Weinstein Company is allowing TV networks to take Weinstein's name off its shows, which, according to The Hollywood Reporter, will begin this week with Project Runway and will continue with all of the company's new and returning series, including high-profile 2018 projects Waco and Yellowstone for the Paramount Network and The Romanoffs for Amazon.
The entire company is going to be renamed, according to Deadline, as an attempt to distance itself from Harvey Weinstein's ignominy.
Oct. 11, 2017, at 02:00 AM
On Tuesday evening, The Weinstein Company released the following statement in response to the allegations outlined by The New Yorker: "The Weinstein Company’s Board of Representatives — Bob Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar — are shocked and dismayed by the recently emerged allegations of extreme sexual misconduct and sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein. These alleged actions are antithetical to human decency. These allegations come as an utter surprise to the Board. Any suggestion that the Board had knowledge of this conduct is false.
We are committed to assisting with our full energies in all criminal or other investigations of these alleged acts, while pursuing justice for the victims and a full and independent investigation of our own."
The New York Times Alleges Harvey Weinstein Has Been Sexually Harassing Women For Decades
Harvey Weinstein Has Been Fired From His Company
Kate Aurthur is the chief Los Angeles correspondent for BuzzFeed News. Aurthur covers the television and film industries.
Contact Kate Aurthur at kate.aurthur@buzzfeed.com.
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Interview: Wheeling-based artist Rebecca Kiger
Rebecca Kiger is exhibiting in A Knowing Intimacy: Photography by West Virginia Women, curated by Elaine McMillion Sheldon, opening March 8, at West Virginia University Downtown Campus Library. The opening reception will begin at 6:30pm with a screening of Sheldon’s Oscar-nominated short documentary, Heroin(e), followed by a panel discussion with Kiger, Sheldon, and exhibiting photographers Meg Ward and Lisa Elmaleh in Room 104 of the Library, sponsored by Daisy Moon Bakery of Morgantown. Kiger also has work in the current exhibit, Looking at Appalachia, on the main floor of the library. She shares with Boss Babes about how she came to photography, working in WV, feminism and collaboration in her work and more. Photographs copyright Rebecca Kiger.
R: I was born in Illinois. My parents took jobs there after graduating from Marshall University. My parents are from West Virginia (Wheeling and Parkersburg). I primarily grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, though I graduated from Huntington High. Then I went to Shepherd College for two years before fleeing the state for more liberal pastures (Massachusetts).
My first year in college I thought I might want to be an artist, though I’m not a painter, graphic designer, etc.. Before giving up on that dream, I took a B&W photography course. The minute the teacher walked in the door of our first class, I knew I was in the right place. Nonetheless, I wasn’t completely photography or art focused. I was very interested in sociology, philosophy and education. So, I took course work in all of those areas, as well. Shepherd didn’t have a program that allowed for such exploratory interest, so I applied to a school with more flexibility and finished my first degree at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
My impetus for creating comes from a longing to understand the world and then share a view of that others may not have considered. I also seek beauty and redemption in ‘dark’ places. There is a history of trauma in my family around speaking, especially speaking to truth, so I think I turned to photography as a form of having a voice in the world.
BB: Tell me about your work in A Knowing Intimacy and why it’s important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?
R: Elaine asked me to share images from this story that I worked on at the beginning of 2017. I produced it for 100 Days in Appalachia and the Ohio Valley Resource, and an audio portion of it aired on public broadcasting. Like many documentarians in West Virginia, I have been trying to find a way to communicate about the opioid crisis. I have been doing what I can to educate myself on the topic and wanted to use the skills I have to contribute to the dialogue. There is a history of alcoholism and death (suicide) in my family and life, so the topic interests me on a very personal level.
For this project, I spent time with a 50 year old woman, a recovering addict, someone who had been using since she was 13 years old. I wanted to illustrate her life in order to humanize her situation. For example, when I first started photographing her, she used a bike with no brakes to get around, even to go work at 4am in the morning in the snow. I wanted to examine how the services she received through the Affordable Care Act, which at the time was in danger of being repealed, were an integral part to her recovery. I also wanted to show relationships in her life that are affected by her sobriety, like those with her son and daughter. I’m glad I can share these images in a gallery format so they can have new life and a chance to reach a different audience.
R: Many of my artist friends that are living and working in WV do so because they care about the place and want to have an impact through their work. The artists here are also legit, down to earth people - like Bob Villamagna, who is currently WV Artist of the Year. He was once a steel worker and came from a family of steel workers. Elaine comes from a family of coalminers. My people were farmers, preachers, and factory workers, though my parents entered into professional fields through their education. Now, everyone in my family is a professional, and I’m a struggling artist, and not a very good one at that.
BB: Does collaboration play a role in your work - whether with your community, artists or others? How so and how does this impact your work?
R: Collaboration does play a role in my work, even my commercial endeavors, in which I’m lucky to work with writers and designers on most projects.
This past year I was able to collaborate on four different documentary films, including two with Elaine.
On one project called ‘Her Appalachia’, which is a companion piece to the film ‘Hillbilly’ by Sally Rubin and Ashely York, I worked with Sam Cole, a writer from Berea College. We interviewed and photographed women about the role media archetypes play in their lives. The project hasn’t yet been published.
While I was responsible for finding, pitching, collecting audio and shooting photos for the story that the photos come from in this show (A Knowing Intimacy), Glynis Board, who is a producer at WVPB helped on the post-production end.
I’ve also collaborated with David Smith, who is a professor here (at WVU) in the Reed College of Media.
Collaborating is not without difficulties, but I really enjoy it. My work can be extremely lonely. Having different minds and perspectives brings energy to the work.
R: I’m a feminist, so it informs my work and life outside of work, like how I raise my daughter. I feel very lucky to have found women friends and mentors in the photo industry, friends like Nancy Andrews, Annie O’Neill, Lynn Johnson and Judy Walgren. This past year has made it ever so clear that it is relevant to have exhibits and forums for women in art. #MeToo
R: Discernment, which is the message given to Ewing, well, that’s a lifelong skill. I hope to continue to cultivate it in my own life. It’s critical in documentary photography. I’m working on a project right now where I have to worry for my life and safety. Lynn Johnson said to me recently, “You have to have great intuition on when to leave, not just the scene, but possibly the project entirely."
The best advice I have been given is that you have to be passionate about a subject in order to work on a story/project for any length of time and with any depth. Otherwise, the work is not sustainable. What leads my work is a desire for reconciliation, understanding, and connection.
A Knowing Intimacy: A photography exhibit by West Virginia women, curated by Elaine McMillion Sheldon, WVU Downtown Campus Library, 1549 University Ave, Room 1020, March 8-April 13, 2018.
March 8: Heroin(e) Film screening, 6:30pm, followed by panel discussion & reception, Room 104
Sponsored by DaisyMoon Bakery
More information: exhibits.lib.wvu.edu, or email Sally Deskins, sbdeskins@mail.wvu.edu.
Sally Deskins is an artist, writer and curator. She currently serves as Exhibits & Programs Coordinator with West Virginia University Libraries. She also blogs at femmesfollsnebraska.tumblr.com. Wanna be interviewed? Email her at sallydeskins@yahoo.com.
Newer PostInterview: Amanda Pitzer, Citizen Advocate & Executive Director of Friends of the Cheat
Older PostRoad to Renewal: Heidi Cannon
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From issue 50 of The Bretton Woods Update
Freshwater Action Network
IRN updates on IFI water projects in the lending pipeline
Pipe dreams: The failure of the private sector to invest in water services for developing countries
Taking the World Commission on Dams report to the next level
World Bank Water Resources Sector Strategy
World Bank water supply and sanitation (WATSAN)
Water meetings everywhere and not a drop to drink
Why have Bank-CSO dialogues on water faltered?
World Bank assesses water strategy, faces barrage of criticism
The World Bank and water
8 April 2006 | Inside the institutions
As water is ubiquitous to development, so it is within the World Bank. Two network vice-presidencies have responsibilities over water (Infrastructure and Environment and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD)). The infrastructure vice presidency houses the Energy and Water department, a Bank-wide department headed by Jamal Saghir.
In the period 1990 – 2005, IBRD lending for water totalled $16.7bn (7 per cent of total lending) while IDA loans totalled $7.7bn (7 per cent of total lending).
In FY05, water, sanitation and flood protection accounted for 10 per cent of combined IBRD-IDA lending, or approximately $2.2 billion in lending, almost a $600m increase on FY04.
In March 2000, the World Bank established the Water Resources Management Group (WRMG) to attempt to integrate water sub-sectors such as hydropower, water supply and sanitation, irrigation and drainage, and environment. The members of the WRMG are the lead individuals from these sub-sectors, lead water resource specialists from each region, water leaders from the World Bank Institute, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Global Environment Facility secretariat, and a representative from the legal department. The WRMG is chaired by David Grey, senior water advisor at the Bank. The staff in the secretariat of the WRMG report to the infrastructure and ESSD vice-presidencies, and are hosted by the Agriculture and Rural Development department in ESSD.
The central unit dealing with Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) is a sub-sector of the Energy and Water department, whose work includes water supply, sanitation, and sewerage. The advisors and task managers in the sector are grouped under the WSS sector board, chaired by Jamal Saghir. Total WBG lending for WSS in the period 1990 to 2002 was $19.3 billion. After a decline in the late 90s, WSS lending has been rapidly increasing over recent years, reaching $1.8 billion in FY05, and set to grow further. The Bank is the largest external financier in this sector. Bank regional units, supported by the Energy and Water department, are responsible for developing and supervising individual projects. The Bank is also heavily involved in advisory work and policy dialogue, and supporting private sector involvement through the IFC and MIGA.
the largest external financier in the water and sanitation sector
The Bank’s work on water is guided by a thematic strategy (operational policy 4.07). This is operationalised through the Water Resources Sector Strategy (WRSS), the most recent version of which was approved by the Bank board in February 2003. The most controversial elements of the WRSS are its stated desire to re-engage with “high-reward/high-risk hydraulic infrastructure” (or big dams), its emphasis on the role of the private sector and its failure to embrace the recommendations of the World Commission on Dams. Other strategies, including the Infrastructure Action Plan (July 2003), the Private Sector Development Strategy (2002), and the Urban and Local Government Strategy (2000) also provide the framework for Bank advice and lending in water resources and water services. The strategies are premised on the need to facilitate private sector provision of basic infrastructure through a spectrum of public-private partnerships.
However, the Infrastructure Action Plan introduced a more pragmatic approach and a shift to supporting reforming public services and local/domestic private enterprises. This was further worked out for the WSS sector in the Operational Guidance for World Bank Group Staff Public and Private Sector Roles in Water Supply and Sanitation Services (2004). It was also presented in 2005 at the World Bank’s water week. It follows from internal criticism in the Bank, from both the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) and the Quality Assurance Group over the ‘irrational exuberance’ with which the private sector was pursued especially in water supply activities. The worldwide protests against privatisation were felt to have paralysed the sector and dried up investments into it, creating difficulties for Bank lending. At the recently concluded World Water Forum in Mexico, the same message was communicated by the infrastructure vice-president, Katherine Sierra.
Following up the WRSS at the country level are new Country Water Resources Assistance Strategies (CWRASs). CWRASs are meant to link water activities to Bank national lending strategies (Country Assistance Strategies, or CASs) and national development plans. They describe priority lending and non-lending activities in water resource management in a country, and in a break from the technocratic focus of the past, are to focus on the “political economy of change in water resources management”. Only a few countries in each region – such as Brazil, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Ethiopia and Iraq – have been selected for CWRAS development, with priority given to countries “where water problems are serious and where there is a demand for Bank engagement”.
Region Countries selected for CWRAS development
Latin America and the Caribbean Brazil, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru
South Asia Bangladesh, India, Pakistan
East Asia and Pacific Cambodia, China, Philippines, Mekong
Africa Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania
Middle East and North Africa Iran, Iraq, Yemen
Europe and Central Asia Azerbaijan
Other World Bank activities in water include managing sectoral trust funds, participating in a myriad of regional and international partnerships, and providing training. The WRMG, WSS and the World Bank Institute (WBI) cooperate to develop water resources management and water services learning and training programmes – seminars at national, regional and international level involving central and local government officials, water utility managers, private sector providers, the media and civil society.
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Muḥammad Naguib
Alternative Title: Moḥammad Neguib
Muḥammad Naguib, also spelled Moḥammed Neguib, (born February 20, 1901, Khartoum, Sudan—died August 28, 1984, Cairo, Egypt), Egyptian army officer and statesman who played a prominent role in the revolutionary overthrow of King Farouk I in 1952. He twice served as president (June 18, 1953–February 25, 1954 and February 27–November 14, 1954) of Egypt.
A professional soldier, Naguib distinguished himself during the Egyptian defeat at the hands of Israel (1948) and won the respect of the Free Officers, a nationalist military group led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1952 the Free Officers helped Naguib win election as president of the officers club in opposition to a man backed by King Farouk. The Free Officers engineered a coup that overthrew Farouk that July, and they saw Naguib as the man to represent their new regime to the public. Thus in 1953 he became president of the newly formed republic, although he had a more conservative political outlook than did Nasser and many of the other Free Officers. Naguib wanted to see a speedy return to constitutional government and objected to the summary sentences that were passed on various politicians by the Revolutionary Tribunal. In February 1954 he resigned the presidency, but demands by civilian and military groups impelled him to resume the office. Nasser, however, steadily consolidated his own position and became prime minister. He shrewdly acceded to some of Naguib’s wishes by allowing the revival of political parties and calling for a constituent assembly to draft a constitution. An assassination attempt was made on Nasser in 1954 in which Naguib was vaguely implicated. Naguib was placed under house arrest, which was eased in 1960 and ended about 1970, and he ceased to play any role in Egyptian politics.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy McKenna, Senior Editor.
Egypt: The Nasser regime
Muḥammad Naguib, an older officer who served as figurehead for the Free Officers and had been president since June 1953, when Egypt officially became a republic. Political parties had been abolished in January of that year. To supplement his power base in the military forces,…
Gamal Abdel Nasser: Attainment of power
…by Nasser, with Major General Muḥammad Naguib as the puppet head of state. For more than a year Nasser kept his real role so well hidden that astute foreign correspondents were unaware of his existence, but in the spring of 1954, in a complicated series of intrigues, Naguib was deposed…
Farouk I
Farouk I, king of Egypt from 1936 to 1952. Although initially quite popular, the internal rivalries of his administration and his alienation of the military—coupled with his increasing excesses and eccentricities—led to his…
Egypt, country located in the northeastern corner of Africa. Egypt’s heartland, the Nile River valley and delta, was the home of one of the principal civilizations of the ancient Middle East and, like Mesopotamia farther east, was the site of one of the world’s earliest urban and literate societies. Pharaonic…
August 28, 1984 (aged 83)
title / office
president, Egypt (1954-1954)
The New York Times - Mohammed Naguib, First President of Egypt, Dies
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U.N. Health Agency Starts Tobacco Industry Inquiry
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched an inquiry Tuesday into what it called a ``systematic and global'' bid by the tobacco industry to undermine U.N. efforts to control smoking.
The U.N. health agency named top Swiss public health official Thomas Zeltner to head a committee of independent experts who are to review evidence and recommend further action. Evidence pointing to efforts to influence policy-making and funding at U.N. agencies had been found among internal tobacco industry files made public under a landmark U.S. court decision last year, the WHO said in a statement. ``Documentary evidence points to a systematic and global effort by the tobacco industry to undermine tobacco control policy and research and development within the United Nations family, including its member states, and within the academic and NGO (non-governmental organization) communities,'' the WHO said. ``Consequently, WHO director-general Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland today called for a preliminary inquiry into the nature and extent of the undue influence which the tobacco industry has exercised over U.N. organizations.'' About 35 million pages of documents from internal files, including those of Philip Morris, B.A.T. Industries Plc and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, were released under a $6.6 billion settlement with the state of Minnesota. The documents, which go up to 1994, revealed the companies' knowledge of the health hazards and addictiveness of smoking. Now available on various Web sites, the documents are part of a $20 billion lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department last month alleging racketeering by tobacco companies in a bid to recover federal funds spent on sick smokers. Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister who took up the top job at the WHO a year ago, has targeted smoking and called for global steps to control tobacco. ``WHO is deeply concerned about the nature of the evidence in the 35 million documents that have now become available in the public domain,'' said Brundtland, who is a physician. ``I make this decision in the spirit of full and complete transparency, but above all, in the service of public health.'' The WHO says tobacco kills four million people a year through cancer, bronchitis, emphysema and cardiovascular diseases. It predicts the toll will rise by 10 million by 2030, with 70 percent of deaths in developing countries, led by China. ``A cigarette is the only freely available consumer product, which, when regularly consumed as indicated, kills,'' the WHO said. The inquiry comes two weeks before the WHO sponsors the first negotiations between its 191 member countries on a tobacco ``framework convention,'' due by 2003. Brundtland has called for a pact to target tobacco advertising and subsidies. Zeltner, a medical doctor and professor, is director of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, based in Bern. He also serves on the WHO's 32-member executive board.
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Massimo Iosa Ghini - Cersaie 2002
“A symbol or trademark comes into being automatically once the pre-requisites have been clarified.The basic idea consists of a perspective view of a symmetric Italian urban context, unique in the way it combines traditional shapes and colours and advanced building technologies. The design of the floor symbolically embodies a creative, advanced and flexible capability represented by a curved line.”
Massimo Iosa Ghini was born in 1959 and he studied architecture in Florence, graduating from Polytechnic Institute in Milan.
Since 1985, he has been part of the avant-garde movement in Italian design, creating illustrations, objects and ambiences for the bolidism group, which he founded. He was also called on by Ettore Sottsass for the Memphis group.
During this period, he opened the Iosa Ghini Studio, starting to work as an architect and designer. Iosa Ghini designs furniture, collections and objects, and develops art direction for leading Italian and foreign design firms such as Yamagiwa Lighting in Japan, Silhouette Modellbrillen in Austria, Zumtobell Staff, Duravit, Dornbracht and Hoesch in Germany, Roche Bobois International in France and Moroso, Poltrona Frau, Cassina, Flou, Snaidero, Mandarina Duck in Italy, and he has defined a highly recognisable and personal style over the years. His professional growth as an architect has developed through his work in planning architectural and exhibit areas, creating cultural and commercial installations, and designing retail chains around the world.
He has held conferences and lectures at a number of universities, including the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, the Domus Academy, the University of Rome, the Elisava School in Barcelona, the Design Fachhoschule in Cologne, and the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. He has also represented Italian design at various international symposia. His works can be found in various international museums and private collections.
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Go Global - Export Services
E: info@chamber-business.com
Call 01582 522448 or email info@chamber-business.com
Latest updates and stories from Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce and its Members
BCC downgrades 2015 growth forecast but predicts earnings are set to rise
Written by Paula Devine | 05 Jun 2015
The British Chambers of Commerce has downgraded its UK GDP growth forecast for 2015 from 2.7% to 2.3%, following weaker than expected growth at the start of the year. However, the BCC believes the slowdown is temporary and the prospects over the medium term remain steady, with GDP growth predicted to be 2.6% in 2016 and 2017.
Commentating on the latest economic projections, John Longworth, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:
"It is always disappointing when we have to downgrade our growth forecast but the unexpectedly low figures from the ONS on Q1 2015 make it unavoidable. While this slowdown will serve as a warning about the strength of our economic recovery, we believe the UK will secure steady growth in the years to come."
Key elements of the economic forecast include:
Earnings and unemployment:
The BCC forecasts total earnings growth (total pay including bonuses) of 2.4% in 2015, 4.0% in 2016 and 4.5% in 2017.
UK unemployment, including youth unemployment, is expected to fall in each of the next three years. However, by 2018, youth unemployment will still be high at 13% - almost three times the overall unemployment rate.
John Longworth, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:
"Families around the country will be heartened to hear that average earnings are on the up and unemployment is falling. We forecast earnings growth will be significantly greater than inflation over the coming years. However, despite the progress in tackling unemployment, youth unemployment - while falling - will remain stubbornly high.
Trade deficit and exports
The BCC forecasts the real net trade deficit will rise in 2015, increasing from 2.7% to 2.9%.
Increases in real exports are predicted of 3.6% in 2015, 2.0% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017. For real imports the BCC predicts increases of 4.1% in 2015, 1.5% in 2016 and 1.7% in 2017.
"The one area which causes most concern is the increasing trade deficit. The growth we see is built on consumer spend and this has been a systemic weakness for years. Despite good intentions, we are heading the wrong way. The trade deficit is an economic time-bomb waiting to go off. We have to confront it head-on and that means getting more of our businesses exporting their goods and services overseas. Restructuring our economy in this way remains the best route to securing high levels of sustainable growth over the long-term."
Business investment is volatile but will remain relatively strong with 4.4% growth in 2015. However, this is lower than the 7.5% in 2014.
"While we expect steady levels of business investment, the fall from 2014 figures suggests the uncertainty over the annual investment allowance is acting as a drag on business decisions. In the Budget, we need the Chancellor to address this and unveil a long-term annual investment allowance which gives businesses clarity and certainty."
The BCC forecasts an increase in UK official interest rates is a year away, with a rise to 0.75% in Q2 2016. Rates will then be subject to small, incremental rises reaching 1.75% in Q4 2017.
"It is right to keep rates at their current level for the next year at least and any increases thereafter should be slow and steady. After having stable, predictable rates for years - we don't need the shock treatment of great leaps to the cost of borrowing."
Reflecting on the overall economic forecast, John Longworth, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:
"The Government should be unapologetic in supporting British businesses and setting the regulatory and business finance systems to help them thrive. I want this to be the Parliament of growth. To deliver that we have to help businesses get the access to finance they need, and make a serious investment in our transport, digital and energy infrastructure. If we get these things right, British businesses will have the world as their oyster."
David Kern, Chief Economist at the BCC, said:
“In spite of the downgrading of our 2015 growth forecast, UK prospects remain solid overall. The slowdown this year is likely to be temporary. Earlier falls in oil, food and other commodity prices continue to support UK growth, and Britain’s flexible and vibrant labour market is a major source of strength for our economy.
"International comparisons also show the UK is in a good position. In 2014, the UK grew faster than other G7 economies. Our new forecast suggests that we will remain near the top of the G7 league table over the next three years.
“But the UK recovery continues to face obstacles. Globally, confidence is too dependent on abnormally low interest rates and huge quantitative easing programmes. In spite of better eurozone prospects, a Greek default could trigger a new crisis, and, of course, the two largest global economies - the US and China - are experiencing slowdowns.
"Domestically, UK growth is relying unduly on consumer spending. Progress towards rebalancing the economy towards exports has been inadequate and the real trade deficit continues to get worse. This is troubling, especially at a time when we are carrying such a heavy current account deficit.
"The UK’s ability to generate tax revenues has worsened, due to big falls in oil and gas output and lower profits of UK banks. We will have to adjust to this harsher and more difficult reality. It is therefore vital that we focus on policies that support higher productivity and a strong recovery in exports, while persevering with the necessary and difficult job of cutting the fiscal deficit."
Other elements from the economic forecast:
Main components of demand
• We forecast a slight upturn in household consumption growth to 2.6% in 2015, before easing to 2.4% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017.
• UK business investment rose by 7.5% in 2014, but in Q1 2015 was only 3.7% higher than in Q1 2014. We are predicting business investment growth of 4.4% in 2015, 7.2% in 2016, and 7.4% in 2017.
• Our forecast is that the real net trade deficit will rise from 2.7% of GDP in 2014 to 2.9% in 2015 and then fall to 2.5% in 2017.
• Our forecast is that the UK current account deficit will improve gradually, from 5.5% of GDP in 2014 to 3.7% of GDP in 2017, this is still a very high and potentially risky shortfall.
• Our forecast envisages increases in real exports of 3.6% in 2015, 2.0% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017. For real imports we predict increases of 4.1% in 2015, 1.5% in 2016 and 1.7% in 2017.
• Quarterly GDP growth, after slowing to 0.3% in Q1 2015, is likely to accelerate to 0.7% in Q2 2015, and then stabilise at a trend rate of just over 0.6% per quarter from Q3 2015 onwards.
Main sectors of the economy
• Service sector output is forecast to grow by 2.8% in 2015%, 2.8% in 2016 and 2.8% in 2017. The share of services in total UK output is likely to rise a little further in the next few years.
• For total industrial output, we are forecasting growth of 0.9% in 2015, 1.5% in 2016 and 1.5% in 2017.
• We are forecasting full-year manufacturing growth of 1.4% in 2015, 2.0% in 2016 and 2.0% in 2017.
• Our forecast envisages growth in construction output of -0.7% in 2015, 2.2% in 2016 & 2.1% in 2017.
Official interest rates
• We expect the first increase in UK official interest rates, to 0.75%, in Q2 2016, one quarter later than we previously predicted.
• We expect to see incremental rises thereafter before reaching 1.75% in Q4 2017.
Earnings and unemployment
• We now predict that total earnings growth (total pay including bonuses) will average 2.4% in 2015, 4.0% in 2016 and 4.5% in 2017.
• The UK unemployment rate is forecast to fall from 5.5% in Q1 2015, to 5.0% in Q1 2016, 4.7% in Q1 2017 and 4.6% in Q1 2018.
• We are forecasting total UK unemployment to fall from 1.83m in Q1 2015, to 1.63m in Q1 2016, 1.58m in Q1 2017, and 1.54m in Q1 2018 - a net fall in the jobless total of 283,000 over the next 3 years.
• We are forecasting that total UK youth unemployment (people aged 16 to 24) will fall from 736,000 (a jobless rate of 15.9%) in Q1 2015, to 601,000 (a jobless rate of 13.0%) in Q1 2018, a net fall of 135,000.
• Public sector net borrowing in the full financial year 2014/15 was £2.5bn lower than the OBR predicted in the March 2015 Budget. In 2015/16, we also expect slightly lower borrowing than the OBR predicted in the Budget.
• However, the OBR’s timetable for subsequent years is still slightly too ambitious in our view. While the OBR is forecasting that UK public sector net borrowing would move into a small surplus in 2018/19, our view is that achieving this aim this would take one year longer (2019/20).
• In annual average terms, we are forecasting annual CPI inflation at 0.2% in 2015, 1.5% in 2016 and 2.0% in 2017. In Q1 we predicted 0.3% in 2015, 1.7% in 2016 and 2.0% in 2017.
Topics: Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce, business, economy, growth, British Chambers of Commerce, unemployment, Export
Written by Paula Devine
Paula is Head of Membership and Global Services at Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce.
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David Van Nuys, Ph.D.
Dr. David Van Nuys: Welcome to Wise Counsel, a podcast interview series sponsored by CenterSite, LLC, covering topics in mental health, wellness, and psychotherapy.
My name is Dr. David Van Nuys. I'm a clinical psychologist and your host.
On today's show we'll be talking about parental alienation with my guest, Dr. Amy J.L. Baker. Amy J.L. Baker, Ph.D. is the Director of Research at the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection in New York City and she is author of the 2007 book, "Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking The Ties That Bind".
Dr. Baker earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the Teacher's College, Columbia University in 1989. She is also the author or co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed scholarly publications in topics such as parental alienation, child welfare, parent-child attachment and parent involvement in their children's education. She has appeared on TV, radio and in the New York Times. She has presented at numerous conferences.
Now, here is the interview...
Dr. Amy Baker, welcome to the Wise Counsel Podcast.
Dr. Amy J.L. Baker: Thanks for having me on the show, David.
David: Well, I'm very glad to have you here and we're going to be discussing your book, the title of which is "Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome". So I guess the logical place to start is what's meant by the term "Parental Alienation Syndrome"?
Amy: That's a good place to start because there is some confusion, some people use the term "parental alienation", some use the term "Parental Alienation Syndrome". The working definition that I use is that parental alienation is a set of strategies that a parent uses to try to effectuate a child's rejection of the other parent who I refer to as the "targeted parent".
Parental Alienation Syndrome is the resulting behavior and attitudes within the child who come to believe that the targeted parent is someone unworthy of having a relationship with.
Now, it's important to know that not all cases of the child rejecting a parent qualify as Parental Alienation Syndrome.
David: Interesting.
Amy: We only consider PAS when there is no other reason. In other words, if a parent is abusive or neglectful or moves away or is a poor parent in some ways that results in the child saying, "You know Dad (or Mom), I really need to step back from this relationship", that's not PAS. It's only PAS when the child is being manipulated by one parent to reject the other parent in the absence of a good reason for rejecting that parent.
David: OK, so just to make sure that I understand and we're talking about a situation maybe where parents are about to get divorced or have gotten divorced or maybe have separated or about to get separated and one parent turns the child against the other parent, is that right?
Amy: That is right and it was first identified in the context of post divorce custody litigation, that is parents who are divorced fighting over visitation and parenting schedules. But in my research and in other research as well, it's become pretty clear that this can happen even when the parents are still married and living in an intact family.
David: Interesting. Now, is this a new diagnostic category? I mean, does it occur, for example, in the diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association?
Amy: It does not, yet, and it is important to note that this manual is an evolving, living document. It's updated only every 20 or 25 years and the last time it was updated, this concept of PAS was so new (Dr. Garner began writing about it in the mid-1980s), there wasn't enough to allow the people who make the decision about what gets into the DSM and what stays out to conclude that this deserves to be included.
The DSM is going through another round of revisions, I think it's due out at some time in 2012 or something and at that point, PAS may be included. It really depends on how much empirical research and the lobbying and behind the scenes sort of pressures to include it and not include it that are going on.
So, simply because it's not in the DSM doesn't mean it doesn't exist and just as a reminder to your listeners, it took Tourette Syndrome, I think, 100 years to be included and PTSD was only just included in the DSM-III, even though many people believe that it existed long before its inclusion in the DSM.
David: Wow! That's interesting background...
Amy: Yeah.
David: And also, you do highlight that to some degree, it's also a bit of a political process and a little bit of a lobbying process. You made some reference to research and your book is a fairly thick one and I have the impression that it's based both on research and on clinical experience. Can you talk about to what extent is the book based on research and to what extent on clinical experience?
Amy: It's 100 percent on research and theory. I'm actually not a clinician...
David: Oh.
Amy: I only do research and the book is based primarily on interviews, in depth interviews with 40 adults who believe that when they were children they were turned against one parent by the other parent and then I used those case studies to explicate various aspects of PAS theory that I'm interested in writing about. The book is solely based on that. I don't have a clinical practice.
David: OK, that's interesting. Somehow, I didn't pick that up. Now, how did you become first interested in this as an issue?
Amy: Well, a researcher's dream is to find a topic that is both rich and fascinating and which there is human drama and a relatively understudied area where there is a significant need to be filled so that there's a kind of "ready made" audience for your findings. The opposite of that is to do a study and you write a book or an article and it just sits on a shelf and it doesn't help anybody.
I really found this topic of PAS because all of my research is on parent-child relationships and I work primarily in the field of child welfare, so it's a topic I was familiar with due to my professional employment. But I became aware when I first started to really want to do this research, that there was nothing known about this. It was so understudied and yet there's such a huge demand. Targeted parents are so hungry for information. That's why I really settled on the topic.
David: Interesting. Now, in the book you outlined three patterns that PAS or Parental Alienation Syndrome can take. Perhaps you could describe each of the three patterns and maybe illustrate each one from the cases that you studied.
Amy: Well, I would like to say that I think it's quite possible that there are even additional patterns other than the three that I identified because my sample was only 40 cases. But I think these are the three main ones.
David: OK.
Amy: The first one is your sort of standard case that Richard Gardner, the person who identified PAS, described in all of his work on PAS. It's a narcissistic mother in the context of a divorce who due to her fragile ego and her desire to exact revenge on the husband who's leaving the family. Through this psychological foundation she turns the children against their father. This is your classic PAS case.
The reason why it is important to know that there are other patterns is that a person who's a mother who believes that she's losing her children due to PAS may go to a therapist and say, "I think my children's father is trying to turn the children against me and I'm very concerned" and if the therapist only has this prototype in her mind, she may very well say back to the mother, "Oh, it couldn't be PAS, it's something that only mothers do to fathers."
Likewise, this might be something that's brought up in couple's counseling or marital counseling. And again, if the person thinks that this only happens in the context of post divorce custody, litigation by mothers to fathers, this concern might be dismissed.
So, part of my mission is to educate people and just to sort of leap ahead for a moment, I've done a couple of surveys, not interviews, but survey studies with targeted parents and I can put out a call on the Internet today that says, "Do you think the other parent of your child is trying to turn your child against you?" and I will get 50 percent mothers and 50 percent fathers. When I get talks, the audience is completely mixed between mothers who are going through this and fathers who are going through this.
So, although my first pattern that I talk about in the book is your classic mother doing it to the father in the context of divorce, it is not the only pattern.
David: OK, what are the other two main patterns?
Amy: Well, the second one is mothers doing this to fathers but in marriages that remains intact. Yeah, this really did surprise me. It's sort of one of the magical beauties of research, is you can be surprised by your own data. I put out a call on the Internet, "When you were a child, did one of your parents turn you against the other parent and did you later have the realization that this was the case?"
That's how I recur to people and I actually expected to find people who only had this experience in divorced families and 10 of the 40 people that I ultimately interviewed told me that their parents remained married. Yet their hearts were completely hardened to this other parent even though their parent stayed in the marriage and stayed in the family home. So the child has access to that parent on an ongoing basis.
And even though clearly the mother wasn't doing it to exact revenge for the husband leaving the marriage, it's still seen, based on the interviews, that she did have a narcissist personality. She did seek gratification from the children. She wanted the children to believe that the father was the cause of all the family's pain and suffering and she did want to align the children with her against the father even though they were still married.
David: OK, so what's the distinguishing factor then between the first kind and the second kind that you described?
Amy: The first one is the parents are divorced and the second one the marriage is intact.
David: Oh, OK. Great! And then the third major pattern?
Amy: The third pattern is sort of the other... And this is why I'm saying if I had a larger, larger, larger sample I might be able to pull out different versions of this other.
David: Yes.
Amy: But in this other category, there were father alienators and mother alienators. Basically, rather than being narcissistic and seducing the children into their camp, so to speak, they were abusive. The parents seemed to have a more anti-social personality disorder rather than a narcissistic or borderline. They really pull the kids to them through fear of rejection, fear of abandonment and more kind of controlling, even physically and sexually abusive style.
So that third category, it's different from the first two not only because it includes fathers but also because the style, the strategies that those parents use are somewhat different.
David: OK. In your book, you refer to the "cult of parenthood" and that seems like strong language. So, in what ways is parenthood a "cult"?
Amy: Well, I have to tell you this resonates with targeted parents when they read this. I actually wrote this chapter first and it got circulated on the Internet and I was flooded. It actually made its way around the world. I was getting emails from people in South Africa and New Zealand and whatever. Because if you experience this, from what I gather from talking to targeted parents, you feel like your child is in a cult. There's complete adulation and obedience and devotion and allegiance to the other adult.
So, the way in which it's like a cult is first of all, alienating parents use many of the same strategies that cult leaders use. The same youth control, they create dependency, they use the same black/white thinking. If you break it down on a point by point basis, alienating parents and cult leaders use essentially the same thought reform and emotional manipulation techniques.
It's also an interesting analogy because it helps us understand how do people leave this cult of parenthood? There's a lot of literature about cults and how people leave cults so we can sort of apply that to understanding how to help people have the realization they're victims of PAS. It's also a useful analogy in terms of the long term effects.
When I interviewed the people who had this experience as adults and I said, "Well, what was this like to you? What do you think this meant to you? What's the impact of this on you?" They talk about the very same negative long term effects that we know people who've been in cults have.
David: Wow! That's really interesting to me because I've made something of a study of cults myself and certainly what you described rings true. Now, later on in the book you talk about the strategies that one parent will use to alienate the child from the other parent. Maybe you can talk about some of those strategies? One of the things I'm wondering too is whether or not those strategies are conscious or unconscious.
Amy: That's such an interesting question and I think the answer is essentially, "it depends". I think there are some alienating parents, based on my research with both targeted parents and these adult children and now I've kind of provided consultations with maybe 100 targeted parents just talking to people on the phone.
And basically, I conclude that some alienating parents are very conscious and they will say to the targeted parent, "It is my life goal to ruin your relationship with our child" or "my child". Usually, they just say this is "their child". Or they'll say: "I'm going to make your life a misery."
David: Ouch!
Amy: Yeah. They are very powerful, charismatic, hostile, aggressive people; these alienating parents, some of them. But I think others are less conscious in what they're doing and sort of have tricked themselves into believing that they're doing this for the child, "No matter what it takes I'm going to save my child from that horrible, horrible, horrible person", who they used to love and were married to, but now they've kind of completely demonize them.
So, the level of consciousness I think really varies and unless I interview them, I don't know that I could really answer that in more detail.
David: Yeah, that's not surprising. That's what I would expect, is that it would vary along a continuum just as you've described. What are some of the chief strategies that they use in alienating, whether conscious or unconscious?
Amy: Well, the main one is badmouthing. I wish there was a more sophisticated term for that but basically, when I asked the adult children, "How did mom turn you against dad? How did dad convince you that mom was bad and to move out of her house?" What they remembered first and foremost was a continual litany of negative remarks made about the other parent and the alienating parent spared their children nothing.
These children remember hearing their other parent talked about as a "whore", a "slut", an "abuser", an "alcoholic", a "lazy bum" and no detail of the targeted parent's life was too small to criticize. One woman remembers that the main criticism that her father and stepmother had about her targeted mother was that she made instant oatmeal in the morning, rather than oatmeal from scratch. The daughter came to believe that her mother was lazy and didn't really care about her because "Oh, my God! She used instant oatmeal."
David: My goodness!
Amy: But when you boil it down...
David: [jokingly] Not the oatmeal.
Amy: When you boil it down, the message that is conveyed to these children is that their targeted parent is unloving, unsafe and unavailable. Now, when you strip away the details, the message is basically that parent doesn't really love you, they're not really around, they're not really doing anything to take care of you and in some cases, the message is that person is dangerous.
One boy remembered asking his mom, "Tell me about Dad" and the mom said, "Well, one day he came home from work and he said, 'Wrap Johnny up in a blanket, I want to take him out.'" Adult Johnny remembered as a little boy saying to his mother, "Well, why did Dad want to take me out?" and she said, "I don't know. I think he wanted to throw you in the river" when there was no reason to believe that that's what his father was going to do.
David: Right.
Amy: So, a constant inundation of the message that that other parent is really no good and not available anyway and then when you tie that to the other part of the message which is basically, "If you pursue that relationship, you will lose me." And that was the other strategy that these kids remembered, is that the relationship with the alienating parent felt like it was in jeopardy if they wanted to have any contact with the targeted parent.
They would go for visitation and they would come home and the alienating parent would be angry. Some of them remember being given inferior portions of food, "Oh, you went to visit your father? Here, you can have the smallest lamb chop on the plate" kind of thing.
David: Wow! So it's...
Amy: And they were given the cold shoulder, they weren't talked to for 24 hours after visitation.
David: Yeah, so really it's a kind of emotional blackmail and I know in the book you strongly suggest that PAS is a form of emotional child abuse?
Amy: I do indeed because although there are many definitions of emotional abuse and I just picked one, you could take any definition and compare on a point by point basis and you would see that PAS really lines up. Even if you didn't do it on a sort of systematic basis, just intuitively, it makes sense to say, "Well, a parent who makes a child lose a relationship with the other parent is abusive in and of itself." Even if you didn't also conclude, as I do, that these very strategies that the parent uses are abusive.
David: Yes. Now, as I mentioned earlier, the title of your book is "Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome" and to me that suggests that the effects of PAS linger on into adulthood. So what sorts of symptoms or effects do you see or what the clinicians see in adults?
Amy: Well, the people that I interviewed talked at length about self-esteem problems. They said they hated themselves and thought that they were horrible, horrible people. Part of this is the guilt they felt when they finally had the realization that they had been manipulated to treat one parent very badly.
Let me just say that children who have gone through this really treat the targeted parent very shabbily. They're rude, ungrateful, nasty, hostile and cold. They really put the targeted parent through the ringer and if they ever do figure out, "Gee, I was really manipulated by Dad to treat Mom really badly." They grow up and they feel badly about themselves.
But they also have self-esteem problems because they've been told their whole life that one of their parents doesn't love them. They've become too dependent on the approval of the alienating parent. This is another way in which it's like a cult. Good parents aim to promote the self-efficiency and independence of their children but like cult leaders, alienating parents really want to maintain that dependency of their children on them and that in turn does lead to a low self-esteem. They don't feel they can take care of themselves and make good choices in the world.
Amy: I can go on but maybe we need to move on to another topic.
David: Well, even though you're not a clinician yourself, do you have any sense of what the process would be by which an adult suffering from this might recover?
Amy: Well, in terms of the catalyst to the realization, which isn't necessarily recovery but it's sort of the first step...
David: Sure.
Amy: The very first step is sort of having this... I don't want to say it's an epiphany because it really wasn't an epiphenal moment for the people I interviewed but an awakening or a realization that yes in fact, they had been manipulated by one parent to forego a relationship. So they really need to have that realization in order to even deal with everything else.
The people I spoke to said it was a very, very painful realization for them. They had this sort of admitted that they've been lied to and tricked and cheated and they lost time with the parent, who really didn't deserve to be cut out of their life. They lost all that time to somebody who they eventually came to value again.
So the realization process often is very painful but, from a clinical point of view, it has to happen. It's like an addiction. You have to admit you have a problem before you can even begin to deal with it.
David: Certainly, certainly. Now, what if you're being targeted for alienation? Let's say your parent and your mate is somehow targeting you for this kind of alienation. How should you respond? Is there a way to be of helpful to the children in that case?
Amy: Yes, I have a lot of advice, and again, I'm not going to have time now. Maybe at the end, I can give my email address so people can contact me if they want.
David: Certainly.
Amy: But for the minimal advice, don't argue with your children about the details of their disgruntlement with you. The kids show up for visitation and they're all trying to treat the targeted parent, "Why did you have an affair? Why did you steal our money?" They sort of have been bothered in all these personal details; and they believe things that aren't true.
But it's sort of pretty much a waste of time to argue with your child. I think the best thing a targeted parent can do is say something like, "I hear that you think I did (whatever). I can see why you would be so hurt and angry. I'm so sorry you're hurt and angry. I do have my own perspective. If and when you want to hear it, let me know. In the meantime, let's go (insert fun activity)." That is, if you're lucky enough to still have contact with your kid.
Amy: It's the trick that the alienating parent -- one of their strategies -- is that they send their kids for visitation trying to have a big fight with the targeted parent. The targeted parent often takes the bait and then they end up spending the whole visitation fighting with their kids. Then, the kid leaves and goes, "Mom's right! Dad is unsafe. All he did was yell at me all weekend."
So, you have to find ways to acknowledge and amplify, put it on the record that you have another side to the story, but leave it at that unless they come to you. If they do come to you and say, "You know, I do hear want to hear what happen to my college fund. I do want to hear your side of things." Unless this is appropriate given the development level of the child, then they're going to be receptive. But you can't wave around the bank statement in their face, and they're not going to look at if they don't want to know the truth.
Amy: Well, that's sort of my main advice. Now, for people who have already lost their kid. People email me or come up to me and tell me, "I haven't seen my kid until the year." My main advice is never give up on your kid, never give up hope. This kid do eventually, some of them do eventually figure it out, and most important thing is for them to know that you're still there and that you'll open your arms to them, no questions asked.
So I advise, unless your lawyer or therapist tells you otherwise -- and always do what your lawyer or therapist tells you -- you should be having some contact with your kid every week, every month, whatever it is. IM them, text message, send them a gift, send them a card. I don't care if you think you know for sure that that kid is ripping up your card and spitting on it and throwing it out. You still send the card because the worst thing from the point of view of the people I interviewed, it's the parent who stopped sending the card and stopped reaching out, and then they're alienating parent turns around and the kid and says, "See? Your Dad is a bum. He never writes you." And look what the kid say, "Yes, I guess you're right. He doesn't write."
David: That sounds like really important advice. Maybe this is a good place for you to in fact, give your email address in case people want to get additional information from you.
Amy: It's very simple. It's amyjlbaker@aol.com. So, it's my professional name but without the periods after the "J" and the "L".
Amy: I invite people who reach out to me. I'm not a clinician. I can give one shot advice or direct you to maybe to a therapist or support groups or some kind of help of support groups who start in my county. Because I know the targeted parents are so ashamed and so frustrated and so demoralized, they really believe the core while dealing with it.
David: OK. Well, I wonder if there's anything that you did not get a chance to say that you'd like to say before we wrap things up here.
Amy: Well, I do recommend a particular website. I have no vested interest in it. It's just a website I think is good. It's called Parental Alienation Awareness Organization.
I do encouraged people who are going through this to read the book. I feel that I can give you perspective in reading the book because it really is the voices of the kids who have gone through this.
I welcome every body to reach out to me and I give my heart out with sympathy to anybody who's dealing with this short of the death of the child, this is one of the most tragic and painful things that a parent can go through.
David: Well, Dr. Amy J.L. Baker, thanks so much for being my guest today on "Wise Counsel".
Amy: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[musical interlude]
David: I hope you found this interview with Dr. Amy J.L. Baker informative. If you were someone you know as caught up in this sort of parental blame game that she describes, you do well to take a look at her book as well as the website she mentioned. And as you heard, she would welcome any inquiries or comments via the email address she gave earlier. In addition, I would encourage you to post comments on our show's website.
You've been listening to Wise Counsel, a podcast interview series sponsored by CenterSite, LLC. Until next time, this is Dr. David Van Nuys and you've been listening to Wise Counsel.
<a href="//www.cascadementalhealth.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=14784&cn=82">Wise Counsel Interview Transcript: An Interview with Amy J. L. Baker, Ph.D. on Parental Alienation</a>
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Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access
Enabling Environments Lab
Assistive Technology Evaluation Lab
Accessible Workplace Lab
Accessible Education Lab
Teach Access
Making Education Accessible for Everyone
CATEA and its Georgia Tech partners have taken a lead role in the Teach Access movement to embed accessibility throughout higher education and to expand educational experiences for students in computing, engineering, design, and related fields.
The Teach Access Initiative is comprised of prominent technology companies including Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and HP, among others; key advocacy groups including American Foundation for the Blind; and leading academic institutions such as Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and the University of Colorado, which are dedicated to building inclusively academic programs in design, engineering, and human-computer interaction that will better prepare students to address the needs of diverse populations.
To tackle these challenges, Teach Access has set forth four main objectives:
Core Education
To include accessibility and universal design principles in the curricula of computer scientists, designers, and researchers in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education.
To foster expansion of accessibility in higher education through approaches such as internships, challenge grants for research and curriculum development, and industry partnerships. These initiatives will focus on practical applications for accessibility including open-source projects and research studies.
To build online learning tools that reflect and teach accessibility best practices. To make these tools widely available to individuals, companies and organizations.
To develop job descriptions that include preference for accessibility knowledge, to increase accessibility focus within recruitment activities, and to extend the post-secondary foundation through “on the job training” in product and service development.
As the lead academic unit, CATEA prepared and submitted an action plan that led to a two-day Kickstart Workshop in April 2016 at Yahoo in Sunnyvale, California. More than 40 participants, representing technical leadership across the tech industry, academia, and disability advocates, attended the meeting. The culmination of the meeting was the formation of six task forces to:
Create teaching materials for diverse student audiences.
Create evidence packets to help engage university leadership and administrators on the need for teaching accessibility.
Pursue accreditation programs for viability of teaching accessibility.
Create opportunities for student engagement beyond the classroom (conferences, internships, etc.).
Investigate industry-sponsored competitions on accessibility and ways to embed accessibility into existing competitions.
Investigate grant opportunities for professors to incorporate accessibility into coursework (e.g., to support student and faculty prizes, select equipment and tools, etc.).
To support and serve as a model program for these initiatives, CATEA and its academic partners in industrial design, psychology, and interactive computing are currently developing an interdisciplinary certificate program that will instill accessibility within a variety of unique and innovative educational experiences.
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Lonely but determined, pro-life Democrats speak up
July 31, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print
Denver, Colo., Jul 31, 2018 / 02:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak has one word to sum up the plight of the pro-life Democrat: “Lonely.”
“We’re not trusted in our party. We are not appreciated by Republicans, even though nothing can pass without us,” he told a gathering of pro-life Democrats in Denver. “It really is a hard road to go.”
Stupak was among the speakers at the Democrats for Life of America annual conference held July 20-22 on the theme “We want our party back.”
When Stupak joined Congress in 1992, there were 20 pro-life Democrats. Now there are only three who openly take a pro-life stand.
“I think there’s more, I think there’s a lot more,” he said. “But our numbers have dwindled so much that there’s no leadership within the Democratic Party to ask these members to vote for pro-life legislation.”
He said he was positive a 20-week ban on abortion could pass Congress with enough key pro-life Democrats. In his view, about 30 Democratic votes are needed to counter to votes of pro-choice Republicans.
“Republicans will never admit it but if you go back and look no right to life legislation can pass in the U.S. Congress without the support of Democrats,” said Stupak.
The nine-term Congressman was a key leader in an amendment intended to limit the provision of abortion in the 2010 health care bill known as the Affordable Care Act. His 2017 book “For All Americans” discusses the passage of the act.
“You need to constantly support the right-to-life Democrats. Remind them they’re doing the Lord’s work. You have to be there for them,” he told his audience. “We have to support our pro-life Democrats and have to remind our party why we are such an integral part.”
Lincoln Davis, a former congressman from Tennessee, also attended the Denver event. U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), who faced a strong primary challenge this year from a candidate backed by pro-abortion rights groups, addressed the gathering in a pre-recorded video. He received the Democrats for Life Bob Casey Whole Life Award, named for the former governor of Pennsylvania.
Michael Wear, a political strategist who directed faith outreach for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, spoke to the conference via live video. He recounted his background in an all-Democrat, blue-collar union family. When he became a Christian, he said, it “put new life and meaning behind what I viewed as the central commitments of the Democratic Party: fighting poverty, civil rights, human dignity.”
“The pro-life movement needs Democrats, and the Democratic Party need pro-lifers. You have earned your place in politics, we have earned our place. Our responsibility is to steward the influence we have as best we know how to do the most good as we know it,” he said.
While on some issue the Democratic Party did not necessarily fit, Wear said, “you join a political party not for that party to influence you, but for you to influence that party.”
“Registering for a political party does not mean signing one’s conscience over to “every jot and tittle of the party platform,” he told the audience.
“You’re willing to hold in the tension of contributing to something you don’t always agree with all the time… but our civic life is not just about our personal preferences. It’s about the common good, about how we live together,” said Wear. “Political parties are a very important way of how to do that.”
Wear saw the Democratic Party of 2006 and 2008 as better for pro-life advocates than the current situation. In his view, the pro-life movement is a “helpful, sort-of-nagging element” that pushes Democrats to “stand up for life.”
He believed President Barack Obama cautioned his party against alienating others, including on the issue of abortion. Obama’s controversial visit to the University of Notre Dame had positive elements for Wear. The Democratic Party platform at the time had language about reducing abortion, language which “ended up pleasing nobody,” the president decided to keep this language in his speech.
The conference drew some opposition from Colorado Democrats and Democrat-leaning groups.
Progress Now Colorado, which previously attracted attention for misleading ads against pro-life pregnancy centers in the state, ran internet ads critical of the conference. In a parking lot outside the conference hotel, the group set up a billboard truck which said, “abortion access is a progressive value.”
On the morning of July 21, several critics gathered outside the hotel for a small press conference: Karen Middleton, executive director of NARAL Colorado; Sam DeWitt, access campaign manager for Compassion and Choices Colorado; and Democratic state legislators Sen. Rhonda Fields and Reps. Leslie Herod and Jovan Melton.
Herod objected to the effort to make space for Democrats who are opposed to abortion.
“Democratic values are not up for debate… the national and Colorado Democratic platforms are clear. Upholding the legal right for anyone to access a safe and legal abortion is essential and non-negotiable,” she said.
Herod characterized abortion as fundamental “to achieving the kind of gender, race and economic equality that we as Democrats have been fighting for, for decades.”
“Let me be clear: a Democrat is someone who stands for equality, stands for choice, stands for racial justice. If you don’t stand for those things then you are not a Democrat,” she said.
Middleton, herself a former Democratic state legislator, said Colorado was “a solidly pro-choice state” and contended that those gathered for the conference were not in fact Democrats, but present “under a ruse.”
“This notion, a false narrative of a false move into the party really needs to be pushed back,” she said. “We’re here to say, ‘No, we don’t believe you, you are not welcome here, we want to see you really let us move forward together, unifying access to abortion care for all.’”
Over a dozen pro-life Democrats and their allies held a brief counter-demonstration. Playing up the regional Planned Parenthood affiliate’s opposition to unionization of its workers, they held signs such as “Pro-Labor, Pro-Life.”
Just minutes later, the conference hosted speaker Justin Giboney, an attorney and political strategist from Atlanta who was elected as a delegate to the 2012 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions.
“A lot of Democrats disagree with the party on abortion but stay silent. We’ve got to speak up,” he said. “Without the assumption of ill intentions on the part of pro-lifers, people would have to acknowledge that there is another life at stake in these debates.”
He said he appreciates the Democratic Party’s “commitment to serving the least of these” and its recognition that government “has a role to play in improving people’s lives.
“The party must not turn away from these fundamental values,” he added.
Giboney, who is African-American, said his formation in traditional black Protestantism “means my faith cannot be separated from my politics.” He placed himself in the Progressive Era tradition of social programs for the poor, workers’ rights, government reform, and criminal justice issues.
Giboney rejected political progressivism that defines itself in “the Western European expressive individualism, permissive culture sense of the term.” While many people appreciate the Democratic Party’s stand on immigration and heath care, he said, they “see the party as speeding recklessly away not only from a sense of morality, but also a sense of reason, a sense of pluralism, and moving so far left on social issues that it is irresponsible. It has become illiberal.”
He feared that other issues will be sidelined for secular progressive issues he said are being championed and funded by a few interest groups.
According to Giboney, there were groups that wanted him kicked out of the Georgia delegation to the Democratic convention. He worried the party is “openly engaging in religious exclusion” to limit the participation of people with certain religious beliefs, hindering any pro-life Democrats’ run for office.
Such candidates will not get exposure or funding if they maintain their beliefs publicly; staff will leave candidates because they fear they won’t get a job later.
“While the party accepts the vote of religious voters, it will treat them as unfit if they try to run for public office,” he charged.
In Giboney’s view, some pro-life advocates on the political right had contributed to false narratives. He found it hard to relate to the Republican Party’s version of the pro-life movement, which he said isn’t “whole life.”
“How can you care about the unborn, if you don’t care about the poor or the immigrant?” he asked. “People ask these questions because too many pro-lifers don’t have a strong record on some of these other issues.”
He stressed the need for pro-life advocates to show compassion for people in a crisis situation and to do more than simply encourage a pregnant woman to have a child, who will then grow up in poverty and the pressures of a harsh criminal justice system.
“I think pro-life Democrats are in the best position to do those things and we need to take up that task.”
To know and do God’s will: A short Ignatian primer
“The Last Days of Disco” and the death of the rom-com
Bishops welcome efforts to defend unborn child of undocumented teen
October 23, 2017 CNA Daily News 0
Austin, Texas, Oct 23, 2017 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Texas’ bishops have welcomed the decision of an appeals court delaying the government-assisted procurement of an abortion by an undocumented teenager who is under federal custody in the state.
However, a request for a review of the appeal has been filed, again opening up the question of whether the government will be forced to facilitate an abortion for the unaccompanied minor.
“Federal and Texas state officials are to be commended for defending the life of an innocent unborn child in a recent case involving an unaccompanied pregnant minor in federal immigration custody,” the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops stated Oct. 20.
They said a lower court’s Oct. 18 ruling allowing the girl to get an abortion would “require the government to facilitate and participate in ending the innocent life of the unborn child.”
“Indeed, this case, one of many brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has as its objective compelling others to perform, facilitate, or pay for abortion who do not wish to do so. This objective is unconscionable. No one —the government, private individuals or organizations — should be forced to be complicit in abortion,” the bishops urged.
The bishops’ statement came in response to an Oct. 20 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The case revolves around the question of whether the federal government will facilitate an abortion for a 17-year-old from Central America, known only as “Jane Doe.” Since September, the minor has been in federal custody in a Texas shelter operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement – an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Under Texas law, minors must have either parental consent or a state permission to obtain an abortion. Doe received state permission Sept. 25, 2017. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has objected to transporting the minor to abortion appointments.
The government argues that since she is a minor in their custody, it has the right to determine what is in the best interest of the teen, and also states it has an interest in not creating incentives for minors to cross international borders in order to obtain abortions.
On Oct. 20, a three-judge appellate panel ruled that Doe would not be allowed immediately to obtain the abortion. This overruled a Texas district court’s ruling that Doe should be allowed to access an abortion immediately.
Instead, the appeals court said, a sponsor must be found for the minor, and she must be released from federal custody into the custody of the sponsor. She would then be allowed to obtain the abortion by herself, with the sponsor taking her to and from the appointment. The government has until Oct. 31 to find a sponsor.
As of last week’s ruling, Doe is 15 weeks pregnant and has secured outside funding for the abortion. Abortion is prohibited in Texas after 20 weeks.
The ACLU, who is representing Doe, has filed an emergency petition asking for a full review of the case by all 10 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The Trump administration has asked the appeals court to deny the petition, saying the court will review the case Oct. 31 if no sponsor is found. The administration also stated that the teen can return to her home country in order to seek an abortion.
Texas’ bishops objected to the ACLU’s ongoing attempts to require cooperation in abortion, and noted that religious organizations, such at the Catholic Church, are involved in immigration efforts for unaccompanied minors and work with pregnant mothers.
They also decried the ALCU’s previous litigation seeking to bar the reception of funds from faith based-organizations, saying such actions are “thwarting the delivery of vital human services by organizations with the competence and experience to provide them.”
“As this case continues through the legal process, we pray for this young mother and her unborn child, so both may enjoy the protection and refuge the United States offers.”
Report: Government funds largest source of Planned Parenthood revenue
January 4, 2018 CNA Daily News 0
Washington D.C., Jan 4, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Planned Parenthood reported that it received more than $500 million in government funding last year, while performing more than 300,000 abortions across the United States.
The country’s largest abortion provider released its 2016-2017 annual report this weekend, reporting that while the organization is seeing fewer patients than in previous years, revenue from government sources remains mostly stable. The report also showed increased excess revenues for the organization.
In the 2016-2017 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood saw 2.4 million patients at its 600 health centers, and performed 321,384 abortions. Though the number of abortions decreased slightly from the prior year, Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers have increased 10 percent over the past decade, despite seeing about 600,000 fewer patients. In 2006, Planned Parenthood reported that they performed 289,750 abortions, and served 3.1 million patients.
Planned Parenthood’s excess revenue increased from the prior fiscal year, from $77.5 million to $98.5 million, an increase of 27 percent.
Despite seeing fewer patients, Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding has increased by 61 percent in the past decade, from $336.7 million in 2006 to $543.7 million in 2016.
CEO Cecile Richards bemoaned a “historic threat” to Planned Parenthood in the report, stemming from legislative efforts at the state and federal level to regulate or defund Planned Parenthood.
Despite defunding efforts, the organization received only two percent fewer tax dollars in 2016 than in 2015. “Government Health Services Reimbursements & Grants” constituted the largest source of funding for Planned Parenthood in 2016-2017, providing 37 percent of the organization’s revenue.
The majority of Planned Parenthood’s expenses, 60 percent, were for “medical services.”
The report showed that the number of patients receiving contraceptive services from Planned Parenthood declined last year, as it has since 2009. That year, Planned Parenthood provided 4,009,549 contraceptives to patients, a number that was nearly halved by 2016. Most of Planned Parenthood’s birth control services are oral contraceptives, the report said, although there was an increase in the number of IUDs implanted in 2016 compared to 2015.
Cancer screenings and prenatal care also declined over the past year. While adoption referrals increased, Planned Parenthood performed about 82 abortions for every child that was referred for adoption.
In light of the report showing a significant, growing, profit, pro-life advocates are continuing to calling for Planned Parenthood to be defunded by state and federal legislatures.
“Enough is enough,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, in a Jan. 3 statement. “Community health centers vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide and offer comprehensive primary and preventative care for women and families. Congress must follow through on the promise to redirect tax dollars away from Planned Parenthood without further delay.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>In looking at <a href=”https://twitter.com/PPact?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@PPact</a>'s latest annual report, more than 82 abortions were performed for every 1 adoption referral. You have to ask – how much choice is Planned Parenthood advocating for their vulnerable patients?</p>— Catherine Szeltner (@CatSzeltner) <a href=”https://twitter.com/CatSzeltner/status/948263568440426497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 2, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>As I’ve stated before (and setting aside the fungible aspect of $), I don’t care if the dollars that Planned Parenthood receives from the government go to purchase fish tanks for waiting rooms. Their organization takes lives, and that is unacceptable.</p>— Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) <a href=”https://twitter.com/SouthernKeeks/status/948347629590728704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
Left unmentioned in the report was that 32 Planned Parenthood facilities have closed during the last year.
Death in the modern age – and how to prepare as a Catholic
November 2, 2017 CNA Daily News 0
Washington D.C., Nov 2, 2017 / 03:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Death. It’s a subject seen as sad, morbid and fearful, something that people would rather not think about, and certainly not discuss.
Yet for Catholics, death is an essential part of the faith.
“For those who die in Christ’s grace it is a participation in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his Resurrection,” reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The celebration of the sacraments hearken for a kind of death: death to self, death as a consequence of sin, a remembrance of Christ’s death and entrance into eternal life.
As the 20th century priest Fr. Henri Nouwen remarked, “Dying is the most general human event, something we all have to do.”
The question, he asks, is “Do we do it well?”
Hiding from death
Advances in medicine and technology have drastically increased life expectancies in the past century. In 1915, most people would not expect to live past age 55. A child born in the US in 2017 is expected to see their 85th birthday.
As a result, death has become something distant and even foreign, argues Julie Masters, a professor and chair of the Department of Gerontology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
“We get lulled into thinking death doesn’t hit us very often, because it waits until people are very old,” she told CNA. “We know that younger people do die, that middle aged people do die, but in this country, the majority of people who die are going to be older people.”
The average American in the 21st century simply doesn’t have the experience with death that previous generations had, she said. And this lack of experience can lend itself to fear and a tendency to ignore the uncomfortable unknown of the future.
“So we’ll put it off until we have to talk about it, and when we do talk about it, then we get in a pickle because we’re not sure what people want,” Masters said.
Hiding from death can have other consequences, as well. Cultural unease and inexperience with death can affect how we approach loved ones as they die.
“If we’re uncomfortable with death, if someone is dying, we may be unwilling to visit them because we don’t know what to say, when in reality we don’t need to say anything,” Masters said. “We may be less available to comfort them.”
Avoidance of death can also impact vulnerable members of society who are not actively dying, Masters warned.
“Our uncomfortableness with dying may be symptomatic of our desire to control dying and death,” she said. When that control or the fear of becoming a “burden” gives way to conversations about physician-assisted suicide, she continued, “we look at the most vulnerable and say ‘are they really worthy of living, think of all the resources they’re taking up?’”
“Each step in that slope, it gets easier to get rid of people who are no longer valuable or are vulnerable. Yet don’t we learn from the vulnerable?” she questioned. “They’re the ones who teach the strong what’s most valuable in life.”
But Masters also sees a desire to move towards a broader discussion of how to die well. She pointed to the spread of Death Cafes and other guided discussion groups that encourage conversations about death, dying and preparation for the end of life.
Churches can offer a similar kinds of programming, she suggested: “People want to talk about it, they just need the place to do that.”
What does it mean to have a ‘happy death’?
While a person may plan for their death, ultimately the circumstances of one’s passing will be out of their control. However, everyone can aspire to a “good” or “happy” death, said Fr. Michael Witczak, an associate professor of liturgical studies at The Catholic University of America.
He told CNA that the essential qualities of a happy death are being in a state of grace and having a good relationship with God.
The idea of a happy death, or at the very least the aspiration of it, gained popular consideration in the Ars Moriendi – a collection of 15th Century Catholic works laying out the “Art of Dying,” he noted.
The texts elaborate on the temptations – such as despair – that face the dying, questions to ask the dying, advice for families and friends, how to imitate Christ’s life, and prayers for the bedside.
Resources such as these, from ages of the Church that had a more daily experience of death, Fr. Witczak suggested, can be a good resource for beginning to live “intentionally” and to think more about death and how to die well.
Masters agreed that intentionality is key in shifting the cultural mindset on death and dying.
“What if people approached death with the same joy that they greet the birth of a new baby?” she asked.
It’s a fitting analogue, she argues. Both processes – birth and death – are the defining markers of human life, and natural processes that all the living will experience. Both processes also open the door to a similar set of unknowns: What comes next? What will it be like afterwards? How will we cope?
She added that the modern tendency to view death with suspicion and trepidation – or to ignore it altogether – reflects something about the culture.
“If we’re so afraid of death and dying, I have to wonder if we’re also afraid of life and living.”
Last wishes
Discussing death is the first step in making practical preparations for it.
Without planning, Masters said, loved ones may not know a person’s preferences for treatment, finances, or funeral preparations, which can lead to sometimes sharp divides between friends and family. “When we get comfortable talking about death,” she noted, “we can let people know what our wishes are, so that hopefully our wishes are followed.”
Thorough planning includes setting advanced directives and establishing a power of attorney who can make medical decisions on one’s behalf if one is unable to do so.
It is also important to be aware of different care options in an individual’s geographic location. These include palliative care, which focuses on improving quality and length of life while decreasing the need for additional hospital visits. Not just limited to end-of-life situations, palliative care is available for a range of long-term illnesses, and seeks to relieve pain rather than cure an underlying condition.
Hospice care is also an option when the end of life approaches. At this point, the goal is no longer to extend the length of life, but to prepare for death, trying to alleviate pain and offer comfort, while also helping mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to prepare for death.
Funeral planning and creating a will are also important steps in the preparation process. Even for the young or those without material possessions, planning for one’s death can be useful for grieving friends and family members, Masters said. She explained that the idea of creating an “ethical will” is a Jewish tradition in which a person writes a letter or spiritual autobiography, leaving behind the values and morals they found important in their life to pass on to the next generation.
The practice, which is growing in popularity, is available to anyone “to put down into words what’s given their life meaning,” and can have special meaning for those who “feel, because they don’t have a lot of wealth or a lot of possessions, that they have nothing to leave their family.”
Masters pointed to a student of hers who wrote an ethical will shortly before passing away in college and the example of her own grandparents instilling the recitation of the Rosary as people who left behind some of their most meaningful gifts to their loved ones.
“It’s a testament to what that person believed in. What a gift that is!”
Paul Malley, president of the non-profit group Aging with Dignity, stressed that planning the more specific details of end-of-life care can help respect a person’s dignity during illness or on the deathbed.
“Those who are at the end of life, whether they may be suffering with a serious illness or disability, tend to have their dignity questioned,” he told CNA.
The sick and dying are often isolated, receiving care from medical professionals, he explained. And while advanced care planning often focuses on decisions regarding feeding tubes, ventilators, and other medical treatment options, that discussion “doesn’t tell your family anything about what dignified care means to you.”
“It’s important not to just talk about caregiving in terms of medical issues,” Malley stressed. “That’s a small fraction of a day – the rest of the day plays out at the bedside.”
Aging with Dignity promotes planning for acts of comfort, spiritual issues and family relationships in order to make the time surrounding death easier and more dignified for all involved.
“These issues were never talked about when it came to end-of-life care or advanced care planning.” Among some of the requests participants make, he elaborated, are small acts of comfort like cool cloths on a forehead, pictures of loved ones in a hospital room, favorite blankets on a bed, or requests for specific family or friends to come visit.
Planning to incorporate what Malley calls “the lost art of caregiving,” was important to his own family when his grandmother died. “One of the most important things for her was that she always wanted to have her feet poking out of the blanket because her feet were hot,” he recalled.
Although nurses and care providers would often bundle her feet up to try to keep her warm, her family was able to untuck her feet afterwards so she could stay comfortable.
“That might be something that sounds very trivial, very small, but for her, for my grandmother, laying in that bed where she couldn’t get up and couldn’t reach down to pull up her own blanket, having her feet stick out at the edge of the blanket was probably the most important thing to her all day long,” Malley said.
The end of the earthly pilgrimage
For Catholics, spiritual preparation for death should always include the sacraments, Fr. Witczak said.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation, important for all the faithful throughout their lives, is a particularly important spiritual medicine for those nearing death.
Additionally, Anointing of the Sick should be sought for those who have begun to be in danger of death due to sickness or old age, and it can be repeated if the sick person recovers and again becomes gravely ill, or if their condition becomes more grave.
“The Church wants people to celebrate the sacrament as often as they need to,” Fr. Witczak said.
The Eucharist can also be received at the end of life as “viaticum,” which means “with you on the way.”
“It’s receiving the Lord who will be with you on the way to the other side,” said Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., vice president and academic dean at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies.
He added that the Eucharist can be received as viaticum more than once, should a person recover, and can also be given even if someone has already received the Eucharist earlier during the day.
A good death is a gift
Prayer, reception of the sacraments, and seeking forgiveness from God and one another can mark death as a time of peace, Fr. Petri said. Death can also be a time of surprise, as it “either amplifies the way a person has lived their life or it causes a complete reversal,” with some people undergoing profound conversions or surprising hardenings of the heart during their last days.
“Much of it really does really on the will of God,” he reflected, adding that we should all pray for the grace of a holy death.
Dying a happy death is not only a blessing for the person dying, but can be a gift to others as well, Fr. Petri said, noting that family and friends can be drawn closer to one another and to God as the result of a holy death.
Masters agreed, adding that “the dying can serve as examples or role models,” by teaching others how to die without fear.
Ultimately, Fr. Witczak said, Christians “do” death differently because Christians “do” life differently.
“I think as human beings, death is a topic we’re afraid of and we’re told not to think about, and the Christian tradition keeps trying to bring it before people, not to scare people, but rather to remind people of their ultimate destiny,” he said.
“This is not simple and it’s something people ultimately have to learn for themselves, but it’s the important task of life. I think what the Church tries to do is to help people live their life fully and even live their death as an entryway into the life that is promised to us by Jesus Christ.”
Looking toward death and the vulnerability that surrounds it can be a vital way of encountering death – and overcoming the fear of it, he said.
Masters agreed, noting that those who have had encounters with death or profound suffering often “look at life differently.”
“They understand it is so fleeting. But because they know how close death is they look at life in a different way.”
For many people, this different approach to life includes an increased focus on family, friends and service, she said. “That’s how you’re remembered at the end of the day: what did you do for other people?”
Starting with even the most basic conversations about death, she added, can be beneficial for those wanting to confront mortality.
“When you can acknowledge that you’re going to die, you can begin to live your life.”
Hundreds Stand with Cordileone at Archbishop Family Support Day
Gibbons J. Cooney May 17, 2015 0
On Saturday, May 16th, approximately 500 joyful Catholics of every age and ethnic group came together in San Francisco’s Sue Bierman Park to show support for the City’s fighting Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone. The faithful were […]
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Browse: Home » 2019 » April » 18 » FIXED COSTS, CASES OVER £25,000, EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE BASKET OF CASES
FIXED COSTS, CASES OVER £25,000, EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE BASKET OF CASES
April 18, 2019 · by gexall · in Appeals, Civil Procedure, Costs, Fixed Costs
In Ferri v Gill [2019] EWHC 952 (QB)Mr Justice Stewart considered the relevant criteria to be applied when a claimant argued that fixed costs should not be applied to a case that had started in the portal but was settled for more than £25,000. How should the court consider “exceptional circumstances” in these circumstances?
“It goes without saying that a test requiring “exceptional circumstances” is already a high one”.
The claimant was injured riding his cycle. A GP report was obtained which anticipated a full recovery. A CNF was prepared under the pre-action protocol for low value personal injury claim. New solicitors were then instructed by the claimant. They obtained report from an orthopaedic surgeon who diagnosed a more serious injury. The new solicitors stated that the claim was not suitable for the protocol, there was a claim for loss of earnings and treatment.
The claim settled for £42,000 without the issue of proceedings,
The issue was whether the fixed costs regime after a claim left the protocol should be applied, CPR 45.29J allows the court to award non-fixed costs “If it considers that there are exceptional circumstances making appropriate to do so…”
THE DECISION OF THE MASTER
Master McCloud found that these were exceptional circumstances.
THE DECISION ON APPEAL: THE MEANING OF “EXCEPTIONAL”
The two central questions are (i) was the Master was right in her test of “exceptional”; (ii) was she right in deciding against what ‘basket’ of cases a case needs to be exceptional.
As regards the first question, it might be thought that “exceptional” is an ordinary English word which would not benefit from Judicial interpretation. Indeed this is what Lord Bingham said in R v Kelly. Statements which define it as “out of the general run”[31] add little, if anything. Had the Master said no more, then this part of the challenge would have failed.
However, there is no getting away from the fact that the Master herself said she was applying a ‘low bar’ to exceptionality and that she construed her test of “outside the general run of these cases” through that prism. There is a further indication of this from her application of the test to the circumstances in her judgment at [10][32]. Indeed it might be inferred that she gave permission to appeal on the basis that she was not adopting a high threshold since (a) “outside the general run” says nothing more than exceptional, and (b) there is no suggestion in her judgment that she was aware of the “basket” point which arises from the wording of her judgment.
As the House of Lords said in R v Soneji, an expression such as “exceptional circumstances” must take its colour from the setting in which it appears. The setting in which it appears informs the Court whether a strict approach to exceptional is or is not warranted. This is apparent from Soneji where the House did not accept the lower courts’ strict construction and did not itself “adopt a very strict approach” “bearing in mind the context”.
Was the Master correct in using a “low bar” or not a “strict approach”, bearing in mind the context of Rule 45.29J. I do not believe she was. My reasons are as follows:
i) Unavailable to the Master, as it had not by then been decided, was the decision in Hislop and the obiter dictum of Coulson LJ that: “It goes without saying that a test requiring “exceptional circumstances” is already a high one”.
ii) The setting of the policy reasons reiterated in the Fixed Costs regimes cases cited earlier in this judgment, while allowing for “exceptional circumstances” to depart from that regime, require a more strict, not a “low bar”, approach.
I turn now to the second question, namely was the Master right in defining the ‘basket’ of cases compared with which a case needs to have “exceptional circumstances”.
The Master referred[33] to looking at the case “in the context of the sorts of cases that are in the Portal” and the correct test being whether there were circumstances “which take it out of the general run of the type of such a case”. Further that it is a low bar because “the Portal is intended to deal with…simple cases which would typically be fast track cases”.
It is clear that the basket of cases against which a case must demonstrate “exceptional circumstances” is the type of cases that have exited the Portal and are subject to the Part IIIA regime. The costs in Table 6B for cases that have exited the Protocol are different from those in Table 6 for cases which have not. Also, it must be remembered that Table 6B costs provide for costs in cases where damages exceed £10000, by reference to a Fee of £1930 and 10% of damages over £10000.
Mr Williams submitted in his skeleton argument, though he did not press it at the hearing, that the ‘basket’ point was not taken below. I do not accept that this is a new point. The point at issue below was the construction of Rule 45.29J. This is an argument on that construction, based on an alleged error by the Master. In any event it would be legitimate to allow the point to be taken, given the principles set out in Paragraph 52.17.3 of the 2019 White Book. Otherwise the Court would be giving a ruling on a pure matter of construction while consciously disregarding an argument which has force. Further, looking at the Defendant’s skeleton before the Master[34], the point was sufficiently raised.
The initial question is whether the Master did use the wrong basket. Mr Williams submitted that it is not clear that she did. He says that she referred to the ‘Portal’ rather than the Protocol and that certain paragraphs of her judgment only make sense if she was using the correct basket. There is some difficulty in the terminology used in the Master’s judgment. However it seems to me that she was probably using the term ‘Portal’ in the sense of cases within the Protocol and those that had exited the Protocol and were subject to the Section IIIA regime. Then at [12] she says: “It is a low bar because the Portal is intended to deal with, in my judgment, simple cases which would typically be fast track cases and, for the factual circumstances that I have set out, it is on balance outside the general run of such cases.” It is correct that cases exit the Portal for a number of reasons, only one of which is that the value is said to be more than the Protocol upper limit; another is that the claimant gives notice to the defendant that the claim is unsuitable for the Protocol (for example, because there are complex issues of fact or law)[35]. Nevertheless, the basket must comprise only the cases covered by the Part IIIA Fixed Costs Regime. Therefore cases which have exited the Protocol under its paragraphs 4.43 and 7.76, (a) form part of the basket against which exceptionality must be construed and (b) do not qualify as engaging exceptionality merely because they are of that type.
Mr Williams submitted that there is no qualitative difference between asking whether the case is out of the norm for, on the one hand, cases within the Protocol/cases in a basket which includes those within and those which have exited the Protocol, and, on the other hand, only cases which have exited the Protocol. The response to this is that I am here dealing with the issue of construction, not with the application of that construction to the facts. The Master used the wrong basket for comparison. “Exceptional circumstances” must be construed against the setting (i.e the basket) in which it appears. I have no evidence to support the argument that there is no qualitative difference between a basket comprising (1) cases which remain in the Protocol, or (2) cases which remain in the Protocol and which exit the Protocol or (3) cases which exit the Protocol. If anything, first impressions suggest the contrary to Mr Williams’ argument. One would expect that cases covered by Protocol paragraphs 4.3 and 7.76 will be a substantially higher proportion of the cases in basket (3) than those in basket (2), and even more so than those in basket (1).
Finally, Mr Williams says that the defendant repeatedly refers to the ‘swings and roundabouts’ of fixed costs. But, he argues, this assumes two things, neither of which should be assumed.
“(a) The first is that any shortfall on costs resulting from fixed costs falls on solicitors who are serial users of the system. This assumption is not (remotely) safe. The shortfall in recovery fact falls on the parties who, in the case of claimants in personal injury proceedings, are very unlikely to be serial users of the system. Section IIIA of CPR 45 has no impact whatsoever on the costs which parties are liable to pay their own lawyers.
(b) The second is that, to the extent that shortfalls fall on solicitors, they will make it back over what the defendant calls their ‘macro’ experience of the protocol system. This might perhaps be a safe assumption for solicitors carrying out the bulk low-value work at which the protocol is in fact directed. It is not a safe assumption for solicitors like Fieldfisher, conducting higher value work for claimants who cases should never have been started under the protocol in the first place.”
Nevertheless, how the regime may impact on a particular litigant or lawyer cannot inform the construction of exceptionality. The authorities already cited make clear the policy reasons behind this fixed costs regime in particular, and other similar fixed costs regimes. Exceptionality should not be a low bar and it must be measured against the types of cases that are covered by Section IIIA.
For these reasons the Master erred in law on both the central questions raised in this appeal.
I should add that I have seen a transcript of the judgment of HH Judge Tindal dated 8th September 2017 from the Birmingham County Court. One of the submissions before him was that the Claimant satisfied Rule 45.29J “exceptional circumstances” where a Defendant accepted a Claimant’s Part 36 offer out of time in a fast track case which had exited the Portal. The Judge decided[36] to follow the test in Costin at [11], namely whether “exceptionally more money has had to be expended on the case by way of costs than would otherwise have been the case”. He did not find exceptionality in that case. He was not referred to Qader or Sharp and his decision pre-dated Hislop.[37]
The matter was remitted for consideration by a different Master.
Tags: Appeals, costs, Fixed costs
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Congress’s end run around a pillar of online free speech
By Mathew Ingram
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Free-speech advocates—including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology—are afraid that a bill currently making its way through Congress could significantly weaken existing protections for online speech.
In the United States, one of the most critical planks supporting free expression online is a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, often referred to as the “safe harbor” clause. The EFF describes it as “the most important law protecting internet speech.”
ICYMI: The story BuzzFeed, The New York Times and more didn’t want to publish
Section 230 states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In a nutshell, this clause gives any online service provider immunity from legal liability for the content that its members or users post (unless it involves either criminal activity or intellectual property).
This means that platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Amazon can’t be sued if one of their users publishes something that is libellous or offensive. But it also protects much smaller platforms and online communities from similar kinds of liability, and digital news companies and online publishers from being taken to court for the comments that readers post on articles.
The risk is that if those protections are weakened, publishers will decide it’s not worth it to host any user-generated content at all, which could significantly reduce the amount of reader interaction in the form of crowdsourced and collaborative journalism.
The bill that the EFF and others are so concerned about is called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act or SESTA, which would amend Section 230. The bill was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee this week.
According to its main sponsor, Republican Senator Bob Portman from Ohio, the legislation will make it easier to crack down on sex trafficking, which is facilitated in some cases through online services like Backpage, a provider of adult classified-ad listings that is currently facing a potential grand jury indictment.
Most people would agree that bringing an end to sex trafficking is a noble goal—although there are those who disagree about whether SESTA will be able to do so (some experts believe it could actually expose sex trafficking victims to more harm, and make it more difficult to stop the practice by driving it underground). But in the process of reaching that goal, the proposed law could blast a large hole right through the free-speech protections of Section 230.
“An internet without Section 230 is one that diminishes the voice of the individual online, limits our access to information and diverse platforms for our speech, and pressures all intermediaries to act as gatekeepers and judge user content,” says Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
While it is celebrated by free-speech advocates, however, not everyone is a fan of Section 230. Some observers say there is a growing belief in Washington that the law gives Internet companies too much freedom, and that its protections should be loosened so the government can hold Facebook and Google accountable for things like fake news and hate speech.
There appears to be “increasing skepticism about Section 230 inside the Beltway, and in fact increasing skepticism about Silicon Valley,” says Eric Goldman, an expert in Internet law at Santa Clara University. “There’s a widespread fear that internet companies are causing society’s ills rather than just holding a mirror up to them.”
SESTA’s critics warn that the proposed law could lead to a significant smothering of online speech of all kinds, not just speech about sex trafficking. That’s because the bill creates a new kind of liability by making it a crime to “knowingly facilitate, assist, or support” any such activity.
Daphne Keller of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society says that the new law could push some platforms and publishers to crack down on a wide variety of speech, to avoid the threat of lawsuits. It would give them “a reason to err on the side of removing internet users’ speech in response to any controversy,” she says, “and in response to false or mistaken allegations, which are often levied against online speech.”
Cindy Cohn, executive director of the EFF, said in an interview that she fears the bill will put pressure on small websites and online communities in particular, and some might decide to shut down for fear of lawsuits, while others might never get into the market at all. And the web in general would ultimately be the poorer for it.
ICYMI: Trump might be in serious trouble for his NBC tweets
“I worry about this a lot, because we’re already in a place where only a few places are hosting people’s speech, and now there’s a lot more pressure on them to limit what people can say on these platforms,” says Cohn. “It will shrink the number of voices because it will shrink the number of places that are willing to host those voices. Ultimately it won’t be worth it to host a bulletin board or comments, and that will just entrench the big guys.”
Goldman says that even after an amendment this week that tried to tighten up the definition of what constitutes “knowledge of conduct,” the language in the bill is still far too broad, and could wind up catching all kinds of other activity in its net.
Not only that, but he says SESTA could potentially create a kind of boomerang effect, by creating a perverse incentive for some sites to ignore all sexually related posts or behavior—since doing anything about them would suggest knowledge, and therefore liability if they miss something.
“If a site decides the best strategy is to dial back its efforts to moderate content” so that it can claim not to have knowledge, he says, “the bill could have the counterproductive result of exacerbating other types of antisocial behavior, because some companies won’t bother to moderate at all.”
Senator Ron Wyden, who co-wrote the original Section 230 clause into the Communications Decency Act, has said he opposes SESTA because of the damage it could do to online speech, and to startups who rely on Section 230’s protections to remain in business, or to even make their business viable at all. “The bill that we’re looking at today is the wrong answer to a serious problem,” he told the Senate Commerce Committee in September.
This week, Wyden put a hold on the bill, in the hope that some senators might reconsider their support. But the pressure to do something about sex trafficking is intensifying, and with industry groups like the Internet Association behind it and widespread support in Congress, observers say SESTA stands a good chance of becoming law.
And if it does, it could significantly curtail speech online in ways that will affect not just large social platforms like Facebook and Twitter but online publishers of all kinds.
ICYMI: CNN airs problematic gun photo
Mathew Ingram is CJR's chief digital writer. Previously, he was a senior writer with Fortune magazine. He has written about the intersection between media and technology since the earliest days of the commercial internet. His writing has been published in The Washington Post and the Financial Times as well as Reuters and Bloomberg.
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Many Languages, One Theme: Welcome!
April 07, 2019 | posted by Lara Klaber in Festival Events
When you have the word ‘international’ as part of your name, it goes without saying that languages and expressing the right messages are important to the CIFF.
Fusion Filmworks worked on the creative campaign for this year’s Festival. In addition to designing the artwork and producing the film trailer, this year they added translator to their list of responsibilities.
“We started out making a list of languages we thought were important to include in the trailer,” says Grace Nowak, executive producer, Fusion Filmworks. “After that we began the search for cast members.”
During the search process, they “stumbled upon a language or dialect we hadn’t anticipated,” she says.
For example, an Albanian woman introduced the creative team to a friend of hers from southern Nigeria who spoke Igbo. The Igbo word for welcome then became part of the list.
“The variety of backgrounds, languages and cultures is what really makes the ‘Welcome’ campaign genuine,” says Nowak.
With a little help from Google Translate, the languages were ultimately vetted by a translation company, along with a final proofread. Simple, right? Not so fast.
“A few of our cast members let us know that there were a number of ways to approach the concept of ‘Welcome' in their language,” Jon LaGuardia, director, Fusion Filmworks adds. “Most [languages] have a formal version that was rarely, if ever, spoken, and a casual everyday word or phrase that would be used even if it was not a direct match.
“Whether the word was able to be translated directly or not,” he says, “there was always a way to convey the concept of ‘Welcome.'”
--Anne M. DiTeodoro
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Personal Experiences Lead Filmmaker to Achieve Her American Dream
April 07, 2019 | posted by Lara Klaber in Filmmakers
The film “Crystal Swan” follows the story of a young woman, Velya, attempting to emigrate from Belarus to the United States in 1996. The heroine of the film has a typo in her visa which lands her in a backwater town in Belarus.
The film’s director, Darya Zhuk, has plenty in common with Velya. Zhuk left Belarus in the ’90s to study in the United States. Zhuk says, “Many times I had to stand in line for the US visa—and I found it one of the most stressful experiences over the years.”
Zhuk talks about how Americans do not understand how difficult it is to acquire a visa to the United States. “It’s personal experiences like that [that] led me to believe ‘Crystal Swan’ would be a good story to tell on screen.”
Travel to the United States for Belarusians is different today. Zhuk says that it is easier to find information with the Internet, and visas are simply more accessible. “There is less of a feeling that it’s now or never, it’s more fluid,” she remarks.
Though the visa situation may be somewhat changed, the story of Velya’s desire to travel the world still rings true. “The ideas of leaving your country to pursue a better life are very much in the air nowadays all over Eastern Europe, so the film resonates with young people,” Zhuk says. “The American Dream is something hugely relevant today, just like it was after the fall of the Soviet Union.”
The theme of following a dream is behind the production of this film as well. “Crystal Swan” is Zhuk’s first feature film, and though the financing was difficult, Zhuk found “at the end, I got a lot of creative freedom, so I feel lucky in how it came together. It’s always a challenge for filmmakers to make their first feature, and my advice is to keep the focus, and believe in your project.”
Zhuk’s website reads, “She strives to tell fun, unapologetically messy stories about always strong, diverse, and sometimes shocking, women.” When asked how the character Velya related, Zhuk responds, “Velya is a perfect embodiment of the type of characters I’d like to explore in my films.”
The film is layered with the goals of the character Velya, Zhuk’s past experiences, and Zhuk’s realized dream of creative direction on a feature film.
—W. Connor Drake
PHOTO: At 16, Darya Zhuk left her homeland in post-Soviet Belarus to study at Harvard University, where she discovered filmmaking. She holds a degree in economics from Harvard and an MFA in film directing from Columbia University, both with honors.
Related Screenings:
04/06/19 @ 9:35 PM – Crystal Swan
Spend Closing Night at 'The Public'
The mission statement of the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County is “Connecting people with the world of ideas and information.” Nowhere does it say that if you’re homeless or mentally ill, you are not welcome.
Public libraries are just that—public, free and open to all. However, one librarian from Salt Lake City, in an article he wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2007, noted that his library, like “virtually all the urban libraries in the nation, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city’s homeless.” The article also noted that librarians have added the role of social worker to their responsibilities in these instances.
That article got Emilio Estevez thinking. It took him 12 years, but he finally finished his story with, “The Public,” tonight’s Closing Night film.
Estevez stars in the film as a librarian caught in the middle of a “sit in” by library patrons, most who are homeless or mentally ill, and won’t leave. The area shelters are full and they have nowhere else to turn on a wintry night.
He also wrote, directed, and co-produced the film. Scenes were filmed at night after hours in the Cincinnati library, or the Public, as it’s referred to. At first, the library administrators and staff were concerned that giving the crew access and filming onsite would be disruptive to patrons and “could negatively impact the mission of the public library.”
“I made it very clear that my intention was not to impinge the public right to freely access the library, its information, and its resources,” Estevez tells American Libraries. “It was important to convey how seriously I take the work of librarians and how important I believe libraries are as a crucial and essential public commons.”
Each night the crew of more than 100 people would wrap up their work “making sure that we left no discernible footprint,” he continues.
The film was originally set to be shot in Los Angeles, until Estevez was lured back to his family roots in Ohio. His mother was born in Cincinnati, and his father, actor Martin Sheen, grew up in Dayton. He was also able to get some significant tax incentives for shooting in Cincinnati.
The local premiere took place on March 30 in downtown Cincinnati, and Cincinnatians are proud and impressed that so many references to their Queen City are made in the movie. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Estevez peppers the script with multiple references to the city and its neighborhoods, as well as some insider lingo.
Also starring in the film are Alec Baldwin, Taylor Schilling, Gabrielle Union, and Christian Slater. It was co-produced with Kristen Schlotman, executive director of Film Cincinnati.
—Anne M. DiTeodoro
PHOTO: Although we are at the Cleveland International Film Festival, we are going to give a little love to our southern Ohio neighbors in Cincinnati. Emilio Estevez’s “The Public” was filmed in 2017 partly in the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County’s main branch downtown.
04/07/19 @ 6:45 PM – The Public
No PhD Needed
The co-director of “Chasing Einstein,” Timothy Wheeler, states, “The film does exactly what Einstein would have done, ask questions.” His fellow co-director, Steve Brown, followed up with some examples, “Why do we believe what we believe today? Is it possible that there will be a completely different explanation in the future?... Could we be on the threshold of a paradigm shift, possibly of the magnitude of Galileo or Einstein?”
“Chasing Einstein” delves deep into these paradigm shifting questions which challenge the entire framework of the last 100 years. Brown says, “When you hear the conclusion of today’s physics that 96% of the universe is made of a type of matter and energy that is impossible to detect, it seems that physics might be hitting some kind of wall, despite its phenomenal success of the past 100 years.”
The filmmakers ask serious questions of the current paradigm in which physics operates. It explores the world of physics today, 100 years since Einstein’s breakthroughs. Brown continues, “The open questions in physics today are so big and some of the explanations are so bizarre that it feels like we are bound for another paradigm shift.”
In spite of these massive and complex concepts, “Chasing Einstein” is meant for a broad crowd of many backgrounds. Prior to interviews with physicists, the directors often shared this quote from Einstein himself: “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” You do not need a PhD in physics to care about these questions, and you do not need a PhD to understand this film.
This attitude permeates “Chasing Einstein” and reveals interesting results. Brown elaborates, “The first question might be ‘What is gravity?’ and the first answer might be a technical answer. Then the follow-up question would be, “But what is gravity, really?” These kinds of questions continue Einstein’s thread of simplicity.
The approach allows physics to become more accessible. Brown said, “We were surprised to learn that some of the most basic questions turn out to be as much of a mystery to the physicists as to the rest of us.”
“Chasing Einstein” puts these universal questions into discussions of common ground. Brown remarked, “What we thought might be dumb questions turn out to be the most important questions that everyone still is trying to figure out.” The interviewees, the top of their field, are dealing with fundamental questions.
In the end, this is a film for anybody with curiosity. “Chasing Einstein” covers questions like, as Browns asks, “Where did we come from? Where are we going? What’s it all about?” The pursuit of knowledge is universal. Wheeler finished with, “There is a real spiritual element to science--the drive to understand.”
04/06/19 @ 7:45 PM – Chasing Einstein
04/07/19 @ 12:10 PM – Chasing Einstein
Suburbia, Through the Looking Glass
It started off as a short film, a 15-minute 2015 excursion into a bizarre alternate suburban idyll. When “Greener Grass” creators Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe finished touring the festival circuit, their original hope was to turn the premise into a TV show. That didn’t come to pass, but the idea just wouldn’t let them go.
“What started happening,” they told Women and Hollywood, is that we kept finding ourselves saying ‘oh my God, this (particular unusual thing) is so “Greener Grass.”’ Or people who’d seen our short would pitch us things from their lives that were ‘so “Greener Grass.”’ And we naturally started building out the world, especially as bits we’d do with each other.”
In the aftermath of Election 2016, the timing was perfect, too. “The news started getting, well, very ‘Greener Grass,’” they continued. “Adults acting like petulant children, people in power unable to see past what’s right in front of them, and a desire permeating our country both politically and culturally, to return to the ‘good old days.’”
Skewering those imagined days was easier than ever given their shooting location: “The oh-so perfect world around us in Peachtree City (Georgia),” they enthused to 25 Years Later. “The people, the manicured lawns and brightly colored identical houses, the 100 miles of paved golf cart paths!”
In fact, they decided that nobody in their fictional world drove anything else. “We couldn’t show any vehicles other than golf carts,” they told Women in Hollywood, “which are comedy gold.”
They created a world in which the desire to compete and conform is so intense that everyone, even adults, wear braces in an attempt to make their teeth even more perfect, and if someone wears underpants as a scarf, everyone else will swiftly do the same. But even at its weirdest, it’s all just one small twist away from life. Except, probably, for the boy turning into a dog. Probably.
Although Luebbe and DeBoer had pulled in Saturday Night Live staple Paul Briganti to direct the short film, they decided that they wanted to co-direct the feature-length version themselves. “Our favorite thing to do as writers,” they said, “is create unusual worlds with their own unique logic and aesthetic. And we found that no one could better bring those specifics to life, exactly the way they exist in our brains, better than we could. So we started directing our own stuff.”
People warned them that it was a lot to take on, especially given that they had little experience with directing and no formal training. They didn’t let that deter them, and they don’t think it should deter anyone else.
“You don’t have to go to film school,” they told Women and Hollywood. “This applies to anyone, male or female, who hasn’t gone to film school and is afraid that means they can’t direct. It’s scary to feel like you don’t know all that technical stuff, but our experience has been that you learn those things fast when you’re thrown to the lions. And you’ll be surprised--you probably know more than you think.”
—Lara Klaber
PHOTO: Directors Jocelyn DeBoer, left, and Dawn Luebbe, right, told Collider that “Greener Grass” is “a horror film in the skins of a comedy, satirizing the world of suburbia.”
04/05/19 @ 4:20 PM – Greener Grass
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This is such an awesome list of all things Cleveland! Thanks to our friends at @clevelandscene for including us: https://t.co/wl9ZdFrxwf
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This is such an awesome list of all things Cleveland! Thanks to our friends at Cleveland Scene Magazine for including us: https://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-100-things-every-clevelander-must-do/Content?oid=30925495
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Australia's oldest exhibiting Aboriginal art gallery
Artworks BY Charlie Tawara Tjungurrayi
AIAM Rank 48
AIAM Rating 3.5541
Born west of the Kintore Ranges in Pintupi country, Charlie Tawara’s friendship with Europeans began early and continued to be instrumental throughout his life and career. He first encountered whitefellas as a youth and in his early teens lived for some time at Haasts Bluff before returning with a prospecting party to his homeland. By the onset of the Second World War he had moved to Hermannsburg and worked for some time as a builder there and with the army at military camps around Adelaide.
In the 1950’s he moved with his family to live at Haast’s Bluff, near Papunya, but still traveled out into the desert to contact and take rations to his people, often liaising for the welfare patrols who sought to draw the various tribes of desert dwellers into the government settlements and assimilate them into the encroaching white society. From its very beginnings Papunya was a place of tribal tensions and government neglect, so the Pintupi strove to establish their own camps, removed from the ‘conflict and grog’ that threatened their tribal integrity. When the painting group began on the veranda of Geoff Bardon’s flat in 1971, Tawara enthusiastically applied himself realizing, along with the other men, that this was one way they could improve their situation. Ultimately they hoped to return to, and set up, independent outstations within their homelands.
An adventurous and energetic man, Tawara was a predominant figure in the Papunya community during the 1970’s. He was a founding member of Papunya Tula and became an important spokesman for the Pintupi due to his strong command of English, despite a number of the white people in the settlement characterizing him as ‘difficult’ or ‘bitter’ (Johnson 2008). Bardon, on the other hand, found him ‘accessible’ and of ‘quiet disposition and warm loyalty’ (1979: 46). His versatility with language and European customs enabled him to guide and explain, on both sides of the cultural divide, the financial and cultural transactions that were the basis of the fledgling art business. He was the eldest of the many Tjungurrayi skin ‘brothers’ that included Kingsley, Shorty Lungkata, and Yala Yala as well as Don, George, Willy, Two Bob and Yumpululu who would follow them in to painting. As such, he took it upon himself to look after their interests. At the same time, he proved himself a prolific and talented painter, responding to criticism with a good-natured determination that saw through to the consolidation of the distinctive Pintupi style. His own work reflected this formal structuring, particularly his renditions of the Tingari creation myths, but at times he gave way to a more experimental flair. The vitality of his brushwork gave his works a characteristic textured surface that emphasized his attachment to solidity of form, and imparted a ‘vigorous presence’ to his paintings. Because of controversy surrounding the depiction of sacred subjects, Bardon suggested painting children’s stories that trace more general activities of traditional life such as food gathering. At the time it became a pathway to peace among the differing opinions as to what subjects and images were safe to reveal and Tawara helped to show the way forward with his vibrant Yam Dreaming 1972. This painting was intended to teach young people where and how to find this valuable desert food. It was Tawara who suggested to Bardon in 1972 that the newly established company be called Papunya Tula. Literally meaning ‘a meeting place of brothers and cousins at the Honey Ant place’, the small hill that looked over the Papunya settlement. It seemed to satisfy everyone, pointing to a new business arrangement that acknowledged an Aboriginal conception of sociability and consultation.
When Andrew Crocker came to Papunya as the new art advisor in 1981, a strong friendship developed between the entrepreneurial English man and Tawara who was, as described by Bardon, 'by far the most accessible of the Pintupi painting men' (Bardon cited in Carter 2000: 293). Crocker significantly raised the profile and sales of Papunya Tula. He contacted wealthy people around Australia and overseas, encouraging their interest in the paintings and selling a sizeable collection to the Holmes a Court family. The company broke free from its dependence on annual government grant money and a wider group, including women, became involved in producing art works. Crocker brought Tawara into the limelight, as a representative of the company but also as an artist in his own right. They traveled together to America and Europe, where in England Tawara met with Queen Elizabeth the second. In 1987 he was afforded the first retrospective devoted to an Aboriginal artist, organised by Crocker for the Orange City Festival, which later toured Australia. Because of the complexity of his relationship to both his white friends and his own culture, Tawara was deeply affected by these experiences, so removed from the basic difficulties his people faced as they began their exodus back to Kintore. His authority and political position within the Pintupi community wavered somewhat, even though he remained confident of his own importance. There is no doubt however, that the growing economic and political value of painting which enabled the Pintupi to regain their beloved homelands and determine an independent and hopeful future, was greatly powered by the vitality and heartfelt persistence of Charlie Tawara. He did eventually return to live in his Pintupi country, 25 years after he left it, by camel in 1956 aided by the money generated from his art sales. He and his wife, Tatali Nangala who passed away shortly after her husband at the end of the 1990’s, had nine children although tragically five of these died before their parents. Charlie Tawara lived an eventful and extraordinary life. Today his art resides in collections around the world and testifies to a life rich in spirit, despite the often alien world and personal sadness that he encountered.
#10768 LOCATION: Bondi Beach
Please note that prices are subject to change at the discretion of the gallery.
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Dear {Friends Name}, check out these paintings I found out on cooeeart.com.au. Regards {My Name}
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Beyond trust
Nick Myers
At Cooper, we spend a considerable amount of time understanding the experience requirements of the products that we’re designing. Our client stakeholders often request a design that our users will react to as feeling simple, intuitive, innovative, and so on. In many cases the products we’re asked to design must display a sense of trust.
Why is trust good?
Trust can play an important role in the successful adoption of a product. For example, in data backup and management, if the software does not give a user, such as a backup administrator, the confidence that his data is safe and securely managed then he’s unlikely to want to use, or switch to, this software. Especially, when considering that his job is on the line in cases where servers go down and critical data could be lost. Likewise, for online banking websites, customers want to know that their personal information is securely housed and not at risk of being stolen.
How do we make software that appears trustworthy?
All aspects of design and technology contribute to improving a product’s trustworthiness whether it be through the visual presentation, the tone of content, the accurate and clear communication of data, or the brand awareness of a company or product. Ultimately, when considering visual design it’s our task to create a visual language that appears professional, high in quality, and appropriate to the user’s expectations. For content and data, it should be clear, concise, error-free and accurate. Finally, repeated interactions with brands can build trust over time if consistent, dependable, and memorable.
When trust can be bad
Right now you might be wondering, “Trust can be bad?” You’ve got a point. No client has ever asked me to design a software application, website, or device that’s intended to be untrustworthy. But, our continuing reliance on complex information systems could lead us down the path of blindly relying on data, even when we don’t fully understand that data. Trust must always be cultivated in users, but too much trust, like too much of anything, can be a bad thing.
Consider the financial meltdown. I don’t pretend to fully understand what has happened, who’s to blame, and how it could have been prevented. What seems clear is that many of those responsible were only looking out for themselves. Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, discusses this issue that began decades ago in “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,”
The shareholders who financed the risks had no real understanding of what the risk takers were doing, and as the risk-taking grew ever more complex, their understanding diminished. The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had by the investment bank as public corporation, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted from trust to blind faith.
In assuming that a system is correct, users assume that what they are doing is correct, ethical and in the best interests of everyone. In doing so, they (perhaps unconsciously) absolve themselves of accountability. It is incumbent on the system to ensure that users are fully aware of their accountability, so the system must leave no doubt about that fact.
In Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think, he discusses a surgical protocol for cardiac tamponade, a condition in which “fluid has accumulated around the heart and was compressing it.” In the story, Dr. James Lock retells of how a standard procedure, where a needle is used to remove the fluid, had been nearly fatal for a young patient,
“Why do you stick the needle under the xiphoid?” Lock asked. I paused. “Because that was how my teachers taught me in my training.”
“And why do you think your teachers taught you the way they did?” Lock asked.
“Because that’s how they were taught.”
By not fully understanding the procedure or its history, the medical staff ceased to improve the procedure and more critically put the patient at great risk.
When viewing complex systems, users should not only understand data but, when necessary, ascertain its origin. Consider the frequency with which patients receive the wrong medication in healthcare environments. Relying too much on a system could give a nurse the false sense that she has administered the correct medication when in actual fact, a pharmacist prescribed the wrong dosage in her computer.
So what’s the solution?
The solution is to dive deep into the research problem and fully understand the trust need from your stakeholders and users. Regarding the stated examples, users should be made to feel like the software they’re using is reliable and dependable. But most of all, users should understand the system, be accountable for managing it, and be empowered to change it.
Credit cards for preschoolers?
Loyalty is so 20th century
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CampaignsToggle subsection
Jackie's Gift of Time
Molly's Gift of Time
Graham's Gift of Time
Graham started caring for his sister Agnes when she began to show signs of having dementia. Agnes moved in with her brother so he could better look after her, and as the years went by her condition continued to deteriorate. Eventually Graham could no longer support his sister alone, and a social worker made arrangements for her to receive additional support.
Cornerstone was asked to support Agnes with three 30-minute visits per day to help her get up in the morning, bathe, eat, take medication, and to get into bed at night. Graham enjoyed these visits too because they gave him some respite from his caring role as well as giving him opportunities to get to know other people. The responsibility of looking after Agnes had resulted in him becoming isolated and having someone else around made a big difference to his wellbeing.
Sadly, Agnes died quite suddenly. With her passing, her local authority funding ceased and the team would no longer be able to visit, leaving Graham to grieve all alone. Recognising that Graham needed their support, the team that had been caring for his sister were able to help him through this difficult time thanks to funding from our ‘Gift of Time’ appeal.
With the ‘Gift of Time’ given to Graham, he received the support needed to improve his mental health and overcome loneliness. Hi was encouraged to take part in local social activities and was soon able to rekindle old friendships. He has since joined a number of local clubs and keeps very active within his community.
Your donation. Our support. Crisis over.
Times of crisis are incredibly difficult, especially when you have no support or don’t know what to do. For people with support needs, there are significantly more challenges for them to overcome.
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Community-Built: Art, Construction, Preservation, and Place
Katherine Melcher, Barry Stiefel, Kristin Faurest
Series: Community Development Research and Practice Series
November 25, 2016 by Routledge
Throughout history and around the world, community members have come together to build places, be it settlers constructing log cabins in nineteenth-century Canada, an artist group creating a waterfront gathering place along the Danube in Budapest, or residents helping revive small-town main streets in the United States. What all these projects have in common is that they involve local volunteers in the construction of public and community places; they are community-built.
Although much attention has been given to specific community-built movements such as public murals and community gardens, little has been given to defining community-built as a whole. This volume provides a preliminary description of community-built practices with examples from the disciplines of urban design, historic preservation, and community art.
Taken as a whole, these community-built projects illustrate how the process of local involvement in adapting, building, and preserving a built environment can strengthen communities and create places that are intimately tied to local needs, culture, and community. The lessons learned from this volume can provide community planners, grassroots facilitators, and participants with an understanding of what can lead to successful community-built art, construction, preservation, and placemaking.
Introduction: Defining Community-Built
by Barry L. Stiefel, Kristin Faurest, and Katherine Melcher
Part I: Participation and Empowerment
Community-Built as a Professional Practice
by Katherine Melcher
Kalaka: Four Stories about Community Building in a New Democracy
by Kristin Faurest
Reflections on Community Engagement: Making Meaning of Experience
by Terry L. Clements and C.L. Bohannon
Impacts of Participatory Mural Making on Youth Empowerment
by Tiva Lasiter
Part II: Culture and Identity
Community Eruvin: Architecture for Semi-Public/Private Neighborhood Space
by Barry L. Stiefel
Community-Built and Preserved Material Culture: Square-log Cabins in the Village of Mont-Tremblant, Quebec
by Mariana Esponda Cascajares
Constructing and Preserving History Through Community Art Projects
by Anastasia L. Pratt
Yellow Star Houses: a Community Generated Living History Project in Budapest
by Ildikó Réka Báthory-Nagy
Part III: Local Control of Place
Building Informal Infrastructures: Architects in Support of Bottom-up Community Services and Social Solidarity in Budapest
by Daniela Patti and Levente Polyak
The Main Street Approach to Community Design
by Jeremy C. Wells
Building Streets and Building Community
Conclusion: Valuing Community-Built
by Kristin Faurest, Barry L. Stiefel, and Katherine Melcher
Katherine Melcher is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design, U.S. Her research focuses on the interaction between design and community development—in particular, participatory processes in the design of community spaces. Her design work has been featured in Landscape Architecture, Designer/Builder, 1000x Landscape Architecture, and Architecture for Change.
Barry L. Stiefel is an Associate Professor in the Historic Preservation and Communty Planning program at the College of Charleston, U.S. He is interested in how the sum of how local preservation efforts affects regional, national, and multi-national policies within the field of cultural resource management and heritage conservation. Dr. Stiefel has published numerous books and articles.
Kristin Faurest worked as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary, where she taught and researched in the areas of community-based planning, social justice in spatial planning, and the connections between culture and landscape. Last year she returned to her native U.S. to direct the Portland Japanese Garden's new International Institute for Japanese Garden Arts and Culture in Portland, Oregon.
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Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age
Theresa Enos
Theresa Enos founder and editor of Rhetoric Reviews Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona, where she teaches writing and rhetoric. In addition to being the author of numerous publications on rhetorical theory and issues in writing, she is the editor of A Sourcebook for Basic Writing Teachers and Learning from the Histories of Rhetoric: Essays in Honor of Winifred Bryan Horner.
"Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition offers the best guide to rhetoric and composition at understood and practiced in the United States." -- Literary Research Guide
"It is helpful to have a source such as this that can help people understand and analyze the ways that a message is crafted and why its creator chose to cast it in a certain way." -- Rettig on Reference
"An invaluable resource for our discipline...impressively broad in scope. These articles provide useful information and enjoyable browsing for even the most expert eye. The Encyclopedia is not only a fine reference, but is also the ultimate coffee-table book. In five years, we'll wonder how we ever did without it." -- Rhetoric Society Quarterly
"A pleasure." -- College Composition and Communication
"Rhetoricians, whatever their disciplinary affiliation, will welcome the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition as the most comprehensive, current reference in English in their field." -- Journal of Communication
"Both students and teachers of rhetoric will find this reference book a useful guide." -- ARBA '970
"A valuable reference source that will be of service to rhetoricians, their students, and those interested in learning about important terms, concepts, figures, theories, and periods in the discipline." -- Quarterly Journal of Speech
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Russian Antisemitism: Volume 2
William Korey
ISBN 9783718657407 - CAT# RX9461
The emergence in Russia of the antisemitic chauvinist movement, Pamyat, has startled Western society even as it has stirred deep fears and anxiety among Jews and democratic forces within Russia. How could a supposedly Communist society, whose founder, V.I. Lenin, had railed against racism and bigotry, give birth to a proto-fascist ideology and organization?
This study seeks to respond to this understandable, if provocative, query. The roots of Pamyat's ideology can be traced to the tsarist Black Hundreds in the early part of the twentieth century, to certain aspects of Stalinism, and especially to the Soviet "anti-Zionist" campaign of 1967-1986. Although the antisemitic campaign was officially halted at the state level by Mikhail Gorbachev, the emerging Pamyat groups took advantage of the freer atmosphere of glasnost to continue to foster anti-Jewish hatred.
These nationalistic forces remain vital elements in contemporary Russian society, inevitably raising a profound sense of concern among Jews and the general community.
Dr William Korey is a leading authority on East European antisemitism and on human rights. He has served as director of International Policy Research for B'nai B'rith. He has published widely on human rights and Soviet Jewish affairs, and has recently been honoured with B'nai B'rith's highest award, the President's Gold Medal.
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As of February 2018, the Chinese Government halted trading of virtual currency, banned initial coin offerings and shut down mining. Some Chinese miners have since relocated to Canada.[32] One company is operating data centers for mining operations at Canadian oil and gas field sites, due to low gas prices.[33] In June 2018, Hydro Quebec proposed to the provincial government to allocate 500 MW to crypto companies for mining.[34] According to a February 2018 report from Fortune,[35] Iceland has become a haven for cryptocurrency miners in part because of its cheap electricity. Prices are contained because nearly all of the country's energy comes from renewable sources, prompting more mining companies to consider opening operations in Iceland.[citation needed]
Izabella Kaminska, the editor of FT Alphaville, has pointed out that criminals are using Ethereum to run Ponzi schemes and other forms of investment fraud.[67] The article was based on a paper from the University of Cagliari, which placed the number of Ethereum smart contracts which facilitate Ponzi schemes at nearly 10% of 1384 smart contracts examined. However, it also estimated that only 0.05% of the transactions on the network were related to such contracts.[68]
This dramatic volatility attracted global attention with the mainstream media running near-daily reports on the price of Ether. The publicity generated has been a major boon for the ecosystem, attracting thousands of new developers and business ventures alike. In 2018 the amount raised through Ethereum-enabled ICOs reached almost $8bn, increasing from just $90m in 2016. While the price of Ethereum has faced extreme volatility over the years, it is this volatility which has driven interest. After every boom and bust cycle, Ethereum comes out the other side with a fundamentally stronger platform and a broader developer community backing it. These fundamental improvements would suggest a positive long-term outlook on the price of Ethereum.
Monero is the most prominent example of the cryptonite algorithm. This algorithm was invented to add the privacy features Bitcoin is missing. If you use Bitcoin, every transaction is documented in the blockchain and the trail of transactions can be followed. With the introduction of a concept called ring-signatures, the cryptonite algorithm was able to cut through that trail.
In 2016 a decentralized autonomous organization called The DAO, a set of smart contracts developed on the platform, raised a record US$150 million in a crowdsale to fund the project.[25] The DAO was exploited in June when US$50 million in ether were taken by an unknown hacker.[26][27] The event sparked a debate in the crypto-community about whether Ethereum should perform a contentious "hard fork" to reappropriate the affected funds.[28] As a result of the dispute, the network split in two. Ethereum (the subject of this article) continued on the forked blockchain, while Ethereum Classic continued on the original blockchain.[29] The hard fork created a rivalry between the two networks.
Vitalik Buterin picked the name Ethereum after browsing Wikipedia articles about elements and science fiction, when he found the name, noting, "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose it was the fact that sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."[9]
Ether is a token whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant mining nodes for computations performed.[3] Ethereum provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.[4] The virtual machine's instruction set, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script, is thought to be Turing-complete. "Gas", an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.[4]
In March 2017, various blockchain start-ups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies announced the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) with 30 founding members.[16] By May, the nonprofit organization had 116 enterprise members—including ConsenSys, CME Group, Cornell University's research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada.[17][18][19] By July 2017, there were over 150 members in the alliance, including recent additions MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank and Scotiabank.[20][21]
Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix "0x", a common identifier for hexadecimal, concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash (big endian) of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so called secp256k1, the same as Bitcoin). In hexadecimal, 2 digits represents a byte, meaning addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits. An example of an Ethereum address is 0xb794F5eA0ba39494cE839613fffBA74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.[34] User accounts are indistinguishable from contract accounts given only an address for each and no blockchain data. Any valid Keccak-256 hash put into the described format is valid, even if it does not correspond to an account with a private key or a contract. This is unlike Bitcoin, which uses base58check to ensure that addresses are properly typed.
Properties of cryptocurrencies gave them popularity in applications such as a safe haven in banking crises and means of payment, which also led to the cryptocurrency use in controversial settings in the form of online black markets, such as Silk Road.[67] The original Silk Road was shut down in October 2013 and there have been two more versions in use since then. In the year following the initial shutdown of Silk Road, the number of prominent dark markets increased from four to twelve, while the amount of drug listings increased from 18,000 to 32,000.[67]
1) Irreversible: After confirmation, a transaction can‘t be reversed. By nobody. And nobody means nobody. Not you, not your bank, not the president of the United States, not Satoshi, not your miner. Nobody. If you send money, you send it. Period. No one can help you, if you sent your funds to a scammer or if a hacker stole them from your computer. There is no safety net.
^ "Bitcoin: The Cryptoanarchists' Answer to Cash". IEEE Spectrum. Archived from the original on 4 June 2012. Around the same time, Nick Szabo, a computer scientist who now blogs about law and the history of money, was one of the first to imagine a new digital currency from the ground up. Although many consider his scheme, which he calls "bit gold", to be a precursor to Bitcoin
Ethereum blockchain applications are usually referred to as DApps (decentralized application), since they are based on the decentralized Ethereum Virtual Machine, and its smart contracts.[46] Many uses have been proposed for Ethereum platform, including ones that are impossible or unfeasible.[47][33] Use case proposals have included finance, the internet-of-things, farm-to-table produce, electricity sourcing and pricing, and sports betting. Ethereum is (as of 2017) the leading blockchain platform for initial coin offering projects, with over 50% market share.
Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[10] a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications.[11][12] Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.[4]:88
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, four of the 10 biggest proposed initial coin offerings have used Switzerland as a base, where they are frequently registered as non-profit foundations. The Swiss regulatory agency FINMA stated that it would take a "balanced approach" to ICO projects and would allow "legitimate innovators to navigate the regulatory landscape and so launch their projects in a way consistent with national laws protecting investors and the integrity of the financial system." In response to numerous requests by industry representatives, a legislative ICO working group began to issue legal guidelines in 2018, which are intended to remove uncertainty from cryptocurrency offerings and to establish sustainable business practices.[50]
In Ethereum all smart contracts are stored publicly on every node of the blockchain, which has costs.[57] Being a blockchain means it is secure by design and is an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. The downside is that performance issues arise in that every node is calculating all the smart contracts in real time, resulting in lower speeds.[57] As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second.[57] In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second leading some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[58] On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[59]
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TSA's airport wait times grow shorter, with some help from airlines
Published Sun, Jul 10 2016 1:00 PM EDT Updated Mon, Jul 11 2016 8:46 AM EDT
Passengers at O'Hare International Airport wait in line to be screened at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint in Chicago.
This year, Independence Day included something most passengers haven't seen in a long time—freedom from interminably long lines at airport security checkpoints. And that informal holiday could be coming soon to an airport near you.
The Transportation Security Administration screened 10.7 million travelers from Wednesday, June 30 through Monday, July 4, the agency said in a statement last week. "The average wait time nationwide in standard security lines was less than ten minutes, while those in TSA Pre-check lines waited less than five minutes," the TSA added, despite the fact that June 30 and July 1 were "the highest volume travel days we have seen since 2007."
The good news comes courtesy of a variety of systemic fixes that include the expedited hiring of more than 750 new Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), and helping hands from airports and airlines. Those entities have hired extra personnel to perform non-security duties at checkpoints, but the battle is far from won.
"We are not declaring victory," said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in a statement. "We plan to do more."
Southwest Airlines Co
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After World Cup, MLS looks to steady growth
By Janie Mccauley
Published: July 5, 2014 6:25 pm Updated: July 5, 2014 6:25 p.m.
Rick Bowmer, File, Associated Press
ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND EDITIONS, JULY 4-6 - FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2013 file photo, fans hug Real Salt Lake defender Nat Borchers (6) after Real Salt Lake defeated the Los Angeles Galaxy in the second leg of the MLS Western Conference semifinal, in Sandy, Utah. Major League Soccer is growing, with more lucrative TV and sponsorship deals and greater attendance. But it hasn't yet translated into a television ratings breakthrough, and the league hopes the World Cup provides a long-lasting boost.
Defense stands up, Argentina into World Cup semis
Rimando, Beckerman provided much-needed spark for RSL
Netherlands beats Costa Rica in penalty shootout
Even before millions of people packed into outdoor fan parties, ran out to bars for long lunches and sneaked peaks of games at their offices during the Americans' World Cup run, Major League Soccer began thinking about how to convert some of those fans into supporters for its own teams.
Playing its 19th season and preparing for an expansion to 24 teams in its post-David Beckham era, MLS has grown in support and interest but remains a feeder league — with most young star players it produces leaving for more lucrative contracts in Europe.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber wants to change that quickly, and it only helps his cause when stars such as Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley come home to play on U.S. soil.
"We want to be thought of the way the Premier League is thought of, Serie A is thought of, La Liga is thought of, the Bundesliga is thought of," Garber said. "When people think about the best leagues in the world, everybody knows who they are, and we want to be one of those leagues."
Dempsey and Bradley each returned to MLS from Europe in the past year. Jermain Defoe joined Thierry Henry and Tim Cahill as the league's top international attractions. David Villa and Kaka already are signed for 2015 and Frank Lampard may be on the way, too.
Garber has set 2022 as the year for MLS to achieve his goal and says that while the league has come a long way, it still has a lot further to go.
To attract top players, MLS must pay top prices. Part of the funds will come from new eight-year broadcasting deals by MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation with ESPN, Fox and Univision that start next season and will average more than $90 million annually.
MLS says sponsorship revenue has nearly doubled since 2010 for the league and its marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing. Among the corporate partners investing in soccer are Adidas, Allstate, AT&T, General Motors' Chevrolet division and Continental Tire.
From Seattle to Salt Lake City, the California cities of Los Angeles and San Jose, from Kansas City to Houston and up to Toronto, general sports fans watched their local MLS players along with the die-hards during the World Cup.
Now, MLS' tallest task is to get those same supporters — and more — to attend league games each weekend. MLS was much more central to this year's tournament, sending 22 players for an increase from six in 2010.
"Any time there's a World Cup it's going to put a focus on soccer for this country, and if there are guys playing in MLS it can only help boost the sport in general and also our league," said Real Salt Lake midfielder Kyle Beckerman, who started three games in Brazil.
People now in decision-making positions got there in the era after the 1994 World Cup in the U.S., which drew a record 3.6 million fans. They've viewed shifts in the taste of American sports fans and the population as a whole, where there has been a growing Hispanic population.
In addition to 16.5 million who watched the United States' World Cup loss to Belgium on ESPN, there were 5.1 million tuned in on Spanish-language Univision. The 24.7 million total watching the U.S. draw against Portugal topped the averages of the most recent World Series and NBA Finals.
"We have been dealing with a generation of soccer moms and a massive youth participation," Garber said. "They now have gone through a generational turn. They are now influencers. They grew up with the game. It's certainly not foreign to them. They care about it in ways that their parents did not and now they are becoming MLS fans and becoming soccer fans overall."
But only a fraction of the people watching the World Cup have tuned into MLS. ESPN2's regular-season average dropped from 259,000 in 2012 to 206,000 last year, the first season after Beckham's departure. They've rebounded to 251,000 this year, and the league hopes having regular time slots as part of the new contracts will provide a boost.
Marc Ganis, president of Chicago-based consulting firm SportsCorp, says the league should be happy with steady if not spectacular growth.
"Major League Soccer is still not a top American sport but it has elevated itself dramatically over the last four, five years. But it is still a select market, relative niche sport and likely will be for the foreseeable future, and that has to do with the predisposition of the American market more than anything else," Ganis said. "There is really nothing MLS can do to change that. They can enhance their position as they have, but it will not likely be viewed as one of the great American sports in our lifetimes or the next for a variety of reasons that cannot be changed simply by better management."
U.S. national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann, already signed through the 2018 World Cup, would like to see a longer MLS season. That will help players develop stamina to compete at World Cups with stars from big clubs that have 60 games or more per year in leagues, cups and European competitions.
"Every year there's another step forward, another step forward," Klinsmann said. "The league is growing, not only in the infrastructure side, the financial side but on the level of play side."
Still, Klinsmann has encouraged his top players to strive for bigger clubs, to want to play in the European Champions League, the world's top club competition. He didn't seem to be 100 percent in favor of deals that brought Dempsey to Seattle last August and Bradley to Toronto this past winter.
Yet those deals would never have even been contemplated by the league five years ago.
MLS player compensation totaled $42 million in 2007 and has risen to $115 million this year, according to salaries released by the MLS Players Union and analyzed by The Associated Press. The average grew from $113,800 to $208,100.
Dempsey has $6,695,000 in guaranteed compensation with Seattle and Bradley $6.5 million with Toronto. But the median — the figure where an equal number of players are above and below — is just under $92,000. The minimum salaries of $48,500 (for the first 24 players on each roster) and $36,500 (for the final five) figure to be a point of contention in negotiations to replace the collective bargaining agreement that expires after this season.
Having more top players and even middle-roster grinders should increase the level of play and the buzz from Seattle to Salt Lake City, the California cities of Los Angeles and San Jose, from Kansas City to Houston and up to Toronto.
"It's a huge thing. It just shows where this league is at right now, the progress, the quality of play," San Jose Earthquakes coach Mark Watson. "We want the best players to play here. There's always going to be the lure of the big clubs in Europe, that will always be there, but we want our best players playing here. To have them back, to add to the quality of the league, to see MLS players in the World Cup, it's something that we're really happy about."
The Earthquakes are building a soccer-specific stadium, scheduled to open in 2015. So is Orlando City, which joins the league next along with New York City FC as MLS reaches 21 teams. That will increase the league's soccer-specific venues to 15.
Teams have thrived in the smaller, 18,000-to-27,000-seat arenas, where the color and noise of supporters stands out, much as it does in larger arenas in Europe and South America.
Garber defines the goals at their most pared down to: improve play, become more relevant in local markets and "work hard to make our teams financially viable and have a path towards profitability at some point."
About an hour after the Americans were eliminated, USSF President Sunil Gulati spoke in Salvador's Arena Fonte Nova and cautioned that growth will not be explosive, but steady. Gaining credibility, competitiveness and cash all takes time.
"We're not going to have the same level of interest obviously tomorrow or on July 14 that we did today. It's pretty simple," he said. "Once the U.S. team is out, ESPN's ratings will be a little bit different. The interest — there won't be the fan parties once the World Cup is over. We can't translate all of that into the league. No one can. But I think we'll see some bumps."
Sports 21 hours ago RSL offense impressive, but improved defense keeps chugging along
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This week in history: Athens defeats the Persians at Marathon
By Cody K. Carlson
For the Deseret News
Published: September 10, 2014 6:05 pm
This stamp printed in Greece from the "2500th anniversary of Battle of Marathon" issue shows bronze Corinthian helmet of Miltiades, circa 2010.
On or around Sept. 12, 490 B.C., an Athenian army, supplemented by a handful of their Plataean allies, defeated and turned back a much larger Persian force at the battle of Marathon, setting the stage for the Greco-Persian Wars.
By the dawn of the 5th century B.C., the Persian empire was the largest in the world, stretching from Egypt throughout central Asia and almost to India. Local revolts against the authority of the king occurred frequently. The king and his army would finish putting down a revolt in one part of the empire when another would rise up. The king's business in the Persian empire was largely one of maintaining his authority. The massive Persian army, made up largely of slave conscripts, succeeded against the rebels every time.
The Ionian coast of Asia Minor lay at the extreme edge of the Persian empire, in what is today western Turkey. The settlements there were largely Greek, though had been dominated by the Persians for a half century. In 499 B.C., the Greeks of the Ionian coast revolted against their Persian masters.
Knowing it would be a hard fight, they asked their fellow Greeks across the Aegean Sea for assistance. Athens, with its newly formed democracy, sent ships and soon the revolutionaries and their Athenian allies sacked the provincial Persian capital, Sardis. The Persian king, Darius I, seethed with anger that foreigners would dare interfere in what he saw as an internal matter of the empire. He vowed revenge.
The Persians put down the Ionian revolt in 493 B.C. and soon prepared to punish Athens. The following year, a Persian fleet sailed with the intention of invading Attica, the territory of Athens. A storm severely damaged the fleet, however, and the invasion was temporarily called off. In 490 B.C., another fleet was assembled and once again Athens was the target.
Aware of the impending invasion, the Athenians attempted to rally the rest of Greece to their cause, warning that if Athens fell to the Persians, the rest of Greece would soon follow. Many of the other Greek states refused to send help, believing that if they took no action the Persians would leave them alone. Others had been bribed by the Persians to stay out of the fight.
Sparta, the greatest military power of the day, refused to send aid because it conflicted with their religious celebrations. Only the Plataeans sent hoplite soldiers or infantryman.
This chief source for the battle is Herodotus, famously unreliable in some aspects of his histories, though often the only primary source extant. He tells us that the Palataeans sent roughly 1,000 men to augment the Athenians 10,000 hoplites. Modern estimates vary for Persian numbers, with some suggesting as many as 100,000 men, and others offering the more probable number of 25,000-35,000.
The Greeks were led by a council of generals, which included the former Tyrant (a title that held no pejorative connotation in the Greek world — simply meaning a ruler) Miltiades, who had ruled Greek colonies along what is today the Gallipoli peninsula. Miltiades' country had been overrun by the Persians, and he had served Darius as a vassal and military commander for years before defecting to the Athenians.
Admiral Datis, a military favorite of Darius, led the Persian invasion. One of Datis' most powerful weapons was the Persian purse. The seemingly infinite Persian coffers allowed the empire to bribe its enemies into submission. When Datis landed his force upon the beaches at the Bay of Marathon, they saw the Athenian battle line waiting for them, and Datis almost certainly attempted bribery. Certainly a fat wallet and comfortable life were preferable to death at the hands of the vast Persian war machine now disembarking, Datis must have concluded.
In historian Tom Holland's essay, “From Persia with Love,” he wrote: “The Athenian army that confronted the invaders on the plain of Marathon, blocking the road that led to their city some 20 miles to the south, did not
disintegrate. True, Athens had long been perfervid with rumors of fifth columnists and profiteers from the Great King's gold, but it was precisely the Athenians' awareness of the consequent peril that had prompted them to march out from behind their city's walls in the first place.
The battle line at Marathon, in short, could not be bought.”
Geography appeared to favor the defenders. The landing beach rose into higher grasslands, which funneled up toward higher hills, flanked by hills on each side. The Athenian line blocked the Persian advance, and it was hoped that the bottleneck would not allow the Persians to bring their greater numbers to bear, nor allow the Athenians to be flanked by cavalry. If a fight was going to take place on anything approaching even odds, Marathon was the place to do it.
Still, some of the Athenian generals advocated pulling back toward the city, but most, led by Miltiades, called for standing their ground. So forceful were Miltiades arguments, that the other generals deferred to his command. Herodotus noted the former Tyrant's strategy:
“On this occasion, however, when the Athenians were being drawn up at Marathon, something of this kind was done: Their army being made equal in length of the front to that of the Medes (Persians), came to be drawn up in the middle with a depth of but a few ranks and here their army was weakest, while each wing was strengthened with numbers.”
Miltiades laid a trap for the Persians. By making his center weak, he invited the Persians to charge the middle of his line, hoping to break it. However, the hoplites on the Athenian right and left flanks were stronger. Once the Persians crashed into the Athenian center, Miltiades gave the order for the hoplites on the flanks to charge the over-extended Persian line, suddenly engaging it on three sides. Eventually, the Persian line broke, and the invading soldiers ran back to their ships.
Miltiades was not done, and took the fight to their ships. Kynegeiros, an Athenian solider so caught up in the adrenaline of the fight, actually jumped up and grabbed at an “ornament” of a Persian ship, presumably to keep it from sailing, “and had his hand cut off with an axe and fell.”
Datis no doubt watched in horror as his hopes for victory faded. Fearing the wrath of his king, and not yet willing to concede defeat, the Persian admiral prepared to sail his ships around Attica and attack Athens directly, before it could be reinforced by Miltiades. The Athenians, exhausted from a day of hard fighting, had another challenge. Miltiades ordered them to march south to Athens, over 20 miles away, and prepare for another fight to defend the city.
Datis' fleet took its time reaching Athens, perhaps dealing with unfavorable winds. They arrived to find Miltiades' troops standing proud, ready to defend their city once again. Disheartened, Datis ordered the fleet home. The Athenians had won the battle and saved all of Greece from Persian domination.
Their religious holiday over, a Spartan army of 2,000 hoplites arrived just after the battle had been fought. Herodotus wrote: “Though they had come too late for the battle, yet they desired to behold the Medes; and accordingly they went on to Marathon and looked at the bodies of the slain: Then afterwards they departed home, commending the Athenians and the work which they had done.”
The Persians returned 10 years later and were again defeated. Nearly a century after the battle of Marathon, the end of the Peloponnesian War saw Athens defeated, not at the hands of the Persians, but by the Spartans. When Sparta's allies demanded that the city of Athens be destroyed and all its citizens made slaves, the Spartans refused. They remembered that it had been the Athens who had saved the Greek world at Marathon, and the gods detested ingratitude.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com
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インタビュー／エマニュエル・アイム（聞き手：ジョナサン・ケリー） (15分)
このインタビューをお気に入りに加える
The French Emmanuelle Haïm played with the Berliner Philharmoniker as long ago as 2002, when she took over the harpsichord part in performances of Bach’s St. John Passion under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. This was followed in 2008 by Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day with which she made her debut as a conductor. Equally unforgettable is Haim’s performance in 2011, when the programme included works by Handel and Rameau, and which was part of a joint education project based on the music of Rameau. Emmanuelle Haïm studied piano, organ and harpsichord. She is in demand all over the world as an instrumentalist and as a conductor, and since 2000 she has enjoyed enormous success with her early music ensemble Le Concert d’Astree. In this interview marking the performance of Handel’s oratorio La resurrezione (The Resurrection) in October 2014, the artist talks to Jonathan Kelly, principal oboe with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2003. Topics discussed include Handel as a composer of opera and oratorio, the theatrical quality of his Resurrection music, the unusually colourful orchestration and the scandal that was triggered by the fact that at the premiere of the work, one of the vocal parts was sung by a woman (and not by a castrato).
エマニュエル・アイム
ゲオルク・フリードリヒ・ヘンデル
オラトリオ《復活》 (116分)
古楽の女王アイムがヘンデルのオラトリオ《復活》を指揮 コンサートを観る
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DSC Hire New Winthrop Men’s Soccer Assistant Coach Phil Hindson
February 12, 2016 /in News /by admin
Discoveries Soccer Club has taken another big step in securing the strongest staff around by announcing the appointment of new Winthrop Men’s Soccer Assistant Phil Hindson.
Hindson returns to our soccer community after spending the last six seasons as head coach of the UNC Pembroke men’s soccer program.
Dave Carton on the hiring of Hindson;
“We are over the moon to have Phil join our staff! A tremendously talented coach, Phil has proven himself at the highest level of college soccer, through some difficult and challenging circumstances. Phil has a genuine commitment to improving players of all levels, and his experience at the collegiate level will help us to enhance the college recruitment process for our players. Having Phil join our team hopefully demonstrates our commitment to excellence and our ambition to have the strongest and most talented staff possible“.
During his six seasons with the Braves, he won 47 games while leading them to the program’s third best finish (NCAA Div. II era) with 12 wins and a berth into the NCAA Tournament. That season the Braves advance to the second round of the tournament with a 3-2 win over Mars Hill before being eliminated on penalties against Flagler, 4-2. It was the first time in 10 years the program had advanced in the NCAA Tournament The 2012 team finished 5th in the Peach Belt Conference, which is arguably one of the top NCAA Div. II leagues. In 2012 and 2013 the Braves were nationally ranked.
Under Hindson’s guidance the program had two CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, a PBC Freshman of the Year, a Golden Ball Winner, PBC Player of the Year, two Daktronics All-Region and NSCAA All-Region players, 10 NCCSIA All-State players, six All-PBC players, six PBC All-Tournament players, two PBC All-Preseason players, 10 PBC Players of the Week, 15 PBC All-Academic Team players and the team garnered a sportsmanship award in 2011.
Hindson left Winthrop for an assistant coaching job at Clemson for the 2004 season. He spent five years as an assistant and was the interim head coach of the Tigers in 2009 before leaving for UNC Pembroke following the season. In 2009 he led the Tigers to a road win at 8th-ranked and eventual national champion Virginia on Sept. 26, 2009. During his six seasons, including the one as interim coach, Clemson posted 56 wins, advanced to the Final Four in 2005 and the Sweet 16 in 2006. In 2005 the Tigers had a final ranking of 3rd in the nation.
In 2000 Hindson joined former Winthrop head coach Rich Posipanko’s staff as an assistant coach and helped the program to a record of 47-28-5 during that time. He was part of the program’s first ever Big South Conference Championship when the Eagles defeated 13th-ranked Coastal Carolina in the final, 1-0 in overtime. That season the Eagles reached a school record for wins (15) since its move to the NCAA Div. I level.
Hindson enjoyed a successful career at William Carey as a player as he holds several records after a career of 54 goals and 22 assists for 130 points in his three seasons. He was a three-time all-conference selection as well as being named all-region and earned all-america honors in 1995. He graduated from William Carey in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and earned his master’s in physical education from Winthrop in 2005. In 2011 he was a member of the Inaugural Hall of Fame Induction Class at William Carey.
Hindson and his wife Liz along with their daughter Sophia and son Connor will reside in Rock Hill.
https://www.discoveriessoccerclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/hindson2-placeholder-1500x883.png 580 1500 admin https://www.discoveriessoccerclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Discoveries-Website-Main-Logo-Temp-1.png admin2016-02-12 11:00:112016-04-26 15:22:58DSC Hire New Winthrop Men's Soccer Assistant Coach Phil Hindson
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IFA Press Release Highlights
The IFA (Internationale Funkaustellung) conference in Berlin is arguably the world’s most important conference every year. The IFA organizers have an ongoing PR battle with the US-based Consumer Technology Association about whether CES or IFA is more important. IFA typically gets more visitors because it is open to the public; CES gets more trade visitors. For those in the global display and consumer electronics industries, suffice to say that both are important.
IFA is a chance for leading companies to showcase their newest products and technology, and often the forum for first-ever introductions of key innovations. Sometimes this depends on the timing of new product introductions: if a company is ready to launch in the summer months, it will choose IFA, but if not it’s likely to launch at CES. Flagship phones are often launched at the Mobile World Congress in February. Of course, the industry’s most valuable company, Apple, disregards all of these events to put on their own show.
Here’s an overview of the product announcements of key industry players:
Samsung’s major announcement was on the Gear 3 smartwatch, a larger, higher-function upgrade of the Gear 2. Samsung also made a big push on quantum dot technology, supplied by Nanosys, with a new 88” SUHD TV featuring QD, and 24 & 27 inch curved gaming monitors with QD technology. Samsung took a thinly-veiled swipe at OLED by giving its TVs a 10-year warranty.
Sony highlighted the PlayStationVR Virtual Reality system and new Xperia XZ flagship smartphones, as well as new audio products. New 4K Bravia TVs with a Backlight Master Drive were also introduced.
LG’s releases again highlighted their leadership in OLED TV, and the High Dynamic Range features in their latest products. LG also introduced several new 21:9 monitors, in sizes up to 38” (!).
Philips introduced its first OLED TV, a 55” with Philips’ Ambilight feature, in addition to a full line of LCD-based TV products. Panasonic, which generally has been retreating from the global TV wars, showcased a “prototype” OLED TV.
Other announcements of new smartphones, fitness devices, smart watches, and tablets are too numerous to mention from simply the press release. I will get a look at these devices over the weekend in Berlin, and will report the key findings in next week’s Display Supply Chain Monitor.
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Should We Be Worried About Our Donor's Genetic Carrier Status?
Posted in Egg Donation on February 17, 2014
Tags: genetic screening, donor eggs, sperm donation, infertility
Clients often ask how concerned they should be about genetic carrier status when they are considering working with an egg donor. Ultimately, your decision to proceed with a donor when she is a known carrier of a genetic condition will depend on many factors. The most important factor will be your gut level of comfort about genetic risk. But you should have the opportunity to speak with a genetic counselor to get the important details straight concerning the condition, so that you can make the decision that makes the most sense to you.
Here is my take on the issue:
We are ALL carriers of genetic disease. It is thought that there are somewhere in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 diseases caused by a single gene and it is believed that we all carry 4-5 mutations in genes critical to life. Should we pair up with someone who carries a mutation in the same gene, and should a pregnancy receive both abnormal copies of the gene, the condition would be lethal. Many of these conditions are recessive in nature, meaning that an individual who has no symptoms of the condition can pass the condition on to offspring. If the condition is autosomal recessive, that means that two copies of an abnormal gene must be present in order for the disease to develop. So both egg donor and sperm donor must pass on a mutation for the child to have the condition. Given this information, I believe it is rather arbitrary to exclude a prospective donor just because we have a test today for one of the conditions for which she is a carrier. As testing gets better, I think we'd have no candidates left if we excluded all known carrier donors! Rather than excluding known donors, I think it makes sense to dig deeper into the issues.
Can we provide reassurance by testing the other reproductive partner? Carrier screening has come a long way in the past few decades. Testing for carrier status for genetic disease began in the 1970s, with testing for Tay Sachs disease available for certain at-risk populations. Since then, the genetic basis of more recessive conditions has become known, and more sophisticated screening options have come on the scene, year after year. Today, many patients elect expanded carrier screening panels that can identify over 90 conditions in a single cheek swab or blood sample. Just a few years ago, when one reproductive partner came back positive, I would compare and contrast the various "panel" approaches to testing offered by the many genetic labs on the market, offering the test with the best coverage for known mutations to my clients, and discussing the relative costs of each. Panel testing would incorporate the most common known mutations in the gene, and would often provide significant reassurance that the matched reproductive partner was likely not a carrier for the same condition. Sometimes a patient would foot a bill for $3000-$5000 to sequence the gene for the greatest reassurance. Sequencing a gene means looking at every DNA base in the genetic code for that gene, essentially "spell-checking" it for any errors. But today, many genes can be tested via Next Generation Sequencing, which targets and sequences the coding regions of the gene, and can often be conducted at a price tag of under $1000. Even with sequence analysis, we can never reduce a risk to zero that an intended parent would be a carrier for a genetic disease, but we can get that number as close as possible. While it is too much to go into here, a genetic counselor can review the condition about which you have concern, the expected medical course for an affected child, how well we understand the genetics of the condition, the sensitivity of the available carrier test(s) in the matched reproductive partner, and ultimately give you some perspective to make an informed decision that is consistent with your beliefs.
Research is not stopping. Sometimes I hear of intended parents who are concerned about giving birth to a child who is a carrier (after a reassuring test in the other reproductive partner). The issue I hear most often is that they are afraid that their grandchildren could then be at risk for the condition. While I think it's a fair concern, I think we need to be aware that--again--we are all carriers of genetic disease. Choosing a donor who does not carry a KNOWN mutation does not mean you are choosing a donor who does not carry a mutation. Our children will most likely have even broader options for carrier screening, for themselves and their reproductive partners. And the immense research into genetic disease does not only benefit carrier identification that allows parents to make informed choices about genetic risk. It also fuels new therapeutic strategies. There is exciting new data on therapeutics coming in, in the areas of cystic fibrosis and lysosomal storage disorders, to name a few. Who knows what conditions will be treatable in the next generation?
What are YOUR preferences for a donor? I think this is the area that merits the most attention. Choosing a donor is not easy, and you need to weigh your thoughts and feelings about a multitude of factors. Sometimes a donor that seems ideal on so many fronts will turn out to be a carrier of a genetic disease. Spend some time talking with a genetic counselor, get the information you need, and consider testing your reproductive partner if you feel the testing strategy could give you enough reassurance. You might come out of this process choosing the donor, or you might come out this process knowing you did your due diligence, and she is just not the right one for you.
Please note: While I think it is reasonable to work with a donor who is a carrier of an autosomal recessive condition, I do not advise working with donors who are carriers of X-linked conditions, such as Fragile X. The genetic risk in such a situation is much more significant, given the pattern of inheritance. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine practice committee also does not recommend working with a donor who is a carrier of an X-linked condition, but states that "donors who are heterozygous (for an autosomal recessive condition) need not necessarily be excluded if the reproductive partner has had appropriate carrier screening. The recipient and reproductive partner
(as appropriate) should be counseled about the accuracy of the carrier screening test and the residual risk to be a carrier following a negative test. Counseling regarding residual risk is complex and may be best provided by a genetic counselor."
Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the information provided here is not meant to be a medical opinion about your specific case. The problems of every patient are unique and should be addressed by their physician or other health-care professionals in an individual conversation. You are welcome to bring up questions inspired by this blog post with your medical team. However, no one should use this blog as a source of medical care.
Gina Davis is a licensed, board-certified genetic counselor, who specializes in the field of reproductive medicine (infertility, assisted reproductive technologies and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis). She served as a genetic counselor at the University of California, San Francisco's Center for Reproductive Health from 2004 to 2013. While studying to become a genetic counselor, Gina served as a medical assistant at two private fertility practices in Southern California, and conducted research at a UC Irvine molecular genetics lab. She has been immersed in the field of reproductive medicine her entire career, and brings a wealth of knowledge in working with both practitioners and patients. Gina has helped to shape the role of the genetic counselor within the field of Reproductive Medicine. She has assisted in the training of fellow genetic counselors, physicians, nurses, other health care practitioners and undergraduate students in reproductive genetics through lectures, small group facilitation and mentoring. She has given numerous presentations at professional and patient support meetings, and has been co-author of diverse publications within the field. Gina is the past chair and current member of the Genetic Counseling Special Interest Group of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). She is an active member of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Special Interest Group of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC). She has also worked as a volunteer with Resolve and the March of Dimes.
About Gail’s Blog
Welcome to Gail's Blog! Gail launched Donor Concierge in 2006 to provide intended parents with greater choice when searching for an egg donor or surrogate. Our Blog retains her voice, and our company retains her philosophy & ethics. We invite you to learn about finding an egg donor, finding a surrogate mother and the fascinating world of fertility.
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Scientists blame fishing gear for fewer whale births
September 7, 2016 by Stephen Rappaport on Environment, News, Waterfront
ELLSWORTH — A study recently published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science says that, despite efforts by fishermen and federal fisheries management authorities, more right whales than ever are getting tangled up in fishing gear. The study also states that injuries and deaths from those incidents “may be overwhelming recovery efforts” for the endangered right whale population.
In the report published in July, lead author Scott Kraus, a whale researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston, says that while the population of whales has increased from fewer than 300 in 1992 to about 500 in 2015, births of right whales have declined by 40 percent since 2010.
According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, between 2009 and 2013 an average of 4.3 whales a year were killed by “human activities,” virtually all of them involving entanglement with fishing gear.
From 2010 to 2015, 85 percent of right whale deaths resulted from entanglements with fishing gear. Those numbers stand in sharp contrast to what occurred between 1970 and 2009.
According to the report, during those 40 years, scientists attributed 44 percent of right whale deaths to ship strikes and 35 percent to entanglements.
Lethal entanglements aren’t the only problem for the whales. As of last year, 83 percent of all right whales carried scars or were dragging ropes from past entanglements.
According to Kraus and his co-authors, those “sub-lethal entanglements can cause reproductive failure and declining health long after the entanglement is over.”
Based on research over the past two decades, the report raises three significant conclusions. First, until recently, the population was growing at 2 to 3 percent per year, less than half of the growth rate of all other well-studied right whale populations around the world. Second, the population growth rate seems to be dropping, “likely due to a combination of anthropogenic mortalities and reduced calving rates.” Third, deaths and serious injuries from fishing gear entanglements remain far higher than the limits set by the federal Endangered Species Act and the Canadian Species At Risk Act.
As a result, the report concludes, recovery of the endangered whale population is in jeopardy and the whale population is “vulnerable to declines.”
Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said this week that it was wrong to blame fishermen for the decline in the number of whale calves born in recent years.
“Given the tremendous positive growth in the right whale population since the 1990s and corresponding changes in how we fish, it is unlikely that fishing gear is the primary cause for a slower rate of right whale reproduction,” McCarron said in an email Tuesday morning. “A more likely explanation is rise in ocean temperatures and changing ocean conditions that have significantly altered when and where right whales frequent their traditional grounds in the Gulf of Maine.”
Waterfront Editor at The Ellsworth American
Stephen Rappaport has lived in Maine for nearly 30 years. A lifelong sailor, he spends as much time as possible messing about in boats. [email protected]
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Under Water Caribou creates a production concept album based on the sounds of swimming
Until recently, Caribou’s Dan Snaith didn’t know how to swim. But his wife got him swimming lessons as a Christmas present, and now when he’s not making music, he’s in the water. In fact, swimming became the production concept for his latest album, Swim (Merge).
Kylee Swenson
Snaith, who has also released albums as Manitoba and has a Ph.D in mathematics, decided to bring the aural effects of water into his compositions. “A big part of the sonic production aesthetic with this album was about having some idea of fluidity or liquidity in the elements of the music,” he says. “Everything is washing around your head, flowing around in a way like waves or liquid would, rather than being very metallic or rigid, the way that a lot of sounds in dance music typically are.”
When Snaith only knew how to do the doggy paddle with his head above water, he wasn’t aware of how sound changed in and out of water. “The characteristics of water are so different, sonically,” he says. “When you’re swimming, one ear comes out of the water, then both ears are in the water, and then the other one. So you get the sense of the sonic space as you’re in rocking back and forth.”
Consequently, musical ideas often came to Snaith while swimming. “I’d think, that would be something interesting to happen: Something appears in one ear in a very crisp, clear sound, and in the other ear, it’s kind of reverb-y or echo-y and watery,” he says. “And it flips back and forth.” Snaith used Ableton Live as his primary engine to modulate parameters for the swimming effect, such as the wavering synth pitch on “Hannibal.”
As for his mathematics degree, Snaith says it helps him get creative faster. “I don’t mind figuring out, ‘Okay, how does this work?’ But that’s not the interesting part,” he says. “The interesting part is what happens once all that stuff is second nature. For example, growing up playing piano, you play all these scales, not because anybody likes playing scales. But having practiced and learned how to play in a certain way, translating your idea into a musical or technical result is easier. And that’s what’s interesting about mathematics, not the boring part, which unfortunately is all you get when you’re in high school.”
An Arturia ARP 2600 V soft synth and an M-Audio Axiom 49 MIDI controller helped Snaith come up with ideas quickly, such as the thick layers of metallic synths on “Kaili.” “I took the part and made four layers of it, and then I shifted over the second, third, and fourth layers so that they’re all happening at slightly different times,” he says. “The second comes in slightly after the first one, and the third one comes in slightly after the second one, etc. And then they’re all modulating differently—maybe one of the filters is turned down or has some weird vibrato—going around your head, coming in, fading to silence, and then coming back in again.”
Miking is a simple proposition for Snaith, with a borrowed Neumann TLM 103 for vocals and a Coles 4038 ribbon mic as one drum overhead. But although he recorded a lot of live drums this time, most of the takes didn’t make it to Swim, mainly because he wanted to do something different than he’d done on previous releases.
The ringing percussive sounds on “Bowls” were created using just that—bowls. “They’re these two Tibetan singing bowls that I got when I spent a month traveling around southwest China last year,” he says. “I picked them up, got them home, and sampled them just once. Then I mapped that sound onto a keyboard and played it as if it were a synthesizer.”
Meanwhile, the combination of pulsing keyboards and crunchy drums on “Found Out” was created with layers of Fender Rhodes with a slow chorus effect, organ, and orchestral percussion samples meshed with a digital-sounding distortion. And on “Odessa,” Snaith sampled a bass note from an old musique concrète record, mapped it onto the Axiom, changed the decay, and played the wobbly, bulbous bass part. “A lot of the sounds on the record are some hybrid of an acoustic sound treated as if it were a synthesizer,” he says.
Although originally from Canada— London, Ontario, to be exact—Snaith now lives in the other London (England) and mixed the album with UK engineer David Wrench, as well as Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) back in Hamilton, Canada.
This time, he wanted to create a mix that was exciting, not perfect. “One mix that I always come back to is the Shuggie Otis album, Inspiration Information, and the track ‘Island Letter,’” Snaith says. “There’s a point where a Fender Rhodes melody appears in one ear, incredibly loud. Everything else is so beautifully mixed and recorded and sounds like you couldn’t even dream of it sounding anymore lush. And then that comes in totally out of the blue. It’s weird moments like that, that always captivate me and make me excited about making music.”
Snaith describes his previous mixing process (involving Mackie HR824 monitors) as “messy, idiosyncratic, and sloppy-sounding.” But he learned a lot from Wrench and Greenspan. He also made their job more difficult.
“I live on a main street, and there are constantly big buses and trucks going past the window,” Snaith says. “So all of the vocal tracks have rumbling and noises in the background, and then I added an echo or a reverb. So when I took these tracks to be mixed, I asked Dave and Jeremy, ‘Is there anything that I could have done to make the parts easier for you to work with?’ And they said, ‘Well, at least get rid of the bus sound before you put the reverb on it. Not only is there a bus on the record, but there’s a big reverb’d bus in the background.’”
Under Water: Caribou creates a production concept album based on the sounds of swimming
By Kylee Swenson
By Dominic Umile
Surprise By Design Sigur Rós Jónsi Creates a Pure-Sounding Acoustic Album—With a Twist
Surprise By Design: Sigur Rós’ Jónsi Creates a Pure-Sounding Acoustic Album—With a Twist
Go Your Own Way Spoon Records Their Seventh Album Transference Without the Safety Net of a Co-Producer
Tobacco on Creating Fuzzed-Out Sounds for Maniac Meat
Caribou’s Dan Snaith and the Artfulness of Muck
By John Payne
TURBULENT WATERS
By Tamara Warren
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Graduates Changing the World
Evangel Christian Academy seeks to graduate students who are world changers in whatever area that God calls them.
Alumni Newsletter Sign Up
Like the Evangel Alumni Facebook Page
REED DICKENS Class of 1992
White House Assistant Press Secretary to President George W. Bush- National Spokesperson for Bush re-election campaign. Co-founder of EQtainment, Co-founder and Chairman of Marucci Sports.
SOPHIA YOUNG Class of 2002
3X WNBA All-Star, Bachelors Degree, Baylor University; Masters Degree in Psychology, University of Phoenix. WNBA forward for San Antonio Stars since 2006.
CARLEY BURROW Class of 2001
Whale and Dophin Trainer Sea World, San Antonio
JOEL HAYSLIP Class of 1993
Missionary to Burkina Faso, Africa. Reaches villages for Christ through children’s outreaches. Founded a school for training pastors. Has planted over 20 churches. Has preached the Gospel to over 300,000 people.
AMANDA SPEIGHTS Class of 2000
Lead flight Test Engineer. A-10 Thunderbolt II & F-15 Strike Eagle. Master of Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronatucial University. Captain, US Air Force, supported launch and satellite control ops for Air Force at NASA.
CAMILLE SUTTON Class of 2010
Professional Dancer, model, marketing director, and blogger.
Thank you for being a part of our Evangel family. Please take time to let us know who and where you are so we can all stay connected.
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Check one
Year of Graduation * 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990
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19 & Above
Please help us by providing contact details for any ECA grads you keep in touch with!
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Tue 17th Sep 2019, 7:30pm
Mythos: Part 1 - Gods
Includes booking fee
Supplied By: Ticketmaster UK
See all dates for Mythos - A Trilogy: Gods, Heroes, Men
Written by and starring Stephen Fry
Originally Produced by The Shaw Festival
Directed by Tim Carroll
‘Let me tell you a story. It’s all about you.’
One of the world’s greatest storytellers, telling the world’s greatest stories. In this trilogy of plays (if you’re quick you can see them all!), Stephen Fry takes to the stage in the company of the Greek gods, heroes and men whose gripping tales still echo today. Laugh-out loud funny, mind-blowing and often personal, Mythos is a once-in-a-lifetime experience with the icon himself.
Mythos: Gods
Fry divides his gripping tales of love and war, debauchery and revenge into three full-length shows as Gods takes us from primordial chaos to the creation of the dazzling Greek pantheon.
Comedian, best-selling author, star of stage, screen & radio, quizmaster, film director and...
8 Argyll Street
W1F 7TF
london-palladium.co.uk
Disabled Booking:
Bronze Status
Find places to stay on Tue 17th Sep 2019
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A Surprisingly Civil Debate About Gas Versus Charcoal
Amiel Stanek
57 Star-Spangled Desserts
The Epicurious Editors
12 Essential Kitchen Items for Your Wedding Registry
Lauren Viera
Inside the Sparkly (but Serious!) Kitchen of David Burtka
Emily Johnson
Every Recipe in When Harry Met Sally
The most memorable food moments from the beloved romantic comedy, including a Katz's Deli–style pastrami sandwich and a coconut cake with chocolate sauce on the side
Upon its release in 1989, When Harry Met Sally was met with both critical and box office success, earning an Oscar nod, five Golden Globe nominations, and more than $92 million. 25 years later, it remains one of cinema's most beloved romantic comedies. The Rob Reiner–directed film was written by Nora Ephron, a well-known food lover who previously wrote about a food writer in Heartburn and later wrote and directed Julie & Julia. And when Epicurious asked her what her signature dish was, Ephron replied, "If there is a Nora Ephron signature anything, it is that there's slightly too much food."
While Ephron definitely wasn't talking about her films when she said that, the quote could easily apply to When Harry Met Sally. The "I'll have what she's having" scene in Katz's Deli is now famous, but it's only one of many food-focused moments that take place as Harry and Sally bicker like enemies, grow into a deep friendship, and ultimately, fall in love. As we witness the ups and downs in Harry and Sally's relationship, starting with their catastrophic initial meeting and ending with a charming interview at the end of the film that reveals they've finally (spoiler alert, if you've been under a rock for 25 years) gotten married, food plays a prominent and often hilarious supporting role.
##Apple Pie à la Mode##When the newly acquainted Harry and Sally, played by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, drive halfway across the country together, the situation quickly heads south. Harry spits out grape seeds in the car—without rolling down the car window first—and then proceeds to hit on Sally, his girlfriend's good friend. And then there's Sally's high-maintenance approach to ordering food, which was inspired by Nora Ephron and first comes on display when Sally and Harry stop at a roadside cafe. It takes Sally almost a full minute to order a salad and a slice of apple pie à la mode. Any sort of dressing or sauce must be "on the side," and Sally's instructions for what to do with (or without) the ice cream on her apple pie renders Harry silent for the first time since getting in the car. Sally's intensely particular way of ordering food ("I just like it how I like it") is one of the running jokes of the film, and as annoying as it can be, in the end, Harry finds it endearing—he even mentions it when he confesses his love for Sally on New Year's Eve, 12 years later, saying, "I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich."
##Pecan Pie##While When Harry Met Sally is a classic rom-com, it's also a celebration of platonic friendship. During an afternoon at a museum, Harry starts talking in a funny voice, encouraging Sally to imitate him. It's easily one of the most charming and romantic scenes in the film, and significant because it reveals Harry's growing love for Sally. In a confused expression of that love, Harry makes Sally repeat, over and over again, "But I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie," drawing out the syllables. Back and forth they go, "pecan pie," "pecan pie," "pecan pie," and it's a beautiful moment about the silliness of friendship, its intimacy and joy. It also shows how love can sneak up on you, even over an imaginary piece of pecan pie.
##Pastrami Sandwich##Katz's Delicatessen on Houston Street was already famous to local New Yorkers, but When Harry Met Sally brought it to the masses. The line "I'll have what she's having," spoken by a woman at a nearby table (director Rob Reiner's mother) following Sally's fake orgasm, is one of the most famous lines in cinema, even inspiring a recent flash mob-style prank. In the scene, Harry and Sally chow down—he has pastrami, she has turkey—and argue about sex, all as Sally takes apart her sandwich and puts it back together again in the way she prefers. Harry is certain the women he sleeps with have a good time, but Sally wonders if perhaps the women are faking it. And when Harry scoffs at the possibility, the usually uptight Sally proceeds to show him what a fake orgasm looks like, and how it is indistinguishable from the real thing.
##Coconut Cake##Throughout When Harry Met Sally, we see snippets of interviews with elderly couples, talking about how they fell in love. These are some of the most touching and funny moments in the film ("I knew the way you know about a good melon"). When love has finally conquered all in the end, we see part of Harry and Sally's own interview, and their interview closes the film. Completing one another's sentences, they reminisce about their beautiful wedding and their amazing wedding cake. It was coconut cake with chocolate sauce, and, of course, because love will not change your essential personality, Sally explains why it was so important that the chocolate sauce had to be "on the side." Harry nods in agreement. He now understands "on the side." Falling in love helped him figure that out.
TagsValentine's Day
Here's What We Actually Want to Buy on Amazon Prime Day
The Editors of Epicurious
Weekly Meal Plan: July 8-12
Debbie Koenig
Weekly Meal Plan: July 15-19
Since 1995, Epicurious has been the ultimate food resource for the home cook, with daily kitchen tips, fun cooking videos, and, oh yeah, over 33,000 recipes.
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© 2019 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 5/25/18) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 5/25/18) and Your California Privacy Rights. Epicurious may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
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Home › Latest News
Improved system for side-effect reporting launched by UK watchdog
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) have launched a new UK-wide pilot scheme to enable people to directly report their experiences of suspected side-effects from medication.
The improved system will see patient Yellow Card Scheme reporting forms being made available in pharmacies, surgeries and other NHS outlets across the UK. Reports on suspected side-effects can also be made on the Yellow Card website at www.yellowcard.gov.uk or by freephone to the Yellow Card hotline on 0808 100 3352.
The new scheme follows a earlier pilot scheme which was restricted to certain parts of the UK.
Dr Patricia Wilkie, chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines working group on patient reporting, said:
"Patient reporting through the Yellow Card Scheme helps the MHRA to collect information on suspected side-effects that patients have experienced, from the patient's own perspective. The incorporation of the patient experience in the Yellow Card Scheme is essential for medicines safety monitoring, and will be important for the development of information for patients about their medicines. The launch of the UK-wide pilot is a major step forward in achieving real patient involvement."
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Greek and Roman mythological traditions offer the backdrops for these fanciful, macho adventures starring bodybuilders as antiquity’s legendary heroes. In the late 1950s, the Italian film industry struck exportable gold mining its ancient history. The genre's vogue was brief but it produced innumerable strength-testing, spear-throwing, guilty-pleasuring adventures before fading out by the mid-1960s.
Watch Peplum Films
Top countries in Peplum
Genres / Action/Adventure / Sword and Sandal / Peplum
Gladiators Seven
GLADIATORS SEVEN revolves around a Spartan warrior who rises from the masses and leads a group of seven brave gladiators into battle, vowing to free Sparta from the cruel tyrants who have been controlling the city with an iron hand. A thrilling one-of-a-kind Italian made...
Italian Sword and Sandal
Pedro Lazaga
GLADIATORS SEVEN revolves around a Spartan warrior who leads a group of seven...
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Whether created from molded clay, acrylic paint or flickering light on a wall, visual arts and their makers are natural cinematic subjects.
POPULAR FILM
Debra Paget, For Example
"...her story is uniquely hers, the woman who almost landed Elvis Presley as a husband and awakened generations of pubescent boys to the ...
Becoming Anita Ekberg
An exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation...
John Garfield
Official selection of the 2003 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
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SUB-GENRES · Motion Pictures · Photography · Painting · Sculpture · Ceramics
Debra Paget was a contract player for 20th-Century Fox, whom they groomed and coached for stardom. But she never quite caught on. Maybe the movies weren't interesting enough. Or maybe she didn’t stand out from the rest of the pack. Or the studio didn’t take enough care in...
Mark Rappaport
"...her story is uniquely hers, the woman who almost landed Elvis Presley as a...
BECOMING ANITA EKBERG is an exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in various movies, both in Hollywood, by Frank Tashlin, and in Europe, by Federico Fellini. It's an...
An exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally...
Mark Rappaport completed his concise portrait of the legendary John Garfield in 2002, comprised (like much of his filmed essays) from existing film footage of the actor. Exceptionally engaging, Rappaport's extraordinary short contains more insightful observations of its subject than many...
(2002) 9 min
The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but...
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a...
The Woodmans
The tragic story of Francesca Woodman, a young photographer renowned for her extraordinary self-portraits, is also the story of her brilliantly artistic family. With THE WOODMANS, director C. Scott Willis shows how the struggle for fame in the high-stakes world of art resulted in tragedy and then...
C. Scott Willis
"There’s a famous Diane Arbus photograph in which a pair of elderly, incredulous parents stare up at a son...
For many, Peter Anton's house embodies an end-of-life nightmare: the utility companies long ago shut off the heat and electricity, the floorboards are rotting and the detritus of a chaotic life is precariously stacked to the ceiling. But for the filmmakers Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden, Anton's...
Dan Rybicky, Aaron Wickenden
A remarkable journey following a gifted artist (a character worthy of his own reality television show)...
The Circle Closes
An examination of four different films, which to varying degrees, center on a prop or an object or an item that crosses various characters lives and passes from hand to hand in THE CIRCLE CLOSES. The story in each film is, to a certain extent, told from the point of view of...
An examination of four different films, which to varying degrees, center on a...
Blank City
BLANK CITY is an "absorbing snapshot of a daring time" (Los Angeles Times) when a disparate crew of renegade filmmakers emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous moment in New York history. From the late 1970s through the mid-'80s, when the East Village was still a wasteland of cheap...
Céline Danhier
"...well-researched doc on the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression scenes of late-'70s/early-'80s New...
My Best Fiend
Director Werner Herzog and late actor Klaus Kinski made five films together over a fifteen-year period, including such mutual career highlights as FITZCARRALDO, NOSFERATU and AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD. As much as this collaboration benefitted them both, the partnership was fraught with off-screen...
German Documentary
Director Werner Herzog and late actor Klaus Kinski made five films together over a fifteen-year period,...
Marwencol
Outside a small bar in Kingston, New York, Mark Hogancamp was beaten nearly to death, his memories wiped away. Seeking recovery, he builds Marwencol, a miniature World War II-era town filled with doll versions of his friends, fantasies and even his attackers. As he documents the town’s dramas...
Jeff Malmberg
Winner of "Best Documentary Feature" at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival.
Our Stars
Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years later, did the magic still work? Did sparks still fly? The movie business, a machine that manufactured romance and desire at the same time that it...
Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal?...
The Double Life of Paul Henreid
Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in CASABLANCA and NOW, VOYAGER became a star at Warner Brothers during World War II, as the exotic lead with the European accent. After the war, his contract was cancelled and he was left to his own devices. He continued acting...
Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in CASABLANCA and NOW, VOYAGER...
The Rape of Europa
THE RAPE OF EUROPA is an epic journey through seven countries, into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in...
Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen +1 other
An epic journey through seven countries, into the violent whirlwind of...
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
An acclaimed photographer with the eye of a filmmaker, Gregory Crewdson has created some of the most gorgeously haunting pictures in the history of the medium. His meticulously composed, large-scale images are stunning narratives of small-town American life (moviescapes...
An acclaimed photographer has created some of the most gorgeously haunting...
Zizek!
The author of works on subjects as wide-ranging as Alfred Hitchcock, 9/11, opera, Christianity, Lenin and David Lynch, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is one of the most important and outrageous cultural theorists working today. This captivating, erudite documentary explores the eccentric...
Astra Taylor
"Mr. Zizek is funnier, in person and on the page, than anyone whose mission is to fuse Hegelian dialectics...
Cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, Zizek literally goes inside some truly...
Sophie Fiennes
With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, a Slovenian...
Tati vs Bresson: The Gag
Jacques Tati and Robert Bresson were very different directors, yet the way they structure a scene is very similar.
Jacques Tati and Robert Bresson were very different directors, yet the way they...
!Women Art Revolution
An entertaining and revelatory “secret history” of Feminist Art, !WOMEN ART REVOLUTION deftly illuminates this under-explored movement through conversations, observations, archival footage and works of visionary artists, historians, curators and critics. Starting from its...
An entertaining and revelatory “secret history” of Feminist Art, !WOMEN ART...
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Formerly Fascia Graphics
Membrane Keypads
Domed Emblems & Liquid Graphics
In-House Graphic Design
R&D Department
Internal & External Technical Sales Team
Rapid Protoypes
Intelligas
Mono Equipment
PowerOasis
‹ Back to Article List
How Has Technology Changed Graphic Design?
The ways in which technology has changed the face of graphic design over the last few decades are far too many to mention. The skills and experience that a budding young graphic designer will learn today are so far removed from those that one even 20 years ago would be familiar with that the professions are almost unrecognisable. The same will undoubtedly be true another 20 years from now.
With that in mind, it’s nigh on impossible to boil down the essence of the changes that technology has made to graphic design in just a few paragraphs… but it’s worth a try. By no means a comprehensive list, here are a handful of the ways in which technological advances have revolutionised the way that graphic designers think and work.
In times gone by, before the advent of computers and the internet, creating a new logo, font or advertisement would have taken days or even weeks. With only pen and paper to work with, designers had to painstakingly draw each of their prospective designs using exact measurements and the patience of a saint. Nowadays, the same results can be used in a matter of hours thanks to ingenious graphic design apps and editing software.
Nowadays, the ability to produce things on a massive scale and even automate that production process means that all kinds of products – from newspapers to nameplates – can be created for mass consumption with the minimum of fuss. When all designs were created on a hand-drawn basis, production was predictably restricted by human limits. Expect those production capacities to only expand further as 3D printing and other new techniques become more sophisticated.
Years ago, a completed design would have to be sent off to the prospective client by courier or through the post. They would then critique it and specify any amendments they wished the designer to make, who would come back with a second draft and so on and so forth until both parties had finally reached an agreement. Today, a design can be sent instantaneously via Smartphone, the corrections taken on board and an acceptable upgrade made within hours or even minutes.
Thanks to professional editing software like Adobe and InDesign, pretty much everyone has access to top-quality tools that can allow them to create incredible designs, if they have the knowledge to do so… and with the ever-increasing popularity of tutorial videos on streaming sites such as YouTube andVimeo, that knowledge is becoming more and more commonplace too.
Of course, with the rise of information sharing, the marketplace for graphic designers is also more competitive every day. Those looking to make a name for themselves in the industry must seek ever more innovative ways of setting themselves ahead of their rivals. This may make things more difficult on an individual level, but as a collective industry, it can only be beneficial for the future of graphic design.
At the cutting edge
Whether you’re looking to revamp your business brand with a new logo, nameplate or marketing campaign, taking advantage of technology to do so is imperative. At CCL Design, we understand the importance of keeping up with the latest trends and innovations to make sure your business stays one step ahead of the curve. To find out more about how our design solutions can help you, give us a call on 01249 460 606 or contact us online. We’re waiting to hear from you.
How we Test our Membrane Keypads
30 Nov -0001
Product testing is vital for quality assurance, and here at Fascia Graphics we believe in performing more rigorous product tests than most. In addition to meeting the British Standards for IP ratings, we go one step further – sending our graphic overlays and membrane keyboards to an externa...
How Labelling can Improve your Business Function
Labels are an inherent part of product packaging, but there are also many other business uses for labels. Labelling is an effective way of branding, informing customers, office organisation and customisation. There are many uses for business labels and if you take full advantage of them, they can...
Five Ways To Turn R&D Into Production
It’s no coincidence that the most successful and innovative organisations are also the leading investors in research and development (R&D). One of our former customers, Dyson, unveiled plans last November to invest £1 billion in R&D with Sir James Dyson explaining: “...
Manufacturing Trends For 2015 And Beyond
Already 2015 has been a pivotal year for the manufacturing industry. No longer dangerous, dark and dirty places to work, plants now hold some of the world’s most advanced equipment which is run on powerful systems and managed using some of the most intricate data and complex software.
While...
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© 2019 CCL Design (Chippenham) Built by Giant Peach
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A new record: 35 games unbeaten
Luis Enrique’s Barça side continue to make history, 35 games unbeaten in all competitions, never achieved before in Spanish football
FCBARCELONA.COM
11:00PM Wednesday 02 Mar
In Vallecas, thanks to their 5-1 win Luis Enrique’s Barça side have established yet another record, most matches unbeaten in all competitions. The previous record in Spanish football stood at 34 matches, held by a Real Madrid side from 1988/89 with Dutchman Leo Beenhakker as coach. 27 years later, the blaugranes have eclipsed their big rivals by reaching 35 games undefeated. The run encompasses the league, Copa del Rey, Champions League and Club World Cup competitions and the streak could well be extended in the coming weeks.
European records: England and Italy
In the near future Luis Enrique’s team have two targets in their sights. First is the record set by English Nottingham Forest of 40 games unbeaten in all competitions, a run that came to an end in December 1978.
However, the record in all competition in the main European leagues was set by Italian club Juventus between May 2011 and May 2012. La vecchia signora went 43 games without defeat in the league and Italian Cup, recording 26 wins and 17 draws. Barça already have 29 wins in their run of 35 games unbeaten.
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