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New York|Transgender Woman Dies in a Possible Hate Crime
Transgender Woman Dies in a Possible Hate Crime
By Alan Feuer
A transgender woman attacked last weekend in Harlem has died in a case the police said they were now investigating as a hate crime after learning that the man accused of hitting her may have used antigay epithets.
The victim, Islan Nettles, 21, was declared brain-dead from her injuries on Thursday and was later taken off life support at Harlem Hospital Center. She had been under the care of doctors since the attack early last Saturday, hospital officials said.
A spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner’s office, Ellen Borakove, said on Friday that the death had been ruled a homicide and the cause was “blunt force trauma.”
Ms. Nettles, who, according to her LinkedIn page, was an intern assistant designer at Ay’Medici, a Harlem fashion company, was walking with a group of transgender friends on Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 147th and 148th Streets when they encountered several men across the street from the station house of Police Service Area 6, which patrols public housing developments in the area.
When the men concluded Ms. Nettles and her friends were transgender, a scuffle broke out, the police said, with punches thrown and homophobic slurs shouted.
A 20-year-old Harlem man, Paris Wilson, was arrested late Saturday and, according to a criminal complaint, was charged in the case by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with misdemeanor assault and harassment. At the time of the arrest, police officers did not realize that the confrontation might have involved bias. At some point later, prosecutors said, a witness went into the Area 6 station house and told the police that homophobic language had been used.
Islan Nettles, 21, who was pursuing a career in fashion, was fatally beaten in Harlem.
The Police Department’s hate crimes task force is now investigating the case.
Prosecutors also said that more, and graver, charges could be filed against Mr. Wilson, who on Friday remained free on bail.
On her LinkedIn page, Ms. Nettles said she had harbored ambitions to work in the fashion industry since middle school. “Fashion became a definite decision for my life after my first show with my hand designed garments in high school at the 11th grade,” she wrote.
Before she worked at Ay’Medici, whose founder, Daequan Andino, did not respond to e-mails seeking comment on Friday, Ms. Nettles served as an assistant photographer and fashion instructor at the Harlem Children’s Zone. She also took classes at the New York College of Technology and attended the Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School in Harlem.
The neighborhood where Ms. Nettles was attacked has a small but growing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said Dayan Jenniffer, the owner of the Nutrive Fitness Studio and Juice Bar on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.
Ms. Jenniffer said she had a number of transgender clients who bought her juices and health drinks “because of the hormones that they take.”
Ms. Nettles was “a very cheerful, happy person,” Ms. Jenniffer said, adding that the neighborhood was in shock over her death, which was first reported by the Web site DNAinfo. “It made us all a little shaken,” she said. “The community here is strong, but being transgendered can be dangerous. There’s still intolerance. There’s still a stigma around it.”
Several politicians, including the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and the public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who are both running for mayor, issued statements condemning the attack.
State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, the Senate sponsor of a bill called the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or Genda, said in a statement on Friday: “Islan was 21 years old — 21 years old. And her life and future were stolen from her. Let’s be clear: intolerance, discrimination and hate have no place in New York or anywhere. Each outrage is another call: It’s time for New York to send that message loudly and clearly by finally passing Genda.”
Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Transgender Woman Dies In a Possible Hate Crime. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Opinion|Saving the Wolf
Saving the Wolf
Re “Wolf Haters,” by Lawrence Downes (Editorial Notebook, Dec. 29):
Idaho’s Wolf Derby is a prime example of why wolves still need federal protection. For a population to be successfully removed from the endangered species list, it must be both biologically recovered and adequately safeguarded from becoming endangered again. The Northern Rocky Mountain wolves aren’t there yet, thanks to the behavior of certain two-legged mammals.
When the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act because the law had worked so well, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it “hubris” and noted that places with greater racial polarization need stronger measures to prevent discrimination. It is similar with wolves. States where antipathy toward them runs high are unlikely to carry out effective conservation measures. Instead, we get the Wolf Derby, and the gleeful slaughter of a keystone species.
Until state management plans are based on logic and science rather than on hatred and the hubris of political expediency, wolves remain endangered, and federal protections must remain robust. Wyoming’s wolves are next to be considered for delisting. Let’s hope that we’ve learned something from the failure in Idaho.
DOROTHY HEARST
Berkeley, Calif., Dec. 29, 2013
The writer is the author of “Promise of the Wolves” and “Secrets of the Wolves.”
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Saving the Wolf. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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MinterEllisonRuddWatts elevates three to partner
by Sol Dolor11 Dec 2017
The MinterEllisonRuddWatts partnership will get a boost in the new year with the promotion of John Conlan, Jane Standage, and Oliver Skilton.
Six new senior associates have also been named by the firm, which said it is continuing its strong growth despite a competitive legal-services environment. They are Maria Collett-Bevan, John Fowler, Elena Kim, Briar Richardson, Alisaundre van Ammers, and Wendy Wang.
The promotions take effect on 1 January and upon completion of New Zealand Law Society requirements.
Conlan started his legal career as a law clerk at the firm before moving to Herbert Smith Freehills and London. When he returned to New Zealand, he then took on in-house roles at Z Energy NZ and then returned to MinterEllisonRuddWatts. Conlan specialises in M&A, corporate finance, structured finance, and commercial contracting.
In addition to being a judge’s clerk at the Court of Appeal and a junior to David Goddard QC at Thorndon Chambers, Standage also has international experience. She joined Allen & Overy in London after finishing her LLM from the New York University School of Law on Fulbright and Hauser Global scholarships.
She joined Bell Gully upon her return to New Zealand in 2014, before moving to MinterEllisonRuddWatts earlier this year. Standage is a specialist in banking and financial services litigation, class-action disputes, complex contractual disputes, professional negligence claims and disputes involving issues of companies and securities law.
Skilton, who worked at Clayton Utz in Sydney and Clyde & Co in London before joining MinterEllisonRuddWatts in 2010, is a commercial litigation expert. His extensive experience includes work in regulatory investigations, contractual, shareholder and intellectual property disputes, and consumer-related issues.
(L-R) Oliver Skilton, Jane Standage and John Conlan
Top Kiwi firms act as major NZ forestry business bought by Australian company
Leading firm pitches in on trading platform buy
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Good Reads Insects & other Invertebrates Insects Bees, Ants & Wasps (Hymenoptera)
Nature Writing SPECIAL OFFER
By: Dave Goulson(Author)
ISBN: 9781911214137 Hardback Apr 2017 Out of Print #234331
About this book Customer reviews Biography Related titles
A hunt for the world's most elusive bees leads Dave Goulson from the Salisbury plains to the Sussex hedgerows, from Poland to Patagonia. Whether he is tracking great yellow bumblebees in the Hebrides or chasing orchid bees through the Ecuadorian jungle, Dave Goulson's wit, humour and deep love of nature make him the ideal travelling companion. But perhaps Bee Quest is most magical when Dave Goulson explores closer to home, amongst the secret places hidden right under our noses: the abandoned industrial estates where great crested newts roam; or the rewilded estate at Knepp Castle, where, with the aid of some hairy, bluebell-eating Tamworth pigs, nightingale song has been heard for the first time in generations. This utterly charming book will inspire you to think about the ways in which we are all responsible for the future of our world. Through his scientific expertise and passion for conservation, Goulson shows us nature's resilience against the odds, and that beauty hides in the most surprising places.
Dave Goulson studied biology at Oxford University and is now Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Sussex. He has spent the last twenty years studying bumblebees, and has published over 250 scientific articles on their biology. He founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller, A Sting in the Tale, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, and A Buzz in the Meadow.
"You'll learn all sorts of interesting things without effort because he's a natural storyteller with a particular gift of understatement that is often laugh-out-loud funny – which you don't expect from a bee book [...] It's warmly personal, and stuffed full of the inescapable poetry and beauty of the natural world [...] Going on Bee Quest with him puts the natural world within our reach – to enjoy but also to protect [...] This is a truly positive and empowering read – you closed it better informed, filled with poetry, pies and ready to get out there and make a difference."
– Laline Paull, Observer
"This is a quest that takes us from Patagonia to Poland, from Ecuador to Essex, fueled by Dave Goulson's extraordinary passion for the bumblebee [...] Goulson's search for some of the world's rarest bees has led him on a geographical and intellectual exploration that combines bizarre facts about bumblebees [...] with passionate ideas about conservation."
– Martha Kearney, The Times
"In this delightful book [Goulson] tells us of the discoveries he has made during his 'bee travels' [...] a humorous, beautifully written tribute to these insects, and hope-filled examples of nature's resilience."
– Outdoor Photography
"Dave Goulson [...] has perfected the art of turning the entomologist's technical expertise into easy-reading everyman's prose. He also laces his stories with rich helpings of wit and humour."
– Mark Cocker, Spectator
"Every now and then you come across a book that changes the way you look at the world. This is one of those books. Ostensibly about bumblebees and Goulson's quest to find some of the most endangered ones around the globe, it proves to be much more than that [...] Bee Quest is as much a travel guide as a bee compendium [...] Along the way he conjures up the history, atmosphere and landscape of his surroundings with an infectious enthusiasm and descriptive flair that more than makes up for the lack of illustrations [...] You may well find yourself building a bee hotel and ordering wild flower seeds long before you reach the end of the book."
– Patricia Carswell, WI Life
Bestsellers in Bees, Ants & Wasps (Hymenoptera)
Handbook of the Bees of the British Isles (2-Volume Set)
Ants of Britain and Europe
Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland
Solitary Bees
RES Handbook, Volume 7, Part 12: Ichneumonid Wasps (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)
Field Guide to the Bumblebees of Great Britain & Ireland
The Ants of Central and Northern Europe
The Solitary Bees
RES Handbook, Volume 7, Part 4: The Banchine Wasps (Ichneumonidae: Banchinae) of the British Isles
Browse titles in Bees, Ants & Wasps (Hymenoptera)
Other titles from Vintage
A Buzz in the Meadow
A Sting in the Tale
Silver Shoals
The Secret Network of Nature
Browse titles from Vintage
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Anelka - Chelsea's Champion Striker
Nicolas Anelka, the Former Chelsea and Arsenal Star to Have His Own Netflix Documentary
Netflix, the popular online video streaming platform has announced that Nicolas Anelka is going to be the subject of a documentary. This is going to be available on the streaming platform next year. It looks like Nicolas Anelka is going to follow the footsteps of Antoine Griezmann, his compatriot. This had been announced on the Series Mania festival which was being held in Lille from 22nd March till 30th of March.
The ex-footballer, the controversial figure from French football player had been one of the globetrotters of the football world in recent times. Hence, he is going to be the protagonist of this project that is to be released in 2020 in over 190 countries. From this, people can get the details of arguments which collect French media 'AlloCiné.
Anelka is going to be the headline. He is going to put his most intimate side on display as he will talk about his childhood, his hectic career, and his faith as a footballer. He is going to talk about how he decided on ending his career in 2015 after he went more than a 10 team that includes Juventus, Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid, and Arsenal.
“The address to the controversies that he had been involved with is not going to be avoided“. This as per the previously mentioned means is going to treat his hostile behavior with the Real Madrid leader and his history of the problem with the coaches of the French team which includes the showdown that he had in World Cup of 2018 in South Africa with Raymond Domenech. “This had caused him“ to be dispelled and had been substituted by André-Pierre Gignac.
The documentary is also going to have testimonies of footballers like Paul Pogba, Thierry Henry, Patrice Evra, and Arsene Wenger.
Yossi Benayoun
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Nielsen Celebrates 90 Years of Innovation
Innovation | 23-08-2013
It started with $45,000, an engineering degree…and a dream. Ninety years later, Arthur C. Nielsen Sr.’s dream has been reimagined many times over.
On Aug. 24, 2013, Nielsen will celebrate its 90th anniversary. For us, this milestone is an opportunity to take a look back, and in the spirit of innovation, a look forward.
Very few companies ever get the chance to deliver true innovation even once. Nielsen has had the good fortune to deliver multiple innovations. Market share, cost per thousand (CPM), television audience measurement and Online Campaign Ratings are all in common use thanks to the demands of clients. They are the standards by which the habits of real people are measured.
Today, Nielsen employs tens of thousands of people across more than 100 countries. We have prospered because Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr. and his son Art Nielsen, Jr. were visionaries who paved the way to decades of innovation. We endure because of our commitment to the original Nielsen Code, written by Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr.: impartiality, thoroughness, accuracy, integrity.
In 1923, Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr. had $45,000 and an engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin, which he used to create a company to help manufacturers invest in the best performing industrial machinery. Back then, Nielsen tested turbines and conveyer belts and reported back to clients.
At Nielsen’s Consumer 360 client event in Phoenix, Ariz. last June, author Malcolm Gladwell said innovation was often born from desperation, and leaders needed the courage to take risks. For Art Nielsen, Sr., that meant convincing his young son to purchase shares of Nielsen stock for $52 to fund a do-or-die business prospecting trip to save his struggling company.
When that prospect said yes, the direction of the company took a dramatic turn to roll out a new breed of interview-style surveys that shed light on consumers’ opinions on goods and services. At this point, Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr. asked himself one of the enduring questions: “Why do we buy what we buy?” His answer was advertising, so he set out to measure radio and television audiences with unprecedented accuracy.
Fast forward to today’s fast evolving needs of marketers: Nielsen understands why mobile phones are so important to the African consumer, how loyalty card customers’ grocery baskets differ from week to week, and how many people watch the Super Bowl.
Any future-thinking enterprise must meet consumer demand. Nielsen helps companies win by letting them walk in their customers’ shoes while predicting the steps they will take. Innovations like market share, cost-per-thousand, television audience measurement and Online Campaign Ratings help businesses understand what people watch and buy. But perhaps most importantly, our founder firmly believed that using science to understand consumer habits could create a more efficient world to improve the quality of life for all people. Today, Nielsen drives that thinking through our global information and measurement efforts.
A few years ago, Art Nielsen, Jr. recorded a video for Nielsen associates and told us that a great leader never stops learning. For the past 90 years, Nielsen has worked to deliver the most complete understanding of consumers across the globe. For the next 90 years, the mission doesn’t change.
For a more in-depth look at Nielsen’s first 90 years, click here to see an interactive timeline.
https://www.nielsen.com/ae/en/insights/article/2013/nielsen-celebrates-90-years-of-innovation/
Webinar: How to Launch More Incremental Innovations
In this webinar, we highlight our collective learning and wisdom on 'How to Launch More Incremental Innovations'. Showcasing examples from local markets in multiple regions, we present local factors that play out in favour of incremental growth and also hotspots where failure risks lie.
Five Reasons To Prioritize Sustainability In Your Brand Playbook
To do it right, companies need to invest in truly understanding their consumers and embed sustainability into their brand’s foundation. Authenticity comes through the end-to-end integration of sustainability into your processes and complete transparency with consumers along the way.
Is Your Competitive Intelligence Missing Innovation Intelligence?
Modern marketers have a number of tools to drive growth in the competitive environment which are supported by data to make confident decisions—like pricing, promotion, assortment and media. But when we talk to marketers about growth, no lever is cited more often than innovation.
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The Movies Blog
20 essential tracks from the golden age of ’90s hip-hop
Leonie Cooper Jun 17, 2019 1:00 pm BST
Credit: Sony
The 90s were without a doubt, the golden age of rap. NME’s bringing you a killer playlist of the 20 finest hip-hop tracks of the 1990s.
Nas, ‘The World Is Yours’
Taken from his stunning 1994 debut album, ‘Illmatic’, ‘The World Is Yours’ mixes up the mythology of Scarface with Nas’ own NYC upbringing, complete with shoutouts to all of the five boroughs. A legendary tune – and one that made a hip-hop hopeful one of the most respected rappers in the world.
Warren G, ‘Regulate’
One of the greatest yarns in hip-hop history, ‘Regulate’ is Warren G and Nate Dogg’s tale of a night gone awry in Long Beach, California. In this ultimate party tune, Nate comes to the rescue of Warren – who’s being robbed – and then the two set about creating the G-Funk era. All in a night’s work eh, lads?
Wu-Tang Clan, ‘CREAM’
The Wu-Tang Clan are the most innovative, cinematic and outstanding hip-hop crew of all time, and their 1993 debut, ‘Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’, is often considered the finest rap album ever released. ‘CREAM’ – led by Method Man, Raekwon and Inspectah Deck – is a celebration of 1990s hip-hop’s most precious commodity: “dollar dollar bills, y’all”.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard, ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’
Rude and raucous, ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’ is one hell of a party tune. Wu-Tang Clan’s late, great ODB shows off one of the most recognisable voices of the 1990s with this filthy and fun guttural groover.
Salt-N-Pepa, ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’
The first ladies of 1990s hip-hop, New York trio Salt, Pepa and DJ Spinderella broke down barriers with their effortlessly fresh tunes and ballsy attitude. ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ wasn’t just a dancefloor filler, but a prescient education in safe sex and a timely debunking of harmful media censorship.
Dr Dre, Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang
Following his formative stint with NWA, Dr Dre slipped into the limelight with his debut solo album ‘The Chronic’, which just so happened to be one of the best rap records of all time. With Snoop Dogg on board, this seamlessly funky four minutes set the bar for the next twenty years. One of hip-hop’s high watermarks.
Jay Z, ‘Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)’
Hip-hop has used some strange samples in its time, but none more odd than Jay Z’s use of a chorus of squealing kiddies from the musical Annie. Somehow though, in his 1998 hit single, Jay managed to make stage brats sound cool, going platinum in the process.
Beastie Boys, ‘Sabotage’
This former hardcore punk band showed a flash of their rowdy roots with this riff-heavy 1994 single. Aggro, awesome and showcasing some serious scratching, it also has one of the best music videos of the decade: a Spike Jonze directed, 1970s cop show piss-take, complete with dodgy fake ‘taches.
Jurassic 5, ‘Concrete Schoolyard’
The pinnacle of earnest, backpacker hip-hop, ‘Concrete Schoolyard’ was this Los Angeles collective’s breakthrough track. It was as socially conscious as it was downright fun, mixing old school samples of Ike Turner with the group’s giddy flow.
Snoop Dogg, ‘Gin & Juice’
Snoop’s second single showcased the rapper’s now iconic, laconic drawl and received a Grammy nomination in the process. A Dr Dre production, it sees Snoop in his happy place: a debauched party full of weed, women and booze. It was this track that set up Snoop as one of the biggest characters in the game.
Public Enemy, ‘911 Is A Joke’
Public Enemy, one of the most important rap acts of the 1980s, maintained their relevance in the following decade. ‘911 Is A Joke’ is Flavor Flav’s caustic take down of the US emergency services, slamming the ambulance response rate to black areas and calling out “911 is a fake live saver”.
Naughty By Nature, ‘Hip Hop Hooray’
Sampling everyone from James Brown to the Isley Brothers and Peter Gabriel, there’s no way ‘Hip Hop Hooray’ couldn’t have been a hit. Add to that a holler-along chorus and this 1993 track – from the New Jersey group’s third album ‘19 Naughty III’ – boasts legendary status.
Digable Planets, ‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’
Jazzier than your average 1990s hip-hop hit, Digable Planets’ debut single featured a horn section and a laid-back, lo-fi vibe. The 1992 track scored a Grammy and proved that rap could be as smooth as soul music.
House of Pain, ‘Jump Around’
A house party staple since 1992, House of Pain’s seminal ‘Jump Around’ mixes tennis metaphors (“I’ll serve your ass like John McEnroe”) with big squelchy beats and a serious sample from Bob & Earl’s soul classic ‘Harlem Shuffle’ – all seamlessly produced by Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs. An unbridled classic.
Ice Cube, ‘It Was A Good Day’
Like Dr Dre, Ice Cube was a former member of NWA. The first to break away from the seminal 1980s gangster rap group, he released a run of brilliant solo tracks, including this chilled out effort from his 1992 album ‘The Predator’. The track sees him having a pretty perfect 24 hours – smoking, shagging and getting some trashy take-out in his South Central neighbourhood. It’s the simple things, isn’t it.
2Pac, ‘California Love’
Yet another Dr Dre-related jam, this 1995 classic came out just after 2Pac was released from jail. A celebration of all things California, the Death Row label release features vocals by Roger Troutman of iconic funk band Zapp as well as a ludicrous, Mad Max-inspired video.
A Tribe Called Quest, ‘Scenario’
Taken from A Tribe Called Quest’s second album ‘The Low End Theory’ (which years later would give its name to a Flying Lotus-endorsed club night in LA), ‘Scenario’ is notable for announcing Leaders Of The New School member Busta Rhymes’ talent to the world after he guested on the track.
Missy Elliott, ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)’
With a memorable, Hype Williams-directed video and a sample of 1970s soul classic ‘I Can’t Stand The Rain’, this single from Missy’s 1997 debut album announced a major league talent onto the US hip-hop landscape. Sparse and sensual, it’s as laid back as it is innovative.
Digital Underground, ‘The Humpty Dance’
One of the most sampled songs in the history of hip hop, this Golden Age gem – from Digital Underground’s 1990 debut ‘Sex Packets’ – has been plundered by everyone from Public Enemy and Ice Cube to Redman and um, The Spice Girls… Cool?
The Notorious BIG, ‘Hypnotize’
Released just three weeks after Biggie Smalls’ March 1997 death, ‘Hypnotize’ was produced by Puff Daddy and went to Number One stateside. It’s a track tinged by tragedy but also a fittingly brilliant example of his colossal talent.
Kevin Spacey Credit: Getty
Prosecutors drop indecent assault case against Kevin Spacey
Hacienda Classical, 2019 Credit: Anthony Mooney / Press
FAC51 The Haçienda announces largest-ever Manchester event
Quavo shows support for A$AP Rocky by recalling his own run-in with Swedish police
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Text Archive
NJ OKs biggest US wind farm off Jersey Shore; will power 500K homes
A $1.6 billion 1,110-megawatt wind energy farm located about 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City was approved by New Jersey regulators on Friday.
NJ OKs biggest US wind farm off Jersey Shore; will power 500K homes A $1.6 billion 1,110-megawatt wind energy farm located about 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City was approved by New Jersey regulators on Friday. Check out this story on northjersey.com: https://www.app.com/story/news/local/land-environment/2019/06/21/nj-oks-biggest-us-wind-farm-ever-off-jersey-shore-power-500-k-homes/1509748001/
David P. Willis, Asbury Park Press Published 1:52 p.m. ET June 21, 2019 | Updated 10:32 p.m. ET June 21, 2019
New Jersey is moving forward with a plan to install enough offshore wind turbines to power 1.5 million homes by 2030. How do gusts 20 miles off the coast turn into the electricity that lights up your home when you flip a switch? Russ Zimmer
Plans for a $1.6 billion wind-energy farm — the largest of its kind in the U.S. — about 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City won the backing of state regulators Friday, in a big leap forward for clean energy.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities chose Ocean Wind, a proposal by Danish energy company Ørsted and supported by PSEG Power, to develop a 1,110-megawatt offshore wind farm. Ocean Wind was selected from among three projects.
Construction of the energy farm, which would produce enough electricity to power more than a half-million New Jersey homes, is expected to start in 2022 or 2023. The first phase would come online in 2024.
The project, the largest offshore wind proposal ever awarded in the United States, is estimated to add $1.46 a month to an average residential electric customer's bill once the project become operational.
Want to learn more about growth and development in Monmouth and Ocean counties? Please visit our What's Going There page and consider buying a subscription today.
Joseph L. Fiordaliso, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, talks to reporters after awarding a proposal to build a wind farm off the coast of Atlantic City. (Photo: David P. Willis)
More: Murphy's clean energy goals include nuclear in long-awaited master plan
Opinion: Are Gov. Murphy's clean energy goals aggressive enough?
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"It's an historic day," said Joseph L. Fiordaliso, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. "I really am having difficulty grasping the reality of the moment, after so many years, that New Jersey is going to finally be open for business as far as offshore wind is concerned."
State officials said the project will generate $1.17 billion in economic benefits and 15,000 jobs over the life of the project. Among the benefits: the creation of a supply chain in New Jersey to support offshore wind farms.
More: Solar power made more expensive by NJ rules; how can we change that?
More: Six Flags Great Adventure unveils massive Jackson solar farm
Six Flags Great Adventure solar farm in Jackson
The Six Flags Great Adventure solar farm, part of a 23.5 megawatt project, will provide nearly all of the energy required by the Jackson park. Courtesy of Six Flags Great Adventure
The solar panels over an employee parking lot at Six Flags Great Adventure are part of a 23.5-megawatt solar project providing nearly all of the energy to the park. Courtesy of Six Flags Great Adventure
The solar panels over an employee parking lot near Six Flags Hurricane Harbor are part of a 23.5-megawatt solar project providing nearly all of the energy to the park. Courtesy of Six Flags Great Adventure
“Today’s announcement firmly establishes a fast-growing global industry in New Jersey, which will create jobs and supply chain in the state,” said Thomas Brostrøm, chief executive officer of Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and president of Ørsted North America, in a statement. “Ocean Wind will ensure that the state and its residents not only benefit from clean, renewable power, but that they reap the rewards of being an early player in the offshore wind industry as it grows in the U.S.”
The turbines will have "limited visual impact" from the shoreline, an Ørsted spokeswoman said. The company voluntarily committed to build the turbines no closer than 15 miles offshore after groups expressed concern, she added.
Gov. Phil Murphy has set a goal of 3,500 megawatts for offshore wind generation by 2030 to power as many as 1.5 million New Jersey homes. The state will next solicit bids for two additional 1,200-megawatt offshore wind projects, one in 2020 and another in 2022. Watch a video about those plan at the top of this story.
Earlier this month, Murphy unveiled a plan to convert New Jersey's electricity production to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
New Jersey has a way to go. About 95 percent of electricity generated in New Jersey comes from natural-gas-powered plants and nuclear facilities.
The project was hailed by environmentalists.
"Nationally, this is the largest move forward on offshore wind to date," said Doug O'Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, in a statement. "These turbines will provide the clean energy engine we need to power our state and finally tap the goldmine of offshore wind potential off the Jersey Shore."
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said it is a "great day for wind."
A lift boat, right, that serves as a work platform, assembles a wind turbine off Block Island, R.I., Monday, Aug. 15, 2016. Deepwater Wind's $300 million five-turbine wind farm off Block Island is expected to be operational this fall. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer) (Photo: AP)
"Offshore wind will move us forward when it comes to clean energy and green jobs," Tittel said in a statement. "It is one of the most reliable and cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases and get renewable energy to scale.”
Ocean Wind was chosen over two other offshore wind developers. They were Atlantic Offshore Wind, a partnership between EDF Renewables and Shell New Energies; and Boardwalk Wind, sponsored by Equinor, which would have built a wind farm off the coast of Long Branch.
In its decision, the board said Ørsted's Ocean Wind had the most benefits to New Jersey, including the lowest cost and risk, and the quickest time to construction. While all of the proposals would cut New Jersey's greenhouse gas emissions, Ocean Wind's environmental protection plan was the most complete and advanced, the BPU said.
Wind turbines of the Block Island Wind Farm tower over the water on October 14, 2016 off the shores of Block Island, Rhode Island. The first offshore wind project in America has created more than 300 construction jobs and will deliver the electricity demands for the entire island. (Photo: DON EMMERT, AFP/Getty Images)
"For me their driving force was their many, many years of experience," Fiordaliso said. Ørsted operates the Block Island Wind Farm, three miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island.
David P. Willis is an award-winning business reporter and "Press on Your Side" columnist who has written about consumer issues for more than 20 years. Contact him at @dpwillis732, 732-643-4039; dwillis@gannettnj.com.
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Home > Local News
New CEO brings business acumen and faith to Catholic Charities Fort Worth
by Joan Kurkowski Gillen
Catholic Charities Fort Worth new chief executive officer Michael Grace, at its headquarters in Fort Worth, May 30, 2019. (NTC/Ben Torres)
FORT WORTH — At first glance, Michael P. Grace’s resume seems to lack a few key qualifications.
“I’m not a social worker and I don’t have a background in nonprofit work,” admitted the new president/CEO of Catholic Charities Fort Worth before pointedly adding, “but that’s not why I’m here.”
What the Springfield, Missouri native brings to his leadership role at one of the premier Catholic Charities organizations in the U.S. is a wealth of business experience and an entrepreneurial spirit that embraces innovation, optimism, and constant improvement.
“I can’t do what they do,” he said, acknowledging the dozens of case managers and support personnel who are the backbone of the agency. “What I can do is use my background and skill set to provide more resources, so the people here can continue their work at a very effective, high level.”
Understanding the principles of economics, and how society allocates scarce natural and human resources shaped Grace’s view of the world at an early age. Growing up in a lower middle-class, blue-collar home, he watched his father, Matt Grace, struggle to keep the family business afloat.
“My dad came home covered in grease, paint, and everything else because he worked with the guys in the shop,” Grace remembered. “Building rock quarry equipment is what my grandfather did and what my dad did. I grew up in that entrepreneurial environment.”
When his father’s company fell on hard times in 1986, affording college wasn’t an option for the high school graduate, so he joined the army. Trained as a combat medical specialist, Grace never saw combat but his schooling in emergency medicine served the military in other ways. Based in Germany, the medic patched up the wounds of brawling soldiers and treated severe dog bites suffered by handlers in the canine unit.
“It was an eye-opener for me to go into the army and see firsthand some of the racial and social tension that existed,” he explained. “Military families are under tremendous pressure and stress, and I saw the negative side of that.”
Returning stateside, the army veteran enrolled in Missouri State University where he met his wife, Elizabeth. He later earned a degree in economics from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an MBA in finance from the University of St. Thomas in Houston.
Like other young men with growing families, Grace spent the next few years building a career — first at an investment banking services firm and then at his father’s company, where he served customers as vice president of sales. More recently, he was co-founder and managing partner of Gulf Shore Venture Partners and a consultant for Capra Foods and Texas Aggregate Producers.
Although professional opportunities were bountiful, the practicing Catholic was in a spiritual desert. Encouraged by his wife, he attended an ACTS (Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service) retreat at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Frisco. The experience was life altering.
“ACTS was a new movement at the time and was certainly an eye-opener,” Grace enthused. “It started the process of reawakening my faith. That retreat changed everything for me.”
The gatherings help participants deepen their relationship with Christ and fellow parishioners through prayer, studying scripture, and service to God and each other.
“After being on an ACTS retreat, I saw major changes in people,” observed the former team leader who began organizing ACTS weekends at other parishes. “I saw men consider the diaconate and parishioners get super involved in the Church and different ministries. Some people quit drinking or stopped taking drugs.”
Entire parishes would undergo a transformation.
“It completely changed the environment of our parish,” the former Plano resident recalled. “We went from a fragmented community to one that was extremely vibrant. I was part of that.”
Grace began openly talking about his faith with friends, clients, and coworkers.
“It made me want to be part of a business or place with a culture that fostered what I was feeling about my faith, the world — everything,” he said earnestly. “That ultimately led me to this opportunity.”
After a nationwide search and series of interviews, the seasoned entrepreneur with 25 years of business development was hired by CCFW to fill the president/CEO vacancy left by Heather Reynolds. Highly regarded for spearheading the non-profit’s effort to end poverty one family at a time, she is now managing director of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame.
On the job since May 16, Grace is spending time with staff and learning more about the agency’s robust portfolio of 43 services. It includes two nationally-recognized initiatives — Padua, a research think tank evaluating the effectiveness of poverty-ending practices, and Stay the Course, a case management program helping at-risk students complete college.
He’s impressed by what he sees.
“The culture here is exceptional,” the new CEO stated emphatically. “Everyone believes in his or her heart we can eradicate poverty. They have a passion for what they do.”
In the short term, Grace hopes to raise the organization’s profile on social media and develop ways to continue mentoring clients once they become economically self-sufficient. With the population in North Texas mushrooming along with a demand for services, ramping up fundraising capabilities is another priority.
“We’re bringing people out of poverty but to do that — the way we do it — takes a certain level of money,” he pointed out.
Reynolds steered CCFW away from merely putting a Band-Aid on problems like hunger and homelessness toward a solution-based agency with a targeted goal — ending poverty in the 28-county diocese.
“What she did here we are not changing,” her successor promised. “We’re going to build on that legacy.”
Calling God the architect of his life, the CEO feels prepared to take on the challenge of leading Catholic Charities into the next decade.
“God put this into motion a long time ago. Everything I’ve experienced in my life led me here,” Grace mused from his office inside the organization’s Thornhill Drive headquarters. “The weight of it means I have to be an exceptional steward of this gift — this calling.”
Published (until 6/4/2034)
More Local News:
North Texas Catholic ( 2 days ago )
by Joan Kurkowski Gillen ( 7 days ago )
by Susan Moses ( 8 days ago )
by Richard Mathews ( 13 days ago )
by Matthew Smith ( 15 days ago )
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3.3 Bringing it all back home: the ‘problem estate’
It would be mistaken to deduce from the discussion thus far that problem populations and problem places only occur elsewhere. The focus of this section is to consider how such understandings also emerge in the UK. Our case study here is formed around a specific type of place which in recent decades has increasingly come to be perceived as a ‘problem’ – the deprived council estate.
3.1 The idea of problematic places
Katrina offers us a rich case study through which we have begun to explore some of the concerns surroundng problem places or populations. In reflecting on the controversies that emerged in the aftermath of Katrina, we can see that for some commentators it was a ‘problem place’ long before the hurricane struck in 2005. The idea that different places can be seen as problematic is a recurring theme that emerges in the context of ongoing debates around poverty and inequality, and the relation
2.3 The impact of Katrina on New Orleans
Below are four extracts from different commentators reflecting on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.
In what ways do they offer contrasting interpretations of the events
2.2 Welfare and law enforcement
The conservative focus on, and allegations of, widespread crime and social disorder were contradicted by other eyewitness accounts. In the extract that follows, two white paramedics from San Francisco talk about their experiences in trying to escape from the flooding in New Orleans across a bridge connecting the mainly black New Orleans City to the largely white suburbs of Jefferson Parish.
By the end of this unit you should have been able to:
develop knowledge and understanding of the complex and different ways in which questions of social justice and inequality come to be seen in terms of the deficient behaviour of different populations. In particular, how certain groups of people and places come to be identified as ‘problematic’ and how social welfare and crime concerns intersect in the management of these populations;
develop knowledge and un
Some commentators argue that social justice as an idea and an ideal is interwoven with issues of inequality, poverty and social exclusion. It is a comparatively straightforward task in the era of World Wide Web access (though by no means everywhere or for everyone) to locate sources of information illustrating the extent of poverty and inequality, though much of the latter, particularly in relation to the ownership and distribution of wealth, or undocumented labour or unpaid care, remains con
4.2 Introducing surveillance
The videos in this section will introduce you to surveillance as an idea and a practice. The main theme of these videos is how surveillance can be viewed as double-edged: it has both protective and disciplinary aspects to it. This double-edged nature of surveillance is explored through a case study of a shopping mall – the White Rose Centre on the outskirts of Leeds. You will come across a range of different evidence, including interviews with an academic, a policymaker and different users
2 Note taking from an audio visual text
The first important point to make is that note taking is more than a process of summarising everything that you see; it must be an active process of engaging with the material and thinking it through for yourself. In the videos, the multidimensional nature of the visual images and the stories they convey means that you will not be able to take in everything on first viewing. The videos allow us to present visual as well as audio information and in a form that makes it easier for you to revisi
The content acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons licence). See Terms and Conditions.
Figure 2 Co
Bernardes, J. (1987) ‘“Doing things with words”: Sociology and “Family Policy” debates’, Sociological Review, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 679–702.
Bernardes, J. (1993) ‘Responsibilities in studying postmodern families’, Journal of Family Therapy, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 35–49.
Bernardes, J. (2003[1985]) ‘Do we really know what “the family” is?’
So far, then, we have seen that family meanings matter for individuals, for social policy and professional practices, and for family studies – both for the ways in which family studies are undertaken, and for the ways in which such academic work impinges upon wider understandings and social processes. Each area of family meanings may thus also shape each of the other areas.
4.3 Family meanings matter in social policies and professional practices
In the studies by Walkover and Ribbens we can see individuals caught between a generalised cultural ideal and the messiness and ambivalences of everyday lives. This tension between the generality of ‘family’ as an idealised model, and the fluidity of individual lives in everyday contexts, is also a key difficulty for the development of social policies, and for the procedures and administrative structures of professional practices. This takes us back to Bernardes' question: how is it possi
4.1 Family and meanings?
We have considered the difficulties of pinning down family definitions and meanings. We now ask whether it is indeed important to explore and unravel these complexities. Do the varieties of family meanings – or the meaning of ‘family’ itself – matter, or do they just provide a minor intellectual diversion? You may like to pause here for a moment to consider how you would answer this question for yourself. Do you think they matter, and if so, in what ways?
We consider this questi
3.1 Studying families
However, if the concept is so tremendously complex, how then can we study family?
Please read the following piece from Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein (1990), where you are introduced to Borg, the extraterrestrial cyborg.
2.2 Responding to the problems
Consequently, some academics have increasingly voiced concerns about whether it is possible to define family satisfactorily at all – or, indeed, whether it serves any useful purpose even to try. The extract you will look at in the following activity is taken from an Introduction to a four-volume collection of readings on Family: Critical Concepts in Sociology. In this Introduction, the author seeks to find a way of defining family that will work across the four volumes of readings on
1.1 Introducing ‘family meanings’
Wendy: What's important about being in a family?
Juliet: I've got mixed feelings in a way, cause I sometimes feel they are over-rated … You don't have to be suffocated in a two parents and a couple of kids situation. To me that is not the be all and end all.
Fred: … it's the natural flow of family life isn't it. You know that you get old
After studying this unit you should be able to:
Demonstrate a critical understanding of the concept of ’ (knowledge and understanding);
Engage with and review debates about selected key concepts relevant to the study of families and personal relationships;
Identify connections between concepts and the themes they raise for research and for social policy;
Understand some of the social processes underlying research around family issue
In this unit you will encounter many different voices and views of ‘family’, and sometimes you will also be invited to reflect on your own views and assumptions. So, we welcome you to the fascinating study of family meanings. By putting ‘meanings’ at centre stage, and using this as a framework to examine families and relationships, this unit will give you an opportunity to explore the shifting and subtle ways in which people themselves, researchers, policy-makers and professionals mak
Arnett, P. et al. (1998) Flash! Associated Press Covers the World, New York, Harry N. Abrams.
Barley, N. (1983) The Innocent Anthropologist, London, Penguin.
Becker, H.S. (1985) ‘Do photographs tell the truth?’ in Cook, T.D. and Reichardt, C.S. (eds) Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Evaluation Research, London, Sage.
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2.1 Before the recording
Now you have the opportunity to listen to the recordings of Sorley MacLean. I hope you will find that it brings to life the poetry that you have looked at on the page, and that it helps you to grasp some of the differences between Gaelic and English that affect MacLean's translation of his own work, as well as elucidating particular references that may have puzzled you. Perhaps the best plan, if you have time, will be to listen to each section once, and then go through them again, stopping an
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
understand the power of Maclean's poetry in its original Gaelic;
give examples of how such poetry engages with historical and cultural change.
Bennett, A., Cook, P., Miller, J., and Moore, D. (1987) The Complete Beyond the Fringe, Methuen.
Berlin, I. (1969) Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press.
Warburton, N. (1999) Arguments for Freedom, Open University (A211 course book).
Warburton, N. (2000) Thinking from A to Z, Routledge (second e
8.1 The forces of change: towards Romanticism
The relationship between the Enlightenment and the movement known as Romanticism, which dominated early nineteenth-century culture, is the subject of intense debate among scholars. There is no single correct way of defining this relationship, and one of the main challenges you will face in this course is in forming your own conclusions on the subject. It is possible, for example, to see the French Revolution as a cataclysmic event that tumbled the old order and ruptured faith in the Enlighten
4.1 Constant human nature
Just as with other natural phenomena, Enlightenment thinkers came to the conclusion as a result of observation that human nature itself was a basic constant. In other words, it possessed common characteristics and was subject to universal, verifiable laws of cause and effect. As Hume put it:
Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular.
2.3 The pervasive influence of Enlightenment
You will find in this unit in one form or another the pervasive influence of the Enlightenment. Sometimes this influence is buried in deeply ambiguous texts such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (1756–91) opera Don Giovanni (1787), which includes a famous toast to ‘liberty’. The opera is seen by some as an attempt to subject to critical scrutiny the behaviour of at least one member of a corrupt eighteenth-century aristocracy and the social or class structure that facilitated h
7 Other rhyming techniques
Near- or half rhymes are words or combinations of words that achieve only a partial rhyme. Half rhymes can be between words with just one syllable, or between parts of words, for example where the accented syllables rhyme with each other, but other syllables in the word don't rhyme. For instance: cover–shovel; wily–piling, calling–fallen; wildebeest–building.
Assonant rhyme refers to echoing vowel sounds, eith
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6 Personal response to a memorial
But, you may be thinking, all our agreement up to now has shown that these perceptions and assumptions come from a common understanding of the appropriate form and meaning of a war memorial. Where, might you ask, does personal response come in? Are we not individuals who have different ways of looking at artefacts and of deciding what – if anything – they mean? This question opens up a big area of discussion, one which will be taken up many times later.
Clearly, as individuals, we m
By the end of this unit you should have:
an awareness of the processes of study in the arts and humanities
an understanding of key concepts in the arts and humanities.
Chinoiserie:
the deployment of ‘Chinese’ motifs within interior decor, popular from the early eighteenth century onwards. The most widespread example of this is the so-called ‘willow pattern’ used on domestic china which persists to this day.
Clerestory:
an upper part of a wall carried on arcades, and pierced with windows to allow light to penetrate.
Coffering:
3 From Enlightenment to Romantic?
In 1800, having divorced Mrs Fitzherbert and contracted a disastrous marriage with Princess Caroline of Brunswick, forced on him by the necessity of persuading the king to clear his vast debts, the Prince of Wales fled back to Brighton with his court. In 1801 he whiled away his time (and squandered Caroline's dowry) dreaming up extensions and changes to the interior decor of the Pavilion.
Of these, certainly the most interesting and prophetic was his development of the interior into a C
Adams, B., Breazeal, C., Brooks, R. and Scassellati, B. (2000) ‘Humanoid robots: a new kind of tool’, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 15, 25–31.
Block, N. (1995) ‘On a confusion about a function of consciousness’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, 227–47.
Block, N., Flanagan, O. and Güzeldere, G. (eds) (1997), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophic
This unit has laid the groundwork for a study of consciousness. We have identified the phenomenon in which we are interested, looked at some of its mysterious features and considered the problems it poses. You may have been wondering exactly what philosophers have to contribute here. Isn't explaining consciousness a matter for scientists – requiring the formation and testing of empirical hypotheses, not conceptual analysis and a priori reasoning? There are at least three aspects to the answ
4.2 Naturalism and reductive explanation
There is a widespread commitment among contemporary philosophers and scientists to a naturalistic view of the world. In broad terms, naturalism is the view that everything is scientifically explicable – to put it crudely, that there are no miracles. (Note that I am using ‘naturalism’ here for a metaphysical position – a view about the nature of the world. It is also used for a methodological position – a view about how the world, or some aspect of it, should be
One of the most impressive but puzzling capacities we have is the ability to represent the world around us, both in talking about it among ourselves and in thinking about it as individuals. When someone utters the sentence, ‘The German economy is bouncing back’, for example, they are able to convey to their audience something about the German economy. Their utterance may be correct or it may be incorrect, but either way it is making a claim about how things are, and in this loose but intu
Cheney, P. (2004) ‘Introduction: Marlowe in the Twenty-First Century’, in Cheney, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–23.
Healy, T. (2004) ‘Doctor Faustus’, in Cheney, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 174–92.
3.5 The health of mothers and children
The health of mothers and infants was one target for action. France was among the first to introduce infant welfare schemes, as low birth rates, high infant mortality and defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led politicians to fear for the future strength of the nation. Diarrhoea among bottle-fed babies was singled out as a preventable cause of high infant mortality. From the 1890s, charities and local authorities set up infant welfare clinics called gouttes de lait, which encouraged moth
This unit was written by Dr Emma Barker
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary (not subject to Creative Commons licence) and used under licence. No alteration or manipulation of images is permitted and they must be used in context and for non commercial purposes.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission:
Figure 1 Robert Owen, c. 1799, by Mary Knight, Scottish National Portrait Ga
7 New Lanark as showpiece and text
Owen's partnership of 1814, consisting of Bentham and other enlightened individuals, mainly wealthy Quakers, paved the way for the rapid implementation of the innovations spelled out in the Statement of 1812 and subsequently in the essays. Two of the partners, William Allen (1770–1843), a chemist and businessman, and the wealthy and philanthropic John Walker (1767–1824), Owen's closest associate, were interested in education and had encouraged the establishment of schools adopting
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Art & Design|Balthazar Korab, Architectural Photographer, Dies at 86
Balthazar Korab, Architectural Photographer, Dies at 86
A 1964 photograph of the TWA Flight Center at Kennedy Airport.CreditCreditBalthazar Korab/"Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography"
By David W. Dunlap
Balthazar Korab, one of the leading architectural photographers in the period after World War II when Modernist design remade the American landscape, died on Jan. 15 in Royal Oak, Mich. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Monica.
Long before the Internet and frequent-flier miles, the way that new architecture found national and worldwide audiences was through published photographs by Mr. Korab, Ezra Stoller, Julius Shulman, the firm of Hedrich Blessing and a handful of other leading commercial photographers. How they saw and interpreted the buildings in front of their lenses shaped the perceptions of untold numbers of viewers.
CreditChristian M. Korab
Mr. Korab captured the romance, moodiness and humanity of even the most austere postwar buildings. “I am an architect with a passion for nature’s lessons and man’s interventions” was how Mr. Korab described himself in a statement on his Web site, balthazarkorab.com. “My images are born out of a deep emotional investment in their subject.”
He was best known for his photographs of buildings by Eero Saarinen, at whose office he briefly worked in the 1950s, and of the town of Columbus, Ind., which became a showcase of distinguished modern architecture under the patronage of the industrialist J. Irwin Miller.
In conventional architectural photographs, a viewer beholds a pristine structure, sharply etched by raking light, but is left without a sense as to how the space is used or inhabited.
Balthazar Korab’s 1978 image of the World Trade Center, designed by Minoru Yamasaki.CreditBalthazar Korab/"Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography"
Though capable of such formal work, Mr. Korab did not hesitate to place people front and center when warranted, like a skinny teenage student with an ice cream cone hastening to class at the Northside Middle School in Columbus, by Harry Weese. Neither rain nor snow stopped Mr. Korab. He was not afraid to let a couple of flowering magnolia trees share the spotlight with Mr. Saarinen’s home for Mr. Miller, nor to let a pair of naked trees rebuke the soulless environment around Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, which have since been demolished.
“Korab’s portfolios contain frequent sharp reminders that architecture is always entangled in broader cultural circumstances within which it is created and by which it is transformed,” John Comazzi, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota, wrote in “Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography,” a monograph published in 2012 by the Princeton Architectural Press.
Mr. Korab, who lived in Troy, Mich., was born on Feb. 16, 1926, in Budapest, to Antal Korab and the former Anna Fellner. During the postwar Soviet occupation of Hungary, his family determined that Balthazar, an architecture student, must escape to the West. He made his way to Paris and was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts. He worked briefly as a draftsman in the office of Le Corbusier.
Balthazar Korab, 1926-2013
View Slide Show ›
Balthazar Korab/“Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography”
At Mont St.-Michel in 1953, he met Sally Dow of Royal Oak, Mich. They were married in 1954, and she persuaded him to move to Michigan. Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1960 he married the former Monica Kane, who survives him, as do their children, Christian and Alexandra.
In Michigan Mr. Korab was hired as a designer in 1955 by Eero Saarinen & Associates of Bloomfield Hills. “It was his skill with a camera that quickly caught the attention of Saarinen and the senior associates,” Mr. Comazzi wrote, “and before long, he was responsible for the integration of photography into the design-development processes.”
He became an independent photographer in 1958 and worked steadily until 2005, then collaborated with his son, Christian, who is also a photographer. Mr. Korab’s archive is housed at the Library of Congress.
Mrs. Korab often accompanied her husband on field trips, waiting with him for the perfect atmospheric moment. She said she never hurried him. “I knew how he worked,” she recalled. “I knew that once it got really dark, he’d stop and say, ‘Let’s go have dinner.’ ”
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Balthazar Korab, 86, Architectural Photographer. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Home / Orwell / Library / Chris Durlacher: George Orwell – A Life in Pictures
Chris Durlacher: George Orwell – A Life in Pictures
Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2010: Chris Durlacher Q&A
Only a few seconds of video footage of George Orwell is known to exist – walking across a field while at Eton – so writer and director Chris Durlacher had to start from scratch with this dramatised biography. Starring Chris Langham as George Orwell, this critically acclaimed and Emmy-winning film was shown on the BBC in 2003, the centenary of Orwell’s birth. Video from Ge0rge0rwell on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4s9pdL7tpA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHtXkRdojBc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlQwDlEHvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB9IQvPpXPA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TqAwFAnA2A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRP3TeUfO2c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RIzZBeeCmg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7DD0dUNyB4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyyFOTrkIN4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPgyJ4aR-WQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf6xtzTgm-k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D77Kck4taxA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eaez1aFY8zs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mypoDSPwwC8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EATky8z9DGM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g47EeDCQIuc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuvlvF9CiCY
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Home Newsroom News and press releases OSCE media freedom representative concerned about complaint filed against journalist by Poland’s Defence Ministry
Media freedom and development, Decriminalization of defamation
OSCE media freedom representative concerned about complaint filed against journalist by Poland’s Defence Ministry
VIENNA 3 August 2017
Media accreditation to OSCE events
OSCE Live
Harlem Désir, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. (Quai d'Orsay/Frédéric de La Mure )
VIENNA, 3 August 2017 – OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Désir today expressed his concern in a letter to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding the decision by the Ministry of Defence to file a complaint against journalist Tomasz Piątek. The Defence Ministry claims that Piątek may have committed a criminal offence in publishing his new book, Macierewicz and His Secrets.
The complaint is based on criminal code provisions concerning “using force or threats against a public official” and “public insults or humiliation of a constitutional body”. If the case against the journalist is pursued, the charges could carry a penalty of up to three years in prison.
In the letter, the Representative stated that authorities should not use the courts to silence the media, whose role it is to hold them to account.
“Restraint must be shown in reacting to reports and publications with judicial action in order to protect freedom of the media in line with national obligations and international standards and commitments,” Désir stressed. “I therefore urge authorities to refrain from levying any criminal charges against the journalist.”
The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media observes media developments in all 57 OSCE participating States. He provides early warning on violations of freedom of expression and media freedom and promotes full compliance with OSCE media freedom commitments. Learn more at www.osce.org/fom, Twitter:@OSCE_RFoM and on www.facebook.com/osce.rfom.
Deniz Yazici
Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
Wallnerstrasse 6
Office: +43 1 514 36 6804
deniz.yazici@osce.org
Sign up to receive OSCE Press Releases and Media Advisories by email as soon as they have been published.
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Home > Issues & Impact > Our Bodies, Our Blog > Double Dose: How Effective is Your Treatment?; History of Women, in Four Volumes; High Cost of Insurance Scares Off Buyers; Tips for Writing About Violence Against Women …
Double Dose: How Effective is Your Treatment?; History of Women, in Four Volumes; High Cost of Insurance Scares Off Buyers; Tips for Writing About Violence Against Women …
By Christine Cupaiuolo | April 27, 2009
Being “Maddy”: Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote a beautiful piece about her relationship with her sons as she transitioned from male to female. Published as a New York Times “Modern Love” column, the essay was adapted from “The Book of Dads,” to be published in May by Ecco.
Determining Which Medical Therapies Work: “Good luck trying to learn what medical treatment works best to relieve low back pain, alleviate depression or prevent the spread of prostate cancer. The information isn’t available — to you or your doctor — because studies comparing potential treatments and how effective they are haven’t been done,” writes Judith Graham at the Chicago Tribune.
The story looks at the government’s plan to invest $1.1 billion in “comparative effectiveness” research and evaluate potential therapies head-to-head. Four medical experts weigh in on conditions they consider most deserving of research on comparative effectiveness. Rachel previously wrote about public input sought on research priorities.
The War Against Women: Writing at The New York Review of Books, Hilary Mantel discusses the four volumes of “From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World,” by Marilyn French. The collection is published by Feminist Press.
Words Matter: Feminist Peace Network has posted useful tips for reporting about domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s a good resource for bloggers, journalists and anyone writing about these issues.
Sticker Shock: “A new national poll, conducted by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, shows that what most uninsured people are willing to pay is a long way from what insurance really costs,” reports NPR’s “Morning Edition.” “Two out of three uninsured Americans say they’d be willing to pay no more than $100 a month for coverage. But, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average individual health plan costs about $400 a month, and a family policy costs more than $1,000.”
When Accidents Happen: According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than half the pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended; poor women are four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy compared with higher-income women. NPR’s “Morning Edition” looks at the use of and access to contraceptives. Reporter Brenda Wilson notes that “the health system often throws up barriers to contraception, especially for young women who are the most vulnerable.” The story, however, focuses more on one woman’s situation.
Call for More Family Planning Aid: Dominique Soguel writes at Women’s eNews about a report released Tuesday calling for aggressive investment in family planning to curb population growth, poverty and maternal mortality. Five former directors of the population and reproductive health program of the U.S. Agency for International Development recommend the United States increase its spending to $1.2 billion in the next year’s funding round from $475 million in 2008.
Also from Women’s eNews: Five women will be recognized this week for their scientific discoveries.
“There is still a very big glass ceiling for women in science,” said Milbry Polk, director of Wings WorldQuest, which runs the awards. “You don’t find them in the history books. Women are left out. Their projects aren’t.”
Search Me: One of my favorite reads last week was Dahlia Lithwick explaining how Supreme Court justices can act like total dingbats:
When constitutional historians sit down someday to compile the definitive Supreme Court Concordance of Not Getting It, the entry directly next to Lilly Ledbetter (“Court fails utterly to understand realities of gender pay discrimination”)will be Savana Redding (“Court compares strip searches of 13-year-old girls to American Pie-style locker-room hijinks”). After today’s argument, it’s plain the court will overturn a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion finding a school’s decision to strip-search a 13-year-old girl unconstitutional. That the school in question was looking for a prescription pill with the mind-altering force of a pair of Advil — and couldn’t be bothered to call the child’s mother first — hardly matters.
Categories Abortion & Reproductive Rights, Birth Control & Family Planning, Feminism & Gender, Healthcare System, Legal, Media, Violence & Abuse
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https://www.ourmidland.com/news/police_and_courts/article/District-court-news-6955396.php
District court news
Published 4:00 am EDT, Sunday, October 6, 2013
EDITOR’S NOTE — OWI means operating while intoxicated. DWLS means driving while license suspended. (H) is for Judge John H. Hart. (C) is for Judge Stephen P. Carras. (M) is for magistrate Stephen Houseal. Sentences may vary based on previous offenses committed by the defendant. Some sentencings include other fees imposed by the state.
The following people were sentenced recently in Midland County’s 75th District Court:
Kristin Elizabeth Shannon, 51, OWI on Aug. 11, $950 fines and costs, nine months probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening (H).
Colin James Tierney, 29, impaired driving on Aug. 30, $800 fines and costs, three months probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed (H).
Wendy Sue Lee, 36, third-degree retail fraud on Aug. 5, 93 days in jail with all but 45 days suspended and credit for five days, $300 fines and costs, $18 restitution, one year probation, attend substance abuse program and mental health counseling, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol or be in the company of anyone who does, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, take medications as prescribed (C).
Herbert J. Schriber, 50, third-degree retail fraud on Aug. 5, 93 days in jail with all but 45 days suspended and credit for six days, $300 fines and costs, $11 restitution (C).
Brian Leonard Cole, 56, OWI on June 9, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for two days, $1,500 fines and costs, one year probation, attend substance abuse program, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol or be in the company of anyone who does, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars (C).
John Edward Sheets, 59, stray dog on Aug. 30, $100 fines and costs (H).
Benjamin Luek Congleton, 33, unregistered vehicle on Sept. 14, $150 fines and costs (H).
Russell Henry Arthur, 22, driving with a high blood alcohol content on June 15, 180 days in jail suspended with credit for one day, $1,200 fines and costs, one year probation, attend substance abuse program, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol or be in the company of anyone who does, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars, attend counseling as directed, to be monitored by an alcohol tether for 30 days (C).
Jeremy Paul Hubert, 34, OWI on July 20, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for two days, $1,000 fines and costs, restitution left open, nine months probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars, attend counseling as directed (C).
Justin Anthony Snyder, 35, attempted assault and battery on Sept. 3, 30 days in jail with credit for time served (C).
Donald Lee Sturgill, 30, disorderly conduct on Sept. 26, 30 days in jail, $150 fines and costs (H).
Kenneth Aaron Dingman, 28, East Stewart Road, impaired driving on Aug. 31, $800 fines and costs, five months probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed (H).
Allen R. Fosgitt, 47, Bayliss Street, improper plate and impeding traffic on Aug. 27, $250 fines and costs (H).
Peter James House, 24, Grandview Circle, second-offense DWLS on July 12, $450 fines and costs (H).
Desa Marie Isberg, 34, West Campbell Court, receiving and concealing stolen property on May 15, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for one day, $300 fines and costs, $10 restitution (H).
Lional James Lum, 39, South Seven Mile Road, attempted third-degree retail fraud on Aug. 24, 46 days in jail suspended, $200 fines and costs, $12 restitution, four months probation, 20 hours community service (H).
Adam Nicholas Marshall, 26, East Cheryl Lynn Lane, DWLS on June 27, 30 days in jail, $200 fines and costs (H).
Melani Jane Martin, 31, West Erin Court, malicious destruction of trees and grass on June 19 and operating with a high blood alcohol content on Sept. 19, 180 days in jail for the second count suspended, $1,300 fines and costs, $200 restitution, 18 months probation, may complete community service in lieu of fines and costs, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed (H).
Kevin Curtis Maxwell, 29, George Street, DWLS on Aug. 16, $200 fines and costs (H).
Gilbert Steven McAllister, 47, East Saginaw Road, DWLS on Sept. 16, $450 fines and costs (M).
Shawn Matthew Nelkie, 29, South Castor Road, allowing DWLS on May 13, $250 fines and costs (H).
Cynthia Kay Publow, 57, West North Union Road, embezzlement on July 23, one year in jail suspended with credit for two days, $500 fines and costs, $1,434 restitution, one year probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed (C).
Kelsey Nicole Reder, 22, West Ellsworth Street, OWI on March 16, $900 fines and costs, six months probation, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed (H).
Kyle Marcel Rider, 20, Hubbard Street, violation of license restrictions on Aug. 1, $100 fines and costs (C).
Kevin Mathew Schwartz, 18, Fast Ice Drive, larceny on May 18, two counts of breaking and entering a vehicle on July 2, 93 days in jail with credit for 85 days (C).
Timothy Allan Sequin, 50, South Saginaw Road, domestic violence on July 12, 93 days in jail with credit for 76 days (C).
Alexander Robert Werth, 23, Chatham Drive, allowing DWLS on Sept. 17, $350 fines and costs (M).
Paul Joseph Walker, 25, allowing DWLS on Aug. 17, $200 fines and costs (C).
Shakellia Shirlyn Davis, 34, third-degree retail fraud on Aug. 20, $200 fines and costs (C).
James David Sasse, 21, operating with a high blood alcohol content on June 15, 180 days in jail suspended with credit for one day, $1,200 fines and costs, one year probation, attend substance abuse program, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol or be in the company of anyone who does, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars (C).
Scott Paul Olson, 40, impaired driving on July 25, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for one day, $1,000 fines and costs, six months probation, attend substance abuse program, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars (C).
Michael Anthony Carpenter, 28, Millington, second-offense DWLS on Aug. 1, one year in jail suspended, $500 fines and costs (H).
Danielle Melissa Rose, 38, St. Charles, malicious destruction of property on March 28, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for two days, $200 fines and costs, $804 restitution, one year probation, attend mental health counseling, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, attend counseling as directed, take medications as prescribed (H).
Jackie Lynn Smith, 52, Mt. Morris, OWI on July 20, 93 days in jail suspended with credit for one day, $1,000 fines and costs, nine months probation, attend substance abuse program, may not use or possess drugs or alcohol or be in the company of anyone who does, subject to random drug and alcohol screening, may not enter bars, attend counseling as directed (C).
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Modern technology must for tunnelling work: Baalu
New Delhi, Aug 25 (UNI) Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Minister T R Baalu today said the large-scale and time-bound road development programme, being taken up by the government, would require sophisticated technology for extensive tunnel construction in the hills, subways and underpasses in urban areas.
Delivering the inaugural address at a seminar on Tunnels and Underground Structures, organised by the Indian National Group of International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (ING-IABSE) here, Mr Baalu said with the overall economic development of the country and the GDP growing at an unprecedented rate, the pressure on urban road space would accelerate the need for underground roads and parking lots.
With the existing build-ups in the urban areas, underground parking lots would be a necessity in near future, he pointed out.
The minister emphasised that it was important to use new technologies not only to speed up the construction but also to ensure that the structures were safe, durable and performance-based and safe.
''Proper emphasis needs to be given on providing adequate lighting and ventilation in tunnels and underground structures to ensure user safety,'' Mr Baalu said.
He lauded the role being played by ING-IABSE in disseminating the state-of-art knowledge acquired by the professionals around the world in planning, design, construction and maintenance of structures, including bridges, tunnels, urban habitats and tall buildings.
The minister pointed out that though extensive tunnelling work had been done in India for hydel power projects and, to some extent, in construction of Metro rails, very limited length of tunnels had so far been constructed for the highways.
He said recently some tunnels had been constructed in the Golden Quadrilateral project, but to speed up the work of tunnelling with great accuracy, the latest technologies in the field had to be adopted.
With the Government laying great emphasis on the development of infrastructure, especially the road network in the country, construction of a substantial length of tunnels would be required for widening of roads passing through the mountainous region, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-Eastern region.
In his keynote address, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Managing Director E.Sreedharan said the country was poised to take up a large number of tunnelling projects in various areas like construction of Metros, roads, urban infrastructural facilities, drainage, irrigation and defence.
He said while the country was equipped to take up any tunnelling job, there was need to enhance capability in their designing, and this would require creating specialised courses in IITs and engineering Colleges.
In his Welcome Address, ING-IABSE Chairman, Mr Velayutham, said that with the urban population projected to reach 50 per cent from the present 30 per cent in the country, there would hardly be any additional space on the ground in the Indian Cities to accommodate the aspirations of the people within the developmental scenario.
On the occasion, Mr Baalu gave away award to four experts for their research papers on underground tunnelling.
The IABSE was set up in 1929 with its headquarter at Zurich to promote international cooperation and exchange of technical and scientific knowledge in structural engineering.
The Association deals with all aspects of planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance and repair of civil engineering structures regardless of construction material, type of structure or construction method.
UNI SKS SHB DS1655
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Tata Motors sets subsidiary to finance vehicles
New Delhi, Aug 25: Tata Motors Ltd today said it has set up a new subsidiary for its vehicle financing operations.
The new entity, TML Financial Services Ltd (TMLFSL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company will function as a NBFC (Non Banking Finance Company), for which it has received approval from the Reserve Bank of India.
TMLFSL will support and enhance the vehicle financing activities of Tata Motorfinance, a company statement said.
The overall vehicle financing done by the company's auto financing arm during the last fiscal was about Rs 5,500 crore, a 60 per cent increase over Rs 3,400 crore a year ago.
In 2005-06, Tata Motorfinance accounted for 23.8 per cent of the company's domestic sales. A total of about 113,000 contracts were booked, including refinance and Construction Equipment (CEQ), while 96,247 new vehicles were financed, a 43 per cent increase compared to 67,356 vehicles in 2004-05.
Company's refinance business grew by 110 per cent, while CEQ business grew by 165 per cent in the last fiscal.
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Skip Heitzig
God's Heart for Your Prayer Life - Connect with Skip Heitzig - Week of February 22, 2019
God's Heart for Your Prayer Life
By Skip Heitzig
In Matthew 7, Jesus promised His followers, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened" (vv. 7-8).
Notice that the promise of receiving, finding, and opening is attached to the command to ask, seek, and knock—to pray, in other words. Why would God command us to pray? Perhaps it's because He knows that we as humans so often don't.
These verses show me the heart of God wanting to give His sons and daughters good things. A child knows that the nature and temperament of their father or mother will determine how much they'll ask of that father or mother. If a parent is harsh and stingy about what they give and doesn't want to be bothered, a child will hesitate to ask them for anything. But if a parent is generous and kind and loves to give to their child, that child will ask a lot.
In the same way, how you pray is determined by your view of God. Do you view Him as harsh? Do you think He's ungenerous, vengeful, and hurtful? That's how the Greeks viewed their gods 2,000 years ago. Even to many Jewish people at that time, God was aloof and distant. The temple was partitioned into courts that only certain people could enter. But when Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (see Matthew 27:50-51). God was saying, "Because of what My Son has done, there's no longer any separation. You can come close and have intimate fellowship with Me."
I was so discouraged when I found out that the Jews sewed the veil back up, but I think we often do the same thing. God says, "I want intimacy; come close and ask, seek, and knock," but we put up barriers. Growing up, I was taught that you can't come directly to Jesus; you can only talk to Mary or the saints, who would then talk to Him on your behalf. But then I read Hebrews 4:16: "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
God wants a relationship with you. He wants to bless and give. He wants you to come to Him and ask. So pray in Jesus' name—submit your requests to His will—and leave the rest to Him.
Copyright © 2019 by Connection Communications. All rights reserved.
Connect with Skip Heitzig February Resource
Discover God's plan for real love in the real world and develop healthier relationships with Beyond the Summer of Love. Plus, find a fresh expression of love with Skip's collection of song, Scripture, and the solid love of Jesus in The Royal Road of Love CD and booklet.
For more from Skip Heitzig, visit ConnectionRadio.org, and listen to today's broadcast of The Connection with Skip Heitzig at OnePlace.com.
Contact Devotionals Articles Cancel
About Connect
Study through the Bible verse by verse. Host Skip Heitzig is senior pastor of Calvary Albuquerque, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
About Skip Heitzig
Skip Heitzig ministers to over 15,000 people as senior pastor of Calvary Albuquerque. He reaches out to thousands across the nation and throughout the world through his multimedia ministry. He is the author of several books including The Bible from 30,000 Feet, Defying Normal, You Can Understand the Book of Revelation, and How to Study the Bible and Enjoy It. He has also published over two dozen booklets in the Lifestyle series, covering aspects of Christian living. He serves on several boards, including Samaritan's Purse and Harvest.
Skip and his wife, Lenya, and son and daughter-in-law, Nathan and Janaé, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Skip and Lenya are the proud grandparents of Seth Nathaniel and Kaydence Joy.
Contact Connect with Skip Heitzig
E-mail: PastorSkip@ConnectionOnline.org
Website: http://www.skipheitzig.com
Albuquerque, NM 87199-5707
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Home > What We Do > Our Expertise > Parliaments and Lawmaking
The legislative function is one of the key areas of responsibility for parliaments. Legislation can either be initiated by the executive or drafted by individual MPs. As part of the democratic process, parliaments are to deliberate all legislation and also have the power to amend, approve or reject government bills.
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In order for parliamentarians to be able to effectively shape laws and policies that reflect the interests of the people they represent, they need to have the capacity to quickly draft, analyze and review legislation and amendments. They also need to be able to assess the exact scope and impact of any policy changes from various perspectives. The Parliamentary Centre works with parliamentarians and parliamentary staff to build their capacity in legislative drafting and review. This is especially important at the committee level, where members carry out in-depth analysis and debate issues.
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Parliamentarians need to have access to timely, up-to-date, accurate and well-researched information in order to be able to assess legislation and policies in an efficient, correct and impartial manner. In addition to the support that committee staff can provide, the Parliamentary Centre assists legislatures in developing strong parliament-based research services, as well as effective library and information systems. The Centre provides capacity building for research staff to understand the specific needs of parliamentarians and on how to identify, consolidate and present information in a user-friendly form. The Centre also assists in building strong linkages with external experts and civil society organizations that can provide support and needed expertise, as well as to facilitate public participation during the legislative process.
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Adeel A. Mangi, Partner
Adeel A. Mangi
aamangi@pbwt.com
Adeel Mangi is a litigator, concentrating his practice in complex commercial disputes. He has particular experience in pharmaceutical industry litigation and false advertising.
In 2018 and 2017, based upon work pioneered and led by Mr. Mangi, Patterson Belknap was awarded the “Legal Leadership Award” by the American Civil Liberties Union—New Jersey; the “Champions of Justice” award by the Muslim Bar Association of New York; the “Religious Liberty Award" (2018) and the “Landmark” litigation award (2017) by the New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association; and the Trailblazer Award by the South Asian Bar Association of New Jersey. Mr. Mangi was also declared Pro Bono Attorney of the Year by the South Asian Bar Association of New York. Also in 2017, Mr. Mangi Chaired the Federal Bar Council’s annual Law Day Dinner celebrating the Rule of Law before some 850 attorneys and federal judges.
Mr. Mangi has been recognized by numerous industry groups. In 2016, 2017 and 2018 Mr. Mangi was named to Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC’s Benchmark: America's Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys' “Hot List”. The list recognizes “the achievements of the nation’s most accomplished legal partners” ages 40 and under. The publication notes that peers refer to him as “meticulous and relentless,” and “an unflappable whiz at everything he does.” In 2015, Benchmark also listed Mr. Mangi as a 2016 "Future Star" for New York, which recognizes lawyers “seen as on the cusp of established stardom by the market, [who] play a vital role in illustrating a firm's bench strength and its generational succession plan.” Mr. Mangi was previously named a “2014 Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal, which recognizes the most promising lawyers under the age of 40 who have demonstrated that they are top contributors to the practice of law and their communities; a “Rising Star” by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s Diversity & the Bar magazine, which selected 12 up-and-coming attorneys for 2014; and as one of the National Asian and Pacific American Bar Association's "Best Lawyers Under 40" for 2014. Mr. Mangi is also a 2013 graduate of the Microsoft Litigation Group's highly prestigious Trial Advocacy Academy.
Mr. Mangi joined the Firm in 2000 upon his graduation from Harvard Law School with an LL.M. Mr. Mangi was at Harvard as a Kennedy Memorial Scholar. Prior to that time, Mr. Mangi qualified as a British Barrister at Law as a Member of the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn, during which time his two-person team won the National Bar Providers Moot Court Competition. Mr. Mangi also holds a First Class Degree in Law from the University of Oxford (Pembroke College), where he held the Roger Bannister Scholarship for Academics and Sports and Domus scholarships. Mr. Mangi's two-person team was also the winner of the Oxford University Inner Temple Moot Court Competition.
Mr. Mangi serves on the Boards of Directors of the Legal Aid Society, the National LGBT Bar Association, and Muslims for Progressive Values, and on the Advisory Boards of the Alliance of Families for Justice and the Center for Security, Race and Rights. He previously served six terms on the Board of the Muslim Bar Association of New York.
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit; Third Circuit; Ninth Circuit; Federal Circuit
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False Advertising
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Harvard Law School (LL.M., 2000)
Lincoln's Inn (Barrister at Law, 1999)
University of Oxford (BA/Law, with honors, 1998)
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Click here to edit text.
When some non-pet sitters hear that you pet sit for a living, they imagine a life of luxury, lazing about all day long, cuddling and playing.
But it's so much more than that. It's keeping an entire property clean, safe, and secure, free from break-ins and vandalism. It's plant care and mail pickup, and keeping the place looking lived-in. It's such a safety bonus that some homeowner's insurance policies will even reimburse the homeowner for hiring someone while they're away.
It's snow/ice removal. It's A LOT of driving and walking, many times in inclement and even dangerous weather.
It's being in constant contact with some owners, and not at all with others, and being expected to intuit the communication balance.
It's being the only one on the premises to take care of the animals and property, no matter what, even when you have the flu, pneumonia, a blinding throw-up migraine, a sprained ankle, dislocated toe, broken finger, or hairline fractured shin.
It's stall mucking. It's hay throwing. It's heating up pasture water in winter. It's med delivery at very precise intervals, needles, handling chemo pills, stomach tube feedings, nail clipping, diaper changing, helping a geriatric dog with mobility issues to get from lying down to standing.
It's calming storm-terrorized pets. It's holding on to a trembling dog while fireworks go off for hours next door on July 4th and New Year's Eve. It's panicking thinking you've accidentally let the cat out when in fact it was napping in the bathroom. It's trying to sleep crushed between two 90 lb. Weimaraners.
It's getting snapped at, bitten, and scratched. It's expressing bladders, changing bandages, delivering surprise early litters, and managing grand mal seizures. It's cooking specialized diets, it's poo cleanup in the yard, it's hypervigilance, making sure no one is where they're not allowed to be and that everyone is safe.
It's running/driving around a neighborhood looking for a Houdini dog that got loose. It's driving very carefully for two miles to catch a horse, pull over, park the car, walk the horse back to the stable, then walking back to collect the car.
It's bathing animals, cleaning vomit, wiping leaky anal glands, tick picking, CPR following a freak cardiac event, doing the Heimlich Maneuver for a dog who's choking on a piece of toy. It's helping a dog with a severe paraphimosis issue. Don't ask. It's noticing undiagnosed cancer, having CPR not be enough, having to make that dreaded phone call, taking the animal to the vet for the one way trip and crying your guts out.
It's a lot.
Oh. Also, there's cuddling and playing. <3 :D And I did all of this and more for 18 years. And I am currently below the poverty line.
The day I got told that my fee was too much for 'hanging around with animals all day,' my heart broke. Completely. I cried for hours. I was at a challenging high-maintenance sit when I got that message. And for some reason, it was one thing too many. The heartbreak was complete. It was the day I realized that to some, this work is worthless.
It was a moment of personal crisis. I had not known until then how much of my identity and self-worth was wrapped up in caretaking.
It felt the same to me as if someone said that I don't deserve a home, or a car, or paid bills, or food on the table. Some humans will never be able to comprehend the amount of personal energy and hypervigilance is invested in every sit, no matter how healthy or unwell the pets may be, no matter how big or small the house, no matter how sick or injured the pet sitter may be. Some will see it as literally worthless. Some will not understand that this is WORK and a primary source of income.
Aside from the shock of realizing how undervalued caretakers are, I also suffer stress when driving with accident-related PTSD since 2014. I just need to slow down, drive less and lower my coritsol. I decided to do something else for a living with plenty of time in nature. The forest is where I find my center, always.
I will forever love animals, but it's time to look after me for a change, and to find peace. Thank you for the good years, and thank you for understanding.
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Home > Vol 9, No 1 (2016) > Kolbin
Kolbin A.S., Prasolov A.V., Maksimkina E.A., Balykina Y.E., Golant Z.M., Polushin Y.S., Kurylev A.A., Vilyum I.A. MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF REIMBURSEMENT DECISION MAKING IN RUSSIA. RESULTS OF VIM LIST FOR 2016 FARMAKOEKONOMIKA. Modern Pharmacoeconomic and Pharmacoepidemiology. 2016;9(1):34-38. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.17749/2070-4909.2016.9.1.034-038
A. S. Kolbin
The first St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician Pavlov; Saint Petersburg State University
MD, professor, head of department of clinical pharmacology and evidence-based medicine, ul. Lva Tolstogo, 6-8, St. Petersburg, 197022;
Professor of the Department of Farmakology, 21-Line, 8, VO, St. Petersburg, 199106
A. V. Prasolov
Saint Petersburg State University
MD, Prof. Head of the department of economic systems modelling,
Universitetsky prospect, 35, Saint-Petersburg, 198504
E. A. Maksimkina
Department of Drug Supply and regulate the handling of medical devices Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation
MD, Prof. Head of the department,
Rakhmanovsky pereulok, 3, GSP-4, Moscow, 127994
Yu. E. Balykina
PhD, Associate professor of the Department of mathematical modelling of energy systems,
Z. M. Golant
Saint-Petersburg State Chemical-Pharmaceutical Academy
PhD, vice-rector for innovations,
Professora Popova street, 14 A, Saint-Petersburg, 197022
Yu. S. Polushin
The first St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician Pavlov
corresponding member of Russian Academy of Sciences, MD, Prof., vice-rector of scientific development,
ul. Lva Tolstogo, 6-8, St. Petersburg, 197022
A. A. Kurylev
assistant of the Department of clinical pharmacology and evidence-based medicine,
I. A. Vilyum
assistant of professor, Department of clinical pharmacology and evidence-based medicine,
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Home | Search | Phrase Dictionary | Under the thumb
The meaning and origin of the expression: Under the thumb
Under the thumb
Other phrases about:
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Under the thumb'?
Completely under someone's control.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Under the thumb'?
Few fields of endeavour have as much false etymology associated with them as falconry. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' derives from hunting with birds of prey and this has seemingly led to a spate of supposed derivations along the same lines. 'Hoodwinked' is said to derive from putting a cloth cap over the eyes of a falcon to calm the bird by simulating nighttime and 'old codger' is said to derive from the carrier of the cadge or cage that held the birds. Neither of these has any basis in fact. We can add to the list 'under the thumb', which was recently presented on the BBC's Alan Titchmarsh Show as originating from the handler's use of his thumb to trap the bird in his hand when he didn't want it to fly. Again, that's pure flight of fancy.
Being 'under one's thumb' is just a figurative expression that alludes to being completely under another's control. The allusion was to a protagonist so powerful and a victim so insignificant that even the former's thumb was strong enough to control them. None of the early references relates to falconry, or to any other specific origin. The phrase was always used to refer to a powerful person, like a king or lord, exercising control over a subject. The earliest reference I can find to the expression in print is from the 18th century English politician Arthur Maynwaring in The Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, which, as is strongly hinted at in the title, was printed after his death:
The French King having them under his Thumb, compell'd them to go at his Pace.
The phrase was well enough established by the 19th century for it to spawn the verb form 'thumbing'. This was defined in James Halliwell's Dictionary Of Archaic And Provincial Words, 1847, as:
Thumbing: A Nottingham phrase, used to describe that species of intimidation practised by masters on their servants when the latter are compelled to vote as their employers please.
'Under the thumb' is still used today with much the same meaning as when it was coined in the 18th century. It's not entirely clear what meaning Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had in mind when they wrote the eponymous 'Under My Thumb' in 1966, but it probably wasn't falconry.
Under your hat
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Polyamorous couple Nico Tortorella and Bethany Meyers marry in gorgeous, genderbending ceremony
Josh Jackman March 20, 2018
(Victoria Matthews)
Bisexual actor Nico Tortorella has married his long-term partner Bethany Meyers in a gorgeous wedding which they described as “genderbending,” “androgynous” and “fluid”.
Tortorella, 29, opened up about his sexuality in 2016, coming out as “sexually fluid” before settling on bisexuality.
When he grew more comfortable with his sexuality, the star of Younger and Scream 4 took pride in publicly sharing his story to help other young LGBT people.
And that’s exactly what he’s done with his and Meyers’ fabulous wedding.
Writing on LGBT news site Them.us, the pair described their polyamorous relationship and the thinking behind a magical-looking wedding.
Tortorella explained that “we are two kids from the midwest who fell in love almost 12 years ago on the south side of Chicago.
“We grew up together, we grew up apart. We taught each other how to love, taught each other how to break. We’ve pushed social constructs and broken boundaries.
“We’ve confused our friends, families, lovers, coworkers, the media, and even ourselves. We’ve said and done the right things and most certainly the wrong ones too,” he added.
“We’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend, no friends, and all friends.”
The actor continued: “We’ve been straight, confused, fluid, queer, bi, poly, gender enthusiasts.
“We’ve been students of the world and seekers. We’ve been individuals, we will forever be. We’ve been lovers, we are lovers, twin flames and we will forever be.
“We both realise that even the ability to share this story is a privilege we have for a number of reasons. Hopefully a piece of love has jumped from these words to your field.
“This is our now, shared with you, and tomorrow is a future for us all.”
He said that “in this relationship, we both wear the pants and the dress.”
Meyers said that when it came to her and her new husband, “gender roles have never been our thing.”
The fitness instructor added that being in relationships with women had changed her views on marriage.
“I started dating women around six years ago,” she wrote. “I started exploring nine years ago.
“I started crushing 12 years ago. I’m sure it all would have started earlier had I known it was an option. Relationships with women did wonders for my views on gender.
“I imagined what it would be like to marry my girlfriend. Now that I was looking at marriage from the lens of two women, it felt different.
“Who would drop their last name? Who would walk down the aisle and who wait at the altar? Who would pay for it? The idea of marriage started to shift.
“It no longer felt patriarchal, it felt equal.
“And I finally began to view it for what marriage was at its deepest core.
“The union between two people who love each other, who wanted to build their foundation of future generations together, who wanted the legal rights to wed and be recognised by the state as a single unit.”
Speaking in 2016, Tortorella said he first had a same-sex experience when he was in high school with a friend who was struggling with his own sexual orientation.
Nico Tortorella (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Mohegan Sun)
In 2017, he revealed that he was becoming more comfortable with being bi.
He said: “I really like the term bisexual, and I fall somewhere under the umbrella that is bisexuality.
“I use the word bisexual because people have fought for so long for this word and the fact that it even exists in part of the LGBTI-etcetera is just a beautiful thing, and I’m not gonna be the person to take, like, fluidity or emotional fluidity or pansexual.”
He added: “I’m comfortable somewhere under the bisexual label, and I’m proud of it.”
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Report assesses China's machinery sector
SHANGHAI (Dec. 18. 11:50 a.m. ET) — Improving technology and lower costs have helped Chinese plastics machinery manufacturers compete with Western suppliers. But a considerable number of Chinese suppliers will disappear in the next five years, according to a new study.
Currently there are 546 domestic manufacturers of plastics machinery in China, most of them producing injection molding machinery. The industry is quite fragmented, with the largest 10 manufacturers accounting for only 39 percent of the total sales, according to Georg Stieler of Stieler Technologie- & Marketing-Beratung GmbH & Co. KG, a L"rrach, Germany-based firm with an office in Shanghai.
According to Stieler, higher-end Chinese press manufacturers have been able to build machines that can handle 80 percent of molding applications. That number will continue to rise, resulting in a shift away from German, Japanese and other imported equipment.
At the same time, there is a large price discrepancy between imported machinery from Europe and made-in-China equipment. Imported injection presses cost up to three times as much as domestically produced ones, and imported extruders and granulators cost up to 30 times as much.
“Chinese as well as international machine buyers in China still rely on foreign machines,” Stieler, general manager of the company's Shanghai branch, wrote in an email to Plastics News China.
“Other important benchmarks where Chinese manufacturers still lag behind are speed, replicability and energy-efficiency,” he wrote.
Chinese companies face challenges to raising their equipment standards.
“The low profitability and a lack of reliable intellectual property rights lead to short-term thinking on the management side,” Stieler noted. “Together with a lack of capable R&D personnel and a high employee fluctuation, this turns out as a vicious circle for many companies.”
The report predicts growth for Chinese-made machinery, with an increase in quality over the next few years. It credits the Chinese government for its strong support to the industry and quoted the China Plastics Machinery Industry Association's projection of a growth rate of 12 percent through 2016.
Bigger companies are expected to develop more sophisticated machinery and further expand internationally, Stieler said, “We expect a considerable number of players in the low and medium segment to disappear during the next five years.”
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PSLS • Features • News • Features • Opinion • PS4 News, Trophies, Reviews, and More • Slideshow
Why The Sinking City Has Potential to be the Best Lovecraftian Game in Years: Part 1
Cian MaherThursday, December 20, 2018
Frogwares’ upcoming The Sinking City looks like it’s set to become the best Lovecraftian game in years if all goes according to plan. If you haven’t checked out our Call of Cthulhu review yet, you can read that first and come back to this, as this article will consider parallels with that game. Call of Cthulhu wasn’t bad by any means, but I don’t believe that it was great, either. As far as Lovecraftian games go, Call of Cthulhu amassed tons of jaded tropes and attempted to reappropriate them, which worked in some cases, but definitely didn’t in others. It was okay, but The Sinking City has the potential to be great.
For this article, I’m drawing on Chandler’s interview with Frogwares on The Sinking City and breaking down some of the things that they said that make me feel as if this genuinely will be a spectacular game. For example, I took issue with how utterly dependent Call of Cthulhu was on Lovecraft—it retained the “Lovecraft” part of that complex compound word “Lovecraftian,” but the best Lovecraftian works are the ones that play around with the space afforded to them by that little “-ian” suffix. There’s no reason to directly adapt Lovecraft into a video game unless it’s emphatically a direct adaptation. Go the whole hog, or write your own story that’s influenced by Lovecraft; don’t rewrite half of one, as that won’t be appreciated by Lovecraft fans, and won’t be particularly accessible to people who haven’t read any Lovecraft.
Frogwares directly addressed this in their interview with Chandler. They said, “We decided we’d rather pull heavily from the Lovecraft themes and multiple stories, instead of focus on any one particular piece of his work.” This sentence alone proves that they’re on the right track. Instead of using Lovecraft’s work as a crutch, Frogwares is using it as a means to tell their own story. Lovecraft, although very problematic in some horrifying ways, contributed a huge amount to the formation of the horror genre as we know it. Even authors as profoundly influential as Stephen King have attributed their flair for horror to H.P. Lovecraft’s iconic oeuvre. However, these authors write their own stories. That’s where Call of Cthulhu went wrong, in my opinion. It did tell its own story technically speaking, but it didn’t feel unique or new.
Frogwares expanded on their previous statement, saying:
In the end it was decided we’d rather give everyone a new story anchored heavily around the feel of Lovecraft’s world. Trying to recreate something that many people already have their own strong mental picture of just for the sake of being able to market the the game better would be foolish.
I couldn’t agree more, to be honest. Lovecraft’s world is what should endure—cosmic horror, the unknown depths of the cosmos and the sea, and the ancient Great One deities from beyond the stars who highlight the insignificance of microcosmic humans within the massive expanses of dark space. It’s horror recognized through the medium of insignificance, which is accentuated by the realization of external greater and malignant powers. By making a video game based on Lovecraft, studios should seek to put the player in the place of the protagonist—literally. Frogwares said that they “want try to thrive on creating situations that people can either relate to or imagine themselves being in, and say ‘Hey, I’ve been there too,’ or ‘I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me!'” This is exactly what a Lovecraftian video game should hold as its core tenet if it seeks to excel.
Frogwares intends to build on this, too. They “want the player to realize that sometimes we all make wrong decisions and live with the consequences. That’s our approach to The Sinking City as well.” By making the player accountable for their own decisions and allowing them to witness the consequences on the game’s environment and atmosphere, The Sinking City will allow players to actually explore a Lovecraftian world. Games like Bloodborne and Amnesia bore heavy Lovecraftian influences, too, and received unanimous critical success. The Sinking City will be less subtle, perhaps, by invoking the actual world of Lovecraft, but it will be the narrative and mechanics that make this game a worthy Lovecraftian one. Frogwares “prefer(s) to wallow around in that murky grey area where people are left wondering who ‘the lesser evil’ is in each situation, me or them?”
All in all, the basis for The Sinking City is strong conceptually and looks like it will yield an incredible game. However, there’s more to it, as Frogwares intends to implement some innovative and horrifying mechanics that will accentuate the horror to an ever greater extent. If you want to know more about that, you can read about it in Part 2 of this piece, which will delve more into the game itself as opposed to the development process.
Bloodborne: A New Lovecraftian Narrative
How Frogwares Explores the Gray Between Good and Evil – The Sinking City Interview
Call of Cthulhu Review – Lots of Lovecraft, Not Enough-ian (PS4)
Tags: Frogwares, The Sinking City
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Rhode Island Edition
The Rhode Island Truth-O-Meter
"Under current law, if you go on a dating website and you say you're 32 and you're actually 42, you've committed a misdemeanor."
— Christopher Blazejewski on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 in a speech on the floor of the Rhode Island House (which was transmitted electronically)
State Rep. Blazejewski says Rhode Island law made white lies misdemeanors if transmitted on the Internet.
By C. Eugene Emery Jr. on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
Are you a 42-year-old grizzled ogre with no money and chronic halitosis searching for an online date by claiming to be 32, rich and extraordinarily handsome?
Good news! Thanks to a new law, you don't risk going to jail for lying through your few remaining teeth.
But previously, you could have faced misdemeanor charges in Rhode Island, if you believe state Rep. Christopher Blazejewski, a Providence Democrat. On June 12, he told the Rhode Island House that it was illegal to transmit a lie on the Internet, on radio, on TV, or over the phone about anything.
"Under current law, if you go on a dating website and you say you're 32 and you're actually 42, you've committed a misdemeanor under our current law. Any transmission of false information makes you a criminal under Rhode Island state law," he said during the final day of the session.
He was pushing for House Bill 7389 to change the law that makes all electronic lying illegal. He wanted to keep the section that made it a felony if you lie to get payment from a claim, but delete the paragraph that made it a misdemeanor to engage in all other types of lying.
To say PolitiFact Rhode Island was intrigued would be an understatement.
Could many of the Pants-On-Fire politicians and pundits we've exposed during the past two years have faced a fine of up to $500, and up to a year in jail?
Well, if it was true then, it isn't now. The bill passed the House and Senate, Governor Chafee signed it on June 20, and the legislation took effect immediately. In Rhode Island, telling white lies on the Internet is now officially legal.
But the question persists: Was Blazejewski correct at the time he made the statement?
The statute involved is Section 11-52-7 of the Rhode Island General Laws. Paragraph (a), which is still in effect, makes it a felony to transmit false data "for the purpose of submitting a claim for payment."
Paragraph (b) dealt with electronic lying for any other purpose. It said, "Whoever intentionally or knowingly: (1) makes a transmission of false data; or (2) makes, presents or uses or causes to be made, presented or used any data for any other purpose with knowledge of its falsity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor . . . "
During a three-minute hearing on the bill on March 13, the lone witness, Steven Brown of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, called for its repeal because "any other purpose" is overly broad and a violation of free speech.
"Make sure that none of us get charged with a crime for lying on a dating site, telling our spouse that we're stuck in a meeting when we're somewhere else, or a variety of other situations that many of us may have encountered over the years," he urged the legislators.
At the Rhode Island attorney general's office, spokeswoman Amy Kempe consulted with Ronald Gendron, chief of the white collar crime and public corruption unit. (Note: We talked with her before Governor Chafee signed the bill.)
"On the surface, someone could take that portion of the statute literally" and prosecute for any lie, she said. But "that was neither the intent nor is it the application of the statute."
Laws need to be interpreted in context, and this statute, as a whole, "was clearly designed to accommodate a fraud for money," said Kempe.
Paragraph (a) made it a felony to transmit a lie "for the purpose of submitting a claim for payment," such as for an insurance loss. Paragraph (b), in its reference to "any other purpose," really only applies to other types of deception where financial gain is involved, she said.
Finally, Jared Goldstein, a law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, said the plain language of the law did "indeed appear to make it a crime to knowingly or intentionally send any false information over the Internet, without any limitation on the context or subject matter. If read literally, the language would seem to cover giving false information on a dating site. Or lying to a friend in an e-mail message. Or maybe even clicking 'Like' for a friend's photo that you don't really like."
"If the provision is read in that literal way," he said, "it would almost certainly be unconstitutionally overbroad because it would prohibit a huge amount of Constitutionally-protected speech. Even if it is not read that way, but construed narrowly to cover only false information that can constitutionally be prohibited, the law may still be unconstitutionally vague, because it doesn't clearly tell the public what is prohibited."
Rep. Christopher Blazejewski said that "Under current law, if you go on a dating website and you say you're 32 and you're actually 42, you've committed a misdemeanor."
That's indeed what the law said at the time. (It has since been changed.)
Whether you risked prosecution if you told such a lie would have been another matter entirely. The attorney general's office said the statute was only meant to apply to lies designed to garner financial gain. And the law professor we checked with says it was such a broad, vague limit on free speech, it was probably unconstitutional.
Nonetheless, the PolitiFact judges rate Blazejewski's claim as True.
(Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.)
Published: Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
Researched by: C. Eugene Emery Jr.
Edited by: Tim Murphy
Subjects: Legal Issues, Pop Culture, Technology
RILIN.state.RI.US, "An Act Relating to Criminal Offenses," introduced Feb.2, 2012, accessed June 15, 2012
Interview, Christopher Blazejewski, state representative, Providence, June 21, 2012
Interview, Christine Hunsinger, spokeswoman, Governor Lincoln Chafee, June21, 2012
RILIN.state.RI.US, "Computer Crime; Section 11-52-7," accessed June 20, 2012
Interviews, Amy Kempe, spokeswoman, Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, June 18 and 20, 2012
E-mail, Jared A. Goldstein, professor of law, Roger Williams University School of Law, June 20, 2012
Browse The Rhode Island Truth-O-Meter
Keep up to date with PolitiFact Rhode Island
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Sponseller seeks second term as Franklin County prothonotary
Timothy Sponseller took over the office, which handles civil cases, in 2016.
Sponseller seeks second term as Franklin County prothonotary Timothy Sponseller took over the office, which handles civil cases, in 2016. Check out this story on publicopiniononline.com: https://www.publicopiniononline.com/story/news/local/2018/12/28/tim-sponseller-seeks-second-term-franklin-county-prothonotary/2431596002/
Amber South, Chambersburg Public Opinion Published 12:45 p.m. ET Dec. 28, 2018
Chambersburg Boro Hall held a dedication ceremony and ribbon-cutting for the new addition. Markell DeLoatch, mdeloatc@publicopinionnews.com
Timothy Sponseller(Photo: SUBMITTED)
CHAMBERSBURG - Timothy Sponseller will seek re-election to the office of Franklin County prothonotary in 2019.
Sponseller will have served in the position for one four-year term, having been elected in 2015.
The county office keeps records of civil cases, including divorces, custody and protection from abuse orders.
In his candidacy announcement, Sponseller talked of challenges the office has faced over the past three years, including implementing new privacy procedures and embarking on an extensive archiving program which will help save space and eventually savings to taxpayers.
More: Franklin County candidates already getting in line for 2019 election
Sponsellor emphasized his office's efficient handling of an ever-increasing caseload and the maintenance of a courteous, friendly and welcoming atmosphere.
The elected position has a salary of $72,023 in 2018 Annual raises are tied to the cost of living index.
He has continued working as a lawyer in Chambersburg while serving in the elected office.
More: Many Franklin County managers earn more than their bosses
He will run as a Republican.
Sponseller took over the position from Linda Beard, who was prothonotary for 20 years before choosing not to seek reelection in 2015.
Sponseller beat Joan George Wagner with 58 percent of the vote in what was the most political race of 2015. Together their campaigns spent more than twice as much than those for all four candidates for county commissioner, and the race attracted more voters than any other race on the ballot.
Sponseller had won a three-way race in the primary. Wagner, one of the losing Republicans, went on to secure the Democratic nomination.
Read or Share this story: https://www.publicopiniononline.com/story/news/local/2018/12/28/tim-sponseller-seeks-second-term-franklin-county-prothonotary/2431596002/
Historic school's transformation nears end
County proceeds with administration building
Man drugged, sexually assaulted boy, 13
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Jérémie Guez and James Ellroy
Jérémie Guez’s “Eyes Full of Empty”
Jérémie Guez, author of the new novel, Eyes Full of Empty (Unnamed Press, 2015), translated from the French by Edward Gauvin, talks about being inspired by James Ellroy's work. Ellroy enthusiastically introduces Guez at Skylight Books in Los Angeles for a reading of the new novel.
Jérémie Guez
Eyes Full of Empty
Unnamed Press
Eyes Full of Empty, by Jérémie Guez
"I wanted to do something with Paris because I thought that it was such a generous city." Jérémie Guez talks about what compelled him to write his noir novel set in contemporary Paris. Eyes Full of Empty (Unnamed Press, 2015), translated from the French by Edward Gauvin, is the first of Guez's books to appear in English.
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Tigers ready for Pride in Meninga Cup
By Matt Crowhurst
Fri 24 Mar 2017, 02:49 PM
The Easts Tigers Mal Meninga Cup side head into Round 4 of their competition with an impressive defensive record, having only conceded 28 points in two games; a good result at this level of football.
Coach Rhett Tronc said that the team’s goal was to build a strong respectful culture based on hard work.
“Defence will be a key measure of attitude for us,” he said.
This is Tronc’s first season in charge of the team and 60% of his players are new as well, so the team is very much a work in progress.
They opened their season with an impressive 28-12 away win over the Sunshine Coast Falcons and had the bye in Round 2, before continuing their opening round form in a tight and competitive 16-14 loss to the Redcliffe Dolphins last weekend.
For most of the game, the Tigers looked the better team – however, dropped ball early in the tackle count cost them dearly. They also failed to take the chances they created in key moments.
A Jared Chambers burst down the carpark touchline at Suzuki Stadium with three minutes to go could have snatched the win for them.
However, Chambers was tackled and in the ensuing play the ball, was knocked on over the line.
Tronc said that he was happy with his team’s effort on the day.
“Our energy was good, we made a lot of tackles in that second half and kept backing up for each other,” he said.
Round 4 sees them at home again to take on the fifth-placed Northern Pride who have two wins and a loss in the opening three rounds.
Tronc said he was not too sure what to expect from the Pride, other than that they, will be big and strong up the middle.
“We are really more focused on what we do and how we execute,” he said.
The game kicks off at 11am on Sunday at Suzuki Stadium and is the first game in what promises to be an action packed day with the Intrust Super Cup and FOGS Under 20s Cup games to follow.
Follow the scores for the Mal Meninga Cup this weekend via QRL Live.
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Rajat Gupta
Experience Designer and Programmer
Growing at SATE 2018
This week, I was in Orlando, Florida for two reasons, to meet with my project clients at Give Kids the World and to attend the TEA SATE conference at SeaWorld. My goal with the conference was to learn how the industry works and be able to gain some insightful design knowledge about how I should be tackling my independent study. The theme for this years SATE conference was the Experience Recipe. The event was designed to spark the imagination with fresh, new "recipes" and techniques for creating groundbreaking experiences. The sessions blended Storytelling, Architecture and Technology to show how rich, diverse projects are created. The presenters, an eclectic panel of "mixologists," curated a diverse menu serving up a feast for the senses to satisfy audiences' taste for adventure, discovery and fun. This innovative approach was inspired by hot trends in hospitality, retail, food, costumes/fashion, scenery/theming and even horticulture, inviting participants to broaden their thinking and explore beyond the boundaries of traditional attraction design.
When it comes to experience design, the people i.e. the guests are the biggest component of it. We are building the experience for the guests and we should always keep them in mind when we are making the design decisions. Some of the interesting things that I picked up about how to drive people to explore while I was at the conference are to create social and shared experiences, guests rarely want to do experiences alone; emphasize the small moments in your experience and combine them to give the guests a journey through the the experience, let them be in there for the long haul and discuss the journey in the experience rather than the goal of the experience.
But since my independent study is focused on the technology behind the experience and how to integrate it in a way to create even more immersive and interactive experiences let’s talk about how technology can be used to create better experiences. My biggest takeaway from the conference was to find opportunities in the technology and use it for something that it is not being currently used and also to give people ownership in the experience, allowing them to create something that they can keep as a memory of the experience are very strong tools.
The most important question we need to answer while designing an experience is what is technology going to be used for. Technology can be used to educate the consumer about a product or a topic. It can be used to provide a multi sensory experiences to the guest, give them very personalized experiences that they know nobody else had. Technology can be used as an ingredient in the experience, it can just fade away into the experience without being the focus of the experience. Technology can also be used to solve problems and alleviate the guest’s woes. And not just the guest’s woes but also the employees as well. The technology could also be used to amplify the memory side of the experience. Technology can be used to cater to different kinds of audience.
I have received a lot of good advice on what I should be focusing on and how I should create a good experience. I will be using the next few weeks to brainstorm a few ideas and then paper prototype them to see if the experience is designed well and to quickly iterate on the design.
In Experience Design Tags Experience, Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center
The Future of Themed Entertainment
The themed entertainment industry as we call it, all started with a mouse in Anaheim, California and now roughly 60 plus years later we are at a point where the industry is not just confined to theme parks but is in every facet of our life, from museums, zoos and aquariums, shopping complexes, sports arenas and even hospitals. The age of disruptive tech is upon us. Technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, block chain and many others have started becoming more ubiquitous and theme parks need to start taking advantage of these technologies to keep guests coming back and also to attract new guests.
Taking this into account I have decided to undertake an independent study with my adviser, Shirley Saldamarco on what the future of themed entertainment experiences would look like. I'm interested in interactive experience design and how different game design techniques can be applied to make themed entertainment and location based experiences more interactive. I will be building a proof of concept of what an experience of the future could look like and how it would incorporate interactivity without making technology the showcase of the experience.
To get me started on this study I have been looking at various interactives that are already in place in and outside the parks. The pre-shows on rides like Space Mountain and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train are a good example of how the guests are traditionally kept engaged as they wait in line for the actual experience that involve some amount of interactivity but with screens. Rides like Toy Story Midway mania and the Ninjago ride at Legoland are examples of how rides and experiences introduce interactivity with the help of technology. Apart from the rides and pre-shows Disney’s Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game and Universal’s Wand Magic experience that allow guests to interact with physical objects in the park show how interactives need not be restricted to the rides and the entire park can be an experience. Apart from the the parks, companies like The Void are working on creating interactive experiences in virtual reality.
The Ninjago ride at Legoland has interactivity without the use of traditional guns.
My process for this semester long study includes talking to industry experts to get an idea of how to tackle this problem, and using the resources I gain from them to create a design for a simple experience that can showcase interactivity as well as what the future might look like. I have decided to use Raspberry Pi as my platform as it offers me a challenge to learn a new platform but also the ability to create something that could hold the potential of being a fun experience. As of writing this post, I have had meetings with two industry professionals, Cathryn Buchanan, a Content Specialist with Cortina Productions and Matthew Wheeler, a Senior Project Director at Jack Rouse Associates. Some of the advice that I got was to make sure that it is a shared experience for the guests and not just a single player game. I was also advised to make an experience that the guests cannot get at home and need to come out to experience. My main takeaway from both the conversations was to put more emphasis on the real experiences, and less emphasis on the virtual ones.
In summary, I will be working on creating an interactive experience that might be representative of what experiences like these might look in the future. I will try to combine the principles for theme park design with some principles from game design to create an interactive experience. By the end of the independent study I hope to have learned interactive experience design for themed installations and also how different technologies will be used in the Themed Entertainment industry in the coming future.
In Experience Design Tags Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Experience, Design
The decline in popularity of local multiplayer games
I remember there being a time while growing up, where every other game was basically a local multiplayer game where you could play alongside your friends in the same room. I really long for days where I would sit in front of the TV and play the same game for hour on end with my friends. This got me thinking about why is that fewer and fewer companies are building local multiplayer games.
I think a major reason for this decline in the number of local multiplayer games is because of a decline in popularity. Back in the early days of gaming, local multiplayer was the only option for all sorts of games as the technology wasn’t strong enough to support online gaming, so players had no option but to play these kind of games. Most people played those games because that is what was available to them at that time. High speed internet wasn't a thing back then and if you wanted to play a game with someone you had to go to their house and play it on their console. Another major reason for their popularity back then was that the majority of people who considered video games to be a major part of their lives were younger people, college age and under. At that age, people have more time and less money and getting 4 people together to play on 1 TV, using 1 console, 1 game, and 4 controllers was easier than getting 4 people, 4 TV's, 4 consoles, 4 games, 4 controllers, and whatever subscriptions were necessary to link them. Also keep in mind that people in that age bracket typically live closer together, whether in the same neighborhoods they grew up in or on the same college campus.
With the constant improvement in technology, these people who played games at a young age have grown up liking games and would like to play games with their friends. But, in a lot of circumstances, they no longer live close to each other and find it easier to set apart time to "meet up" online and play on their own consoles and the current technology is providing them with this avenue.
AAA gaming is always pushing the boundary of what the technology can do and how good the game can look to the players and in some cases of local multiplayer games like split-screen games this involves rendering the scene multiple times depending on the number of players and this puts an additional load on the processing power of the console that could have been utilized to render insane graphics. Another issue with split screen games is that they start taking up valuable screen real estate that could be used to render something else. Online gaming has overcome these challenges and therefore, I feel it is safe to say that it is not going to lose to local multiplayer. This is also the reason that a lot of AAA companies have stopped supporting local multiplayer on their titles, most notable was 343 Studios stopping Split screen support on Halo 5 back in 2015.
Now this is not to say that there is no market for these kind of games, but that the market size has certainly diminished. Games that don't offer the players the ability to play alone and try forcing an always multiplayer game-play on them usually don't work. Some great examples of that are Rocket League and the Injustice series. Somewhere the local multiplayer series could work well was if it was designed from the bottom up with co-op or competition in mind. Hazelight, the developer on 'Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons' was able to accomplish this by coming up with the novel control scheme that they had for their game. Their next title, A Way Out is built in a similar way where players can only play if they have a partner to play the game along with but it works as it was well designed. Something that usually works in local multiplayer games is giving players a shared view of the entire world where they can see the character they control do actions but the perspective of the game doesn't change around too much. Sports games like FIFA have been doing this for years and games like Overcooked have found success in it.
In conclusion, making local multiplayer games is really fun and everyone enjoys playing them but with the ever diminishing size of the market it is really hard to justify spending a large amount of money on a building a game that doesn't have a large appeal to begin with. This was something that I had to think about on my recent game design assignment as there are not too many financially successful local multiplayer games to point to.
In Game Design Tags Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, Game, Game Design
Designing Educational Experiences for Middle School students.
Before I jump into the heart of the topic, let me give you some context. I am currently the game designer on CryptoKnight, my semester long project at the Entertainment Technology Centre. We are tasked with creating a game for picoCTF 2018, a computer security competition for middle and high school students. picoCTF has been associated with the ETC twice in the past, once in 2013 and once in 2014. Both of these projects, slapped a narrative onto the existing competition and created a nice interface for the game and called it a day.
In order to differentiate ourselves from the previous projects we sought help from faculty and they advised us that we should address some of the problems that are inherent in the competition. We looked at data collected from the picoCTF 2017 and the problem was pretty evident, the questions that the problem development team had created last year were extremely hard and more than 50% people could not solve more than the first 4 questions and the drop off in participants was extremely high. Assuming that the problem development team addresses this issue this year and creates a more gradual difficulty in the questions, we decided to target the middle schooler demographic of students who were just getting exposed to computer science and computer security and had no prior experience in these areas.
Difficulty of picoCTF 2017 showing the sharp dropoff in the number of participants after the first few questions.
We decided that with our project, we aim to expose young middle schoolers to the various concepts that are part of computer security. We did not aim to teach the students anything as that requires coming up with decent metrics to measure whether the students have actually learned something and also our faculty advised us that it was not our job to teach.
In order to tie the entire experience into one cohesive ball, we needed a story or a narrative context that the players could relate to while interacting with the educational concepts. This story would also form the basis around which the educational experiences would be built. I came up with the idea that, the city you are in is under the imminent threat of attack from a disgraced evil scientist and you and your team are being recruited by a secret agency to help save the city from danger. This allowed us to present the scaffolding i.e. the actual educational material in the form of missions for the players. Another problem that we needed to tackle was that of making the game inclusive for all genders and races. This was something that previous games had failed to do, we chose to incorporate a story element where, it is unsafe for you to go outside and you must control a robot remotely through the city.
We started prototyping on our ideas, by choosing Cryptography and more importantly, Encryption and Decryption as the basis of the puzzle. During my research, I tried to learn as much as I could about particular topics. Apart from learning the topics online, I also took help from the problem development team to help simplify the concepts. After learning these concepts, I tried breaking them down to the most basic level. For cryptography, we wanted the players to understand why cryptography was important. From encrypting your data to protect it from intruders and everyone, to decrypting it so that it is in a human readable format. Once we had these pieces, I started making the simplest of puzzles out of them.
The Cryptography mission, where you need to get through a security scanner with the encrypted key.
I chose to make a simple move from point A to point B kind of puzzle for this topic. The character’s robot had a key in their hand, which looked like a briefcase. The players had to go through enemy security to get to the other part of the level. To get past security safely, the players need to “encrypt” the key. Encrypting the key is basically clicking a button and playing an animation of what a transposition cipher would look like in that scenario. After the players have gotten past security, they need to deposit the key into a portal like device, but before they can do that they need to decrypt the key. This is one of the more simpler puzzles that I created and the art and sound in the level is doing some heavy lifting. The initial iterations of this level had us stuck on how the player would interact with the key and how much interaction we wanted to add into the level while making sure that the concepts that we are trying to convey don't get lost in the mix. The following images show how the animation for the encryption and decryption worked. We decided to keep the interactivity at this point low on purpose as the players would not know what to do as this is not a straightforward mechanic.
During the first playtest of our game, we received overwhelming feedback from our players that they wanted the core of the puzzle to be more interactive. I took this feedback into account while designing the second mission. This mission was about Brute Force attacks and how you can simplify them. The idea behind brute force attacks is that, you create a dictionary that might be very small or very large depending on the lock. I used this concept to form the core of the puzzle. The story of the mission is that you are trying to intercept the armed nuclear football on the way out of the city and then disarm it.
The stealth part of the brute force mission where you are tailing the enemy robot.
The first half of the mission is a simple stealth mission, where you need to tail an enemy without getting caught or losing track. As soon as the enemy turn onto an alleyway, the mission shifts gears and you now have the opportunity to disarm the enemy robot and the bomb. As you get the briefcase, you realize that it is locked by a 3 digit code and logically you should realize that without any help this could take you a long time. We then give you a clue that contains the first 2 digits of the code and you can use them to to unlock the briefcase as after this the last digit is just trial and error. In short, we reduced the size of the dictionary from a 1000 option to 10. The following images show how the interaction with the briefcase looks like.
This mission was received much better than the previous one as it had the right amount of interactivity along with the educational content that allowed the players to take something away from the game. As of writing this blog, this mission is still in development and the players are still having difficulty traversing through the level, but with each iteration, the level is improving just enough to make the player experience a good one.
Last weekend, we had 7 middle to high schoolers playtest our game and we received some valuable feedback on the quality of our game. Most playtesters were able to understand at least part of the problem and enjoyed going through the game despite its rough edges. We were able to identify potential walls for the players and mitigate those problems early.
Playtesting data showing how the 7 players understood the problems in the game differently
In summary, creating educational experiences for children requires you as the designer to be well versed in the topics that are in the game. This helps you take those topics and break it down to the most basic level that a middle schooler would be able to understand and take something away from. Also, keep playtesting a lot, as this will help you understand what is working for your audiences and what isn’t.
In Game Design Tags Carnegie Mellon University, En, Games, Game Design
Game Developers Conference 2018
Over the last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It was a great learning experience and I highly recommend everyone that if given the opportunity to attend GDC, you must. The reason I chose to attend the Game Developers Conference was to explore what types of opportunities the industry could provide me as a game designer and also to meet people already working in the industry and learn from their experiences and also to see if this was the right career path for me. While I may have accomplished these goals, attending GDC was an eye-opening experience that taught me so much more about the diversity of careers that exist within the field. Particularly, I was deeply impacted by attending the Independent Games Summit the two days leading up to the main conference. I highly suggest anyone interested in indie games and game design attend this particular portion of the conference. It was the most rewarding part, and I feel the conference would have been a letdown for me had I only attended the main three days.
Attending GDC is a whirlwind of discussions, conversations, and exchanging of business cards. At times, it felt overwhelming, for an ambivert like me. Still, I would say the most beneficial growth I did at the conference came from these conversations. So many of the designers I met had had wonderfully twisting and turning careers. As someone who did not fully understand the extent of the role of video game designers, this was a revelation. In addition, I did some networking that I hope will pay off later on down the road.
My initial plan for the conference was to attend the Game Design workshops that were being held on the first two days of GDC. The workshop was being led by Stone Librande, Lead Designer at Riot Games and also an Adjunct Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center. During the first day of the workshop, I very soon realised that Stone had built the curriculum for the workshop by things he had learnt from watch the Building Virtual Worlds class and the Game Design class at the ETC. Even though the workshop was good, I did not feel like I was learning anything new and after the first half of the day I decide to head to the Summits and other workshops.
At the Summits, I attended many fantastic talks. I chose to focus my time on talks that would benefit me at my stage in my career. I avoided talks that seemed too hyper- focused on topics I would likely not encounter for a long time. I am happy I made this decision, as it prevented me from getting speaker-fatigue from all the panelists.
Some of my favourite talks at the Summits were; Building Games That Can Be Understood at a Glance delivered by Zach Gage as part of the Independent Games Summit. Zach talked about how his goal over the years as a designer and developer had transformed into making Subway-Legible games and he shared the techniques that he used to make such games. I also attended some of the Level Design workshops on the second day of the Summits, and even though I do not want to be a level designer in the industry, some of the talks were really good. One of my favourite talks from that series was the Level Design Workshop: Balancing Action and RPG in 'Horizon Zero Dawn' Quests deliver by Blake Rebouche, Lead Quest Designer at Guerilla Games. This was an interesting talk as he talked about his background in MMO RPGs and how that played into designing a quest that lies somewhere in the middle of an action game and an RPG game and how he had to think of conventional things differently. I also got the opportunity to talk to him after the talk and talk to him about The various system design techniques they use.
Zach Gage's talk summary on Building Games that can be Understood in a glance.
GDC is incredibly full of things to do. Talks, presentations, demos, parties, people, recruiters, and friends can all take up a large chunk of time. It is important to go in understanding that you will not be able to do everything you want. You should make a plan ahead of time, ranking what you wish to do most. I made friends, potential professional relationships, and fond memories. I certainly plan to attend again next year.
In Game Design Tags Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, Gam, Game Des
Are asymmetric games good?
I have been playing a lot of Overwatch recently and I absolutely love that game, but there are some maps and game modes that require players to walk forever to reach where the action is taking place and this got me thinking about how asymmetric the game is and why is that a good thing?
What is asymmetry? Asymmetry generally refers to the fact that players have different experiences from the start of the game. This can be anything from choosing different characters with different stats and roles in Overwatch to choosing different roles in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Asymmetry can also be introduced through the level design, like in Overwatch's different game modes like Assault and Escort.
Some of the arguments that people make in favour of asymmetric games is that it adds variety to the game, makes it interesting and keeps it from going stale. It also supports different player preferences and player styles. It helps players in learning and getting into the game easy. But the same can be said for a well designed symmetric game. It will keep the players interested, support their different play styles and make it easy to learn the game.
Blizzard is doing a lot of right things to create an optimal experience for everyone from a casual gamer to a professional eSports gamer in Overwatch. They have thoughtfully balanced asymmetric character design as well as level design. Each character in Overwatch is vastly different from the others and favours different kinds of play styles from its players. Some characters, like Widowmaker and Hanzo require you to have the perfect vantage point to snipe and block the enemy team in, while some characters like Bastion require you to have the perfect defensive point to lay down suppression fire in Sentry mode. This prompts the truly interested players to learn the maps inside out so as to take advantage of these points and that is true for every FPS. Overwatch also makes sure that characters can only be where they are supposed to be and not reach places and locations in the map that would give them an unfair advantage.
Overwatch's asymmetric level design plays an important role in ensuring this as well. Overwatch has mainly two kinds of game modes, the first where one team is defending an objective and the other team is attacking the objective and the other is when both teams are vying for the same objective. The first type of game mode has a more asymmetric design while the second one is more symmetric. In the game modes like Assault or Escort, the attacking team has the initial advantage as they have multiple ways to approach the objective and they can flank it from any direction but as the game progresses, the defending team has the advantage as the attack is led to one straight path which can be easily blocked. This leads to some interesting moments in the game. Also, the games don't concentrate all the action on one location and have multiple choke points throughout the level and the action keeps moving around the level. Some of the asymmetry in the level is also introduced from where each player is spawned after they are killed. Overwatch does not use the fixed spawn point technique as this would not favour the asymmetric level design and they move towards having multiple spawn points throughout the level and choose to spawn players closer to the action.
Level Design for Temple of Anubis in Overwatch showing how the Asymmetric Design works in that level.
But, this asymmetry is like a double edged sword for Overwatch as even though it introduces an interesting player dynamics for all sorts of players it prevents them from quickly iterating on new characters as every character needs to be balanced for the game in its current state to make sure they can't take advantage of the current level in unfair ways. This leads to Overwatch tuning their levels for new characters and releasing them at a much slower rate.
A game like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes uses asymmetry in the fact that players choose different roles to begin with. Only one player can see the bomb, while one or more players can see the bomb manual and they must cooperate to diffuse it in the given time. After a while, some of the puzzles in the game turn into a memory game, but Keep Talking handles this by upping the ante and adding more modules to the bomb as you progress through the levels.
In conclusion, asymmetric games being good is debatable. On the one hand, it make things interesting and caters to a myriad of player types but on the other hand it might lead to players having vastly different experiences and that can be a good or a bad thing. Designing a good asymmetric game involves balancing the game for different player types and running through the checklist that it gives everyone a fair and equal opportunity to win the game. Designers need to walk the very fine line of designing experiences that are focused on not just one type of player.
In Game Design Tags Games, Game Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, Asymmetry
Why LIMBO is a good game, even in 2018.
When I played LIMBO, the 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer developed and published by Playdead Studios in 2010, last year, I was completely blown away by how good of a game it was even comparing it to some similar games that had released in 2017. The game won a lot of critical acclaim for its minimalist aesthetic and heavy focus on gameplay. Even though the gameplay is only a few hours long at most, it holds its own against some longer games.
First, lets talk about the story. The game follows the primary character, a boy whose name is never mentioned throughout the game. The game starts with the boy waking up in a forest. As the game’s tagline, “Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo,” suggests we follow the boy throughout the game to help him find his sister. As we play through the game, the forest environment transitions into an abandoned factory and then into a crumbling city. Throughout the game, we encounter very few human characters that either attack the boy, run away or are already dead. The game ends with the boy being flung through a glass pane and landing in the forest where the game started. The game’s story and especially its ending are open to many interpretations. The ending was purposely left vague by the developers, to allow players to interpret it as they please. I interpreted the ending to befit the title of the game, the player is stuck in Limbo, like purgatory. The boy completes the journey only to end up in the same place where he started, allowing the player to restart the journey all over again. Very few games have split the audience in the way LIMBO was able to on how they perceived the ending of the game.
Now lets talk about the audio. The game's audio was created by Martin Stig Andersen, whose specialisation was in "acousmatic" music, non-traditional music created from generated sounds that have no apparent visual source. The music or lack thereof in Limbo is instrumental in building immersion of the player. Anderson noted that; "if [the players are] scared it will probably make them more scared when there's no music to take them by the hand and tell them how to feel". Two examples that stuck out to me were the use of the electricity noises while in the presence of the ruined neon "HOTEL" signs, and the gradual silencing of the wind sound as the spider approached the boy in the forest. The sound used is not clear and is distorted in a way that it leaves it open to interpretation by the player allowing players to interpret their meanings for themselves. The sound in the game is realistic and recognisable but abstract at the same time. This sets LIMBO apart from most games that rely heavily on the use of background music to guide you through the game.
One of the ruined hotel signs where the electricity noises are played.
Talking about the visuals, LIMBO has extremely dark visuals and the entire game has a grayish tone to it. The game’s director Amt Jensen set out to make this game with the goal of having minimum emphasis on graphics and thus chose not to use three dimensional models and keep the tonality very dark. This approach along with the various lighting and filtering techniques allows the visuals to carry most of the story’s weight. The game has a very open-ended feel to it. The game from the start has no tutorials of any kind or any text tor UI to guide the player. The game relies heavily on the player learning as they go from the beginning. The entire experience can be titled as one of “trial and death” as the player dies repeatedly in the traps that are hidden in the dark visuals, like bear traps or electric signs. One aspect that I absolutely loved about the game was that the game did not shy away from showing you the gruesome ways in which you would die, like by beheadings or dismemberment of your limbs. Although this feature could be disabled for the faint-hearted. The game manages to captivate the attention of the player despite the use of minimalistic visuals and that makes the game stand-out for me.
An example of how you would die in the game.
The puzzles in the game lie in the sweet spot of neither being too easy that they are solved just by looking at them nor being too complex that the player doesn’t understand the significance of the puzzles and just solves them by trial and error. This makes the game lie in the Flow Channel, thereby avoiding boring players by being too easy or frustrating players for being too hard. Each puzzle in the game involved no more than three interactions, thereby leaving the player with enough room to process what was happening. The puzzles in the game aid in immersing the player into the experience and narrative that they are helping the boy find his sister and I easily bought into this narrative. The game is a feast for Achiever and Explorer player types according to Bartle's taxonomy. Achievers are given the opportunity to gain extra achievements by finding the hidden eggs and unlocking the secret ending or by completing the game by dying less than 5 times. Explorers are given the agency to roam around the 2D landscape as much as they want and complete the game in any order as they please.
The secret ending to the game. There are 10 candles and each correspond to one the eggs in the game.
In conclusion, Playdead Studios’ work on LIMBO is poetry in motion. Their use of an aesthetically pleasing minimalistic art style and dark tonality, their use of distorted sound effects and absence of background music elevates the story to a higher level. I enjoyed playing the game and was completely invested in the story by the end and that is the reason the ending left me surprised and disappointed at the same time. I was surprised because I didn’t expect the game to end so abruptly and I was a little disappointed as the story left a few important questions unanswered, What happened to the sister and who was that girl?
In Game Design Tags Games, Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, Game Design
Why I prefer playing simulation games.
As I get comfortable in my seat and sift through my game library to decide what to play, I chuckle at myself as I know I will always end up choosing the same games over and over again. As I start another session of FIFA 18 on my PC, I look back at the start of the previous semester. Since I have started studying at the Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, I have been asked multiple times "What games do you play?", and every time someone asks me that question it gets me thinking about what do I actually like playing.
Over the years I have played my fair share of games in a lot of genres from First and Third Person Shooters to Real Time Strategy and Role Playing Games, but, nothing gets me as excited - or lose complete sense of time - as a good simulation game. Simulation games give me the ability to live vicariously through them and gain experiences that I normally wouldn't have been able to acquire in this lifetime. A well crafted simulation game will have you hooked from the get go.
Let's take a look at Sims for an example; the brainchild of Will Wright and currently the gold standard for a suburban simulation. The Sims 4 provides an exceptional wealth of options for self-expression and customization, and the extent of this variety only continues to grow. Another great example is F1 2017 by Codemasters. IGN states that, "F1 2017 is a confident and comprehensive racer that succeeds by embracing all of modern F1’s idiosyncratic rules and regulations, as well as its danger, and baking it all into a truly great sports simulation."
Kerbal Space Program is an incredibly detailed physics-based space simulation which lets you design and construct your own spacecraft before launching it into orbit, and then doing impossibly complicated things like docking with other vessels or landing your wobbly phallic construct on the moon. Is it 100% realistic? Given that it's simulating one of the most complicated human endeavours ever undertaken and letting you have a go with your mouse and keyboard, there's an element of creative licensing. However - it's about as close as the medium has produced. Every physical object in the game abides by Newtonian dynamics and its model of orbital mechanics has also been praised by those in a position to assess that sort of thing. In fact, NASA took notice of the work Squad, the developers of Kerbal Space Program were doing and worked with them to implement the real-life Asteroid Redirect Mission. My point with these examples is that a good simulation will be able to recreate the original content in a fair and just way, and have you playing them for hours on end.
Image: A screenshot of Kerbal Space Program
Personally, my favourite category of simulation games is sports simulation games. I grew up watching and playing a lot of sports, from being part of my high school soccer team to watching every sports channel imaginable on the television with my grandfather. This has prompted a love and appreciation for all things sports. Therefore, I lap up any opportunity I get to enjoy sports - be it first-hand by playing the sport physically, or second-hand enjoyment by playing it in a simulation, or watching it on TV. Ernest Adams says in The Designer's Notebook that, "Simulation games, especially sports simulations deserve more respect than they get because they make a real effort to address the second-greatest challenge in all of computer gaming, and they’re getting better and better at it all the time. The greatest challenge in computer gaming (and, for that matter, in computing generally) is the creation of credible artificial people. That’s a problem whose solution is still a long way off, and most adventure and role-playing games don’t make any serious effort to address it. The second-greatest challenge, however, arises from the basic premise of almost all simulation games: that they are an accurate simulation of the real world." Even though most of what Ernest says is relevant even today, I personally feel that the challenge of having credible artificial people in your game has been tackled to quite some extent, and the day we can have such characters in the game is just beyond the horizon.
Also, over the last twenty years, with advancements in computing technology, simulation games have started becoming more realistic and accurate depictions of the real world. Simulations like military simulator or a flight simulator might have the luxury of faking things and not having to worry about being completely accurate as the number of people that know what the real thing feels and how it works like is very small, but in the case of sports simulation games, they do not have that luxury as millions and millions of people know how the sport works and these people also have access to the real thing weekend after weekend on the television. But that being said, simulation games are reaching the point of realism where they are being used as training and testing apparatus for professionals in that field.
While one of my cousins was studying to be a commercial pilot he was required to undertake six months of training on a flight simulator before he could actually get his hands on a real plane. When I questioned him about it, he said that these simulations are so realistic he sometimes forgot they he wasn't actually flying. He also said that the simulator use the same software as the jets themselves, and that makes a major difference for training realism and effectiveness. He stated that the companies also use these simulators as testing apparatus to test the pilot's level of preparedness in the case of an emergency, may that be flying through a storm or following protocol in case of a hijacking. These tests are conducted periodically to keep the pilot's on their feet.
Image: An example of a flight training simulator
All in all, the level of detail that game development companies put into their work - from getting the stadium atmosphere right, to perfecting the idiosyncrasies of the actual sport, right to having actual commentators do hours of dynamically playing commentary - grants sports simulation games a gold star in my books.
As I recline back in my chair waiting for the next game to load, I now have some of the answers to the questions that I get asked when I say that I prefer playing simulation games over any other genre out there.
In Game Design Tags Game Design, Sports, Simulation, Games, Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center
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>We Need a New International Order. Here's Why
(World Economic Forum)
We Need a New International Order. Here's Why
Image by Leontura/Getty Images
by Michael J. Mazarr
Few global issues have taken on more current importance than the future of the postwar, rule-based international order.
The roots of the order run back to the mid-1940s, when U.S. officials concluded that the United States should work to shape the postwar settlement in more structured, collaborative and rule-bound ways. They conceived of global organizations to promote collective problem-solving, avert protectionist impulses, and stabilize the world economy.
The resulting global institutions, processes, habits, rules, and norms inspired the rise of regional organizations and became what we now know as the postwar international order. The essential approach it reflects—nesting U.S. power in a shared multilateral order—has provided the basis for U.S. national security strategies since the 1950s.
Today, however, that order is under unprecedented strain, both within the societies of its leading members and from revisionist countries determined to change some aspects of how the order functions.
The question is whether the order retains strategic value, and whether such a vision can or should continue to shape U.S. strategy.
The question is whether the postwar international order retains strategic value.
A RAND Corporation research team recently completed a two-year project to answer these questions. The project produced six major research reports and over a dozen smaller analyses and essays.
Our work produced a number of major findings, which have now been summarized in a final overview report of the project. They include the fact that the postwar order has generated tremendous value for the United States and many other countries; that it retains impressive areas of resilience; and that challengers to the order, notably Russia and China, do not seek to destroy it so much as gain additional influence in its operation.
Perhaps our most important conclusion emphasizes the value of the postwar order. It has boosted the effectiveness of other instruments of U.S. statecraft, we found, such as diplomacy and military strength, and helped to advance specific U.S. interests in identifiable and sometimes measurable ways.
An excellent example is the global response to the 2008 financial crisis, a response that was both accelerated and facilitated by the principles, norms, institutions, and relationships fostered by the postwar economic order.
Power and a Changing International Order—From G-7 to E-7 (2016)
Between 2016 and 2050, the landscape of the world's economic powers will shift considerably—and with it, the list of states that will play leading roles in setting and enforcing global rules.
* 2016 measurements from World Bank data, in current international dollars; all GDP figures in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms. Amounts for multilateral institutions reflect most recent year total commitments; in case of IMF figure is total quota resources.
** GDP per capita in PPP terms; 2016 figures from World Bank.
a E-7 includes China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and Turkey.
NOTE: ADB = Asian Development Bank; AIIB = Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; CRA = Contingency Reserve Arrangement; CDB = China Development Bank; CMI = Chiang Mai Initiative; NDB = New Development Bank; SCO = Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
SOURCES: All data for 2050 are drawn from Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLC, “The World in 2050: The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050?” February 2017. National economic data: World Bank, “GDP (Current US$),” webpage, undated; International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, October 2017.
More broadly, the seven-decade rise of a shared order has had identifiable socialization effects: Our research pointed to incomplete but important hints of a lasting international community that has emerged among the order's leading member states.
Yet we also found that if a truly multilateral order is to be sustained, the U.S. predominance so characteristic of the current order must give way to a more multilateral system, one that takes seriously the sometimes-differing perspectives of other major powers.
Revisionist pressure against the order today is not as much opposed to the idea of multilateral rules and institutions per se as it is to U.S. hegemony over key aspects of the order. If the United States clings too tightly to a particular vision of specific norms, it is likely to accelerate the order's decay.
China's Role
Our analysis of China's role in the postwar order did raise serious concerns. The history of its attitude and behavior toward the postwar order revealed many areas of progress, but China's determination to extend its influence beyond its borders and predatory trade practices imply that it might not be willing to respect the rules and norms of the order over time.
Both history and theory argue that such a risk amplifies the relevance of a multilateral, rule-based order. It lays out the standards we expect countries like China to uphold, and it offers the most powerful tool available to rally multilateral pressure for shaping China's behavior.
Our study concludes that, in part because of the emergence of an era of more distinct rivalries, leading a revised, more complex multilateral order continues to represent the grand strategy that best serves U.S. national interests.
Multilateral responses to rising challenges will be more effective than unilateral ones—and more importantly, without the benefits and legitimacy conferred by such an order, vibrant U.S. global leadership will become financially and strategically unaffordable.
Michael J. Mazarr is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
This commentary originally appeared on World Economic Forum on June 21, 2018. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Michael J. Mazarr
Senior Political Scientist; Affiliate Faculty, Pardee RAND Graduate School
International Diplomacy
Building a Sustainable International Order
Without Reform and Cooperation with China, the International System Cannot Hold
Timothy R. Heath, Michael J. Mazarr
Summary of the Building a Sustainable International Order Project
Measuring the Health of the Liberal International Order
Michael J. Mazarr, Astrid Stuth Cevallos, et al.
Testing the Value of the Postwar International Order
Michael J. Mazarr, Ashley L. Rhoades
China and the International Order
Michael J. Mazarr, Timothy R. Heath, et al.
Previous Blog PostWithout Reform and Cooperation with China, the International System Cannot HoldNext Blog PostAfghan Ceasefires Offer Hope for a Peaceful Future
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Sarah Palin's Interview with ABC Part One
By Gov. Sarah Palin - September 11, 2008
GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you. And it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say, I have the experience, and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?
PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20th, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we'll be ready. I'm ready.
GIBSON: When McCain asked you to take the spot on the ticket, for a moment, did you think no?
PALIN: I did not. I thought yes, right off the bat. When he offered me the position, as his running mate, the first thing I said to him was, if you really think that I can help the ticket, if you really think that I can help this country, absolutely, I want to do this with you.
GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, am I experienced enough? Am I ready?
PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.
GIBSON: Doesn't that take some hubris?
PALIN: I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness. And knowing that you can't blink. You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country, and victory in the war. You can't blink. So, I didn't blink then, when asked to run as his running mate.
GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage, in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact you have command of the Alaskan National Guard and Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?
PALIN: But it is about reform of government. And it's about putting government back on the side of the people. And that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues.
Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie. And that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years, as the governor of this state, that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy. That I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conversation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas developments in our state, to produce more for the United States.
GIBSON: National security is a whole lot more than energy.
PALIN: It is. But - but I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security. It's that important. It's that significant.
GIBSON: Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
PALIN: Canada. Mexico. And then, that trip that was a trip of a lifetime, to visit troops in Kuwait and stop and visit injured soldiers in Germany. That was a trip of a lifetime. And it changed my life.
GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
PALIN: I have not. And I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. But Charlie, again, we got to remember what the desire is in this nation, at this time. It is for no more politics as usual. And somebody's big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yeah, they've had opportunity to meet heads of state.
GIBSON: Let me ask you about some specific national security situations.
PALIN: Sure.
GIBSON: Let's start, because we are near Russia. Let's start with Russia and Georgia. The administration has said, we've got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
PALIN: First off, we're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak the other day and giving my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we have to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have asserted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable. And we have to keep ...
GIBSON: You believe unprovoked?
PALIN: I do believe unprovoked. And we have to keep our eyes on Russia. Under the leadership there.
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions particularly in the last couple weeks does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: They're our next door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.
GIBSON: You favor putting Georgia and Ukraine into NATO?
PALIN: Ukraine definitely yes. Yes. And Georgia. Putin thinks otherwise, obviously he thinks otherwise.
GIBSON: Under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?
PALIN: Perhaps so. That is the agreement. When you are a NATO ally, is, if another country is attacked, you are going to be expected to be called upon and help.
GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?
PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.
GIBSON: So, what should we do about a nuclear Iran?
PALIN: We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran.
GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and need to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?
PALIN: Well, first, we are friends of Israel, and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves, and for their security.
GIBSON: So if we didn't second guess it and if they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was an existential threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?
PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.
GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right?
PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.
GIBSON: We talk on the anniversary of 9/11. Why do you think those hijackers attacked? Why did they want to hurt us?
PALIN: You know, there is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme, and they are violent, and they do not believe in American ideals. And they attacked us. And now we are at a point, here, seven years later, on the anniversary, in this post- 9/11 world, where we are able to commit to never again. The only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have, instilled in us, because we're a democratic and we are a free, we're a free-thinking society.
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view?
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, annunciated September 2002, before the Iraq War.
PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made, and with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with us?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligent and legitimate evidence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.
GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan, from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
PALIN: As for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world, where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be and military strike a last option.
GIBSON: But governor, I am asking you, do we have the right, in your mind, to go across the border, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America, and our allies, we must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie. In making those tough decisions of where we go, and even who we target.
GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes, that you think we have the right to go across the border, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government? To go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?
PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying America, and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GIBSON: You said recently in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PALIN: Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right, also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GIBSON: Are we fighting a Holy War?
PALIN: That's a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words, when he said, first he suggested, never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak god's words, but what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was, let us not pray that God is on our side, in a war, or any other time. But let us pray that we are on God's side. That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.
Today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son, oversees with his Stryker brigade. Four thousand other wonderful American men and women to fight for our country, to fight for our freedoms.
GIBSON: But you went on and said, "There is a plan, and it is God's plan."
PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world, and that plan, for this world, is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country, to be able to live and be protected within inalienable rights, that I believe are God-given, Charlie. And I believe those are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That in my worldview is the grand plan.
GIBSON: Then, are you sending your son on a task from God?
PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision. What he decided to do, in serving for the right reasons in serving something greater than self, and not choosing a real easy path, where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.
Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, is the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Gov. Sarah Palin
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THE END OF ALL SECRETS
Posted by Sevan Bomar on November 28, 2013 at 3:30pm
"Hypnotism is nothing new they used to call it putting someone under a spell"
It will just keep coming until all is laid bare and everything is transparent so you can see...We are coming together rapidly!
This has been made in to audio for brevity. Expand
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/s99iwtsb6ssnpeq/The%20End%20of%20al...
The following is an excerpt from Black Terror White Soldiers by David Livingstone
MK-Ultra, the CIA's infamous "mind control" program, was an extension of the behavior control research conducted by the Tavistock Institute. Formed at Oxford University, London, in 1920 by the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), a sister organization to the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) created by the Round Table, the Tavistock Clinic became the Psychiatric Division of the British Army during World War II.[1] The clinic took its name from its benefactor Herbrand Russell, Marquees of Tavistock, 11th Duke of Bedford. The Dukes of Bedford was the title inherited by the influential Russell family, one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain who came to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty. Herbrand Russell and arch-conspirator Bertrand Russell shared the same great grandfather, John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford. Bertrand Russell was descended from John Russell’s third son, Bertrand’s grandfather, John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, who served twice as Prime Minister of the England in the 1840s and 1860s. Herbrand Russell’s son, Hastings Russell, Lord Tavistock, the 12th Duke of Bedford, went on to become patron of the British Peoples Party, a far-right political party founded in 1939 and led by ex-members of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. It was he whom Rudolf Hess flew to England to contact about ending World War II.
The basis of the project of the Tavistock Institute was explained by Round Tabler, Lord Bertrand Russell, is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the twentieth century's premier logicians. Russell offered a revealing glimpse into Frankfurt School’s mass social engineering efforts, in his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society:
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called "education." Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
…Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.[2]
A successor organization, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, was then founded in 1946 under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic. According to John Coleman, a former British Intelligence agent, it was Tavistock-designed methods that got the US into World War II and which, under the guidance of Dr. Kurt Lewin, established the OSS. Tavistock became known as the focal point in Britain for psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. Tavistock is ostensibly a British charity concerned with group behavior and organizational behavior. Tavistock engages in educational, research and consultancy work in the social sciences and applied psychology. Its clients are chiefly public sector organizations, including the European Union, several British government departments, and some private clients. Its network now extends from the University of Sussex to the US through the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Esalen Institute, MIT, Hudson Institute, Brookings Institution, Aspen Institute, Heritage Foundation, the Center of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, US Air Force Intelligence, and the RAND Corporation.[3]
The Tavistock Institute’s projects were a follow-up on the work of the Frankfurt School, a predominantly Jewish group of philosophers and Marxist theorists who fled Germany when Hitler shut down their Institut für Sozialforschung, “Institute for Social Research,” at the University of Frankfurt. The school’s main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber and Lukacs, and focusing on the study and criticism of culture developed from the thought of Freud. The Frankfurt School’s most well-known proponents included Max Horkheimer, media theorist Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Jurgen Habermas. Dr. Kurt Lewin, the founder of the study of “group dynamics,” was a member of the Frankfurt school in America, and an important influence on the work of the Tavistock.
In producing their critical theory, the Frankfurt School brought together the dialectical versions of history of Hegel and Marx. They were deeply influenced by Hegel's idealism and dialectical interpretation of history, and derived a sense of the power of Spirit (Geist) or of cultural forms in human cultural life. From Marx they derived a sense of the importance of material forces in history and the role of economics in human and social life. They were also heavily influenced by Nietzsche, particularly his critiques of mass culture, society, morality and the state, which in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he had denounced the new idol, a new object of worship. Nietzsche also criticized "mass man" and conformity, and was one of the first critics of the role of journalism in creating mass opinion. The Frankfurt School agreed with Nietzsche that a lot of the common cultural forms repressed natural instincts, and therefore tried to develop a philosophy that would lead to the supposed emancipation of the human being in society.
The Frankfurt School recognized that modern consumer society was the new form of capitalism, creating novel forms of social institutions that integrated the working class into advanced capitalist systems. Important, therefore, was their attempt to update traditional Marxist interpretation by analyzing the role of what they recognized as state and monopoly capitalism. While, beginning in the late nineteenth century, a new era of monopoly capitalism had arrived, additionally, with the Great Depression the state began to play a much more important role in managing the economy, resulting in the new model of state capitalism exemplified by the New Deal. There were two forms of state monopoly capitalism: there was the fascist and authoritarian state capitalism of Nazi Germany and the democratic state capitalism of the United States. In both of these forms of state capitalism, new types of administration, bureaucracy and methods of social domination emerged that contributed, they believed, to a curtailing of individual freedom and democracy, giving rise to conformity and massification. In particularly, the Frankfurt School explored the role of the mass media. Where control of mass media was overt in Nazi Germany, and similarly in the Soviet Union, the Frankfurt School saw that the instruments of mass culture and communication were playing an equally important role in marketing capitalism, democracy and the American way of life.
The members of the Frankfurt School were, for the most part, from assimilated Jewish families. And it would seem, due to their secularism, despite retaining a Jewish identity, as well as their cohesiveness and theories promoting a reinterpretation of traditional morality, particularly sexual morality, that they must have been of Sabbatean origin. When they treated religious topics, as in the case of Walter Benjamin, it was of a decidedly mystical orientation. Benjamin was highly influenced by his close friend Gershom Scholem, the renowned twentieth-century expert on the Kabbalah, regarded as having founded the academic study of the subject. Scholem, by tracing to the origins of Jewish mysticism from its beginnings in Merkabah and all the way forward to its final culmination in the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi, rehabilitated perceptions of the Kabbalah as not a negative example of irrationality or heresy but as supposedly vital to the development of Judaism as a religious and national tradition.[4] According to Scholem’s “dialectical” theory of history, Judaism passed through three stages. The first is a primitive or “naïve” stage that lasted to the destruction of the second Temple. The second is Talmudic, while the final is a mystical stage which recaptures the lost essence of the first naïve stage, but reinvigorated through a highly abstract and even esoteric set of categories.
Frankfurt School historian Martin Jay concedes that a certain degree of Jewish identity nurtured the Frankfurt School’s perspectives. Having attempted to live assimilated lives in Weimar Germany with dubious success, he says, must have had an impact. “The sense of role-playing that the Jew eager to forget his origins must have experienced,” says Jay, “could only have left a residue of bitterness, which might easily feed a radical critique of the society as a whole.”[5] Jay additionally concedes that the Kabbalah would have had some influence as well, as noted by one of its own members, Jurgen Habermas. Jay summarizes:
Jurgen Habermas has recently argued that a striking resemblance exists between certain strains in the Jewish cultural tradition and in that of German Idealism, whose roots have often been seen in Protestant Pietism. One important similarity, which is especially crucial for an understanding of Critical Theory, is the old cabalistic idea that speech rather than pictures was the only way to approach God. The distance between Hebrew, the sacred language, and the profane speech of the Diaspora made its impact on the Jews who were distrustful of the current universe of discourse. This, so Habermas has argued, parallels the idealist critique of empirical reality, which reached its height in Hegelian dialectics… The same might be argued for its [the Frankfurt School’s] ready acceptance of [Freudian] psychoanalysis, which proved especially congenial to assimilated Jewish intellectuals.[6]
Habermas cites the example of the Minima Moralia of Theodor Adorno who, despite his apparent secularism, explains that all truth must be measured with reference to the Redemption, meaning the fulfillment of Zionist prophecy and the advent of the Messiah.
Philosophy, in the only way it is to be responsive in the face of despair, would be the attempt to treat all things as they would be displayed from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but what shines on the world from the redemption; everything else is exhausted in reconstruction and remains a piece of technique. Perspectives would have to be produced in which the world is similarly displaced, estranged, reveals its tears and blemishes the way they once lay bare as needy and distorted in the messianic light.[7]
David Bakan, in Sigmund Freud and The Jewish Mystical Tradition, has shown that Freud too was a “crypto-Sabbatean,” which would exlain his extensive interest in the occult and the Kabbalah. As shown in “The Consolation of Theosophy II,” an article by Frederick C. Crews for The New York Review of Books, several scholars have established that Freud was among the key figures who developed therapy through the retrieval of forgotten trauma, through a debt to Franz Anton Mesmer.[8] Adam Crabtree’s From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing traces Mesmer’s use of artificially induced trance-states to uncover the influence of unconscious mental activity as the source of unaccountable thoughts or impulses. Jonathan Miller traced the steps by which psychologists gradually stripped Mesmerism of its occult associations, reducing it to mere hypnosis and thus paving the way for recognition of nonconscious mental functioning.[9]
Hypnotism is nothing new. It is merely what had been known as putting someone under a spell, and practiced for thousands of years by witchdoctors, spirit mediums, shamans, Buddhists, and yogis. Freud himself was renowned in Vienna as a suggestive healer, his practice relying heavily on the use of hypnosis, a method he characterized as essentially "mystical."[10] Freud engaged in magical propitiatory acts and tested the power of soothsayers. He confided to his biographer Ernest Jones his belief in "clairvoyant visions of episodes at a distance" and "visitations from departed spirits."[11] He even arranged a séance with his family members and three other analysts. He also practiced numerology and believed in telepathy. In Dreams and Occultism, he declared, "It would seem to me that psycho-analysis, by inserting the unconscious between what is physical and what was previously called 'psychical,' has paved the way for the assumption of such processes as telepathy."[12]
Freud, when he was made aware of the Lurianic Kabbalah apparently exclaimed, “This is gold!” and asked why these ideas had never previously been brought to his attention.[13] Carl Jung, who had worked with Freud, commented approvingly on the Jewish mystical origins of Freudian psychoanalysis, stating that in order to comprehend the origin of Freud’s theories:
…one would have to take a deep plunge into the history of the Jewish mind. This would carry us beyond Jewish Orthodoxy into the subterranean workings of Hasidism...and then into the intricacies of the Kabbalah, which still remains unexplored psychologically.[14]
Freud’s theories were excessively concerned with sex and even incest, which is reflected in Sabbatean antinomianism. As Gershom Scholem noted, the Sabbateans were particularly obsessed with upturning prohibitions against sexuality, particularly those against incest, as the Torah lists thirty-six prohibitions that are punishable by "extirpation of the soul,” half of them against incest. Baruchiah Russo (Osman Baba), who in about the year 1700 was the leader of the most radical wing of the Sabbateans in Salonika and who directly influenced Jacob Frank, not only declared these prohibitions abrogated but went so far as to transform their contents into commandments of the new “Messianic Torah.” Orgiastic rituals were preserved for a long time among Sabbatean groups and among the Dönmeh until about 1900. As late as the seventeenth century a festival was introduced called Purim, celebrated at the beginning of spring, which reached its climax in the "extinguishing of the lights" and in an orgiastic exchange of wives.[15]
As Bakan indicated, in his book Moses and Monotheism, Freud makes clear that, as in the case of the Pharaohs of Egypt, incest confers god-like status on its perpetrators. In the same book, Freud argued that Moses had been a priest of Aten instituted by Akhenaten, the Pharaoh revered by Rosicrucian tradition, after whose death Moses was forced to leave Egypt with his followers. Freud also claims that Moses was an Egyptian, in an attempt to discredit the origin of the Law conferred by him. Commenting on these passages, Bakan claims that his attack on Moses was an attempt to abolish the law in the same way that Sabbatai Zevi did.
Thus, Freud disguised a Frankist creed with psychological jargon, proposing that conventional morality is an unnatural repression of the sexual urges imposed during childhood. Freud instead posited that we are driven by subconscious impulses, primarily the sex drive. In Totem and Taboo, published in 1913, which caused quite a scandal. Freud theorized about incest through the Greek myth of Oedipus, in which Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and incest and reincarnation rituals practiced in ancient Egypt. He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire.
Freud also read Nietzsche as a student and analogies between their work were pointed out almost as soon as he developed a following. Freud and Nietzsche had a common acquaintance in Lou Andreas-Salomé, a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships and affairs with a broad array of well-known western intellectuals, giving her a reputation of somewhat of a femme fatale. These included Richard Wagner and Rainer Maria Rilke, considered one of the most significant poets in the German language, and who was a friend to Gurdjieff’s collaborator, Thomas de Hartmann. Salomé claimed that Nietzsche was desperately in love with her and that she refused his proposal of marriage to her. During her lifetime she achieved some fame with her controversial biography of Nietzsche, the first major study of his life.
Salomé was a pupil of Freud and became his associate in the creation of psychoanalysis. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts and one of the first women to write psychoanalytically on female sexuality. She developed Freud's ideas from his 1914 essay On Narcissism, and argued that love and sex are a reunion of the self with its lost half. She was eventually attacked by the Nazis as a "Finnish Jewess,” though her parents were supposedly of French Huguenot and Northern German descent. A few days before her death the Gestapo confiscated her library, because she was a colleague of Freud, practiced "Jewish science" and had many books by Jewish authors. The fact that Salomé would have secretly been Jewish despite professing a Christian heritage would suggest that her family were Sabbateans. We may suppose that their deviant sexual practices might have contributed to a trauma that gave rise to her inability to develop normal relationships with other men, and in turn to her unconventional theories. We may speculate that, sadly, the origin of Salomé’s dysfunctions were possibly incestuous relationships with her father and five older brothers. In fact, Lou would claim to see a brother hidden in every man she met. Lou married linguistics scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas, and despite the marriage never being consummated, they remained together from 1887 until his death in 1930. Nevertheless, Salomé maintained sexual relationships outside marriage and visited regularly a gathering place for gay men and lesbians. Freud considered Salomé’s article on anal eroticism from 1916 one of the best things she wrote. This led him to his own theories about anal retentiveness, where prohibition against pleasure from anal activity “and its products,” is the first occasion during which a child experiences hostility to his supposedly instinctual impulses.[16]
Essentially, by rejecting that man could be driven by a higher moral inclination, Freud believed all that was left was man’s animal nature, particularly what he called the libido, a belief that was reflective of his association with the traditions of occult thought and its veneration of the act of sex as the only true vital impulse. Freud believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object of desire, a process codified by the concept of “sublimation.” He argued that humans are born “polymorphously perverse,” meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued that as humans develop they become fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of development. The first is the oral stage, exemplified by an infant’s pleasure in nursing, then in the anal stage marked by a child’s “pleasure” in evacuating his or her bowels, and finally in the phallic stage. In the phallic stage, Freud contended, male infants become fixated on the mother as a sexual object, referred to as the Oedipus Complex, a phase brought to an end by threats of castration, resulting in the castration complex, the severest trauma in man’s young life.
Through Freud’s influence, the “incest taboo” would become an issue of fundamental concern to the Frankfurt School. For example, Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – 2009), a French anthropologist and one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought, considered the universal taboo against incest as the cornerstone of human society. Incest, he believed, was not naturally repugnant, but became prohibited through culture. Lévi-Strauss’ theory was based on an analysis of the work of Marcel Mauss who believed that the basis of society is the need for the exchange of gifts. Because fathers and brothers would be unwilling to share their wives and daughters, a shortage of women would arise that would threaten the proliferation of a society. Thus was developed the “Alliance theory,” creating the universal prohibition of incest to enforce exogamy. The alliance theory, in which one’s daughter or sister is offered to someone outside a family circle starts a circle of exchange of women: in return, the giver is entitled to a woman from the other’s intimate kinship group. This supposedly global phenomenon takes the form of a “circulation of women” which links together the various social groups in single whole to form society.
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Laurel Canyon: Sex, Drugs and Aliens
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Submitted by David Livingstone on Fri, 07/19/2013 - 12:21
Xaviant Haze has put together an interesting article, building on the excellent research of Dave McGowan on the mysterious world of Laurel Canyon, that connected the early folk rock music scene to Satanism and military intelligence. In particular, Haze makes mention of a strange 1983 B-movie called Wavelength, about a young couple who discover aliens being held by the US government for experimentation in an underground base in Laurel Canyon. In Haze’s words, the movie “drops hints about where to look when confronted with the Canyon conspiracy.”[i]
This is a topic I deal with in my book, Black Terror White Soldiers, where I add my own findings as well. As McGowan has shown in his multipart “Inside the LC,” many of those musicians, like David Crosby, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and Frank Zapa grew up on military bases. Zappa’s father was a chemical warfare specialist assigned to the Edgewood Arsenal in Aberdeen, Maryland, a facility deeply enmeshed in MK-Ultra experiments, and where numerous Nazi scientists were employed under Operation Paperclip.[ii] Zappa, in the early years, was Laurel Canyon’s father figure, leading an entourage in a residence dubbed the “Log Cabin,” where, in the words of Michael Walker, author of Laurel Canyon, there “raged a rock-and-roll salon and Dionysian playground.”[iii]
Many of these musicians were involved in MK-Ultra, a known “mind-control” operation of the CIA, whose real focus was the spread of LSD through the Haight-Ashbury scene of San Francisco, to produce the 60s counter-culture scene, as per the dictates of the notorious Frankfurt School of psychologists. The chief evangelist of the project was Aldous Huxley, the kingpin of the CIA’s subversion of culture, and author Brave New World, a dystopia about a society drugged into servitude.
Huxley also wrote The Doors of Perception, which exploded the fascination with the “mind-expanding” possibilities of drugs. Jim Morrison, who named his band The Doors after the book, and one of the earliest to arrive on the Laurel Canyon scene, was the son of US Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison, who was in command of the warships that purportedly came under Viet Cong attack, in the false-flag operation known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964.
Key to the CIA’s MK-Ultra operation was the soundman for the Grateful Dead, known as Owsley Stanley, or “Bear.” At only fifteen, he “voluntarily committed” himself to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC where, as Colin Ross explained in The CIA Doctors, Dr. Winfred Overholser Sr. funded LSD research through the Scottish Rite Committee and was at the center of the mind control network[iv] St. Elizabeth’s is also where presidential assailants, serial killers or other federal cases are kept, such as Ezra Pound and John Hinckley, Jr. who shot Ronald Reagan.
After a stint in the US Air Force, beginning in 1956, Stanley moved to LA, where he worked at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, founded by Jack Parsons. Parsons was a leader of the Agape lodge, the American chapter of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and also one of the first known contactees of the so-called “Nordic” aliens. Likewise, Crowley claimed in 1919 to have contacted an extraterrestrial named Lam, which looked much like the iconic “greys” that have now come to be associated with alien contact.
Along with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, beginning in 1946, Parsons started the “Babalon Working,” a series of rituals designed to manifest an individual incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babalon, and to conceive a child through sexual magic. Parsons wanted to create a Moonchild, as outlined in Crowley's occult novel by the same name.[v]
Parsons associated with Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, who was also heavily influenced by Kenneth Anger, who enjoyed cult status in Hollywood as author of two controversial Hollywood Babylon books, and as underground experimental filmmaker of Crowley-inspired films that merged surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult. Anger became acquainted with notable countercultural figures, including Tennessee Williams, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, which he involved in his Crowley-themed works, Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972).
Anger also introduced Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page to Aleister Crowley, who became the owner of one of the world’s largest collections of Crowley memorabilia, including Crowley’s notorious Boleskine estate on the shores of Scotland’s Loch Ness. As explained by Gary Lachman, founding member of the New Wave band Blondie, and now author, in Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, “tales of pacts with the Devil followed Zeppelin throughout their career, and stories of orgies, black masses and satanic rites were commonplace, mostly centered around the infamous Chateau Marmont off the Sunset Strip.”[vi]
Page composed a soundtrack for Anger’s Lucifer Rising, a film for which Crowley associate and OTO member Gerald Yorke was credited as a consultant. Yorke had also been the personal representative of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to the West.
Anger and the Laurel Canyon groups were closely associated with Vito Paulekas, his wife Zsou and Karl Franzoni. Vito also happened to be first cousin of Eva Paul, wife of Winthrop Rockefeller.[vii] According to Barry Miles, in his book Hippie, “The first hippies in Hollywood, perhaps the first hippies anywhere, were Vito, his wife Zsou, Captain F*** [Franzoni] and their group of about thirty-five dancers. Calling themselves Freaks, they lived a semi-communal life and engaged in sex orgies and free-form dancing whenever they could.”[viii]
Vito and his wife Zsou’s three-year-old boy was the first candidate to play in Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, before dying of a tragic accident, ascribed in the documentary Mondo Hollywood in morbid sarcasm, as “medical malpractice.” The child died on December 23, 1966, the very winter solstice heralded the Age of Satan by LaVey, who performed the role of the devil in Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother alongside Mason “Family” member, Bobby Beausoleil. Zsou suggested the fall occurred during a “wacky photo session,” which may be connected to the fact that, according to Beausoleil, some of Anger’s film projects were for private collectors: “Every once in a while he’d do a little thing that wouldn’t be for distribution.” According to biographer Bill Landis, Anger was at one time investigated by the police on suspicion that he had been producing snuff flicks.[ix]
According to Miles, Vito operated “the first crash pad in LA, an open house to countless runaways where everyone was welcome for a night, particularly young women.”[x] By the mid 1960s, the group had expanded into a guesthouse known as “the treehouse” at the Log Cabin. The “treehouse” attendees included Mick Jagger Marianne Faithfull, members of the Animals, Mark Lindsay from Paul Revere and the Raiders, Alice Cooper who joined Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, Janis Joplin, and Roger McGuinn and Mike Clarke from the Byrds. Journalist John Bilby recalls, “Tim Leary was definitely there, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar were there.”[xi] Zappa took over the commune in 1968.
Also included in the pack was Kim Fowley, who had spent time working as young male street hustler, but had his greatest success creating the Runaways, featuring Joan Jett, who were recently the subject of a film in 2010. Fowley crassly attired the band in leather and lingerie, and boasted, “everyone loved the idea of 16-year-old girls playing guitars and singing about f******.”[xii]
It was the Runaways’ lead singer, Cherie Currie, who co-starred with Robert Carradine in Wavelength. Robert, who would later star in Revenge of the Nerds, is one of a number of prolific actors in the “Carradine family” of American actor John Carradine. As McGowan points out, according to authors such as Craig Heimbichner (Blood on the Altar), Martin P. Starr (The Unknown God), and John Carter (Sex and Rockets), Dennis Hopper and John Carradine, were both members of the Parsons’ Agape Lodge of the OTO, alongside, actor Dean Stockwell, and science-fiction writer, Robert Heinlein. According to Gregory Mank in Hollywood’s Hellfire Club, John Carradine and John Barrymore were also members of the so-called “Bundy Drive Boys,” who engaged in such practices as incest, rape and cannibalism.[xiii] Robert’s brother was David Carradine of Kung Fu fame, who later died in what appeared to be a ritualistic murder.
The Oxford Movement
A speaker increasingly popular among Muslim audiences, known as Sheikh Imran Hosein, was featured recently at the University of Moscow, hosted by Russian fascist ideologue Alexandre Dugin. Disturbingly, Hosein’s speech seems to be in support of Dugin’s vision of Russian backing for the aspirations of Muslims, which is closely connected with a long-standing British and CIA plot to create a “neo-Caliphate” as a puppet Islamic state to exercise control over the Islamic world.
As outlined in A Peace to End All Peace, during World War II, the British, in a characteristic act of bald-faced duplicity, incited the Sharif of Mecca to fight the Ottoman Empire, in return for the title of King of the Arabs if victory should result. It was a plan devised by London’s Middle East team, who were joined by Winston Churchill and Arnold Toynbee of the infamous Round Tablers. Outlining the policy was T. E. Lawrence “of Arabia”:
If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, the present representative of which is Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca. Hussein’s activities seem beneficial to us, because it marches with our immediate aims, the breakup of the Islamic bloc and the disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states the would set up would be as harmless to ourselves as Turkey was. If properly handled the Arab States would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of jealous principalities incapable of cohesion, and yet always ready to combine against an outside force.[1]
Lord Palmerston
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Up to that point, the British had been working to undermine the Ottoman Empire from within, by supporting the nationalistic causes of various ethnic communities and rival sects like, certain Sufi orders, and Freemasonry.[2] These actions were mainly the work of the Oxford Movement, whose sponsors were the British Royal family, and many leading prime ministers and aides, such as Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Palmerston and the highly influential Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton, the English politician and novelist who was immensely popular during his time, was also the “Great Patron” of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), and one of the leading occultists of his day. Overseeing the movement was Scottish Rite Freemasonry, whereby missionaries were assigned to build branches of the rite throughout the Empire.[3]
Under the guidance Palmerston, who served as Prime Minister of England, Giuseppe Mazzini, who had apparently succeeded Weihaupt as head of the Illuminati, had organized all his revolutionary sects: Young Italy, Young Poland, and Young Europe.[4] In 1870, Mazzini along with Palmerston, Otto von Bismarck and Albert Pike, all thirty third degree Scottish Rite Masons, completed an agreement to create a supreme universal rite of Masonry that would arch over all the other rites. Known as the Palladium Rite, it was to be the pinnacle of Masonic power.
Pike had been assisted in the founding of the KKK by Judah P. Benjamin, the individual who gave the order for Lincoln’s assassination.[5] Benjamin was a British subject and leader of the B’nai B’rith and the Order of Zion, whose funding came from the London and Paris banking houses of Rothschild, Montefiore, and de Hirsch. According to Jeffrey Steinberg et al., in Dope Inc, the Order of Zion formed part of an underground network of subversion headed by Lord Palmerston, as Patriarch of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.[6] The Order of Zion was the elite secret arm of the masonic-style order Alliance Israëlite Universelle, whose American arm was the B’nai B’rith. The Alliance was founded in 1860, by Benjamin Disraeli, as well as Moses Montefiore and Adolph Cremieux (1796 – 1880), Supreme Council of the Order of Misraïm, as well as Grand Master of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.
Abdul Qadir al Jazairi
One of the chief agents of the Oxford Movement was Jamal ud Din al Afghani, who despite being the Grand Master of the Egyptian Freemasons, came to be regarded as the founder of the fundamentalist reform movement of Islam known as Salafism, from which emerged the Muslim Brotherhood, the primary agents of Western policy in the Middle East.
Afghani was part of a wider circle of British espionage that was centered around the person of Abdul Qadir al Jazairi, (1808 – 1883), an Algerian national hero who led a struggle against the French invasion of their country in the mid-nineteenth century. Abdul Qadir was ultimately forced to surrender, and eventually settled in Damacus, Syria, under a generous pension from the French.
In 1860, he attained international fame when he and his personal guard saved large numbers of Christians who had come under attack by the local Druze population. As reward, the French government bestowed on him the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur and he was also honored by Abraham Lincoln. As well, the town of Elkaker of Iowa was named after him.
Edward Scawen-Blunt
Abdul Qadir was also friends with Jane Digby and Sir Richard Burton, the famous British explorer, spy and fellow Freemason, who had been made consul in Damascus in 1869. Digby, or Lady Ellenborough (1807-1881), was an English aristocrat who lived a scandalous life of romantic adventures, having had four husbands and many lovers. She died in Damascus, Syria as the wife of Arab Sheikh Medjuel al Mezrab, who was twenty years her younger. Burton (1821-1890) is best-known for traveling in disguise to Mecca, his search for the source of the Nile, as well as a translation of One Thousand and One Nights and bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English. Ouida reported in 1906 that “Men at the FO [Foreign Office] …used to hint dark horrors about Burton, and certainly justly or unjustly he was disliked, feared and suspected… not for what he had done, but for what he was believed capable of doing.”[7]
Jamal ud Din al Afghani
Burton and Digby were also close friends of Afghani’s handler, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and his wife Lady Anne, a grand-daughter of poet Lord Byron. Blunt had supposedly become a convert to Islam under the influence of Afghani, and shared his hopes of establishing a British-sponsored Arab Caliphate based in Mecca to replace the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. When Blunt visited Abdul Qadir in 1881, he decided that he was the most promising candidate for Caliphate, an opinion shared by Afghani and his disciple, Mohammed Abduh.[8]
Burton was also an avid occultist, and like Abdul Qadir, a member of the Qadiriyya Sufi order, because
“Sufism,” he claimed, is “the Eastern parent of Freemasonry.”[9] Burton was also a member of the Theosophical Society, started by Helena P. Blavatsky, who visited him in Damascus. Blavatsky was the great oracle of the Occult Revival of the late eighteenth century, whose channeled books are considered “scriptures” of Freemasonry, and who is regarded as the godmother of the New Age movement. According to historian K. Paul Johnson, Afghani was one of Blavatsky’s “Ascended Masters,” from whom she learned her central doctrines. Afghani was the reputed head of a mysterious order known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, which exercised a profound influence over the occult societies of the period, culminating in the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) of the scandalous Aleister Crowley.
Gérard Encausse (aka Papus)
Jamal Aghani was in Russia in 1886, where according to Scawen Blunt, he "threw himself into the opposite camp, that of the advocates of a Russo-Turkish alliance against England."[10] Afghani joined up with Blavatsky’s publisher, Mikhail Katkoff, who was interested in organizing anti-British agitation in Central Asia and India. These activities were in alignment with the new political directions of the Great Game, that would feature actors connected to the Theosophical Society and the Martinist Order, headed by Gérard Encausse, also known as Papus. As a young man, Encausse studied Kabbalah and later joined the French Theosophical Society, and was also a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and the Golden Dawn.
In establishing the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix (OKR+C), which came to be regarded as the “inner circle” of the Martinist Order, Papus dreamed of uniting occultists into a revived Rosicrucian brotherhood, as an international occult order, in which he hoped the Russian Empire would play a leading role as the bridge between East and West.[11]
Papus believed that the vast Russian Empire was the only power capable of thwarting the conspiracy of the “Shadow Brothers,” and to prepare for the coming war with Germany. Papus served Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. Through Papus the Imperial family became acquainted with his friend and spiritual mentor, the mystic Maître Philippe who exercised an important influence on the royal family before Rasputin. He was believed to possess remarkable healing powers, as well as the ability to control lightning, to travel invisibly. The purported forgers of the Protocols of Zion were also said to have made use of an earlier version of the work discovered by Papus.[12]
Papus had founded the OKR+C along with Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, who proposed the political philosophy of synarchism, which became the bedrock of much twentieth century fascism. Saint-Yves was Grand Master of the Martinist Order, and close to Victor Hugo and to Bulwer-Lytton’s son, the Earl of Lytton, a former Ambassador to France and Viceroy of India. Neville Bulwer-Lytton, the son of the Earl of Lytton, married Judith Blunt-Lytton, the daughter of Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne.
Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
It was after 1885 that Saint-Yves began to refer to an Asian origin of synarchism, after he met the mysterious Haji Sharif. Although Haji Sharif presented himself as “a high official in the Hindu church,” he had a Muslim name, and was familiar with Hebrew and Arabic. This Haji Sharif would most certainly refer to Jamal ud Din al Afghani. In 1885, Afghani was in France, and with his disciple Muhammad Abduh, he began publishing an Arabic newspaper in Paris entitled “The Indissoluble Blond,” also the name of a secret organization he founded two years earlier. Among the members of Afghani’s circle in Paris were Christian and Jewish Middle Easterners with connections to Wilfred Blunt, as well as the Egyptian-Jewish actor and James Sanua, who was a travelling companion of Blavatsky.[13]
Synarchy came to mean “rule by secret societies,” serving as priestly class in direct communication with the “gods,” meaning the Ascended Masters of Agartha, a legendary city that is said to reside in the hollow earth. Agartha was connected to the myth of Shambhala, popularized by Blavatsky as the legendary home of the Aryan race, and derived its influence from Bulwer-Lytton’s occult novel, The Coming Race or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.
Like Shambhala, Agartha was situated in Central Asia, which connected it to the myth of the Lost Tribes of Israel, who were expected by Jews to come forth at the advent of the messiah to assist him in his conquest of the world. In Medieval times, the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel were known to the Jews as "Red Jews," and believed to reside in Central Asia, where they had been absorbed among the Turkic peoples, themselves believed to be descended from Gog and Magog.
According to Colin Gow, the legend of the Red Jews was a conflation of three separate traditions: the prophetic references to Gog and Magog, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and an episode from the Alexander Romance. In the Alexander Romance, the earliest version of which was produced in the third century AD, with the aid of God, Alexander and his men closed the narrow pass in the Caucasus by constructing a huge wall of steel, keeping the barbarous Gog and Magog from pillaging the peaceful southern lands. The wall has been frequently identified with the Caspian Gates of Derbent, Russia, and with the Pass of Darial, on the border between Russia and Georgia. An alternative theory links it to the Great Wall of Gorgan, also known as "Alexander's Wall,” on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, 180 km of which is still preserved to this day.
The accounts are reflected in the enigmatic figure mentioned in the Quran, named Dhul-Qarnayn, literally "He of the Two Horns.” Similarly, on Macedonian coinage of the third century BC, Alexander was typically portrayed with ram’s horns. According to Hadith, unable to pass the wall, Gog and Magog have been digging below ground ever since, but will emerge at the time of the return of the Messiah Jesus, to afflict the earth, but Jesus will pray to God to eradicate them.[14]
According to Jewish legends, the Lost Tribes of Israel were said to have been carried in the eighth century BC to a place called “Arzareth,” referring to the Araxes, a river that borders Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Azraeth is also connected to Asgaard, the legendary homeland of Odin, the forefather of the Scandinavians. In the 1870s, Ernest Renan was inspired to place Asgaard in Central Asia. Another French writer, Louis Jacolliot (1837 – 1890), in Les Fils de Dieu (“The Sons of God”) wrote at the same time about a city of “Asgartha.”
Réne Guénon
Papus, the most high-profile follower of Saint-Yves, worked to put the synarchist ideals into practice by fusing the various secret societies of his day. He organized an “International Masonic Conference” in Paris in 1908 at which he first met Theodor Reuss the founder of the OTO of Aleister Crowley. Reciprocally, Papus assisted Reuss in the formation of the OTO’s Gnostic Catholic Church, based on Crowley’s Book of the Law. In 1913, Papus was elected to the office of Grand Hierophant of the Rites of Memphis and Misraïm.
Papus had a particular influence on one of the most influential occultists of the twentieth century, René Guénon (1886 – 1951), who would continue to offer intellectual inspiration to much of the political right.[15] Guénon was initiated into Martinism and the Rite of Memphis-Mizraim in 1907, and the OKR+C. Guénon founded the occult school of Traditionalism, which suggests that all exoteric religions share a single underlying occult tradition. Therefore, according to Guénon, one could choose any religion as one’s outward belief, and so he chose Islam.
Guénon was initiated in 1912 in the Shadhili Sufi order, which had been involved in a scandal that included Richard Burton. The inner circle of the Shadhili met at Abdul Qadir’s residence in Damascus to meditate and pray “for enlightenment before the throne of God.”[16] Finally, as related by Burton’s wife Isabel, they become conscious of a presence among them and used to hear and see things they did not understand. Finally, they received a vision that assured them it was the religion of Christianity which they were seeking. Richard and Isabel threw their support behind the Shadhili, and attempted to secure support for their conversion. But the British government, fearing the political consequences, removed Burton from his post in Damascus.[17]
Guénon’s initiation was effected by Swedish convert to Islam Ivan Aguéli, who was also interested in Kabbalah, and performed under the authority of the friend of Abdul Qadir al Jazairi, Sheikh Abder Rahman Illaysh al Kabir, a Freemason and head of the Maliki Madhhab at Al Azhar University. As a Freemason, al Kabir also aimed to demonstrate the relationship between the symbols of Freemasonry and Islam.[18] Al Kabir was responsible for the Fatwa that launched the Urabi revolt, that ultimately provided a pretext for the British to move in and “protect” the Suez Canal. The agent-provocateur revolt was followed by a formal invasion and occupation that made Egypt a colony.
The two principle organizations behind the revolt were created by Jamal Afghani: a nationalist organization called Nationalist Liberal Party, which was assisted by Scawen Blunt, and the Mazzini-inspired Young Egypt. Both were united in their membership in Afghani’s French Masonic lodges.
Arminius Vambery
When Afghani founded Young Egypt, it was mainly composed of members of the Young Turks, a Masonic political party, also known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), who were the primary agents for the overthrow of the Ottoman caliphate, and inspired by the ambitions of Pan-Turksim. Pan-Turkism was first called for in the 1860s by a Hungarian Zionist named Arminius Vambery (1832-1913), an agent for Lord Palmerston, who had become an adviser to the Ottoman Sultan.[19] Vambery was inspired by Alexander Csoma de Körös, who was an important source for Blavatsky, and the first in the West to mention Shambhala, which he regarded as the origin of the Turkish people, and which he situated in the Altai mountains and Xinjiang.
Vambery’s reputation in England as an expert on Muslims began with his publication of Arminius Vambery: His Life and Adventures, about his travels throughout the Middle East and Central Asia disguised as a dervish between 1862-64. Vambery also chronicled the strange vampire and other legends of the Balkans, and knew author and Golden Dawn member Bram Stoker, to whom he acted as his consultant on Transylvanian culture. The character of Professor Van Helsing in Stoker’s novel, Dracula, is said to be based on Vambery.
The Young Turks were created in the 1890s by a prominent Sephardic Jewish family in Ottoman Salonika (modern Thessaloniki, Greece) and an official of the Italian B’nai B’rith, named Emmanuel Carasso. Carasso was also the grand master of an Italian masonic lodge there called “Macedonia Resurrected.” The lodge was the headquarters of the Young Turks, and all the top Young Turk leadership were members. The Italian masonic lodges in the Ottoman Empire had been set up by a follower of Mazzini named Emmanuel Veneziano, who was also a leader of the European affiliate of the B’nai B’rith, as well as the Alliance Israëlite Universelle.[20]
Young Turk revolt in 1908
Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman Sultan, was overthrown in 1908 in a military coup carried out by the Young Turks, who seized power over the Empire. While in power, the Young Turks ran several newspapers including The Young Turk, of which Zeev Jabotinsky was the editor. Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism, on which the policy of the Zionist terrorist faction the Irgun was based, and helped form the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War I. He was educated as a young man in Italy, and later described Mazzini’s ideas as the basis for the Zionist movement. Jabotinsky arrived in Turkey shortly after the Young Turks seized power, to take over the paper. The paper was owned by a member of the Turkish cabinet, but it was funded by the Russian Zionist federation, and managed by the B’nai B’rith.[21]
Turkish nationalism based on the pseudoscientific race theories of Europe had become the guiding ideology of the Young Turks.[22] From the middle of the nineteenth century, the British had worked to develop an alliance between several leading Sufi orders in Turkey, such as the Bektashi who had strong associations with the crypto-Jewish community of the Dönmeh, as well as the Naqshabandi, and the Scottish Rite Freemasons of Afghani and his followers.[23]
Like the Nazis, the Pan-Turkists aspired to return to the true pagan heritage of their nation. Through the influence of the beliefs of the Bektashi Sufis, Pan-Turkism aspired at reviving shamanism as the true religion of the Turkish heritage. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks expanded on the ambitions of Pan-Turkism and tried to replace the lost legacy with a new Turkish commonwealth. The legend of Agartha was therefore promulgated by Ataturk, who sought to create a sense of nationalism to replace the religion of Islam as the primary identity of the new Turkish secular regime.[24]
The Muslim Brotherhood
Hasan al Banna
Afghani’s chief pupil, Mohammed Abduh, also Masonic Grand Master of the United Lodge of Egypt, was made the Grand Mufti of Egypt, the chief legal authority in Islam, by Lord Cromer, where he instituted reforms that benefitted British imperial objectives. Abduh’s pupil, Rashid Rida, also a Freemason and a known reformer, was the mentor of Hasan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Banna’s Brotherhood was established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company in 1928, and over the following quarter century would be at the disposal of British diplomats and MI6 as a tool of British policy.[25]
Abdel Halim Mahmoud
More disturbingly, John Loftus, a former US government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer, discovered that Hitler commissioned al Banna to found the Muslim Brotherhood, to serve as an arm of German intelligence in the Middle East.[26] Effectively, the Nazi Party was the result of a merging of the German branch of Crowley’s OTO and the Thule Gesellschaft of Germany, whose notions of Aryan superiority were derived from the ideas of Blavatsky and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Thus the Brotherhood and the Nazis represented two branches of the influence of Jamal Afghani.
From early on, al Banna was a member of a sub-branch of the Shadhili Sufi order.[27] Many of the head lecturers of al Azhar University in Cairo have also been followers of the Shadhili. Prominent among them was a friend to René Guénon, Abdel Halim Mahmoud, who eventually served as Grand Imam of Al Azhar and became an important source of inspiration for members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his articles were published in their magazines.
Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier note in their classic work, The Morning of the Magicians, that Nazism was “’Guénonism’ plus tanks.”[28] Guénon later dedicated his book The Symbolism of the Cross to al Kabir. By “cross,” Guénon meant the occult symbol of the swastika, employed by the Nazis as a symbol of their “Aryan” heritage. Guénon regarded the swastika as “a truly universal symbol.”
In addition to Guénon, two important mystics who contributed to the myth of the Sufi origin of Freemasonry were George Gurdjieff and Idries Shah who, as reported by Robert Dreyfuss in Hostage to Khomeini, worked with the Muslim Brotherhood in London. Shah’s chief associate was Gurdjieff disciple, J. G. Bennett, head of British intelligence in Istanbul. As the secretary to Gerald Gardner, one of the key representatives of Wicca, whose rituals he developed with Aleister Crowley, Shah was responsible for popularizing that European witchcraft, as well as the occult tradition in general, was derived from Sufism. Specifically, in The Sufis, Shah mentions as a source of this occult tradition the Aniza tribe, to which belonged not only Jane Digby’s husband Sheikh Medjuel al Mezrab, but most importantly, the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Shah’s claim may reveal the hidden basis for the collaboration between the West and Saudi Arabia, which has been the primary source of funding for the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities, conducted on behalf of the CIA.
Shah was also a member of the Club of Rome, a project initiated by the Rockefeller family at their estate at Bellagio, Italy.[29] The founders of the Club of Rome were all senior officials of NATO. These included Aurelio Peccei, the chairman of Fiat who was also chairman of the Economic Committee of the Atlantic Institute, and Alexander King, the co-founder, who was Director General of Scientific Affairs of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In 1965, Shah founded SUFI (Society for Understanding Fundamental Ideas), and dubbed himself Great-Sheikh, not only of the Naqshbandi, but of all Sufi orders. Several presentations were given by scientists like Alexander King to the Institute for Cultural Research (ICR), which evolved from SUFI.[30] Other visitors, pupils, and would-be pupils included the poet Ted Hughes, novelists Alan Sillitoe and Doris Lessing, zoologist Desmond Morris, and psychologist Robert Ornstein. Over the following years, Shah established Octagon Press as a means of distributing reprints of translations of Sufi classics. Several of Shah's books were discussed the Rand Corporation.[31]
At a November 1977 Lisbon conference sponsored by the Interreligious Peace Colloquium—an organization set up by Cyrus Vance and Sol Linowitz—Peccei conspired with several leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly with the well-known Iranian “court philosopher” who was highly active during the Iranian revolution of 1979, Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Teheran University, a personal friend of the Shah of Iran.[32]
Nasr is a Perennialist in the school of Guénon’s Traditionalism. Nasr was initiated into the Shadhili by Ahmad al-Alawi (1869-1934), who had been recommended to him by Guénon. Al-Alawi had founded the Alawiyya branch of Shadhili after supposedly being instructed to adopt the name for the order and himself in a personal vision of Ali, the Prophet Muhammed’s son-in-law.
Frithjof Schuon
Nasr was a student of Guénon’s leading disciple Frithjof Schuon who established the Maryamiyya branch of the Shadhili in Europe and North America. Some of Schuon’s most eminent students include supposed converts to Islam, Titus Burckhardt and Martin Lings, best known as the author of a very popular and positively reviewed biography of Muhammad, first published in 1983. But according to Andrew Rawlinson, in Book of Enlightened Masters, Schuon was not as a pious Sufi but as a charlatan.
Shuon was also interested in Native American sacred traditions, and was adopted by a Sioux family and Crow medicine man and Sun Dance chief. The author of Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick discovered photos sent to him by Rawlinson, showing Shuon dressed up as a Native American chief, surrounded by young women in bikinis. Another showed Schuon naked, except for what looked like a Viking helmet. Another showed a painting by Schuon of a nude Virgin Mary, who is known as Myriam in the Quran, after which his order is named. Burckhardt expressed concerns about Schuon and episodes “involving women,” but reminded other Maryiamis that the followers of a Sheikh [Sufi master] should judge him by his teachings, not his actions![33]
In 1976, the Traditionalist views of the Maryamiyya featured prominently in the World of Islam Festival in London. It involved Queen Elizabeth II, who opened the festival, as well as the archbishop of Canterbury who received Abdel Halim Mahmoud. Exhibitions were managed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Martin Lings, and though books by Traditionalists and Maryamiyya featured throughout, the festival generated much favourable publicity for “traditional” Islam.
Burckhardt is read by Prince Charles, and according to Sedgwick, “Traditionalist influences are increasingly visible in some of his speeches,” which explains rumors of his supposed conversion to Islam.[34] Prince Charles has also written a foreword to Lings' book on the esoteric meanings in Shakespeare's plays. Prince Charles' close friend and spiritual mentor, Sir Laurens van der Post, a friend and follower of Carl Jung, introduced him to Temenos, a publication of Schuon's followers. One of these was English poet and literary critic Katherine Raine, who studied spiritual magic with a group she identified as descended from the Golden Dawn. Prince Charles then encouraged Raine to establish the Temenos Academy, within his own Prince's Foundation.
The New Great Game
After World War II, the pretext of a Cold War with the Soviet Union was used by the US to carry out covert action in all countries of the world. CIA chief Allen Dulles devised a plan whereby on the explicit request of the Pentagon, secret armies of fascist terrorists, including many former leading Nazis, were set up across Western Europe with the coordination of NATO, known “Stay Behind” units. The most infamous “stay-behind” unit was Operation Gladio of Italy, which was responsible for the Strategy of Tension, which carried out false-flag terror operations to discredit the popular communist party, culminating in the assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades and the Bologna train station massacre of 1980.
Julius Evola
The chief inspiration for the fascist Gladio networks was Julius Evola (1898-1974), who is recognized as the primary heir of Réne Guénon’s Traditionalism.[35] Evola reflected the synarchist belief in the authority of adepts of secret societies. According to Evola, the superior priestly class of the world of Tradition was not merely a professional priesthood, but royalty itself because, in Evola’s view, temporal power proceeded from spiritual authority.
Mussolini, being impressed by these ideas, backed Evola’s launch of the journal Blood and Spirit. Evola traveled to Germany in 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on the publication from leading Nazi race theorists. In the post-war years, Evola's writings were held in high esteem by members of the neo-fascist movement in Italy. According to one scholar, “Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century."[36]
Julius Evola has been the primary inspiration to Alexandr Dugin, who is part of a plot involving the Turkish branch of Gladio, to dupe the Muslim peoples of Central Asia into creating a Neo-Caliphate with the support of Russia.
Although the Americans managed to defeat the Soviet Union, conflict with the two remaining powers of Russia and China for control of Central Asia is not yet over, and the New Great Game continues. And just as the occult legend of Shambhala was employed by the competing sides in the earlier episodes of the Great Game, now that the American’s have secured their hold in much of the region, so the same legend continues to be featured in the US’s actions, but now more precisely in the region said to be the location of the legendary city, Xinxiang, China.
To this purpose, the same pan-Turkism that first gave rise to the popularization of the story of Shambhala is being used by the Americans, in a covert strategy that is deceptively exploiting the notion of uniting Turkic peoples of Central Asia and under a neo-Caliphate to be ruled from Turkey.
The Turkish Gladio, known as Counter-Guerrilla, have exerted great influence over the country’s Cold War history, and were responsible for numerous unsolved acts of violence. Counter-Guerrilla were responsible for the development of the Ergenekon, the name given to an alleged clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey, with ties to members of the country’s military and security forces. “Ergenekon” is a name deriving from a supposed Turkish legend describing it as a mythical place located in Eurasia, in the inaccessible valleys of the Altai Mountains, serving as a model for the synarchist idea of the mythical underground realm of Agartha.[37]
The Ergenekon connection to Agartha is related to the Pan-Turkism movement, which the US sought to exploit after World War II in their continuing fight against communism. The Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter reported in 1990 that they had obtained declassified strategy documents with specific reference in how the Pan-Turkism movement could be exploited strategically by the United States.[38]
Colonel Alparsan Turks
US support of Pan-Turkism in bolstering Turkey’s role in NATO came in the person of a right-wing extremist named Colonel Alparsan Turks, who during World War II had been the contact person of the Nazis in Turkey. After the war, Turks made contacts with the CIA in 1948 and set up a secret anti-Communist stay-behind army in Turkey, eventually renamed the Special Forces Command, which operated Counter-Guerrilla.[39] To staff the Counter-Guerrilla, Turks had recruited heavily among the Grey Wolves, a right-wing terrorist group which he also ran.
Based explicitly on the Pan-Turkism movement, the Grey Wolves derived their name and flag from the mythological legend of the grey wolves that led the Turk peoples out of Asia to their homeland in Anatolia. The Grey Wolves’ dream is to create the “Turan,” the “Great Turkish Empire,” to include all Turkic peoples of the Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as the Caucasus and the Uighurs' homeland of East Turkestan in the Xinjiang, China.
According to Turkish authorities, the Grey Wolves carried out 694 murders between 1974 and 1980.[40] As related by investigative reporter Lucy Komisar, the 1981 attempt on John Paul II's life by Grey Wolves member Mehmet Ali Agca may have been related to Gladio.[41]
Neo-Eurasianism
Alexandr Dugin is the suspected leader of Ergenekon.[42] But Dugin is not a Turk. He is a Russian, and the most popular ideologist of Russian expansionism, nationalism, and fascism. He was born in Moscow into a family of a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer, and continues to have close ties to the Kremlin and Russian military. There were many reports that Dugin’s Eurasia Movement was heavily funded by associations of retired officers of the SVR and the FSB, the foreign intelligence and domestic security services into which the Soveit KBG had been divided in 1991.[43]
Dugin likes to see himself as the inheritor of the “ancient Eurasian order,” elements of which were already present in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the secret service of the SS.[44] Like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dugin is also a follower of Sir Halford Mackinder, seeing Central Asia as a key aspect of geopolitics, but taking the reverse view, where he sees Russia as needing to create a Eurasian block to impede American imperialism.
Dugin’s platform is the basis of the Eurasia Party which he founded in 2001. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Dugin posited that Russian civilization does not belong in the “European” category, and that the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks was a necessary reaction to the modernization of Russian society. It suggested that the Soviet regime was capable of evolving into a new national, non-European Orthodox Christian government, shedding off the initial mask of proletarian internationalism and militant atheism.
Sometimes called Greater Russia, the movement closely aligned to Pan-Turkism, and is described as a political aspiration of pan-Russian nationalists to retake some or all of the territories of the other republics of the former Soviet Union, and territory of the former Russian Empire, and amalgamate them into a single Russian state.
Gaydar Jamal
Dugin’s call for an alliance with Islam is reflected in his associate Gaydar Jamal, a Muscovite of Azerbaijani origin, who exemplified the relationship between Traditionalism and Islamic extremism. Once a member of Naqshbandi Sufism, Jamal was the founder of the Party of the Islamic Renaissance (PIR) in 1990. In 1992, Jamal led a splinter group towards alliances with Islamist extremists in the Middle East and with the domestic opposition to Yeltsin, in the form of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF).
Hasan al Turabi
Jamal’s relations with the Middle East included Hasan al Turabi, leader of the Sudanese Islamic Front. In 1991, after he left Saudi Arabia for his opposition to Ibn Baz’s Gulf War Fatwa, bin Laden first went to Pakistan and back to Afghanistan, before finally settling in Sudan. General Omar Hassan al-Bashir had taken power in a military coup in 1989. Just a few months later, at a Muslim Brotherhood meeting in London, it was decided that Sudan would be a new base for the Islamist movement, and a Muslim Brotherhood leadership council of nineteen members was subsequently established in Khartoum under Turabi, who would emerge as the real power in the Sudanese regime.[45] According to bin Laden biographer Roland Jacquard, Turabi visited London in 1992 and was a guest at the Round Table’s Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA).[46] In addition, Turabi seems to have Masonic connections. When their relationship had broken down, and after Turabi had foiled an attempted coup by him and his party, Bashir denounced Turabi as being sponsored by “Zionists and freemasons.”[47]
Jamal’s PIR was replaced by the Islamic Committee of Russia (ICR), which became part of a network of radical Islamic movements under Turabi’s leadership, which included Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.[48] According to Jamal’s own admission, in 1999 the ICR formed a united front with the Movement in Support of the Army, Defence Industry and Military Science, an independent opposition group aligned with the CPRF and run by the chairman of the Duma State Security Committee.
Claudio Mutti
Another example of the meeting of Traditionalism and radical Islam is Claudio Mutti, whose works have been promoted by Dugin. Mutti was also apparently a friend of Luc Jouret, the founder of the notorious Solar Temple mass suicide cult with links to Gladio.[49] Mutti, a one-time follower of Franco Freda, converted to Islam through the influence of Guénon, which he discovered through his study of Evola. From 1971 onwards, Freda had been put on trial several times, notably for involvement in the Strategy of Tension. Although eventually acquitted he spent several years in jail for the crime of “subversive association.”
Mutti had taught Romanian and Hungarian at the University of Bologna, before losing that job when he also had to serve a prison term for his terrorist activities. Mutti founded the publishing house Edizioni all’Insegna del Veltro, which published the works of Evola, Nazi ideologue Johann von Leers, Nazi occultist Savitri Devi and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. When he converted to Islam, Mutti took the name of Omar Amin, in honor of Johann von Leers, Goebbels’s former anti-Semitic propaganda expert, who had taken the same name before him on his own conversion, when heading Gamal Nasser’s anti-Jewish broadcasting service in Egypt.[50]
Ian Dallas, a.k.a. Abdalqadir al-Murabit
Mutti was also appointed Emir in the notorious Murabitun Movement, founded by a Scottish convert to Islam named Ian Dallas, a.k.a. Sheikh Abdalqadir al-Murabit. Dallas is also a member of a branch of the Shadhili Sufi order, also descended from Ahmad Al-Alawi, Guénon’s friend who initiated Schuon into the order. Dallas celebrates Hitler as a “great genius and great vision,” praises Wagner as the “most spiritual of men among men in a age of darkness,” and regards the black stone of the Kabbah in Mecca as the Holy Grail. In 1990, he held a symposium in honor of the occultist Ernst Junger, one of the fathers of Nazi ideology, and which ended with a Masonic ceremonial. Also in attendance was Albert Hofmann, the scientist who discovered LSD, associated with the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.[51]
Dugin’s ideas, particularly those on “a Turkic-Slavic alliance in the Eurasian sphere” have recently become popular among certain nationalistic circles in Turkey, most notably among alleged members of Ergenekon. The most prominent figure is Dogu Perinçek, the leader of the Workers Party, and an associate of Dugin, who in 2008 was arrested on suspicion of being a member of Ergenekon. Perinçek combines Kemalism with Marxism but is also a neo-Eurasianist, meaning that he strives towards an alliance between Turkey, Russia, Iran and the Central Asian republics against the Western hemisphere.[52]
Despite its claims of presenting an obstacle to American imperialism, Neo-Eurasianism is aligned with recent American designs in Central Asia, through the assistance of the network of Fethullah Gülen and his links to Counter-Guerrilla, who have been fronting for the CIA in the radicalization of Central Asia, involving drug trafficking, money laundering, the nuclear black market, and false-flag terrorism. The Pan-Turkism ideals espoused by Gülen, as an ostensible project of creating a pan-Islamic Caliphate to be ruled from Turkey, is merely part of America’s post Cold War strategy to control Central Asia with the aim of containing Russia and China.
Coordination with the Gülen movement is tied to recent plans to confront China through the support of an independence movement of the Uighurs, a Turkic and predominantly Muslim minority of Xinjiang, in northwestern China. In other words, the supposed location of Agartha. The CIA plotting came to a head in July 2009, with a series of violent clashes that erupted between Uighurs and the Chinese state police and Han Chinese residents in Xinjiang. As was also stated in 2004, with regards to the separatist moves over Xinjiang, according to TurkPulse: “One of the main tools Washington is using in this affair in order to get Turkey involved in the Xinjiang affair is some Turkish Americans, primarily the Fetullah Gülen.”[53]
The majority of the information pertaining to these covert activities has been revealed by FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, on Iranian state-owned Press TV, that the US was on intimate terms with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, using them to further certain goals in Central Asia, right up until 9/11.[54] Her highly astute observation is as follows, in full:
You’ve got to look at the big picture. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the super powers began to fight over control of Central Asia, particularly the oil and gas wealth, as well as the strategic value of the region.
Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn’t get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.
This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.
This is why I have been saying repeatedly that these illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors.
And I want to emphasize that this is “illegal” because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.
And one last thing, take a look at the people in the State Secrets Privilege Gallery on my website and you will see how these individuals can be traced to the following; Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—and the activities involving these countries.
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Comment by Maria Martin on November 28, 2013 at 7:56pm
This was quite an informative night for me - this sure is one for the history books (the 'real' history books).
Just an image that I viewed recently that came to mind. I also had to pull up this movie "A Dangerous Method (2011)" in reference to earlier mention in the excerpt regarding man's 'natural sexual desire' related to incest' (I think this might be hard for some to swallow) - this movie deals with the complex relationship between the fathers of psychoanalysis,Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
As far as the detailed list of events that followed throughout our history, to most recent years; this is quite appalling; to say the least. Makes me wonder; can the carpet be fully shaken - can it be completely lifted?
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The Most Influential LGBTQ+ Person from Your State
In honor of Pride Month, we compiled a list of influential LGBTQIA+ people in entertainment and politics born in each state across the US.
https://www.reviews.org/trends/influential-lgbt-activists/
Trevor Wheelwright
Researcher & Writer
Whether breaking new ground in activism or wowing audiences with their performances, these folks have made a name for themselves—and we’re here to celebrate those names.
What does LGBTQ+ stand for?
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (or sometimes Questioning). We’ll use LGBTQ and also LGBTQIA+ to include Intersex, Asexual, and additional community members.
Using a mix of Out.com’s Power 50 List, IMDB, and a list of the first LGBTQ holders of political offices in the US, we learned that each of our beloved 50 states had someone to show off.
Our list is fairly evenly split with 24 people in the politics side of things, 22 in entertainment, and then 4 people more directly involved in activism (which most politicians and entertainers are part of too).
Not every name will be immediately recognizable, but we tried to include those who made differences in terms of visibility, inclusion, and community building.
LGBTQ entertainers, artists, musicians, and more
(RuPaul - Picture from Wikimedia commons)
LGBTQ representation in the media is important, with big names like Ellen Degeneres (perhaps the most beloved talk show host since Oprah), RuPaul Charles (who many people see as the queen of drag queens), and Anderson Cooper (who’s famous for his icy blue eyes and his long career of delivering news stories for CNN).
Michael Sam was unanimously voted All-American football player in 2013 and became the first publicly gay player to be drafted in the NFL. He was also named one of GQ’s men of the Year and was a finalist for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year award.
Many of our highlighted individuals are multitalented. Carrie Brownstein, for instance, is not only a star of the Emmy and Peabody award–winning show Portlandia, but she’s also known for her music with Sleater-Kinney; her articles with Slate, The Believer, and NPR Music; and her two books, including her memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. She’s also directing an upcoming movie called Fairy Godmother.
Dragging it up, some of our favorite pioneers include Kenny Kerr, who performed in Las Vegas, and RuPaul, whose show RuPaul’s Drag Race has won four Emmys, among other awards.
LGBTQ activists
Left to right: Audre Lord, Meridel Leseur, Adrienne Rich. (Photo By K. Kendall [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons)
We’re also proud to represent voices like Marsha P. Johnson (New Jersey), who was an integral part of the Stonewall Riots during June 1969. These riots fueled the fire for important LGBTQ organizations like the Gay Liberation Front, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
Philanthropy is a common thread in our list, with organizations like Dan Savage and Terry Miller’s It Gets Better Project.
Tim Gill (Indiana) alone has contributed over $422 million to the LGBTQ rights movement, the single largest contributor in US history.
LGBTQ politicians
(Chad Griffin - Picture from Wikimedia commons)
We found that most of the influential LGBTQ politicians lean more Democrat than Republican. However, the first openly gay senator in South Carolina, Jason Elliot, is a Republican, and he’s trying to make the party more inclusive.
Danica Roem is a journalist who became the first openly trans US state legislator.
Tammy Baldwin was the first woman elected to represent Wisconsin in the US Congress, and the fist openly gay candidate ever elected to state legislature.
Chad Griffin, a political activist hailing from Arkansas, founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights to overturn the controversial California bill Proposition 8. (This bill, you might remember, barred same-sex marriage in the state—and overturning it was a major victory on the marriage equality front.) Chad Griffin later became president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ rights organization in the US.
LGBTQ work continues
While we’ve all come a long way to more harmonious understanding of each other, there’s still much to be done, specifically in regards to representing the full spectrum of folks in the community. That means more support for homeless youth, suicide prevention, legal advocacy groups, and more.
Here are some organizations you can consider supporting:
Ali Forney Center
LGBT Books to Prisoners
Our list is filled with greats, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of prominent and influential folks who have fought and paved the way for individuals to live authentically—to live with pride instead of fear. We’d love to hear who you think is the most influential LGBTQIA+ person born in your state.
Trevor's three years deep at Reviews.org, where he writes about the things that make your home hip and cozy. Prior to that, he worked seven years in retail and e-commerce, testing and reviewing products ranging from world-class guitars and amps to designer handbags and shoes to everyday furnishings and gizmos. Influenced by art and philosophy, he views everything as part of a story and an expression of our transcendent experience.
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//Home Office
Efforts to uncover the true scale of modern slavery, expose more trafficking networks and better inform action aimed at stamping out these crimes have been boosted following news of the Government’s investment of £10 million to create a cutting-edge Policy and Evidence Centre for...
The Economic Crime Plan draws together actions designed to overhaul the Government’s approach to tackling economic crime, with greater partnering between itself, the law enforcement community and the private sector. Criminals will have “nowhere left to hide their...
The Government and the police watchdog – namely Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) – will work together to put the well-being and mental health of staff and officers at the heart of policing following a landmark review....
NAO report criticises Government for “significant and avoidable shortcomings” on approach to serious and organised crime
Serious and organised crime is evolving at a rapid rate. The Government recognises the seriousness of this challenge and is responding, but there are still significant and avoidable shortcomings to its approach, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). Tackling serious and...
Government’s Places of Worship Protective Security Fund now worth £1.6 million
The Places of Worship Protective Security Funding Scheme, which is now in its fourth year, is worth £1.6 million after the Home Secretary Sajid Javid doubled the amount available from last year in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attacks. In a further change to previous...
‘Secure by Design, Secure by Default’ scheme launched by Surveillance Camera Commissioner
Tony Porter QPM LLB, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, has launched another ‘global first’, namely ‘Secure by Design, Secure by Default’ minimum requirements for the manufacturers of surveillance camera systems and components. Several high-profile and...
Global MSC Security Conference and Exhibition 2019 to focus on ‘Ethical Use of Surveillance Technologies’
Global MSC Security has announced the theme and agenda for the 21st Edition of its Global MSC Security Conference and Exhibition (for which Risk Xtra is serving as Official Media Partner). Running on Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 November 2019 at the Bristol Hotel in central Bristol,...
Biometrics Commissioner calls for debate in wake of Home Office strategy report
The long-awaited Home Office Biometrics Strategy “is to be welcomed” as the basis for a more informed public debate on the future use of biometrics by the Home Office and its partners, suggests Biometrics Commissioner Paul Wiles, but he feels that “the strategy...
UK faces “unprecedented threat” despite decrease in terrorism-related arrests
Counter-Terrorism Policing’s senior national co-ordinator has warned the UK still faces an ‘unprecedented’ level of threat, despite arrest numbers falling in the previous 12 months. The Home Office’s quarterly release of statistics relating to the police’s use of powers under the...
Home Office allocates £35 million to police forces for Violence Reduction Units
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has provisionally allocated £35 million to Police and Crime Commissioners in 18 local areas for the purpose of setting up Violence Reduction Units. These will take a multi-agency approach, bringing together police, local Government, health services,...
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Agent Carter Season 2 episode 9 review: ‘A Little Song And Dance’
Find out what we thought of ‘A Little Song And Dance’
Jennifer Getzinger
Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters (story), Chris Dingess (teleplay)
Hayley Atwell, James D'Arcy, Enver Gjokaj Lotte Verbeek, Wynn Everett, Chad Michael Murray, Ken Marino, Bridget Regan, Lyndsy Fonseca
Tensions are high and emotions are aplenty in the latest instalment of Agent Carter’s second season, ‘A Little Song And Dance’. With just one episode to go until the end of the season (or maybe even the entire series), the drama of the first eight episodes has finally unravelled into a hot mess of epic proportions. Peggy (Hayley Atwell) and Mr Jarvis (James D’Arcy) may have managed to escape capture in record time, but there’s still the terrible business of sorting out what got them captured in the first place.
With Whitney Frost (Wynn Everett) determined to take all of Jason Wilkes’ (Reggie Austin) Zero Matter for herself, the SSR are still stuck with the task of recapturing and subduing her. But when Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) starts to turn on the rest of his team, adamant that the gamma cannon is the only thing that will work against their enemy, Peggy, Mr Jarvis and Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) find themselves with more than just Frost and Zero Matter to worry about.
In the grand scheme of things, ‘A Little Song And Dance’ is just another episode. We’re at that tricky stage where it’s too late into the mystery for shits and giggles, but we’re not far enough for real butt-clenching drama and action. With one episode to go, we’re being set up for the grand finale. What elevates the episode from ‘meh’ to ‘ooh!’, however, is the opening scene. It’s a dream sequence, but that’s not all it is. It’s, quite literally, a little song and dance, and it’s spectacular.
After being knocked out cold with Mr Jarvis in the back of Frost’s cronies’ van, Peggy is transported (in her mind) to a world of Hollywood glitz and glamour. Sousa sings. Mr Jarvis dances. Peggy takes her place centre stage for a musical number about her distracting Season 2 love interests. Even Angie Martinelli (Lyndsy Fonseca) makes her first appearance since ‘Valediction‘ to belt out an extremely tuneful solo in her blue and yellow Automat uniform. It’s all enormous fun, and it kind of makes us yearn for a full-length Agent Carter musical. It’s unfortunate that the best scene of the episode, maybe even the whole season, is right at the start. Everything else is slightly dull in comparison. But oh well. There’s still time for the finale to match it.
Tags: Agent Carter
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8 Things to Know About the Surprise Women’s College Cross-Country Champion
Yes, Karissa Schweizer does work on her finishing kick, which propelled her to an upset national title.
By John A. Kissane
Kirby Lee/Image of Sport
Halfway through Saturday’s NCAA cross country championships, Missouri junior Karissa Schweizer was feeling strong. Never mind temperatures in the 30s and the wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour. Or an unexpectedly fast pace on the challenging LaVern Gibson cross-country course outside Terre Haute, Indiana.
Schweizer, 20, was an unexpected presence near the lead. At 4K of the 6K race, she sat fourth, behind Notre Dame’s Anna Rohrer, favorite Erin Finn of Michigan, and Sharon Lokedi of Kansas. A quarter mile later, the real racing began.
“When we got to 5K, they made a hard move,” Schweizer said in a phone call with Runner’s World from her parents’ home in Urbandale, Iowa. “It was definitely hard to respond to that, and I started letting them go a little bit. And I remember thinking at that point, ‘Top five, that’s what you wanted and that’s what your coach talked about. You could easily settle for top five.’ But then we entered that home stretch and a whole other thought entered my head. I was like, ‘I’m just going to catch as many as I can.’”
With 400 meters remaining, Rohrer led but was being caught by Finn. At the same time Schweizer, hitting top speed, began gaining on the leading pair. To the surprise of almost everyone, Schweizer went right by Rohrer and past a surprised Finn before crossing the line in 19:41.6. Missouri had its first female national champion in program history.
Here’s how it happened:
1. Schweizer was snubbed before the race started.
Although she won four races this fall, including the SEC championships and the Midwest regional, and she was third at the 5,000 meters at the outdoor track championships last June, Schweizer received little attention before the race. The final Flotrack rankings that came out the week before nationals did have her fifth, but otherwise she was overlooked. She was not one of six top women invited to participate in the premeet press conference the day before the meet, something that put a bit of a chip on her shoulder.
“Our program has been flying under the radar, so we’re used to it,” said Missouri coach Marc Burns. “And I love using that as motivation. I asked Karissa how she felt about not getting invited to the press conference and she said, ‘I don’t know, I feel maybe I should be in there.’ And I was like ‘Yeah, I kind of feel that way too. Why don’t you go show them tomorrow why you should have been in there.’ And she said ‘Yeah, that’s cool. Let’s do that.’”
2. She’s got the genes for it.
A 2014 graduate of Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines, Schweizer grew up in a family of runners. Her parents, Mike and Kathy, were both standouts at Minnesota State-Mankato. Minnesota State is also the alma mater of Karissa’s grandfather, Frank Schweizer, who in the early 1960s earned All-American honors in cross country and track and eventually coached at Dowling for 42 years before retiring in 2008. Karissa’s two siblings, Ryan, a freshman at Notre Dame and Kelsey, a sophomore at Dowling, are also strong runners. Ryan Schweizer was an eight-time state champion at Dowling while Kelsey improved on Karissa’s high school bests at 400 meters and 800 meters.
3. She was undertrained in high school.
A low mileage runner in high school, Schweizer had the type of background Burns favors. He tells it best: “Even though the Schweizers are a running family and she started running pretty early, her parents didn’t let her run a whole lot and had her playing every sport in the book,” he said. “What she may lack in hand-eye coordination she more than made up by being smart and just an uber-competitive kid on the playing field. Her parents did a really nice job slowly building her up. She started off running 400s and 800s in track and then finally ran some 3Ks her last year but mostly she ran the 800 and 1500 in high school.”
Schweizer ran in the range of 40 to 55 miles per week her first year in Columbia and has gradually worked up to 60 to 75 along with supplemental cross training. “I know that to be great you’ve got to run a lot of miles and put in a lot of work, and hit those marquee workouts here and there,” Burns said. “But not before you’re ready to do them. So I think it’s been important that we’ve taken a lot of time in slowly bumping her miles up. That’s allowed her to stay healthy.”
4. She’s worked hard on her form.
During Schweizer’s first two years in Columbia, the coaching staff paid a lot of attention to her running mechanics. “At the end of races, as she got tired, she would cock her head to one side,” Burns said. “And one hand would kind of curl in, almost like a claw, and swing across her body. The third thing was that she would overstride down the homestretch. She was really struggling her freshman year, getting beat down the stretch by people.”
So they showed Schweizer video so she could see what she looked like and what they had to fix. “We’d have Karissa consciously focus on keeping her head and posture correct, staying tall,” Burns said. “The biggest thing for her was feeling that track being pulled underneath her. It’s taken time, but by the end of last outdoor season we saw a huge difference in how she was transitioning, the last 800 meters of a 5K or the last 600 meters of a mile. You’d see her get up on the balls of her feet, get a little bit taller. Her head straight, everything staying linear. She was getting after it but moving in the right direction, not side to side.”
5. She works on her speed every week.
The Missouri team focuses on strength-oriented workouts during the cross-country season, with long tempo runs and hills. But they never neglect speed and turnover. “We always end workouts with some faster stuff, 100s, 150s, 200s at mile race pace or below,” Burns said. “I just think cross country kids need to sprint, even when they’re at high mileage volume. So at least once every week we’ll do efficiency work and some sprinting.”
They also do circuit and mobility training, with drills like speed ladders to work on quick feet. They follow that up with six to eight bursts of 60 to 80 meters, as fast as they can go. “That has really helped Karissa, and it was pretty cool to see her access it in the most important moment on Saturday,” Burns said.
6. Her coach didn’t even know she had won.
When Schweizer started unleashing her final kick, Burns was 300 meters out from the finish. He didn’t actually see Schweizer cross the line and couldn’t hear the loud speaker. So he called his wife who was watching online. “Karissa was still 20 or 30 meters back when they ran past, but she looked good and was gaining,” Burns said. “And when I realized she had won...oh my God, it was amazing.”
7. She improved 32.2 seconds in five weeks at the 6K distance.
Schweizer’s final four races of the 2016 season got progressively faster. On October 15 at Pre-Nationals, on the same course where the national meet was held, she ran 20:13.9 to finish fourth, well behind Finn who won in 19:44.7. Two weeks later Schweizer cruised to an easy win at the SEC championships, where she ran 20:10.6 to finish eight seconds up on Devin Clark of Arkansas. And at the Midwest regional on November 11, in a battle with Kansas All-American Sharon Lokedi of Kenya, Schweizer pulled away and won in 19:54.4.
Despite the tough conditions at nationals last Saturday, Finn managed to trim 0.4 seconds off her Pre-Nationals time by running 19:44.3. But Schweizer did far better, lopping more than 30 seconds off her previous best on the course en route to her win in 19:41.6.
8. She and her grandfather share a special bond through running.
Although her entire family has been integral to Schweizer’s running success, she has always turned to her grandfather when in need of advice or a confidence boost. And no one has been a bigger fan than the former collegiate standout and retired coach, Frank Schweizer. “When he saw me win [in Terre Haute] he started tearing up a bit, and it was really a special moment for me to have him there,” Schweizer said. “He’s been a great support throughout my whole running career. I’d call him to talk before every race, and I still do to this day.”
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Werner Herzog, chicken hypnotist
A new memoir details a screenwriter's strange dealings with the enigmatic director on the set of "Heart of Glass"
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2012/08/28/werner_herzog_chicken_hypnotist/
Paul Cullum
August 29, 2012 12:54AM (UTC)
This article originally appeared on the L.A. Review of Books.
"The enormity of their flat brain, the enormity of their stupidity, is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor when you’re out in the countryside and you see a chicken: Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing. By the way, it’s very easy to hypnotize a chicken; they are very prone to hypnosis, and in one or two films I have actually shown that.”
This brief monologue from a video directed by Siri Bunford (who has done at least one KFC commercial) encapsulates much of what we associate with Werner Herzog: His instinctive distrust of nature (including human nature) as a cruel and brutal aggressor; the enigmatic quality of his private obsessions; and the dogmatic certitude with which he expresses them, often bordering on the comical. All three are most memorably on display in the Les Blank documentary Burden of Dreams, about the torturous making of Fitzcarraldo (and rendered in brilliant self-parody in Zack Penn’s mock documentaryIncident at Loch Ness), but they’re always present — whether in the bug-eyed tyranny of Klaus Kinski, or in the long line of everyman eccentrics and dreamers the director uses to hold a mirror up to nature — taking comfort in the reflection of himself he finds there.
Herzog does in fact hypnotize chickens — in Signs of Life, his first feature (soldiers in an isolated garrison descend into madness) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (aka Every Man for Himself and God Against All: an insular visionary, raised in isolation, is assimilated into a small town before being mysteriously murdered). They also make memorable cameos in Stroszek (a dancing chicken in an arcade novelty bears witness to the final carnage) and especially Even Dwarfs Started Small, where they peck out one another’s eyes, parade about with trophy mice in their beaks and use the cover of social chaos to cannibalize their fallen comrades. Not to mention Heart of Glass, the subject of a new memoir by screenwriter-photographer-documentarian Alan Greenberg cryptically titled Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass — although the animal in question, clutched by the village idiot in a crowded pub — may be more duck than chicken.
Published as a production diary under the eponymous title Heart of Glass at the time of the film’s 1976 release, Greenberg’s text has now been revised with the benefit of hindsight, if not an overflowing character bible to crib from: His protagonist easily dovetails with our image of a director who is routinely shot at during interviews and pulls Joaquin Phoenix to safety from his overturned vehicle, and whose most commercially successful film is about Timothy Treadwell, a would-be filmmaker who befriends wild Alaskan bears at his own peril. This handsome Chicago Press Review edition intersperses Greenberg’s essay with his unpublished photos and Herzog’s original screenplay, which occupies roughly 75 pages of the 200-page book, and they share authorship. Herzog’s stories, explanations and unprovoked opinions included therein can also be found in competing versions on the commentary track of the Heart of Glass DVD, throughout the Paul Cronin-edited Faber and Faber volume Herzog on Herzog and from the director himself, if you ask him, as I have on occasion.
“To be frank, I had hesitation about the book Heart of Glass, because I did not like the tone of adulation toward me,” Herzog writes in an Afterword, implicitly endorsing this more nuanced portrait. “As I gaze at events and persons who are like a distant echo, I myself do not recognize the young man I used to be.”
Heart of Glass remains Herzog’s one defiantly enigmatic film — it’s impossible to escape the word — falling historically between Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek. Both starred Bruno S. (nee Schleinstein), the street musician and actor who died two years ago, who was mistakenly institutionalized for much of his childhood, and whose somnambulant screen presence seems extended here to virtually the entire cast. When the foreman of a glassworks in a small Bavarian village dies with the secret of its signature “ruby glass,” knowledge that is essential to both the town’s livelihood and identity, its residents are soon pitched over into despair and madness, culminating in a fire set by its owner that engulfs the now-idle factory. When a cowherd and mystic named Hias (short for Matthias, and based on one or more 18th Century Bavarian mystics) predicts these events, he is attacked and imprisoned by the villagers.
Working from a loose, impressionistic script partially based on a chapter in the novel The Hour of Death by German filmmaker and painter Herbert Achternbusch (who plays the Bavarian Chicken Hypnotizer in Kaspar Hauser), Herzog’s highly improvisational strategy produces numerous moments that might seem intentionally absurd: An old man who has been seated in the same chair for 12 years finally rises to witness the fire, only to find that he has misplaced his shoes. A man kills his best friend in a drunken brawl, then retrieves the body to dance with it. A dead girl is sequestered in a closet where a harpist serenades her corpse (a gag that almost seems lifted from Woody Allen’s Bananas). The village idiot cradles the aforementioned duck-chicken hybrid in a crowded pub as a disembodied arm and outstretched index finger emerge from beyond the frame to form a spindle, on which she spins in place. Even the dialogue is so fraught with inadvertent poetry as to tempt the ridiculous: “Glass has a fragile soul. It is unstained. A crack is the Sin; after the Sin, there is no sound.” Or the more concise “the chaos of the stars makes my head ache.” Yeah, me too, pal.
And yet what seems absurd on the page is often tragic, even operatic on screen. This may be attributed in large part to the director’s decision to hypnotize his entire cast, save for the glassblowers working with temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (it proving too dangerous) and Hias the cryptic seer, whose proclamations represent a clarifying light in a thick cotton of fog. That is to say, Herzog’s casting process consisted primarily of putting ads in German newspapers, screening respondents for susceptibility and stability and then using the power of suggestion to sculpt performances out of trance-borne civilians. Comparing hypnosis to acupuncture — a mechanical procedure whose physical explanation eludes us but whose application is straightforward — Herzog initially worked with a professional hypnotist bearing the positively Nabokovian name of Thorwald Dethlefsen (which Greenberg initially hears as “death lesson”), and who he fires early on for the crime of “New Age babble.” (Certain aspects of the hypnotist’s behavior reportedly made it into Tim Roth’s characterization of Erik Jan Hanussen, “Hitler’s Jewish mystic,” in Invincible.)
Herzog himself then took over the role of hypnotist and claims to have gotten so good at it that by the end of the production, he could transition his actors from one state to the other in 15 seconds, and was forced to adopt an artificial voice when giving instructions to the crew, lest the entire cast try to follow them automatically. After screening his features Fata Morgana and Aguirre, Wrath of God for audiences whom he had placed under hypnosis, which convinced him he could tap directly into his actors’ subconscious, he briefly considered adding a prologue in which he would hypnotize the theater audience directly from the screen, before abandoning the idea as profoundly irresponsible.
What he lacked in technique, he made up for in the quality of his suggestion, surreptitiously setting a bar that even the most humble subject labored to surpass. Encouraging a man who cleaned the police stables to create an imaginary poem, he gave these instructions:
“You are on a foreign island, the first who has set foot on the island in centuries. It is overgrown now with jungles, butterflies, strange birds singing, and you are walking through the jungle and you come across a gigantic cliff. And upon closer inspection, this entire escarpment is made completely of emeralds, [where] a holy monk hundreds of years ago spent his whole life with a chisel and a hammer scratching a poem into the walls. It’s hard like diamond; it took all his life to engrave only three lines in a poem. Please open your eyes and you will see it; you will be the first one to see it, and you will read it to me.” When the man protested he didn’t have his glasses, Herzog encouraged him to move closer and he would be able to read it. His poem began: “Why can’t we drink the moon? Why is there no vessel to hold it?”
I’d like to get that as a tattoo.
Credit: Alan Greenberg
Dispelling the notion that hypnosis can compel its subjects to violate their principles, or even to always speak truthfully (it is not accepted in any court in the world), Herzog argues that rather than circumscribe the actors or make them easier to control, it actually expands the bounds of possibility:
“The story of a village community in Bavaria that walks straight into a foreseen and foretold disaster, almost like a community of sleepwalkers, needed a specific stylization,” he argues in the Afterword. Memory and imagination function better under hypnosis; language is more formal and stylized. He extends this trance state even to the act of directing, claiming he often worked whole days without remembering anything about them, “as if I had been at a drunken party and somehow got home without being aware of it.”
“Chance is the lifeblood of cinema,” he announces elsewhere.
The result is a film in which everyone moves as if underwater and speaks in David Byrne or REM lyrics. Herzog cites two films in particular as direct influences: Morley Markson’s The Tragic Diary of Zero the Fool, which stars a theater troupe from a lunatic asylum in Canada, and Jean Rouch’s Les Maitres Fou, where Ghanian laborers ingest a hallucinogenic potion and reenact the arrival of the British royals, and in fact the film seems like nothing so much as some bastard union of the Wooster Group and Cheech and Chong.
Much has been made of the influence of Aguirre, Wrath of God on Francis Coppola’sApocalypse Now — the madness in the jungle that subsumes characters and filmmakers alike, as well as the repetition of specific images (a helicopter and a boat suspended in trees, visible from the river; or the final image in Aguirre of monkeys swarming over a deserted ship, repeated with the abandoned sampan in the latter and visible in bootlegged outtakes). But the much larger influence may come from Heart of Glass — in the intentional derangement of the senses of Capt. Willard in his hotel room (Martin Sheen films the scene drunk and famously cuts his hand badly while punching a mirror), or in the excruciatingly deliberate rhythms of the Kurtz compound scenes and Brando’s weird, glistening improv dialogue (“…like I was shot by a diamond bullet right through my forehead”), which he claims in his autobiography was the deepest into character he ever traveled. In Herzog’s hands, hypnosis becomes one more investigation into his famed ecstatic truth to be found in the untrammeled byways of extreme experience.
Greenberg makes a momentary appearance in Heart of Glass — presumably un-hypnotized — as one of half a dozen figures chosen to carry the remains of the ruby glass to market, appearing alongside Herzog and a cross-section of his closest friends, many of them now long gone.
“And so many others died,” the director says in the final paragraph of the book. “At night the trees disappear. I hear them speak in the book. I see them all back alive and full of enthusiasm, following me on a wild project which stands alone among so many other wild enterprises of my life.”
Greenberg is one of those filmmakers — like Les Blank, Errol Morris, and Harmony Korine — who periodically pass within Herzog’s orbit and emerge bearing his stamp of approval. His 1982 documentary Land of Look Behind set out to capture the funeral of his friend Bob Marley at the invitation of his family, but charted a parallel leisurely walkabout through Cockpit Country and Trelawney Parish, the daunting “District Known by the Name of Look Behind,” as it’s designated on maps, where sinkholes and sudden cliffs lurk around every blind corner and wild forces gather. It also contains long uninterrupted monologues from the likes of Mutabaruka and Gregory Isaacs that seem to bear an influence on Herzog’s subsequent American-based TV documentaries on the likes of evangelist Dr. Gene Scott (God’s Angry Man) and Brooklyn Pentecostal preacher Bishop Huie Rogers (Huie’s Sermon). Land of Look Behind was shot by Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein, the cinematographer on 18 Herzog films, including Heart of Glass and La Soufriere a year later, in which the pair scaled a live volcano on the island of Guadaloupe that was set to erupt, in the world’s largest game of Russian Roulette. Greenberg has also worked with Martin Scorsese and Bernardo Bertolucci, worked on early drafts of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde and his unproduced script for Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnston was published by Da Capo Press.
It may be that any book on a single film has its secret virtues, the close reading for once matching the filmmaking effort in time and intensity. Nor is it necessary that the film in question be particularly good: De Palma’s herniated Bonfire of the Vanities produced Julie Salomon’s cautionary tale The Devil’s Candy; Michael Cimino’s sprawling Heaven’s Gatespawned Stephen Bach’s Final Cut (written by the executive who actually oversaw its profligacy); and John Huston’s arguably stillborn The Red Badge of Courage produced the first classic of the genre, Lillian Ross’s Picture. And unlike novelizations or making-ofs, if the original is a classic, the nonfiction prose account often seems just added value, as evidenced by Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log, Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and (for all its controversy and crankiness) Pauline Kael’s The Citizen Kane Book, not to mention practically anything in the BFI series. The fact that Greenberg is a careful and inspired writer only adds to the enterprise.
Greenberg met Herzog at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, where the director recognized in him an incendiary mix of idealism and recklessness and quickly pressed him into service, telling him, “There’s work to be done — and we will do it well.” Two days later, this had somehow mutated into, “You, too, will be held accountable.” Very quickly, as captured in a breathless, downhill prose, the chaos of filmmaking soon becomes inseparable from the vortex of the filmmaker, around which everything else circles and seems in danger of disappearing into. The result, at least as recounted in this single, oddly fashioned production cycle, seems as animated and hyperbolic as anything in the Hunter S. Thompson canon, for example.
The narrative account is so overflowing with readymade omens and portents as to border on science-fiction: It begins with a pigeon flying into the author’s head and ends with the director bent over a lamb crushed beneath the wheel of his car, prepared to cut its throat like Abraham was Isaac, only to watch it snap to and bound away across an open field, “Munich rumbling from a distant earthquake.” In-between, there are bloody lamb placentas, burning cows, shattered mirrors, whirlwinds, fornicating horses (interrupted by young girls dressed as angels), monstrous pigs, hornless deer, a hound with one red ear and a stag that bolts in front of their car. Like the ruby glass, with its suggestions of rose-colored glasses, glass houses, ruby slippers — even the blood of a virgin, to the mad factory owner who murders his housekeeper and destroys the glassworks by conflagration — there is meaning everywhere, none of it grounded in anything.
You could spend your whole life making films — and Herzog himself has tried — and not invent a character as complex or endearing as Werner Herzog. Born in Munich in late 1942 just as the war was preparing to turn, Herzog was spirited to the small mountain village of Sachrang on the Austrian border two months after his birth when a bomb obliterated the house next door. (Heart of Glass may well be the director’s most autobiographical film — the title in German, “Herz aus Glas,” sounds like “Herzog’s Glass,” and it was filmed in the Bavarian countryside of his youth, with Bavarian yodeling and medieval string music, and the actors speaking in Bavarian dialect.) There he grew up in pronounced isolation — he saw his first movie at 11 and made his first phone call at 17 — presumably free from the exfoliating irony he still professes to be incapable of recognizing. He once entertained himself in the hospital for a week with a single thread pulled from a blanket, and given a piece of chewing gum by a conquering GI, chewed it consistently for the next eight months.
This kind of free-floating obsessiveness could, for example, allow someone to create a 30-second shot, seen in the opening montage of naturalist tableaux, of mountain fog flowing like a river, which took 11 days to shoot, a frame at a time. In fact, one of the pristine joys of this book is measuring the mythology of the filmmaker, much of it no doubt self-generated, against the demands of working with real-world consequences, a talent he has obviously mastered. This is, after all, a man who surmised after his first meeting with would-be Hollywood financiers that such people would waste his life, and he never pursued the illusion of easy money again — a lesson that most filmmakers never learn.
“A man who is a coward with his body is a coward with his mind as well,” says Herzog in one of his many asides — if staunch declarations can be termed asides — seconds before he descends into the treacherous Via Mala gorge carrying a heavy Arriflex camera. Repeatedly, Herzog is the first into any dangerous or difficult situation — operating a second camera at the edge of a burning building, carrying a heavy piece of furniture back downstairs after every take — as well as an inadvertent lightning rod for incipient chaos. On their first location scout, Herzog and his production manager-cum-enforcer Walter Saxer, who we see later shrieking with delight as a fisherman’s daughter stoves in the head of a huge pike, leave Greenberg in the van at a local apartment complex, motor running, while they grab two rifles out of the back for a chat with a producer who owes them money. They drive a recalcitrant actor back into town, only to pull over at a scenic overlook, the director telling his fixer, “OK, Walter, this is going to look like an accident.” And in a scene reminiscent of a famous anecdote from Even Dwarfs Started Small, Herzog offers to swim across a river and back underneath the ice if his cast will tolerate a rare fourth take. He steals shots in a cemetery by posing his crew as a grieving funeral procession; elicits a taped confession from Clemens Scheitz, the old man from Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek, by dressing his soundman up as a priest; and refuses a fisherman’s demand of $200 to row them 10 miles to a nearby island, then gets the man’s brother to do it for $40. By the time Greenberg treks through snowy wastes barefoot, having lost his shoes just to get a shot, the demand seems quite reasonable.
But on occasion, flashes of something darker show through, insinuating a private logic which often imprisons those of less hearty stock:
Without provocation, Herzog launches into tirades on St. Nicholas, cannibalism, the coming media plague, a 15-minute Hamlet (two years before Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet hit Broadway) and Zorn’s lemma, a mathematical proposition I couldn’t begin to explain to you. On the island of Crete filming Signs of Life, he spent four hours under his bed convinced fighter jets had mounted an attack against him, in an incident that may or may not have occurred. Watching for a road sign for the small Bavarian town of Thusis, Herzog becomes so violently overcome with an irrational dread that he is forced to run into an open field for the emotion to abate. “I don’t think it’s very healthy,” he says recounting the story later. “This will come to a bad end.”
“Herzog must ground himself,” his set designer observes. “He must not stray. Or else, like the Americans, he’ll become abstract.”
Herzog is that most entertaining brand of intellectual — Norman Mailer and Camille Paglia come to mind — whose autodidacticism and breathtaking scope of interests all seem merely the long way home to self-discovery, like sailing to Catalina and then China and Africa beyond just to get to La Cienega. The Bavarian landscapes in this film merge seamlessly with locations in Alaska, Yellowstone, Monument Valley and the western coast of Ireland because he can summon them from memory. He may be one of the most widely traveled individuals ever — jungles, deserts, mountains, the South Pole, all seven continents — and yet it’s the same journey many writers and thinkers make without leaving their study: Boring through the caprock of the cerebral cortex to see what mineral strains and noble gases are trapped there within its marbled fissures.
“Everything goes into him,” his mother says on the set, recalling his odd, insular childhood. “If it comes out, it comes out transformed.”
As a final coda, the film switches to Great Skellig Island, a sheer crag rising out of the Atlantic at one of the westernmost points of Ireland, for the cowherd’s final vision. In voiceover, he tells us the island was once inhabited by a race of men so removed from the world around them that they still believe the world was flat. After years of gazing out to sea, the boldest among them expresses doubts. Eventually, he is joined by others. They set out, “pathetic and senseless, in a boat that is far too small,” to see if there really is an abyss. The final line of the film, and the most enigmatic because it hangs there stenciled on a horizonless sky, tells us, “It may have seemed like a sign of hope that the birds followed them out into the vastness of the sea.” What Greenberg contributes to the tale is that the residents of Great Skellig Island were 7th century Benedictine monks who had gone there for a better view of the Apocalypse, and their vigil was cut short when Vikings threw them into the sea.
Following Herzog to that final perilous summit, Greenberg chooses this moment to ask his mentor, “What do you think of the auteur theory?” As the ocean wind whips his words away, he has to repeat the question several times. It turns out the director has never heard of it.
“Film is not the art of scholars but illiterates,” Herzog declares at one point. “Movies come from the country fair and circus, not from art and academicism.” Elsewhere, he confides to his protege, “Only ugly runts like us create the beautiful things.”
Yet it remains the glassblowers and the seer — the technicians and the visionary — who ultimately refuse to sleepwalk through the film, even as the villagers cling to their stupor and the financier’s madness makes their catastrophe inevitable. Those who pursue their vision, even at great peril or fortified with the anodyne of hope, ultimately have no choice; they are cursed with clarity. Take comfort in those that follow you.
“I’ve been hurting since I bought the gimmick about something called love,” says Iggy Pop in “Lust for Life,” written with David Bowie in April 1977, a year after Heart of Glass, holed up in a studio in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and consciously channeling William Burroughs’s Dr. Benway in The Ticket That Exploded, a blanket indictment of all the Control Addicts who willingly fall for the striptease of liquor, drugs, sex, advertising and all the other misdirection and carny spiel designed to keep us entranced, himself included. “Well, that's like hypnotizing chickens.”
In Heart of Glass’s penultimate sequence, the one preceding the Great Skellig Island scene, Hias is credited by his cellmate, the mad factory owner, with possessing the heart of glass of the title. But Herzog himself is not so sure.
“If Hias does have this heart of glass, it means that he is translucent,” he says. “It means that he cannot associate in a warm way with other people because, as a seer, or as one who looks over and through such things, he has to keep some distance from them. And that makes him very lonely. He doesn’t have many human relations.”
Hias is released from jail and leaves the village. He repairs to a cave in the woods, where he wrestles with an invisible bear that only he can see. When asked in the DVD commentary what this sequence means, the director is for once strangely without an opinion: “I can’t explain,” he says finally.
To offer a bit of regional folk wisdom gleaned from growing up in a hardscrabble land: “Some days you get the bear; some days the bear gets you.” Timothy Treadwell would be the first to tell you that. Life is struggle, with about a fifty percent success rate. Get out ahead of the zero, bring more than you take, and that’s a pretty good life. Werner Herzog may not be able to articulate that principle when it claws its way out of his subconscious. But he’s a poster child for it.
More Los Angeles Review of Books
Shoshana Olidort on "The People of Forever Are Not Afraid"
Words are not enough
Shoshana Olidort August 27, 2012
"Erika and Envy" by Diana Wagman
Certain things get heated on Facebook
Diana Wagman August 25, 2012
Paul Cullum is a writer living in Los Angeles.
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Give to Softball!
Roanoke Mini Camps
Moyer Complex
Moyer Sports Complex
The City of Salem-built Moyer Sports Complex is the home of the Roanoke softball team. The field is about one mile from campus and in the early 1990s cost $10 million to build. The Complex has been the home of the Maroons softball team since its inception in 1997. The complex is not only home to the Maroons, but also to the NCAA Division II and III Softball Regional and National Tournaments. Recently, the facility has also hosted the Big East and Big South conference tournaments. The Maroons do benefit from the facility also hosting the ODAC Championship tournament as well.
Roanoke softball has won all eight of their league titles in the facility. The team has also hosted three NCAA Regional tournaments and played in the 2000 NCAA championship series at Moyer. The Moyer Sports Complex features four regulation-size softball fields, all of which are lit for play at night. The Maroons have posted a 241-66 record while playing at home since the start of the program in 1997. Moyer has seen some fantastic Roanoke softball teams come through including the 20-0 undefeated home record season in 2000 and when the softball team compiled a 21-2 record in 2006 at home.
Most recently the Moyer Sports Complex was the host of the 2012 NCAA DIII Softball World Series where the Maroons finished in fourth place in the nation while playing in this tournament. This team shocked the DIII softball world by only playing with twelve girls throughout the season and were dubbed the “dirty dozen.”
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Fact or Fiction: Not All U.S. State Require Unanimous Verdicts in Criminal Trials
Posted on June 25, 2019 by Mary Mock - Law
According to TV shows, all criminal convictions require unanimous guilty verdicts from all 12 jurors, right? Actually …. no. As of 2019 Oregon is the lone holdout.
In 49 U.S. states and the federal court system, a 12-0 guilty vote is needed to convict in criminal court. But Oregon permits convictions (for felonies other than murder) on a 10-2 or 11-1 vote of the jury.
The Oregon legislature is considering a constitutional amendment that would require a unanimous jury for a conviction. The voters would also need to approve it via referendum.
Some district attorneys oppose requiring unanimous verdicts in Oregon, arguing that its main effect would be to increase hung juries, requiring the state to spend more on retrials and forcing victims of crime to relive their traumas a second time.
Many supporters of unanimous verdicts argue that nonunanimous juries were permitted for racist reasons. They claim that in nonunanimous juries minority viewpoints on the jury are more easily ignored, which can lead to more wrongful convictions.
One African-American defendant in Oregon recently argued that because only about 2 percent of Oregonians are black, nonunanimous juries silence African-American jurors without actually excluding them.
Oregon’s history appears to lend some credence to that theory. Did you know that In 1844, all black people were ordered to get out of what was then Oregon Country? And when Oregon entered the Union in 1859 — it did so as a “whites-only” state. The original state constitution banned slavery, but also excluded nonwhites from living there.
Oregon adopted its nonunanimous jury system in 1934 after the high-profile trial of Jacob Silverman for the murder of James Walker. Silverman was Jewish. In the 1930s, waves of Jewish and Catholic immigrants arrived in the United States. The immigration led to a resurgence in Ku Klux Klan activity, including in Oregon. One of Silverman’s 12 jurors held out for his innocence, and the jury returned a compromise verdict of manslaughter.
In response to the Silverman verdict, Oregon’s largest newspaper wrote that “the vast immigration into America from southern and eastern Europe, of people untrained in the jury system, have combined to make the jury of 12 increasingly unwieldy and unsatisfactory.” The newspaper also took aim at ethnic jurors, bemoaning “mixed-blood” jurors and lamented the role that some immigrants played on juries, questioning their “sense of responsibility” and “views on crime and punishment.”
Image Source: washingtonpost.com
Oregon may be the last state with nonunanimous criminal juries, but Louisiana only abolished them via referendum in 2018. According to Innocence Project New Orleans, 13 of the 57 Louisianans who have been exonerated—and the only person exonerated by the Oregon Innocence Project—were convicted by nonunanimous juries.
Are nonunanimous state juries constitutional? In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear Apodaca v. Oregon – the case of three men convicted of felonies by non-unanimous juries in Oregon. A four-justice plurality held that there is no constitutional right to a unanimous jury verdict in state-level criminal cases and that Oregon’s law doesn’t violate due process.
Image Source: nola.com
What do you think? Should all criminal convictions in all states require unanimous juries? Or is that bar simply too high and too difficult, allowing the guilty to go unpunished?
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September 25, 2012 5:00PM ET
Premiere: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, ‘Walk Like a Giant’
Rockers remain off camera in their new video
RS Charts: Post Malone, Young Thug Take Number One Spot on Top 100
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Neil Young and Crazy Horse fans, your nearly decade-long wait for new material is finally over. Here is the premiere of their video for “Walk Like a Giant.” No member of the band actually appears in this video. Instead, it’s footage of giants of history (real and imagined) like Bigfoot, Albert Einstein and the Atomic bomb. The song is over 16 minutes on the album, but they’ve shaved it down to under five for the video. It’s one of six new songs that Neil Young and Crazy Horse debuted last month on tour. The album hits shelves on October 30th. It’s just eight songs long, but some of them are so long it’s a double album. The tour resumes in early October and runs through December.
In This Article: Neil Young, Neil Young and Crazy Horse
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Pettit resigns as Portland boys basketball coach
By Chris ZadoroznySentinel Staff616-546-4271
After 13 years of coaching basketball for Portland High School, Dave Pettit has stepped down as the boys varsity basketball coach.
He announced his resignation on Wednesday, May 1, effective immediately and cited a growing family, as the reason.
“My daughter Lindsey is expecting our first grandchild in late November and that really sealed the deal for me,” Pettit said. “She helps with the varsity girls basketball program in Frankfort and I thought it would be nice to able to head up north on some weekends in the winter time.”
Pettit spent three years as the junior varsity coach before coaching the varsity team for the past 10 years. That included coaching both of his sons, Brett and Bryant.
“I had great kids throughout my time and had the privilege of coaching both of my boys during my career as well. I was able to work with Kevin (Veale) for all of my time there as well and we had a very good relationship and that will continue on.”
Veale, the Portland Athletic Director, said Kevin will be missed.
“We appreciate all of his time, commitment and dedication to the basketball program over the last decade plus and wish him the best,” Veale said. “He always put the kids first and was fun to work with. I am happy to say he has become and will remain a friend.”
The search for a new boys varsity basketball coach will begin immediately.
— Contact Sports Editor Chris Zadorozny at chris.zadorozny@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelZads.
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South Tyrolean energy
All-round assistance
Strong together
Welcome Member benefits Exercising influence – in South Tyrol, Rome and in Europe
Exercising influence – in South Tyrol, Rome and in Europe
SEV represents the interests of its members. This lobbying works: in spring 2013 SEV presented its energy concept (“The Second Way”) to promote “co-operation instead of confrontation” in South Tyrol. One year later the provincial administration set up (as SEV had been requesting for years) an “energy panel” where representatives of SEV could meet on an equal footing with decision-makers from the local energy sector.
Practical work and concept development: SEV holds talks with the government and deputies in Rome. International networks are indispensable in the energy sector. In May 2014, therefore, SEV joined the European Association of Independent Electricity and Gas Distribution Companies (GEODE). The GEODE Federation covers 1,200 energy suppliers in 13 different countries, serving 100 million customers.
SEV of course also represents district heating plant operators. SEV is a member of
FIPER, the Italian Federation of Renewable Energy Producers (Federazione italiana produttori di energia da fonti rinnovabili), with Hanspeter Fuchs of SEV serving as deputy chairman.
A voice that is heard
EVME
FIPER
RESCOOP.EU
SEV has a capable voice that is heard well beyond regional boundaries and has since its inception taken part in decision-making at European level, including as a member of the European Association of Medium-Sized Energy Companies (EVME),
founded in 2008. In spring 2014 Rudi Rienzner, Managing Director of the South Tyrol Energy Association, was appointed a “mentor” of the pan-European REScoop.eu project (REScoop = Renewable Energy Sources COOPerative).
REScoop.eu has since 2012 been bringing together enterprises, research institutions and associations. The project aims to promote the co-operative use of renewable energy in Europe and enable cross-border exchanges of know-how.
The Transatlantic Energy Cooperatives Alliance (TECA) was founded in May 2017. The merger was initiated by European and US energy cooperatives: the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC), which supplies 161,000 customers with electricity in the US state of Virginia, and the South Tyrol Energy Association .
The aim is for TECA to expand in the coming years into a broad platform for the exchange of transatlantic experiences. Framework conditions will be established in Europe and the USA to facilitate the work of energy cooperatives, with the further possibility of a service structure involving activities on both continents.
There are also surprising parallels between the history of energy supply in the United States and South Tyrol. The first energy cooperatives came about in the 1920s between the Brenner Pass in the north and Salurn in the south; examples such as Prad or Villnöss show that the farmers, craft workers, entrepreneurs and hoteliers of the era themselves secured the power supply to their valleys. The United States was confronted with a similar challenge ten years later, albeit under very different circumstances. Even in 1934 fewer than 11% of all US farms were supplied with electricity; so in 1935, under the New Deal, the federal government created the US-wide Rural Electrification Administration (REA), whose job was to bring power to rural areas – a perfect example of the Raiffeisen motto of “Helping others to help themselves”.
The US government thus decided not to establish a centrally-controlled power corporation and instead opted for decentralised development. Under the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, REA granted cheap loans that led to the creation of numerous public utilities and cooperatives. As a result, by 1942 some 50% of all farms had their own electricity connection. Today a total of 900 cooperatives belong to the U.S. umbrella organisation America’s Cooperative Electric Utilities, providing 42 million customers with energy.
Tourism, agriculture, trade, crafts, industry, energy: the key areas of the economy in South Tyrol all have their own business associations. This position is taken in the energy sector by SEV. While much has changed over the years, just one constant has remained: the task of looking after the specific needs of all of our members.
Billing, electricity trading and legal advice are all administered in-house. We also carry out lobbying activities for small- and medium-sized energy companies. The expansion of our organisational structure and our highly motivated team combine to make SEV the only association in South Tyrol capable of offering competent cover for all areas of the energy sector.
Open-mindedness
Transcending borders
We are confidently able to communicate with our European partners and, with the Transatlantic Energy Cooperatives Alliance (TECA), SEV now has a bridge to North America. Shared visions? Why not! The combination of open-mindedness, curiosity and firm local roots also creates added value for our own energy sector.
Via Giuseppe di Vittorio, 16
I-39100 Bolzano(BZ)
© 2019 SEV - Südtiroler Energieverband . Credits . Privacy policy . Cookie Policy . Sitemap . produced by
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Majestic VP discusses effort to return NFL to…
Majestic VP discusses effort to return NFL to Southern California
By The San Gabriel Valley Tribune | sgvtribune@dfmdev.com |
PUBLISHED: March 4, 2010 at 12:00 am | UPDATED: August 30, 2017 at 10:48 am
REDLANDS – Citrus Plaza developer John Semcken spoke about the business of football at the Rotary Club of Redlands on Thursday.
Semcken, vice president of Majestic Realty, talked about his involvement with Los Angeles Stadium, which will be built for a National Football League team.
The complex will be built into a mountain to reduce the amount of energy and steel needed.
When asked what he would do in winter without heat, Semcken said: “Change from tank tops to a T-shirt.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill approving the stadium in October. All that remains is enticing an NFL team – several of which are interested in moving, Semcken said.
One Rotary member asked which teams were interested.
“I’d tell you and then I’d kill you,” Semcken said.
“Go ahead!” was the answer.
Semcken and others worked on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as a site for an NFL team. He was also a developer for Staples Center.
After working on the Coliseum six years, Semcken and Majestic Realty CEO Ed Roski proposed a new stadium to be built in Industry, where Majestic is headquartered.
California has the “wonderful distinction” of the three worst stadiums in the NFL – San Francisco, San Diego and Oakland, he said.
“Many of you know the Rams and Raiders left in 1994,” he said. “Everyone blames the NFL, but the real reason is it’s so easy to do business in California.”
It is, in reality, difficult to develop in California because of environmental impact requirements, he said. He and Rossi pitched to the NFL that it would be cheaper to build their $850 million stadium – which will be built entirely with private money – and the team will be the league’s richest in its first year.
There are 15 million people living within an hour’s drive of the stadium, he said.
In the last 22 years, many people moved inland because of housing prices, he said.
“Everyone brought their wallets with them, so we proved to (the NFL) we could afford it,” Semcken said.
In a focus group poll, parking was the No. 1 concern, he said. The new stadium will have 25,000 parking spaces.
“You can have a terrible team, a terrible seat, but if you have a good parking space you’re fine,” he joked.
Ninety-three percent of the group said it was a good location.
“You can’t even get 93 percent of people to go to the bathroom when it’s time,” he said.
Traffic will be minimal compared to daily traffic from nearby Mt. San Antonio College, he said. The project will create permanent jobs, temporary construction jobs and generate tax revenue, he said.
And the NFL is philanthropic, he said.
“Not only does the league give money, but the team gives money, the quarterback gives money, the running back gives money,” he said.
He predicted an NFL team would play in Los Angeles by the 2011 season, barring complications from disputes between owners and the players’ union.
He was less enthusiastic about a local project.
Majestic Realty’s Mountain Grove, the second phase of Citrus Plaza, is on hold indefinitely.
“It’s really a function of the tenants because the retail business has been so devastated,” Semcken said after the meeting.
“They need to get more comfortable to be in expansion mode,” he said.
E-mail Staff Writer Joy Juedes at jjuedes@redlandsdailyfacts.com
The San Gabriel Valley Tribune
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No Hillsborough 'cover-up' charges for three former South Yorkshire Police officers
Three former South Yorkshire Police will not face charges into allegations of a "cover-up" by the force following the Hillsborough disaster - despite 'indications' that two of them may have committed a criminal offence.
Wednesday, 14 March, 2018, 09:50
The Hillsborough disaster unfolds in 1989.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) - now renamed the Independent Office for Police Conduct - investigated allegations that these three senior officers participated in a strategy to minimise South Yorkshire Police culpability for the disaster by wrongly blaming Liverpool fans.
In particular, it is alleged that officers sought to deliberately mislead the Lord Justice Taylor inquiry, the contributions hearing and the original inquest proceedings. Potential offences of perverting the course of justice, misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit these offences were all considered as part of the police watchdog's investigation.
However, the IOPC said today it was not referring the cases on to the Crown Prosecution Service - in part because doing so may delay the trials of six other individuals who have already been charged with offences relating to the disaster.
The CPS has also announced today that they will not be charging two former senior West Midlands Police (WMP) officers in relation to the investigation conducted by the force into the causes of the disaster.
A statement from the IOPC said: “Although there was some indication that two of the three former officers may have committed a criminal offence, it was not deemed appropriate to refer their cases because the CPS had already rejected the possibility of bringing criminal charges based on substantial evidence that was reviewed in 2016. No further evidence or legal matters have since been identified that could realistically alter that view.
“The fact a referral at this stage could also potentially delay the trials of the former SYP officers and individuals already charged was also taken into account.”
Rachel Cerfontyne, IPOC Strategic Lead for Hillsborough, said: “At the core of my decision not to refer these SYP officers for formal charging decisions is the CPS’s clear view that charges would not be brought and the risk that a referral could cause disruption to the forthcoming Hillsborough trials.
“The evidence gathered by the investigation team has been wide ranging and thorough. I have reviewed it very carefully, as I know the CPS have done.
“This will now be used to determine if any officer involved in Hillsborough would have had a case to answer for misconduct if they were still serving. These findings, along with underlying evidence, will be set out in full in the Hillsborough final investigation report.”
Meanwhile, the CPS has said no charges will be brought against two former West Midlands Police officers who were being investigated for their role in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.
The two suspects, from the force which investigated the disaster in 1989, were alleged to have failed to investigate the causes of the disaster properly, either deliberately or negligently.
It was alleged that a misleading or incomplete file was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1990.
A CPS spokesman said: “After careful consideration of the evidence, and the detailed advice provided by counsel, it has been decided that the evidential threshold for criminal prosecution is not met in relation to either suspect.”
He said that “whilst there was found to be some cause for concern in the actions of both suspects”, the evidence was “insufficient to reach the high threshold required to prove a criminal offence”.
The spokesman said there was evidence that some aspects of the investigation were not carried out to a high standard, but there was a lack of evidence showing a deliberate plan of action by the suspects.
In a letter sent to families of the 96 victims this week, Sue Hemming, Head of Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division at the CPS, said: “I appreciate that my decision will be disappointing to you, but I would like to reassure you that in reaching this conclusion, we have spent a significant amount of time reviewing and considering the evidence that was submitted to us.”
The spokesman said no other files were being considered in relation to the disaster.
Six men, including match commander David Duckenfield, already face charges relating to the disaster and its aftermath.
Ninety-six Liverpool fans died in the crush at the Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough stadium on April 15 1989, as the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest began.
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The Samsung Note 10 will launch in August
Everything you need to know about Samsung’s new smartphone
Samsung releases four new Notebook laptops
We wouldn't blame you if you thought this was a MacBook
The Samsung Note 10 smartphone will be officially unveiled on Wednesday August 7.
The release of this new gadget is highly anticipated, especially after some of the tech giant’s recent blunders – namely, reports in 2016 of the battery short-circuiting in the Galaxy Note 7, as well as fundamental flaws in the hinge and the screen of the Galaxy Fold, which hit the shops earlier this year.
So what’s new on the Note 10? The phone is set to feature an expansive 6.6-inch screen and three rear cameras, plus a central front camera. It is rumoured also to include a stylus which can be seen on some of Samsung’s recent models such as the Galaxy Note 9.
Multiple versions of the phone will be available, from a higher-end model to a more affordable handset. The exciting launch will take place at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York.
With other big names like Apple and Huawei also bringing out new tech this year, we can’t wait to see how Samsung shapes up.
By Martha Davies
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Mark Conlon02 Jul 2019 AT 12:04 PM
Cori Gauff produces massibe shock at Wimbledon
The 15-year-old beat Venus Williams in straight sets in the first round
Everything you need to know about Wimbledon 2019
There’s more to Wimbledon than strawberries and cream, rain delays and Cliff Richard. It’s a fortnight which never fails to deliver, and here we look back at some of the tournament’s most memorable moments…
There was a huge shock on the opening day of Wimbledon as 15-year-old Cori Gauff stunned Venus Williams, the youngster eliminating one of the greats in the first round.
World number 313 Gauff beat Williams, who had already won four Grand Slams before her opponent was even born, in straight sets to cause a major surprise.
Gauff was the youngest player to qualify for the main Wimbledon draw since the Open era began in 1968 and, having looked up to the Williams sisters, couldn’t contain her delight after producing one of the biggest shocks in the tournament’s history.
"Venus told me congratulations and keep going, she said good luck and I told her thanks for everything she did," Gauff said.
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her - I told her she was so inspiring and I've always wanted to tell her that but I've never had the guts to before.
"I'm really happy Wimbledon gave me the chance to play, I never thought I would get this far."
Elsewhere, Novak Djokovic cruised to a comfortable victory against Philipp Kohlschreiber, while second seed Naomi Osaka suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Yulia Putintseva.
Roger Federer is among those players in action on day two in SW19.
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You are here: Sports Betting Online > Long Shot Bets > Van Gerwen is building towards a nine-dart finish
Van Gerwen is building towards a nine-dart finish
Michael van Gerwen is playing incredible darts right now and it may be worth a speculative bet on Mighty Mike throwing a nine-dart finish in his PDC Premier League Darts match versus James Wade at the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester.
Van Gerwen has thrown four nine-dart finishes in matches on live television, including a perfect game against Wade in the 2013 PDC World Darts Championship semi-finals when he struck 180, 177 and 144, checking out on double 12 to the delight of the capacity crowd at London’s Alexandra Palace. He followed that up with 8 more perfect darts in the very next leg before agonisingly missing the final double for an unprecedented back to back nine-dart finishes (see below)
Nine-dart finishes used to be as rare as hen’s teeth – John Lowe threw the first televised perfect game in 1984 and there were just two in total during the 20th century – but the sport has gone to a whole new level in recent times, particularly since the mid 2000s. There have been half a dozen nine-dart finishes in PDC Premier League Darts matches since the hugely popular competition got under way in 2005.
Van Gerwen is in the form of his life. Van Gerwen has lifted from the disappointment of losing to Gary Anderson in the 2015 PDC World Darts Championship semi-finals to dominate the PDC program, taking out the latest event in Gibraltar. Van Gerwen has won six and drawn two of his eight PDC Premier League Darts matches, with his one and only poor performance resulting in a 6-6 draw against Peter Wright. Van Gerwen annihilated his Dutch compatriot, Raymond van Barneveld, in the eighth round of PDC Premier League Darts matches, winning seven legs to two with a 108.71 average.
Several bookmakers, including Bet365 and WilliamHill, are offering odds of 20/1 21.00 +2000 20.00 20.00 -0.05 that van Gerwen gets the Manchester crowd off its feet to acclaim a nine-dart finish when he plays Wade. Van Gerwen has won nine of his last 10 matches versus Wade so Mighty Mike will step up to the oche with confidence coursing through his veins and he has been threatening to throw a perfect game throughout 2015.
Van Gerwen has been one throw short of a nine-dart finish on eight occasions this year, including during his PDC Premier League Darts demolition of van Barneveld. Van Gerwen missed double 12 with his ninth dart of the second leg before he returned to the oche to sink double six with his 10th arrow. Van Gerwen went close to a perfect game not once but twice during the PDC Gibraltar Darts Trophy as well, failing to hit double 12 against Brian Woods and Jamie Lewis.
One used to think that bookmakers were having a laugh in quoting odds of around 20/1 21.00 +2000 20.00 20.00 -0.05 about a match featuring a nine-dart finish but the standard is so high these days that the act is commonplace when the top guys take on each other. Van Gerwen is not the reigning world champion but, if one polled the darts community about the identity of the best player currently, Mighty Mike would come out on top.
Van Gerwen is two points clear at the top of the PDC Premier League Darts ladder, he has thrown a competition-high 30 180s despite playing the fewest legs and his checkout percentage is a remarkable 47.37. Van Gerwen is in the sort of form that he wishes he could bottle and save for the big tournaments on the darts calendar because, when he plays to his potential, no-one – not even Taylor – can go with him.
One should note that the odds of 20/1 21.00 +2000 20.00 20.00 -0.05 refer to a nine-dart finish by either van Gerwen or Wade so, if you decide to bet, you have The Machine on your side as well as Mighty Mike. Wade has thrown two perfect games live on television. It’s basically a freeroll on Wade as the best price for van Gerwen to hit a nine-dart finish is also 20/1 21.00 +2000 20.00 20.00 -0.05 with Coral.
Don’t forget to check out our other Premier League Darts article for more top tips on this week’s action in Manchester.
Van Gerwen nine-dart finish
2nd April
Odds: 20/1 21.00 +2000 20.00 20.00 -0.05
Where to Bet: Bet365, WilliamHill
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Review: Everclear, Welcome to the Drama Club
Preston Jones
Given the tenor of Art Alexakis’s existence these last few years (going through his third divorce, filing for bankruptcy, saying farewell to two-thirds of the band that hit big in the late ‘90s with “Santa Monica”), Everclear’s eighth album Welcome to the Drama Club should have the raw, no-holds-barred feel of a Blood On The Tracks or Nebraska, but, despite his uncanny ability to synthesize seething frustration into addictive, sugar-coated three-minute ditties, Alexakis is no Dylan or Springsteen. Having recruited bassist Sam Hudson, guitarist Dave French, drummer Brett Snyder, and keyboardist Josh Crawley, Alexakis elected to travel a less dour route, infusing his trademark grungy punk with a shot of Bakersfield sunshine. It’s not entirely surprising, since traces of glittery, jangly pop have been evident in Everclear’s songs as far back as So Much For The Afterglow; here, tracks like “Now,” “Shine,” “Glorious,” and “The Drama King” (which sounds so close to “I Will Buy You A New Life” Alexakis should sue himself for plagiarism), blossom like carefully tended flowers, revealing lush harmonies and sleek wall-of-sound guitar. While most the tracks don’t linger long after an initial spin or two, I still don’t quite understand the intent of the faux-Offspring flavored lead single “Hater” or the sense that, despite the shit-storms Alexakis has weathered, he’s not a little bit angrier; it’s almost as though some anger management classes or self-help books finessed the vital, pissed-off artist right out of his system. It’s revenge against an unfair world delivered with a hug rather than a clenched fist.
Label: Eleven Seven Music Release Date: September 4, 2006 Buy: Amazon
Review: Audioslave, Revelations
Internet Killed the Video Star
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Review: Korn, Korn III: Remember Who You Are
Luke Winkie
Is anyone really listening to Korn anymore? There was a time when the band was at the forefront of rock radio, but that’s not the case anymore, and their legacy (and the legacy of nü-metal in general) hasn’t exactly flourished since the pinnacle of the subgenre’s popularity. The band’s ninth album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are, is boring, melodramatic, self-righteous, dim-witted, and chock full of clichés—just like most everything else Korn has released over the past two decades. And it doesn’t even have the stones to be bad in an interesting way.
Korn III is attuned to the same muggy jangle-metal sensibilities that has always marred the band’s output, and frontman Jonathon Davis’s whining teenager-isms are just as egregious as ever on songs like “Let the Guilt Go”: “I tell you one thing which leads to another thing/Then I backtrack, which leads to hurt feelings.” The band is entirely obsessed with their own hackneyed mythology, apparently born out of a failed concept album. Davis spews his contrived, notebook-poetry right at the front of the mix with such force, you might even be fooled into thinking it actually means something. The album abandons the dizzy, mosh-pit raging for an increased focus on half-baked storytelling. “Freak on a Leash” was at least catchy, but the tracks here blend together in one muddied, overcrowded mess, with individual songs getting lose in the unrelenting monotony.
Liz Phair just released easily the kookiest album of her career, and Recovery was most certainly not the earth-shattering ascension that Eminem wanted it to be, but despite the wavering quality of those two albums, one still gets the sense that those similarly aging, past-prime artists have some drive, some creativity, and some good songs left in them. That’s simply not the case with Korn III. The album is bad in a predictable, sluggish way, with no hint of better work on the horizon.
Label: Roadrunner Release Date: July 13, 2010 Buy: Amazon
Review: Tracy Bonham, Masts of Manhatta
Review: Paul Wall, Heart of a Champion
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Budget 2015: SMEs to write-off every asset purchase under $20,000
Eloise Keating / Tuesday, May 12, 2015
As of 7.30pm this evening, Australian small businesses with turnover below $2 million will be able to immediately deduct every asset they purchase valued up to $20,000.
While SMEs were expecting the budget to include an accelerated depreciation package with an annual threshold of $10,000, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Small Business Minister Bruce Billson said in a joint statement the government will instead extend the threshold for asset deductions from $1000 to $20,000.
The new threshold will be in place until the end of June 2017 and is designed to support small businesses to invest in new assets to grow their businesses.
The $20,000 threshold applies to each individual asset and small businesses will be able to apply the $20,000 rule to as many individual assets as they want.
Most small capital purchases will be eligible for the new threshold, with the exception of assets that have specific depreciation rules, including in-house software and horticultural plants.
Assets above the $20,000 threshold can be added together in the existing simplified depreciation pool and depreciated at the same rate: 15% in the first income year and 30% thereafter.
If the value of the asset “pool” is less than $20,000, it can be immediately deducted until the end of June 2017.
The government will also suspend current “lock out” rules for the simplified depreciation rules until June 30, 2017. The rules currently prevent small businesses from re-entering the simplified depreciation regime for five years if they have opted out.
The budget papers estimate the changes will cost $1.8 billion over the forward estimates.
The threshold is part of the government’s $5.5 billion “Growing Jobs and Small Business” package, which Abbott, Hockey and Billson described as “the biggest small business initiative in our nation’s history”.
“The government is committed to ensuring Australia is the very best place to start and grow a small business,” they said.
“Small businesses are the engine room of our economy. In 2013-14 there were over 280,000 new small businesses started in Australia.”
“96% of all Australia’s businesses are small business, employing over 4.5 million people and producing over $330 billion of nation’s total economic output.”
“As our economy changes, the role of our small businesses will be even more important. With the economy in transition we are freeing up small business to create new jobs.”
Measures that allow small businesses to accelerate depreciation of asset purchases are supported by the Council of Small Business of Australia and the Australian Greens, which said in April it would support Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s proposed small business tax cut if the Coalition also reinstated two small business measures it scrapped when it did away with the mining tax.
Greens Senator and small business spokesperson Peter Whish-Wilson said at the time his party will “provide the pathway through the Senate” if the federal government uses the budget to “undo” the damage it did to small businesses by scrapping the loss carry-back scheme and slashing the instant asset write-off in 2014.
Ultimately, the Greens want to see the Abbott government “shift the burden from small business to big business, said former Greens leader Christine Milne in a statement at the time.
“The Greens are open to a two-tiered company tax system if the Abbott government is willing to help shift the burden from small business to big business,” Milne said.
“We have to shift the burden and raise revenue from those who can afford it – the big end of town.”
Eloise Keating
Eloise Keating is the editor of SmartCompany. Previously, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry.
Voice will be essential for brand relevancy as search rankings shift with voice queries
Now’s a (really) good time to upgrade your equipment – here’s why
Can’t retain good staff? Chances are you’re making one of these three mistakes
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R.I.P. Allen Toussaint: Celebrating the Life & Music of the Legendary New Orleans Soul Man [VIDEOS] @AllenToussaint
Iconic pianist, singer, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint has passed away at the age of 77 upon suffering a heart attack while on tour yesterday in Madrid, Spain. Toussaint is survived by his two children, Reginald and Alison.
Masterfully fusing a number of musical styles including R&B, blues, jazz and funk, Toussaint was an influential ambassador of the New Orleans arts community throughout his prolific, six decades-long career, and proved instrumental in elevating the worldwide profile of the citys vibrant music scene. During the 1960s and 1970s, Toussaint wrote and produced several hit songs for fellow New Orleans natives including Lee Dorsey, Dr. John, The Meters, Aaron Neville and Irma Thomas, as well as a handful of non-New Orleans artists.
Toussaint wrote several of his most recognizable singles including Fortune Teller, Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette), and Ruler of My Heart under the adopted pseudonym of Naomi Neville, in honor of his mother. Toussaints compositions have been affectionately covered by countless country and rock artists, including Glen Campbell, The Doors, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones, Boz Scaggs, and The Who. Dorseys version of Toussaints Get Out of My Life, Woman has been widely sampled by hip-hop artists, most notably Biz Markie, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, the Fugees, and Nas.
While Toussaints much in-demand songwriting and producing helped establish his unparalleled reputation, he also enjoyed a fruitful and acclaimed solo career as a performer, recording a few dozen studio LPs, live albums and compilations. Highlights of his album repertoire include Toussaint (1971), Life, Love and Faith (1972), Southern Nights (1975), and The Bright Mississippi (2009). Toussaints most recent album, Songbook, was released in 2013.
Toussaint was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Toussaint diligently raised funds and support for New Orleans residents left homeless by the tragedy. When awarding Toussaint with the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 2013, President Obama acknowledged his selfless work, explaining that After his hometown was battered by Katrina and Allen was forced to evacuate, he did something even more important for his city he went back. Since then, Allen has devoted his musical talent to lifting up and building up a city. And today, he’s taking the stage all over the world, with all kinds of incredible talent, doing everything he can to revive the legendary soul of the Big Easy.”
With Toussaints passing, the world has lost a magnetic figure and indelible musical fixture. In celebration of his life and legacy, the soulhead team has selected a handful of our favorite Allen Toussaint performances, which you can enjoy in full below.
R.I.P. Allen Toussaint.
Explore Allen Toussaints discography via Amazon | iTunes | Spotify
Allen ToussaintBluesEssaysjazzLee DorseyNew OrleansR&B
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Cadillac Records [FULL MOVIE]
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Top Braodway composer of 1920s
Harry A. Tierney
Wrote hit "Alice Blue Gown" longest running show of the era
Composer Harry Austin Tierney was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey on May 21, 1890. He was educated at the Virgil Conservatory in New York and studied music with his mother as well as Nicholas Morrissey.
In his early career, Tierney toured throughout the US as a concert pianist. In 1915 he worked for a music publisher in London and then in 1918 became the staff composer at Remick music publishers on Tin Pan Alley.
Tierney wrote scores for several Broadway productions including Irene, The Broadway Whirl, Up She Goes, Kid bots, Ziegfeld Follies (1924), Rio Rita and Cross Your Heart. He also contributed songs to the music revues Afgar, Ziegfeld Follies of 1919, 1920, Follow Me, Everything and A Royal Vagabond.
Under contract to RKO studios, Tierney moved to Hollywood in 1931, contributing songs to films such as Dixiana and Half Shot at Sunrise.
While his chief collaborator was Joe McCarthy, Tierney also worked with lyricists Bert Hanlon, Benny Ryan, Al Bryan, Ray Egan and Anne Caldwell. Highlights from the Tierney catalog include “Just For Tonight”, “If You Can’t Get a Girl in Summertime”, “M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I”, “My Own”, “Cleopatra”, “I Found the End of the Rainbow”, “My Baby’s Arms”, “Alice Blue Gown”, “Irene”, “Castle of Dreams”, “Journey’s End”, “If Your Heart’s in the Game”, “Someone Loves You After All”, “Rio Rita”, “the Kinkajou”, “The Rangers Song”, “If You’re in Love You’ll Waltz” and “You’re Always in My Arms”.
Harry Tierney died in New York City on March 22, 1965.
His songs used in Ziegfield Follies by Eddie Cantor
Scroll to Discover Harry Tierney Connections
Harry A. Tierney Harry A. Tierney Alfred Bryan Anne Caldwell Joseph McCarthy Alfred Bryan Anne Caldwell Joseph McCarthy
Harry A. Tierney at:
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Victoria University (VU)
Victoria University (VU) is a multi-sector institution (higher education and TAFE) with excellence in teaching, training, research and scholarship. They offer short courses, as well as qualifications in vocational education (TAFE) and higher education. Their learning pathways enable students to move from a certificate course through to an advanced diploma, degree, or postgraduate qualification by coursework or research.
Student Law Notes offers detailed audio case notes of case studies for students studying with VU in courses such as:
Bachelor of Laws
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business (Accounting)
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business (Event Management)
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business (International Trade)
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business (Management)
Bachelor of Laws / Bachelor of Business (Music Industry)
Bachelor of Legal Practice Management
Practice Note SC Gen 13 – Search orders (also known as Anton Piller orders)
Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Everett (1980) 143 CLR 440
Hilton v Wells (1985) 157 CLR 57
"I am saving heaps of time with these summaries"
- Anonymous, Bond University
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Maine International Film Festival comes to Rangeley
MIFF in the mountains
The Rangeley Friends of the Arts (RFA) presents MIFF in the Mountains, the BEST films of the Maine International Film Festival – eight films over four nights, Sunday through Wednesday, July 30 through August 2, at the RFA Lakeside Theater in Rangeley. Film lovers rejoice! A different film at 5 & 8 PM each evening. Admission is $7 per film, $50. for an ALL Festival PASS. MIFF is Sponsored by Juliet J. Goodfriend. For the complete film schedule and tickets, visit www.rangeleyarts.org and click on the “MIFF” tab at the top of the page.
Enjoy an opening night reception with William Wegman at 4:30 PM on July 30, and discussions after each film. Two of the films on the schedule are Abundant Acreage Available, Directed by Angus MacLachlan: Oscar nominee, Amy Ryan (GONE GIRL) stars in this film set on a North Carolina farm. Martin Scorcese. Executive Producer, and Angus MacLachlan, lead the outstanding crew who bring this haunting story to life. Some would say it is all about the land and what that teaches, or fails to teach, those who toil on it; and Henry David Thoreau, Surveyor of the Soul, Directed by Huey: Award-winning-Maine filmmaker, Huey, paints a portrait of Thoreau and his influence on thought and environmentalism. Join the director for a Q and A after the screening.
The Rangeley Friends of the Arts is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation “Bringing the Arts to Life” in the Rangeley Lakes Region. For more information or to find their complete schedule of events, visit www.rangeleyarts.org.
Wilhelm Reich Museum
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October 2014: the start of Sports Performance.
Dr. Chris Garcia and Dr. Stephanie Garcia founded Sports Performance in 2014. Prior to 2014, Chris worked for the United States Olympic Committee and elite sports performance companies, preparing professional athletes to perform at their best.
2012: Chris in Wellington, New Zealand traveling with the USA Rugby 7’s team. Chris served as the primary physical therapist and helped keep the team healthy to compete against the world’s best teams (including a match against the New Zealand All Blacks).
2013: Chris in Lyon, France with Team USA at the Paralympic Track and Field world championships. Chris would travel with these incredible athletes and provide medical coverage so they could compete at their best.
After years of traveling around the world to care for professional athletes, Chris wanted to bring this vast experience and knowledge back to his local San Diego community. Born and raised in San Ysidro, a suburb of San Diego, Chris came from humble beginnings and wanted to contribute to the south bay.
In 2014, the company started with an idea, a foldable treatment table and one client. Chris would pack up the table in his car and go to local gyms as a mobile concierge physical therapy service, offering personal training and sports rehab. One day, the first client referred his friend. That friend referred their neighbor…and so on and so forth. Sports Performance slowly built into a large community of active people who wanted elite level care to help them stay healthy.
January 2015: This was the first community event for Sports Performance. Chris provided treatment at the CrossFit Barracks event in San Diego.
Fast forward to 2016. Stephanie was 8.5 months pregnant (due date of September 7) and they were approached with an incredible opportunity to open up a physical location (where it resides today). The caveat was that the offer to open the building was to begin in two weeks (September 1), which was one week before their due date (September 7).
They thought long and hard and decided it would be the best for their future to take the plunge. Surprise! Their son, Zachary, arrived one week early on August 31. The next morning, on September 1, Chris and Stephanie received a phone call to inform them the keys to the building were available. So two days after the birth of Zachary, Chris and Steph embarked on a journey to renovate Sports Performance with a newborn baby.
Chris and Stephanie begin renovations two days after the birth of their first child, Zachary. Chris was treating clients 6am – 7pm and renovating at night, while Stephanie coordinated the administrative projects and cared for their newborn.
One of many late night renovations. Zachary was such a trooper. He would allow them to work in 1-2 hour shifts before waking up.
The blank slate. This is what the front entrance looked like before Sports Performance opened. There were several post-its and note pads used to create the front design of the building.
This was a dream in the making for Chris and Stephanie. Working long nights with a newborn was an incredible experience that required patience and communication. Chris and Stephanie are now stronger because of it.
Designing the floor layout came down a game of inches. Every inch of the facility had to be considered to maximize the space and flow of the facility. Chris and Stephanie went back and forth on different layouts but finally agreed when Stephanie’s mom put her two cents in.
The carpet was removed and the front desk area was finally designed. Soon after the walls were ready for paint. Who would have thought patching holes in the wall would take so long.
Things piled up quickly. Do you know how many shades of grey there are? They debated between 5-8 shades. Long nights were spent coordinating just the right combination of grey and red.
The dark grey to the far left was almost painted black. And the crevices on the mat flooring had to be installed air tight with a 2×4 and sledge hammer. Chris was averaging 4 hours of sleep per night. And Stephanie? Less than that with a newborn baby.
Floor installation: each one of the mats weigh 90 pounds so they had to carry them in one by one into the facility. Several box cutters were used to trim the mats and a sledge hammer was used to knock each one into place.
Logo installation: this took several attempts and precise measurement. There was one small error in size with the first attempt, but they figured it out when it was on the wall. This is tougher than it looks.
After painting, cleaning and preparing the facility for 1 month (with a newborn, if we didn’t mention it), Sports Performance officially opened October 1, 2016.
Dreams truly come true. From traveling with a foldable treatment table… to an integrated performance facility with a variety of services, Chris and Stephanie have built Sports Performance from nothing into what it is today.
Chris and Stephanie managed the day to day operations on their own for 10 months, before hiring the first team member, Erica. At the same time, Chris had a waitlist of five weeks to schedule an appointment with him. Stephanie quickly jumped in to help with providing treatment and on goes the story of the expansion of Sports Performance. Since opening, Sports Performance has grown from one person to 10 awesome team members and we are excited to continue to keep San Diego healthy and happy!
Team Sports Performance is built with humility and passion. Each member depends on the group to collaborate to upgrade the lives of our community.
We are one fun group of hard working people, striving to help our clients stay active and healthy so they don’t miss a workout.
CLICK HERE TO SCHEDULE
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WORLD BANK Credit For Stability
World Bank Board Approves $100 Million To Help Financial Sector Reforms In Nepal
Aug. 19, 2018, 12:26 p.m. Published in Magazine Issue: VOL 12 No.03, August 17, 2018 (Bhadra 01, 2075) Online Register Number: DOI 584/074-75
As Nepal is in a desperate need of financial support to implement federalism, the World Bank Group has agreed to partner with Nepal with a focus on federalism, private sector, and inclusive growth.
Finance Minister Dr. Yubaraj Khatiwada convinced the World Bank’s Board about the needs of Nepal in the context of implementing the federal structure in Nepal.
The World Bank Board has approved a fourth Financial Sector Stability Development Policy Credit (DPC4) of $100 million to help Nepal continue to deepen its medium-term reform program in the financial sector.
The World Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors also strongly supported Nepal’s quest to secure a stable path to federalism and an inclusive and prosperous future. The board also discussed a new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for Nepal for the next five years in Washington D.C.
According a press release issued by the World Bank, Nepal is undergoing a historic transition. The new Constitution adopted in 2015 defines Nepal as a democratic, decentralized, federal and secular republic. The country’s 2017 elections at the federal, provincial and local levels resulted in a super majority government for the first time in its parliamentary history. Welcoming the prospects of stability, the World Bank Group, in the CPF, pledges its support to strengthen institutions that are critical to the effective implementation of federalism, as well as innovative pathways to faster, equitable growth and accountable service delivery.
“Nepal’s transition to federalism unlocks opportunities for all citizens to participate in its development,” said Qimiao Fan, the World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. “This represents a window of opportunity for the country to further reduce poverty, increase the income of the bottom 40 percent, and pursue its ambitious agenda of inclusive growth and accountable service delivery,” he added.
The CPF notes that the federalism agenda will underpin the World Bank Group’s future programs at the strategic, policy and operational levels. It also cautions that transitional vulnerabilities could heighten in the early days of federalism as development roles are adjusted and the new structures take root. Against this background, the CPF focuses on three areas of engagement: (i) strengthening public institutions for economic management, service delivery and public investment; (ii) promoting private sector-led jobs and growth; and (iii) enhancing inclusion for the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized groups, with greater resilience against climate change, natural disasters, and other exogenous shocks.
The CPF priorities emerged from extensive consultations with the federal, state and local governments, development partners and key stakeholders including civil society, academia, the private sector, rural community groups and the media. This includes hearing from over 200,000 citizens across Nepal through SMS and online surveys. The framework aligns with the government’s development priorities and Nepal’s goal to graduate to middle income country status by 2030.
“This partnership strategy with the World Bank supports our goal of giving every Nepali equal access to security, justice, good governance, basic services, and an opportunity to participate in our future prosperity,” said Nepal Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada. “The new partnership strategy with the World Bank Group is focused on supporting our transition to federalism, fits squarely within our vision and underpins a Nepali-owned model.”
The CPF notes that Nepal will require significant financing – over and above public and development aid resources currently available – to achieve faster growth and accelerate poverty reduction in the context of its transition to federalism. The World Bank Group will apply ‘Maximizing Financing for Development’ approaches to optimize the use of scarce public resources and leverage commercial private financing in Nepal. The CPF states that the government’s development model of growth fueled by higher levels of investment, productivity and effective public institutions to underpin private sector dynamism will require carefully calibrated reforms to draw in private investment in parallel with the implementation of federalism.
“We will expand our investments — both debt as well as equity — and advisory services for private investment in Nepal,” said Wendy Werner, International Finance Corporation’s country head for Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. “Our efforts will encourage high-quality private investors to support the government’s strategy of inclusive development.”
The Financial Sector Stability Development Policy Credit (DPC4) of $100 million, approved by the World Bank Board, is the final in a series of financial sector DPCs that was initiated in 2013 and has since supported a government-led program aimed at stabilizing the sector by reducing vulnerabilities and increasing transparency. In this phase, the program has focused on implementing key reforms through a strengthened legal and regulatory framework, consolidating the financial sector, placing the financial sector safety net on a firm footing and laying the ground for a further program of reforms to broaden and deepen access to financial services for both business and individuals.
In Nepal, the World Bank Group (WBG) includes the International Development Association (IDA), the concessionary lending arm; the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm; and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the investment risk insurance arm.
“The World Bank currently supports 21 active investment projects in Nepal with US$ 2.5 billion dollars in commitments from IDA. The indicative resources available under IDA18 (FY2018-2020) are about US$ 1.3 billion, including US$ 300 million from the IDA Risk Mitigation Regime. During the IDA17 period (FY2015-2017), the World Bank committed US$ 1.2 billion.
IFC aims to commit about US$ 800 million to US$ 1.2 billion over the five-year period. MIGA is actively seeking opportunities to support foreign private investment into Nepal. IFC and MIGA may make use of the IDA IFC/MIGA Private Sector Window (PSW) and the MIGA Guarantee Facility to underwrite eligible projects,” writes a press release.
The World Bank Group (WBG) fielded its first economic mission to Nepal in 1963 to assess the country’s development prospects and challenges. It approved its first credit in 1969 for a telecommunications project. Since then, the World Bank has provided Nepal US$ 4.75 billion in assistance (US$ 3.48 billion in credits and US$ 1.27 billion in grants).
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May 25, 2015 by Mary Austin 6 Comments
Soon after my brother’s death, I start working as a hospice chaplain, and meet Don, an old-fashioned gentleman with a deep Catholic faith. He’s hard of hearing, grouchy, forgetful at times, and sharp when he wants to be. It’s hard to tell what he’s taking in, and not. He’s so modest that he asks our home health aide to give him a shower with his underwear on.
I visit him at his senior residence, arriving as he finishes lunch so I won’t interrupt the afternoon nap that follows lunch. Asking his permission, I pull up a chair and sit at the table, keeping him company as he finishes eating the meat, potatoes and gray vegetable. “What did you have for lunch?” I ask him one day.
“L.O.K,” he tells me.
“L.O.K – what’s that?”
“Lord Only Knows.” I laugh out loud, which makes him smile. He always offers me dessert, which I decline, and coffee, which I drink to be sociable.
Don’s daughter Rose has award winning patience, and the same warm smile I see in pictures of her mother. The approaching loss of her father brings up other losses. “I was sitting on my couch in front of the fireplace, sipping a glass of wine, last Christmas Eve,” she tells me, “and there was a knock on my door.”
The newspaper stories about the war and roadside bombs come to brutal life as I listen to her tell about her son’s death in the war. The Christmas Eve knock on the door comes from two men in uniform, the sight every military family dreads. Her son Mike had been killed on Christmas Eve in Iraq. The family stumbles through a funeral mass here, and then a memorial service held by his unit, out of state. “I feel like we buried that child so many times,” she says. “At the end I was so tired.”
Her story of his sudden, violent death recalls my brother’s death, and I feel a silent connection with her story. My dad asks me one night, “Isn’t it hard to visit other people when David’s death is on your mind?” No. Yes. It’s all I know how to do, I tell him. Once your heart cracks open, you have an unwanted kinship with every other broken-hearted person. Once grief makes you gasp for breath, you recognize the other air-starved people around you. It’s strangely relaxing to be with other broken people.
As the chaplain, it’s my job to hear their stories, not their job to listen to me. I’m careful not to share my own loss, not to chime in, not to shout excitedly “I know exactly what you mean.” But we belong to the same club.
Don stays with us for two years, declining slowly and bouncing back, and then slipping again. Finally, the last descent begins. One day at lunch, he tells me that he has to get to the shop to finish some things. “Let’s go,” he says, urgently. “Can you take me?” he asks, and I know that the end is coming. Talk about finishing something, or traveling somewhere, signals the soul’s final work.
I come every afternoon to see him. When I walk up the driveway and see the car with the “Gold Star Family” license plate, the distinction given to families who lose someone in combat, I know that Rose is here, too. The afternoons become a sabbath, as we sit by his bed and talk about her dad. In the dim peace of the room, she tells me about his political career, his stubborn personality, his passion for coffee, which he drank day and night. The first household task she ever learned was making coffee.
And, again, she tells me again about her son. Sitting in the peace of the room, the story comes with different details this time. Mike was married briefly, and it didn’t work out. Because of the timing of the divorce, when Mike dies, the Army calls the young ex-wife first. Her dad, drunk, makes a rambling, expletive-filled call to Rose and her husband. Her husband picks up the phone and can’t understand anything except that Mike is dead. Rose runs upstairs to the computer and frantically, crazily hits the buttons, searching for the emergency number the Army gave them. She finds it and is screaming her questions into the phone when she looks out the window. A white sedan turns the corner onto their street and moves slowly up the block, as if looking for a house number. She watches the car driving through the snow until it stops in front of her house, and two men get out and come toward the porch.
Pausing in the story, she looks at me in the dark room and asks “Are you crying?”
“I am,” I admit.
“You’re sweet to cry at my story,” she tells me.
Oddly, I feel jealous. Her son’s death in the war seems more meaningful than my brother’s random death. And yet, grief is grief. Her story is my story, although I don’t tell her that. The death of her dad will eventually be the death of mine. The terrible absence of her son is also the aching absence of my brother.
I realize that the only meaning in someone’s death is the meaning we give it. How we live after the death, making a path forward. We mark the way with dates and ceremonies so no one is forgotten, when remembering is the only gift left to give.
Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: grief, hope, Memorial Day
Pauline Saves
March 21, 2014 by Mary Austin 19 Comments
Pauline comes down the stairs from her bedroom each morning, wraps her robe around her thin frame, and starts making coffee. At the tippy kitchen table, she reads a worn Bible until it’s ready. Always, the plastic counters gleam in her kitchen. Fortified by the coffee and the Bible, she goes down another flight of steps to the basement, where her son lives.
The basement is Damian’s kingdom, with a huge flat screen tv, always on. The dark wood paneling and big, squashy sofa and chairs seem like a different world from the light, spotless kitchen upstairs. More removed from the world, more manly. Damian is in his twenties, and he seems both younger and older. Younger because he lives at home, where his mother cooks his meals, and watches over his day. Compared to other men his age, with jobs and kids, his life is easy. But the awareness of his illness makes him seem older.
After a lifetime of coddling, Damian is dying now, but Pauline won’t talk about it. Not to me, her hospice chaplain, not to her family, not to our nurse. He has lived a long time with an inherited disease, and she is sure he can keep going. Her life is about caring for him, and Pauline insists that he’ll be fine.
Grief guru Alan Wolfeldt says he doesn’t like the term “denial.” He likes to think of it as “resting.” We’re resting from what’s too hard, too awful, too painful to think about. That feels right. Pauline is resting from the knowledge that she’s about to lose her third son.
Her oldest son carried the family stresses until they became too much for him, and he turned to drugs. He died of an overdose a few years ago. Her second son was killed in a shooting. She doesn’t say much more about it, and I don’t ask, but I know that a mother’s grief is no less or more even when a child makes poor choices.
Her third son seemed safe from all of that, with the illness that kept him at home.
Now she is resting fiercely from the knowledge that Damian is dying.
She sorts it out in her own way. “We don’t need to know why,” she says. “We don’t ask God why things happen. We just trust.”
Her daughter Francie, a mother herself, pulls up in her van between trips to drive her kids home from school and on to football practice. Francie knows how tired her mother is, and she begs her to take a break, but she seems to know it’s impossible. Her mother won’t let go of Damian.
I wonder if Pauline keeps moving to keep her grief away. If she sits down, it all comes back.
I understand because I do the same thing. I can’t seem to sit still, except when I’m at work, hearing someone’s story. I can’t read anymore – it doesn’t hold my attention. No one else’s drama on the page can compare to the drama in my head. I think I must be hard to be around, but no one is brave enough to complain.
My work as a chaplain for this hospice started ten days after my brother took his life.
I wouldn’t recommend this, except that it saved me.
It was already planned, and I was too tired with grief to call and quit. Oddly, going to work with dying people seemed easier than calling a normal person to tell my story.
I had been to orientation, given an employee badge, and shown to my new desk, covered with a big pile of folders, full of people who needed visits. Then I left for an already planned vacation. It didn’t turn out quite the way I’d planned.
I came home from the funeral, and went to work.
Out in the suburbs, I would have gotten lost in my own story. Self-pity would have taken me over. Driving around Detroit, it was hard to feel sorry myself when so many stories were just like mine, or worse.
The mothers of Detroit become my teachers. The woman whose son went out with friends one night, and was beaten up, left with a head injury so severe he can’t work. The mother and sisters who visit the woman in a nursing home bed, unresponsive for six years, after an attack one night. The mothers of men paralyzed in shootings. They feel fortunate, compared to the sorority of women who’ve been to funerals and trials and only have framed pictures of their brothers and sons.
“We don’t need to know why,” they all tell me, in one way or another.
“But I want to know why,” I wail silently in response, but never say out loud. I want to know why. All I want is to know why.
Slowly, the truth of what they’re saying sinks in. Why doesn’t help. There’s no solace there. The truth is still the truth. Grief is still grief.
I never tell them my story, but I wonder if they see it in my eyes. Slowly, my teachers save me, and, in the silence, I hope they hear the power in their stories, too.
Filed Under: Light in Detroit -- Stories from the City Tagged With: Detroit, grief
July 22, 2013 by Mary Austin 4 Comments
I came to love Detroit, in spite of the bathrooms.
When you work in hospice or home care, driving around to visit people, you have to find your own.
When I saw people as their hospice chaplain, I wasn’t a guest. I hated to impose the worry of a clean bathroom on already burdened people. So, fast food places, and libraries became familiar stopping places.
I used to cover both the city of Detroit and the suburbs as a hospice chaplain, until we had too many patients. My boss told me I had to choose – Detroit, or the suburbs.
The suburbs meant lots of places to eat lunch, and plenty of nice, clean bathrooms in libraries and gas stations, plus coffee shops. People like me, white, suburban, familiar. Choosing Detroit meant really learning the city, not just going in for a concert or the museum.
In the end, I got Detroit. And Detroit got to me.
For the first five years I lived here, I served a church in the suburbs. I missed city life, missed the culture and the diversity and the food, but I didn’t think I could find any of that in Detroit. Detroit was burned out buildings, hungry people, unemployment, long-closed factories and despair.
After I moved from the church to the hospice, the first few months were all about geography. I struggled to plan my visits so I wasn’t driving all the way across the city and then back. People always told me that Detroit is large, geographically. I didn’t understand until I started driving it every day. It’s huge, and often empty. One day I drove down a four lane street, and block after block was empty. Then, around a corner, one board bungalow in the tall grass. Children in their underwear played outside, making me feel like I had somehow traveled back to rural America. One Sunday I visited a neighborhood church. A member had to come and unlock the door, covered with metal bars, for me. She waited until all the stray dogs ran away before she opened it.
Driving around, I came to love the energy of this city, too. The art in unexpected places. The creativity of the people who pop a beer garden in a vacant lot for a month, or a store open on the weekends. The grit of the math teacher who warns off the gangs when they come to recruit at the middle school. The guy who reluctantly agrees to coach kids, and ends up teaching not just basketball, but about being a man in a perilous place. The girl who changes schools every year, but keeps up her A’s.
Nursing homes in the suburbs are quiet. In the city, the staff plays dance music for the residents. People sing, and talk more. Listening to the staff is an education. As the fall grows chilly, the talk turns to heat. “You run up the electric bill in the winter, and then you need the summer to pay it off,” one of the health aides says, as the others nod their heads. “I’m not ready,” she adds. “I didn’t get it all paid off yet.” Other times they talk about the dads of their kids, and the struggles to get them to show up, and to pay up.
My patients taught me the history of Detroit in the story of their lives. Many of them came here from the South for work in the auto plants. The Great Migration of history books is alive in them. Now they’re moving toward the end lives of hard work and discrimination. Story after story reveals the backbone of this city. It was these people in the factories, making cars, that made Detroit famous. Now the backbone of the city is the nurses and aides, women mostly, who care for the now old and sick, and keep the city running with their own hard work.
One day I got out of the car to make a visit, and the sidewalk was covered with broken glass. Ironically, from a bottle of Barefoot wine. Anyone who was barefoot here would need a trip to the emergency room. This is a street where kids walk home from school, the younger ones in the care of the bigger ones, no adults in sight. I opened my trunk, got out a plastic bag, and started picking up the pieces of the bottle.
Crouching on the sidewalk, searching for more glass, I knew that I had come to love Detroit.
Filed Under: Light in Detroit -- Stories from the City Tagged With: church, Detroit, grief, Presbyterian Church
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Time for which emergency savings fund would be sufficient for U.S. Millennials 2014
If you were not working, how long could you pay your basic monthly expenses from your emergency savings fund (excluding tapping into your retirement savings if applicable)?
by Statista Research Department, last edited Mar 10, 2015
This statistic presents the time for which an emergency savings fund would last to cover monthly expenses of the Millennials in the United States in 2014. During the survey period, 32 percent of the U.S. Millennials stated that if they had no work, their emergency savings fund would cover 4 to 6 months of their expenses.
October to December 2014
full-time or part-time workers
Percentage points missing to 100 percent are probably due to rounding.
Monthly personal saving rate in the U.S. 2016-2019
Personal saving rate in the U.S. 1960-2018
Personal savings in the U.S. 1960-2018
Average family net worth in the U.S. 1989-2016
Statistics on "Personal savings in the United States"
Savings practices
Reasons for saving
Family savings
Savings deposits
Personal saving rate in the United States from 1960 to 2018Personal saving rate in the U.S. 1960-2018
Personal saving rate in the United States from April 2016 to April 2019Monthly personal saving rate in the U.S. 2016-2019
Value of gross private savings in the United States from 1960 to 2018 (in trillion U.S. dollars)Gross private savings in the U.S. 1960-2018
Value of personal savings in the United States from 1960 to 2018 (in billion U.S. dollars)Personal savings in the U.S. 1960-2018
Assets of section 529 savings plan in the United States from 2001 to 2018(in billion U.S. dollars)Assets of section 529 savings plan in the U.S. 2001 to 2018
Share of households owning mutual funds in the United States from 1980 to 2018Share of households owning mutual funds in the U.S. 1980-2018
Which, if any, of the following types of savings/investments do you have?Savings and investment products owned in the U.S. 2016
Have you done or considered doing any of the following over the past six months in order to save money?Saving money behavior in the U.S. 2017
Share of adults who contributed to retirement savings accounts compared with the previous year in the United States in 2018Share of adults contributing to retirement savings accounts in U.S. 2018
What are you currently saving for?Reasons for saving money in the U.S. 2017
Reasons why families saved in the United States from 2010 to 2016Reasons why families saved in the U.S. 2010-2016
Reasons for starting to save for retirement in the United States in 2017Reasons for starting to save for retirement in the U.S. 2017
Percentage of American parents saving for their college education of their children from 2009 to 2018Percentage of American parents saving for college education of their children 2018
What types of accounts do you have for your retirement savings?Accounts used for retirement savings in the U.S. 2019
Average family net worth in the United States from 1989 to 2016 (in thousand U.S. dollars)Average family net worth in the U.S. 1989-2016
Share of families that saved in the United States from 1992 to 2016Share of families that saved in the U.S. 1992-2016
Share of families that saved in the United States from 2001 to 2016, by ethnicityShare of families that saved in the U.S. 2001-2016, by ethnicity
Share of families that saved in the United States from 2004 to 2016, by work status of headShare of families that saved in the U.S. 2004-2016, by work status of head
Share of families with savings bonds in the United States from 2004 to 2016, by age of family headShare of families with savings bonds in the U.S. 2007-2016, by age of family head
Share of families holding financial assets in the United States in 2016, by asset typeShare of families holding financial assets in the U.S. 2016, by asset type
Which of the following do your kids have?Financial instruments and accounts owned by children in the U.S. 2019
Value of savings deposits at all depository institutions in the United States from 1980 to 2018 (in trillion U.S. dollars)Savings deposits at all depository institutions in the U.S. 1980-2018
How much money do you have saved in your savings account?Amount of money saved in saving accounts in the United States 2018
How much money do you have saved in your savings account? (by income)Amount of money saved in saving accounts in the United States 2016, by income
How much money do you have saved in your savings account? (by gender)Amount of money saved in saving accounts in the United States 2018, by gender
How much money do you have saved in your savings account?Amount of money saved in saving accounts in the United States 2017, by generation
For how many months would your emergency fund cover your family's expenses?Length of time of emergency fund coverage of U.S. family expenses 2019
Distribution of Millennials with emergency savings fund in the U.S. 2014
Time period for which emergency savings fund suffices among U.S. Millennials 2014
Emergency savings fund ownership among U.S. Millennials 2014
Ownership of financial products among Millennials in the U.S. 2014, by type
Expected sources of retirement income for Millennials in the U.S. 2016
Distribution of Millennials with a monthly budget in the U.S. 2015
Reasons for low importance of retirement saving among U.S. Millennials 2014
Main financial burdens of U.S. Millennials 2014
Types of budgeting systems used by Millennials in the U.S. 2015
Expected sources of retirement income of Millennials in the U.S. 2016
Financial research sources of the U.S. Millennials 2014
Reasons why U.S. Millennials chose to work with a financial professional 2014
Millennials - distribution of retirement responsibility, 2013
Millennials - percentage saving for retirement, 2013
Family costs - savings of Millennials in Great Britain 2016
Age of financial independence according to U.S. Millennials 2014
Education and training savings level for Millennials in Great Britain 2016
Age when Millennials started to save for retirement in the U.S. 2014
ESG criteria important to investors in Canada 2016, by generation
Monthly pension payments for Millennials in Great Britain in 2016
Personal savings in the U.S.
Credit cards in the United States
Retirement saving in the United States
Insured Catastrophe Losses
Millennials financial management habits in the UK
Millennials Savings Tracker 2016
The Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey 2019
Student Loan Debt and Housing Report 2017
Personal saving rate in the United States from 1960 to 2018
Personal saving rate in the United States from April 2016 to April 2019
Value of gross private savings in the United States from 1960 to 2018 (in trillion U.S. dollars)
Value of personal savings in the United States from 1960 to 2018 (in billion U.S. dollars)
Assets of section 529 savings plan in the United States from 2001 to 2018(in billion U.S. dollars)
Share of households owning mutual funds in the United States from 1980 to 2018
Which, if any, of the following types of savings/investments do you have?
Have you done or considered doing any of the following over the past six months in order to save money?
Share of adults who contributed to retirement savings accounts compared with the previous year in the United States in 2018
What are you currently saving for?
Reasons why families saved in the United States from 2010 to 2016
Reasons for starting to save for retirement in the United States in 2017
Percentage of American parents saving for their college education of their children from 2009 to 2018
What types of accounts do you have for your retirement savings?
Average family net worth in the United States from 1989 to 2016 (in thousand U.S. dollars)
Share of families that saved in the United States from 1992 to 2016
Share of families that saved in the United States from 2001 to 2016, by ethnicity
Share of families that saved in the United States from 2004 to 2016, by work status of head
Share of families with savings bonds in the United States from 2004 to 2016, by age of family head
Share of families holding financial assets in the United States in 2016, by asset type
Which of the following do your kids have?
Value of savings deposits at all depository institutions in the United States from 1980 to 2018 (in trillion U.S. dollars)
How much money do you have saved in your savings account?
How much money do you have saved in your savings account? (by income)
How much money do you have saved in your savings account? (by gender)
For how many months would your emergency fund cover your family's expenses?
Have you established an emergency savings fund?
Distribution of emergency savings fund ownership among Millennials in the United States in 2014
Do you own any of the following financial products?
Anticipated sources of retirement income of Millennials in the United States in 2016
Have you established a monthly budget you try to follow?
Why is saving for retirement of low importance to you?
Largest budget issues among Millennials in the United States in 2014
If you follow a monthly budget which of the following best describes your budgeting system?
Expected sources of retirement income of Millennials in the United States as of 2016
If you research online before making a financial decision, what sources do you use?
Why did you choose to work with a financial professional in the past?
Who would be financially responsible for your retirement?
Percentage of millennials saving for retirement in the United States in 2013
Millennial generation currently saving more or less than what they planned each month for family costs in Great Britain as of 2016*
At what age do you feel a young adult should be financially independent?
Share of Millennials saving for their education and training according to earlier plans in Great Britain as of 2016*
At what age did you start saving for retirement?
Which ESG issue is the most important to you as an investor?
Monthly private pension scheme payments for the Millennial generation in Great Britain as of 2016*
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Town's two memorials receive listed status as families get ready to honour war dead
The assets both contain the names of local soldiers who lost their lives in battle
Dave Knapper
Biddulph's town centre memorial is now Grade II listed
A town's war memorials have been listed to help safeguard their future as residents prepare to pay tribute to their heroic predecessors.
Historic England has confirmed Grade II status has been awarded to the two assets in Biddulph, which carry the names of those who lost their lives in the First World War and other conflicts.
The announcement comes as families prepare for poignant Remembrance services this weekend.
Listing is seen as a key way of identifying the most important parts of the nation’s heritage – and allowing recipients to be protected by law.
Biddulph’s two memorials are located at the junction of John Street and Congleton Road, and in the grounds of St Lawrence’s Church.
The church-based tribute was unveiled on June 4, 1921 and was first inscribed with the names of 70 local men who died. Three others were added at a later date.
It was refurbished and cleaned to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.
And on Sunday, it will prove a focal point for the church congregation when a special Remembrance service is held.
The memorial in St Lawrence's was the first in Biddulph
Andrew Shufflebotham, one of the Congleton Road church’s leaders, who is also a parochial church council member, said: “There are also a number of war graves in the churchyard and it is good news this has been listed.”
It's Armistice Day: Are you wearing a red or white poppy?
The retired teacher, who was born and raised in Biddulph, added: “We are proud of the sacrifice made by local people, along with those still serving today, and it is important we always remember them.”
The town centre memorial, boasting a granite and limestone sculpture of a soldier, was unveiled on April 29, 1922. Originally 73 names were listed in dedication to those who died in in the Great War before a further nine were added. It also contains names of those who fell in the Second World War and later conflicts.
Around 50 wreaths have already been laid there, with scores of families expected to turn out for Sunday’s parade. There will also be a silence for Armistice Day taking place today.
Elaine Rice, chairman of the Biddulph Royal British Legion, says the memorial acts as a constant reminder of the bravery of troops.
Was a North Staffordshire soldier to blame for Somme disaster?
In recent times, it has had the names of a brave local man who died in Afghanistan added to it, along with others who passed in Malaysia and Northern Ireland.
Elaine, who lives in the town, added: “We are very proud of the memorial and it is a real focal point.”
Historic England has pledged to list a total of 2,500 war memorials over the centenary of the First World War, with communities urged to put such assets forward for listing.
Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: “These memorials were an important indicator of how society was feeling and reacting as the war progressed and as the loss of life increased to unprecedented levels.
"They were not just a focal point for people’s grief, but also seen as a symbol to those still fighting.”
Staffordshire PolicePolice appeal after man found dead at Stoke-on-Trent homeThe 60-year-old's body was discovered last week
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ERIN OPREA JOINS A-LIST LINEUP OF CELEBRITY TRAINERS FOR SHAPE BODY SHOP EVENT IN LOS ANGELES (6/15)
Celebrity trainer and fitness expert ERIN OPREA will bring her signature high-intensity tabata training and lean-and-clean tips to SHAPE’s 2019 Body Shop on June 15 in Los Angeles.
Joining an A-list class of celebrity fitness gurus (including Melissa Alcantra, Lacey Stone and more), Oprea will teach her “One Hot Tabata” full-body circuit alongside classes ranging across all styles and methods that will empower and motivate attendees.
Well-known for her sessions that feel like a party, while instilling knowledge about form and technique, she’ll bring her no-excuses motto to the event. Proving that “the world is your gym,” her 15 years of training experience will be on display, teaching fans exercises they can take home and implement long after Body Shop through this hands-on training opportunity at LA’s Hudson Loft.
Tickets to Erin’s “One Hot Tabata” class and the 2019 SHAPE Body Shop are on sale now, available here.
The “queen of lean and clean” (Fitness Trainer Magazine) continues to make fitness accessible and attainable each week through cutting-edge live virtual training sessions, available to anyone globally with access to Wi-Fi and motivation to move. Sign up to virtually train with Oprea here.
To learn more about Erin Oprea, visit her website, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
ABOUT ERIN OPREA
Celebrity trainer, author and former U.S. Marine Erin Oprea has served as the personal trainer to some of the fittest names in music, including Kelsea Ballerini, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood and many more. A nine-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Oprea made history when she was chosen to lead the first all-female platoon attached to the infantry in a war zone. The fitness guru and her calorie-torching workouts have been featured on Good Morning America and E!, as well as in People, Women’s Health, Self, Vogue, Glamour, Shape and more. Her revolutionary fitness and nutrition guide, The 4x4 Diet, is available now.
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Winstanley encouraged by British performances at 2017 Universiade
England Water Polo Performance Pathway Lead Phil Winstanley insists the British performances at the 2017 Universiade have set a solid platform for the progression of the senior men’s and women’s water polo teams.
The British teams both secured top 10 finishes at last month’s competition in Taipei City, Taiwan.
Both teams picked up encouraging results at the event, with the British men accounting for Canada in the knockout stages before finishing eighth overall.
The British women also impressed in the knockout rounds, seeing off Argentina before taking Greece to penalties as they finished 10th.
“The World University Games provided a fantastic opportunity for our athletes,” said Winstanley.
“If we have ambition to compete on a European and World stage then we must grasp opportunities like this with both hands.
“Both teams have come together in less than a year and acquitted themselves fantastically well against established teams.
“Both squads were young and we absolutely need to invest in the youth over a sustained period of time if we are to achieve our aims of competing at this level in future.”
British men picked up three consecutive victories
While the men lost their first match to France, they bounced back with three consecutive wins.
Victories over Republic of Korea and Chinese Taipei in the group stage were followed by a dramatic 7-6 defeat of Canada to qualify for the quarter finals.
The Brits faced France again in the last eight, and while they narrowed the margin from their group game, they ultimately lost out 13-4.
Further defeats to Hungary and the Netherlands saw the GB men place eighth overall, matching their target before the start of the competition.
“From the outset, we knew our tournament objective was to make the top eight,” said head coach Tim Dunsbee.
“The draw gave us an opportunity and it was for us to take advantage of it.
“The players responded perfectly and in what was to become our cup final last-16 game against Canada, they were superb in every aspect.”
British women build momentum after tough group draw
The British women were handed a tough group draw, facing countries who ultimately finished second (Hungary), third (Japan), fourth (Russia) and fifth (Canada) in the overall rankings.
While they lost out to those four sides, the Brits drew their other group match 9-9 against New Zealand, then won their first classification match with a 7-4 defeat of Argentina.
In their 9-10 classification game, the GB women took Greece – whose senior team were seventh at this year’s World Championships – to a penalty shoot-out before losing out 11-10.
“I’m really proud of the players,’ said head coach Theo Nousios. “In a short space of time, the girls managed to come together as a team and be competitive.
“We always knew the standard of competition would be very high.
“Strength, decision making under pressure and inexperience were our weaknesses. However, GB ladies still performed above everyone’s expectations to draw against New Zealand and Greece, games we now know we could have won.
“The prevailing thought is that GB water polo teams belong to this big stage.”
Men’s Competition
Group Stage: France 17-5 Great Britain (5-2, 3-1, 3-1, 6-1)
Group Stage: Great Britain 11-7 Republic of Korea (5-3, 3-1, 3-2, 0-1)
Group Stage: Great Britain 18-2 Chinese Taipei (3-0, 4-2, 7-0, 4-0)
Round of 16: Great Britain 7-6 Canada (2-3, 1-1, 3-2, 1-0)
Quarter Final: France 13-4 Great Britain (4-1, 2-1, 6-1, 1-1)
5-8 Classification: Hungary 19-2 Great Britain (7-0, 5-1, 3-1, 4-0)
7-8 Classification: The Netherlands 18-5 Great Britain (4-2, 4-0, 6-3, 4-0)
Women’s Competition
Group Stage: Russia 25-5 Great Britain (6-0, 6-0, 5-2, 8-3)
Group Stage: Hungary 28-3 Great Britain (8-1, 6-1, 6-1, 8-0)
Group Stage: Japan 18-4 Great Britain (4-1, 4-1, 3-1, 7-1)
Group Stage: Great Britain 9-9 New Zealand (3-3, 3-0, 2-3, 1-3)
Group Stage: Canada 24 – 5 Great Britain (5-1, 4-3, 6-1, 9-0)
9-12 Classification: Great Britain 7-4 Argentina (2-0, 3-1, 1-2, 1-1)
9-10 Classification: Greece 11-10 (after pens) Great Britain (2-0, 3-4, 1-2, 1-1)
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Gareth David (Los Campesinos!) Talks Alvvays’ “Archie, Marry Me”
The singer of Los Campesinos! managed to find the one bright spot on an otherwise intolerable “alternative” radio channel.
By Gareth David | August 6, 2014
Gareth David
Gareth David is lyricist and singer in the band Los Campesinos! He was nominated for Sexiest Vegetarian at the 2009 PETA Awards 2009 and Hottest Male at the 2012 NME awards. He didn’t win either. The most recent Los Campesinos! album NO BLUES is out now via Wichita Recordings.
archie marry me
Los Campesinos!
track reviews
Every summer, there’s that song — the song that defines those sunny days and balmy nights, the one you’ll forever associate with a specific time and place. This week, Talkhouse writers talk their song of the summer of 2014.
— the editors of the Talkhouse
Day to day I work in an office, and though I have free rein to play whatever music I like, loud and proud, with no fear of complaint from my three equally discerning co-workers, more often than not I am completely unable to remember what music I like.
Therefore, when I arrive at work, I’ll switch the radio on to what’s considered to be the vaguely “alternative” national digital radio station and listen to it for the next several hours until I leave for home.
By and large this is a traumatic, soul-destroying experience. The music is dreary, and most of the hosts are unforgivable in their mundanity. We’re talking middle-aged men getting fellow middle-aged men to phone in to answer questions like “Have you ever bumped into someone you know at a gig, without knowing they were going to be at the gig?” Endless tiresome punning on band names and ironic use of “YOLO” (while labeling it “hipster slang”).
Amongst the detritus there’s one song which I first heard on this radio station, and up until now have only heard there. Played a couple of times a day throughout these past couple of months, as its playlist spot demands, “Archie, Marry Me,” by the Canadian indiepop group Alvvays, is exactly the sort of song that people who turn their nose up at my band would expect me to like, basking in winsome post-C86 fuzz as it does. Well, in this case you’ve got me, I hold my hands up.
This is a song full of great fist-in-the-air moments. At the very start, before the rest of the band crashes in behind her mid-sentence, singer Molly Rankin has the gall to set up a “matrimony/alimony” rhyme. Later in the song there is a pause as the band comes out of the middle eight, instrumentation ceasing briefly as she throws out a triumphant “hey, hey” to lead us back into the endless chorus outro. And then there’s my favourite moment of the song — I’m a sucker for turning the minutiae, the unimportant, into clarion calls — as Rankin, disregarding the need for a showy wedding with hundreds of guests, implores Archie to “forget the… bread makers!” It looks kind of corny written down, but it’s truly not.
Best of all, “Archie, Marry Me,” from the group’s self-titled debut, is a song about two people against the world. It’s reassuring, slightly trepidatious, ultimately exultant, and it has buoyed my chest in these summer months when, though I may not have been able to see it, I’ve known that the sun is shining outside, and I’ve someone with whom I can lay in it with, for many summers to come. Just as soon as I get off work.
Actor/Screenwriter Randy Russell Talks Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat
Jonathan Lisecki (Gayby) Talks James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Gareth David (Los Campesinos!) Talks James Blunt’s Moon Landing
Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz) Talks Bluffing’s “Sheltered”
Gareth David (Los Campesinos!) Talks Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ Wig Out at Jagbags
Evan Weiss (Into It. Over It., Pet Symmetry, Their/They’re/There) Talks Fucked Up’s Glass Boys
Zachary Lipez (Freshkills, Publicist UK) Talks Kirin J. Callinan’s “Embracism”
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Matthew Dear Talks Dinosaur Jr.’s I Bet on Sky
I met J. Mascis once. It was a brief backstage sighting in 2007 at the Belgian festival Pukkelpop. In a rare moment of unquestioned will...
By Matthew Dear | March 4, 2013
Matthew Dear is a DJ, a dance-music producer, an experimental pop artist, and a bandleader. His latest album Beams is a suite of weird, wild, and queasily optimistic rhythm-driven pop songs. He currently lives in upstate New York near the Delaware River. You can follow him on Twitter here.
I met J. Mascis once. It was a brief backstage sighting in 2007 at the Belgian festival Pukkelpop. In a rare moment of unquestioned will, I hopped up from where I was sitting and approached him, simply to say how much I enjoyed Beyond, Dinosaur Jr.’s eighth and latest album at the time. His reply was humble and gracious. However, what forever burned itself into my mind was not his gratitude but the sound of his voice: It was identical to the J. Mascis I had grown up with on the albums, a voice seemingly smothered in amber molasses, dripping from his mouth down to the pavement.
I Bet on Sky is Dinosaur Jr.’s tenth album, and it’s overflowing with jars of that slow-paced, oozing voice. “Discharge is a sign,” Mascis sings on the Mellotron-laden album opener “Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know,” evoking images of a forlorn, angst-ridden soul in a dark hallway, leaning with his back against the wall, head cocked up at the ceiling, staring. Has he been burned and now blames himself and the lover who scorned him? Will there be a resolution? Did she really pretend she didn’t know? Whatever the case, or the song’s meaning for Mascis, the beauty of Dinosaur Jr.’s music remains apparent. It evokes a comforting familiarity that, when left unchallenged, propels listeners into a soft-space imagination spurred by three-piece rock simplicity. Unlike many of their contemporaries who have failed to stay cohesive and fallen by the critical wayside years ago, Dinosaur Jr. prevails by not getting in the way of being Dinosaur Jr. and in turn gives the listener all of the creative listening freedom they desire.
Last year, Spin notched Mascis at the number five spot in their list of the greatest guitarists of all time. Granted, it was a list geared toward guitarists who are “resourceful, egalitarian, flawed and human” and although having some considerably questionable entries along the way, it nonetheless kept Mascis in the company of some boundary-breaking musicianship — including Prince, Kurt Cobain, and Thurston Moore. I Bet on Sky is wrought with Mascis’ effervescently sharp string bends and crunched, compacted chords. Immediate guitar standouts “What Was That” and “See It on Your Side” follow in the tradition that would place Mascis atop many all-time great lists. “What Was That” opens with a mantric repeater riff, rattling high in the upper frets, slightly effected with delay, mesmerizingly simple and boldly effective. “See It on Your Side” conjures feelings similar to the best Guided by Voices riffs, pure in their domain, as if plowed from fields where rock & roll grows like rows of wheat on a plain.
Seemingly, Dinosaur Jr.’s goals are to blanket the listener with an unabashed raucous fervor and coat the mind in pithy tales of flawed love and bittersweet optimism. I Bet on Sky continues traditions, and reflects a band firmly established in its sound, moving forward into another decade, fastidiously committed to doing what they do best — which is simply being Dinosaur Jr.
Anthony Anzaldo (Ceremony) Talks the XX’s Coexist
Cassie Grzymkowski (the Babies, Vivian Girls) Talks the Fresh and Onlys’ Long Slow Dance
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Scaling Up Tissue Engineering
News Mar 15, 2016
A team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School for Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has invented a method for 3D bioprinting thick vascularized tissue constructs composed of human stem cells, extracellular matrix, and circulatory channels lined with endothelial blood vessel cells. The resulting network of vasculature contained within these deep tissues enables fluids, nutrients and cell growth factors to be controllably perfused uniformly throughout the tissue.
"This latest work extends the capabilities of our multi-material bioprinting platform to thick human tissues, bringing us one step closer to creating architectures for tissue repair and regeneration," says Wyss Core Faculty member Jennifer A. Lewis, Sc.D., senior author on the study, who is also the Hansörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at SEAS.
To date, scaling up human tissues built of a variety of cell types has been limited by a lack of robust methods for embedding life-sustaining vascular networks. Building on their earlier work, Lewis and her team have now increased the tissue thickness threshold by nearly tenfold, setting the stage for future advances in tissue engineering and repair. The method combines vascular plumbing with living cells and an extracellular matrix, enabling the structures to function as living tissues. In the study, Lewis and her team showed that their 3D bioprinted tissues could sustain and function as living tissue architectures for upwards of six weeks.
In the study, Lewis' team demonstrated the 3D printing of one centimeter-thick tissue containing human bone marrow stem cells surrounded by connective tissue. By pumping bone growth factors through the supporting vasculature lined with the same endothelial cells found in our blood vessels, the team induced cell development toward bone cells over the course of one month.
"This research will help to establish the fundamental scientific understanding required for bioprinting of vascularized living tissues," Zhijian Pei, National Science Foundation Program Director for the Directorate for Engineering Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, which funded the project. "Research such as this enables broader use of 3-D human tissues for drug safety and toxicity screening and, ultimately, for tissue repair and regeneration."
Lewis' novel 3D bioprinting method uses a customizable, printed silicone mold to house and plumb the printed tissue structure. Inside this mold, a grid of vascular channels is printed first, over which ink containing living stem cells is then printed. The inks are self-supporting and strong enough to hold shape as the structure's size increases with each layer of deposition. At intersections meeting within the foundational vascular grid, vertical vascular pillars are printed, which interconnect a pervasive network of microvessels throughout all dimensions of the stem cell-laden tissue. After printing, a liquid composed of fibroblasts and extracellular matrix fills in the open regions around the 3D printed tissue, cross linking the entire structure.
The resulting soft tissue structure is replete with blood vessels, and via a single inlet and outlet on opposite ends of the chip, can be immediately perfused with nutrients to ensure survival of the cells. The pervasive vasculature facilitates stem cell differentiation by enabling delivery of cell growth factors throughout all areas of the tissue. To achieve a variety of tissue shapes, thicknesses, and compositions, the shape of the printed silicone chip can be customized and the cell inks can be tuned to include a wide variety of cell types.
"Having the vasculature pre-fabricated within the tissue allows enhanced cell functionality at the deep core of the tissue, and gives us the ability to modulate those cell functions through the use of perfusable substances such as growth factors," said David Kolesky, a graduate researcher at the Wyss Institute and SEAS and one of the study's first authors.
"Jennifer and her team are shifting the paradigm in the field of tissue engineering based on their unique bioprinting approach," said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology program at Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS. "Their ability to build living 3D vascularized tissues from the bottom-up provides a potential way to form macroscale functional tissue replacements that can be surgically connected to the body's own blood vessels to provide immediate perfusion of these artificial tissues, and thus, greatly increase their likelihood of survival. This would overcome many of the problems that held back tissue engineering from clinical success in the past."
In addition to Lewis and Kolesky, other team members on the new study include co-first authors Kimberly Homan, Ph.D., Research Associate at the Wyss Institute, and Mark Skylar-Scott, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
“Slug” Keeps Breast Stem Cell Health in Check
A transcription factor called "Slug" keeps breast cells healthy by regulating both stem cell activity and repair of DNA damage.
New Class of Cancer-killing Agents Could Eradicate Cancer Stem Cells
Scientists at The University of Toledo investigating improvements to a commonly used chemotherapy drug have discovered an entirely new class of cancer-killing agents that show promise in eradicating cancer stem cells.
In a World First, Researchers Hijack Bacteria to Guide Stem Cells “Home”
In a world first, scientists have found a new way to direct stem cells to heart tissue. The findings could radically improve the treatment for cardiovascular disease, which causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK.
Olympus Launches Revolutionary Next-Generation Objectives
Bio-Rad Launches its scATAC-Seq Solution
Inside a “Fake” Conference: A Journey Into Predatory Science
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Shinzo Abe insists on reforming pacifist constitution as he is set to break record for longest serving PM
Julian Ryall, Tokyo
20 September 2018 • 10:54am
Shinzo Abe was re-elected head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Thursday and is expected to quickly attempt to follow through on a campaign promise to revise the nation’s pacifist constitution.
Mr Abe took 553 of the 807 votes available to politicians in the LDP and members of the party in regional blocks, handily defeating his sole challenger, Shigeru Ishiba, a former defence minister.
As well as reinforcing his control over a party that has been in power since December 2012, the win means Mr Abe is on course to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
Combined with the LDP’s firm grip on power in both houses of the Diet and the fact that Japan’s next general election does not have to be called until 2021, the victory means that Mr Abe is likely in November next year to surpass the 2,886 days that Taro Katsura spent as prime minister over three terms from 1902.
Mr Abe, who turns 64 on Friday, has ridden out two scandals alleging he influenced ministry decisions for old friends but remains popular with the public largely because the domestic economy is doing well.
Profile | Shinzō Abe
Japan has recently reported the longest period of economic growth in more than two decades, unemployment is at record lows and the vast majority of people have increased spending power once again.
Mr Abe’s position on security issues - primarily the threat posed by a nuclear-armed and still unpredictable North Korea as well as an expansionist China - also resonates with ordinary Japanese.
Mr Abe is expected to play on those fears when he puts forward the first proposals to amend a constitution that many conservatives still believe was imposed on a defeated Japan by the vengeful Allies in the aftermath of World War Two.
Abe is expected push for a change in the constitution to formally recognise Japan’s military as acceptable Credit: MARTIN BUREAU/ AFP
Speaking just days before the leadership vote, Mr Abe said he intends to “build a new country” and that he would “take the leading role in handing over a proud and positive Japan to future generations”.
Mr Abe has devoted much of his political career to revising the section of the constitution that details the legal standing and role of the Self-Defence Forces. Article 9 of the document says that Japan forever renounces war and forbids the use of force to settle international disputes.
Mr Abe has suggested that he will call an extraordinary session of the Diet before the month is out to put forward a proposal to formally recognise Japan’s military as acceptable under the constitution - a definition that has previously been a grey area.
The issue may be one of interpretations, but China and both North and South Korea are likely to express their opposition to any moves that could be seen as strengthening the hand of the Japanese military.
A more significant hurdle for the prime minister is likely to be the two-thirds majority he requires in the Diet to force a change in the constitution. The LDP has a majority in both houses, but lacks such an overwhelming majority.
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catherina cunnane, marie martin, women in ag, women in business
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Marie Martin (23) established her own business when she was a Transition Year student.
The Dingle, Co. Kerry native invented her flagship product – the Safe Scrub Sprayer – after her father became ill from spraying pesticides.
“I was helping my father on our farm; he was operating a hand lance on the back of a tractor using protective gear,” Marie told Catherina Cunnane – That’s Farming.
“As the evening and night progressed, my father started feeling rather ill.”
“He is a typical farmer so it takes a lot for him to go to a GP; he sought medical attention and it really was a near miss.” She added.
Fuelled with enthusiasm, Marie had a desire to prevent this issue from re-occurring, so she went in search of a solution.
She combined her agricultural knowledge with her welding experience to create what is now a top-selling product.
The Safe Scrub Sprayer is a front-loader mounted sprayer which eliminates all exposure to noxious fumes that accompany weed killers.
“It is activated from inside the tractor cab. You can adjust the height, the width and the angle all from the comfort and the safety of the tractor.”
Up to 50% less pesticide is needed because of this feature which has been added in recent years.
The Safe Scrub Sprayer can be adjusted up to 1.5-metres out on either side of the tractor, depending on wind direction; this prevents any back drift onto the tractor as explained by the 23-year-old.
It won its first award - the Young Entrepreneur Programme – just months after its creation. “Everything snowballed from there. Up until this point, I wanted to study Physiotherapy at third-level.”
Following this, experimental trials were conducted on neighbouring farms to maximise innovation, value and quality. The product launched in 2013 and is now available across the country and worldwide.
“Farmers want to save time and money and this product ticks all of those boxes and more.”
“We outsourced production when the business was in its infancy; however, my brother is now at the helm of manufacturing and my parents also provide assistance.”
Martin's Safety Equipment's mission is to continue to produce innovative products that promote farm safety in the agricultural sector.
“Our health and safety promotion is in an indirect way – it is through innovation and new product development.”
This means that research and development and having a close relationship with clients are integral parts of the business. “Constructive criticism is the most beneficial thing that I have ever experienced - personally and within the enterprise.” She added.
With several awards under her belt, Marie regards becoming a Quercus Innovation and Entrepreneurship Scholar at University College Cork (UCC) as one of her biggest achievements to date.
“This has allowed me to balance my academia with my business, sporting activities, farming and having a social life.”
She represented Ireland at Forbes 30 under 30 in Boston in 2016 and received a scholarship to study Innovation and Entrepreneurial Studies at Harvard Business School in summer 2017.
Flying the flag for women in agriculture and women in business with pride, Marie has a desire to prove that females should aspire to be successful entrepreneurs.
She acknowledged the continued support of family, friends, Kerry Tractors, Tralee, other dealerships and clients.
She admitted that starting a business in the farm machinery sector in her mid-teens was challenging.
“Everyone including farmers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and bankers did not take me seriously, but I hadn’t much confidence in myself.”
“I was at our product launch, with the sprayer on-show and a man came up to me and asked me what was I selling.”
“I shared my story and told him about the product and its benefits. He turned around to me and said ‘you’re a young girl, what do you know about farming’?” She added.
Marie said she now has a general, educational conversation with potential clients before she introduces her product to them - that's how she has eroded this barrier.
Marie is ready to embark on the next chapter once she completes her undergraduate studies this summer, although no plans have been set in stone yet.
“I try to build my portfolio every summer; I have worked for health-care and technology firms.”
The 23-year-old looks forward to helping her company reach its full potential as its Founder and C.E.O.
She will continue to be involved in the running of the family dairy, sheep and beef enterprise; she has a strong passion for exhibiting their commercial cattle at agricultural shows.
“Take everything with a pinch of salt and don’t be afraid to ask for help – that’s my mantra." She concluded.
For more information, please see here.
If you are a woman in agriculture and you want to share your story, email – catherina@thatsfarming.com – with a short bio.
Post by Catherina Cunnane
Editor of THAT'S FARMING
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Chicago resurrects its master craftsman
Edgar Miller finally gets his due as the city prepares to celebrate the overlooked designer’s eclectic work
Nancy Kenney
A detail of Edgar Miller's art glass window design at the Glasner Studio (industrial glass, stained glass, metal cuts, lead, iron oxide; 1929) Photo: Daniela Colucci
With their striking wealth of detail—stained-glass windows with frolicking animals, wood incised with geometric patterns, classical bas-reliefs, brick studded with tile—Edgar Miller’s riotously decorated artists’ studios in Chicago have earned comparisons with landmarks such as Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in south Los Angeles or Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Yet Miller (1899-1993) has been largely overlooked in US architectural history. A likely reason is the designer and master craftsman’s refusal to be confined to one style: his work shows influences ranging from ancient, Medieval and Renaissance art to the indigenous, Expressionist, Modernist and Art Deco movements.
Now, however, architects, home design enthusiasts and non-profit organisations in Chicago are embracing Miller’s work, which includes murals, sculptures and wallpaper as well as large-scale projects such as his hand-crafted Frank Fisher Apartments complex. This autumn, the Terra Foundation for American Art is underwriting a series of lectures on Miller at the city’s DePaul Art Museum. Organised by the non-profit Edgar Miller Legacy, which preserves and promotes the designer’s work, the lectures are part of Art Design Chicago, a year-long effort that celebrates the city as a crossroads of creativity.
The National Public Housing Museum, which is converting the former Jane Addams Homes housing project into its new home, is raising money to refurbish the large-scale sandstone Animal Court sculptures, now pockmarked, that Miller designed for the project in 1938. “They’ve deteriorated over the years,” says Lisa Lee, the museum’s director.
The Edgar Miller Legacy is offering sold-out monthly tours of the R.W. Glasner Studio, which Miller created between 1928 and 1932 in collaboration with the artist and developer Sol Kogen and then remodelled in 1946. Their partnership in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in the creation of Carl Street Studios and the Kogen-Miller Studios, of which the Glasner Studio is a part. (The Glasner was restored from 2003 to 2007.)
Efforts are also under way to recruit craftsmen with the expertise to preserve Miller’s fantastical assemblages of wood, metal, glass, brick, tile and plaster.
The Glasner Studio (1928-32) includes glass window designs, concrete bas-reliefs and wood carvings by Miller Alexander Vertikoff
Kogen and Miller visited demolition sites, departing with tiles and other detritus that Miller could incorporate in his spaces. When the World’s Fair in Chicago ended in 1934, says Zac Bleicher, the executive director of the Edgar Miller Legacy, Miller and Kogen scooped up brick, metal, industrial glass and even the marble dividers between urinals and then stashed them in their workshop.
Some have cast Miller as a counterpoint to 20th-century Modernism and an anomaly in Chicago’s architectural legacy. But to Bleicher, Miller fits solidly into the city’s vernacular architectural tradition. “It’s not really stuff you see in the Loop or in the major skyscrapers or buildings of Chicago,” he says. “It’s what you see as you walk down a neighbourhood street and notice a building that’s really kind of funky and artistic—definitely in Old Town or Lincoln Park” (neighbourhoods that came to be populated by artists).
“In a way, it’s a fusion of Arts and Crafts style with Modernism,” he says. “And that only occurred in the 1920s and 1930s.” Subsequent generations of home architects, renovators and “artistic-reuse people” have drawn inspiration from Miller’s designs and use of scavenged materials, Bleicher says.
Bob Horn, the artisan who led the meticulous restoration of the Glasner Studio, once said that the most difficult aspect of restoring Miller’s homes “is that it’s like learning to copy someone’s handwriting”, Bleicher recalls. Often, a piece of carved wood “would be so rotted out that a partial re-creation would be necessary, so this wasn’t just about applying a new coat of paint or varnish”, he says. “Horn would also talk about having to remove your ego from the project and completely dedicate yourself to Edgar’s vision.”
Today, Miller stands as a “Renaissance man” who “inspires any creative person to go beyond where they’re currently at”, Bleicher says. “It’s like, wow, this guy did all this stuff and maybe I should try to do a little more.”
Appeared in The Art Newspaper, 304 September 2018
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Deported veterans ‘distress’ flag mural on US-Mexico border under review
US Customs and Border Protection is considering whether to remove or preserve the painting, which some have complained is disrespectful
Natalie Schachar
13th July 2018 03:25 BST
The upside-down flag mural painted by deported veterans on the Tijuana side of the US-Mexico border fence
For years, an upside-down American flag painted on the Tijuana side of the US-Mexico border fence attracted little attention from Washington, DC. But a recent decision by US Customs and Border Protection to evaluate the removal of the flag is another flashpoint in a national debate over the Trump administration's immigration policy. The decision also comes at the same time another flag protest work, created by Josephine Meckseper as part of a nationwide project by the New York organisation Creative Time, was removed from public display at the University of Kansas.
The upside-down flag—a long-time military distress signal—was painted on the border fence by a a San Francisco-based artist and a group of deported military veterans to raise awareness of their struggle to receive benefits and return to the US. Border officials are now determining whether the painting, measuring about 20ft by 15ft, is graffiti or “an intentional mural” after receiving complaints about the overturned flag, which some have interpreted as a sign of disrespect.
Artists, free speech advocates, and the deported veterans have been quick to criticise the possibility that the mural could be scrubbed clean. “Prompted solely by its political message and viewpoint, the mural’s removal would raise serious First Amendment concerns in addition to concerns relating to the destruction of a work of public art created by a recognised artist,” says the National Coalition Against Censorship, in a June letter to San Diego’s chief border patrol agent.
Amos Gregory, the San Francisco-based US Navy veteran who oversaw the work, says the mural has existed without qualms for years. “When did they start to care about art on the wall?” he asked, noting the letters SOS, a rainbow, and the names of dozens of veterans that are also painted on the fence at Friendship Circle, a public spot between San Diego and Tijuana.
Deported US Navy veteran Alex Murillo at the mural he helped paint on the border Griselda San Martin
“It’s a mural from us to America—to our country—and to the world,” says Alex Murillo, a US Navy veteran who was found in possession of a large quantity of marijuana and deported about five years ago, who helped paint the work.
In an emailed statement, a customs spokeswoman said that it is obvious that skilled artists painted the fence with the aim of “sending a specific political message and/or beautifying” the border fence. “It is important to understand that the Chief Patrol Agent has not made any final decision and is currently reaching out to those involved with creating the murals in an attempt to offer them a voice,” before the agency decides on “remediation or preservation”. The statement adds: “It is also important to understand that this is US Government property and that all of the graffiti and/or paintings were applied without permission.”
Army Reserve veteran Hector Lopez, who was deported from the US and now lives in Tijuana, remains determined about the mural. “We’re gonna keep that flag and keep repainting it,” he says.
The names of dozens of veterans are also painted on the border fence Griselda San Martin
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Germs Rule the World
The new germ theory: Infections play a role in many, many diseases—in ways we're just beginning to understand.
Thomas Goetz
A Tuberculosis vaccine at the Institute Pasteur in Paris, France in 1931.Alfred Eisenstaedt/AP
In 1882, Robert Koch discovered that a bacterium was behind the world's leading cause of death: tuberculosis (TB). This brilliant combination of investigative logic and savvy microscopy refuted the conventional wisdom that TB was an inherited disease, or some form of cancer. Rather, TB was caused by a particularly wily and insatiable germ. This finding didn’t just accurately identify the agent behind the world’s leading cause of death. It also established an essential new paradigm for medicine.
There are those diseases that are caused by bacteria (and later, viruses), such as tuberculosis, typhoid and typhus fevers, and diphtheria; and those diseases caused by the body’s own failures, such as heart disease and cancer. For more than a century, this distinction has served as a sharp and clear line in our understanding of disease. But it is a distinction that may be on the verge of being itself replaced. Germs, it seems, may be at the root of more disease than we have given them credit for.
In the last decade, several diseases understood as strictly noninfectious have, in fact, been found to have significant infectious components. Several forms of cancer, gastrointenstinal diseases, autoimmune illnesses including diabetes, and even some categories of heart disease are all being reconsidered in light of new research. Together, this research amounts to nothing less than a new germ theory, one that could once again alter contemporary definitions of medicine.
Heart disease, of course, has long been considered an ailment of exclusively human causes, rising in the developed world as traditional infectious disease has waned. Heart disease kills more people than any other condition worldwide, including 47 percent of Americans and Europeans and 30 percent of all global deaths. Scientific consensus points to some combination of behavioral and environmental links (smoking, diet, exercise, stress, and so on down the list), along with various genetic components. Except in rare cases of acute infections, such as infectious endocarditis, microbes have been considered irrelevant.
But in 2013, an infectious component revealed itself, in the form of trimethylamine-N-oxide, or TMAO. TMAO isn’t a bacterium itself; rather it’s created when bacteria digest carnitine, a compound found in meat, and lecithin, a fatty substance common in certain foods such as eggs, milk, and some nuts. In research published in Nature Medicine and The New England Journal of Medicine, a team led by Cleveland Clinic’s Stanley Hazen found that human subjects with the highest levels of TMAO in their blood had about twice the risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or death compared to those who had the lowest TMAO levels.
The chain of causation here requires a few clever links. First, the hypothesis goes, the human eats a diet high in meat or lecithin. The gut bacteria feed on carnitin and lectithin and release a substance that in the human liver is turned into TMAO. This excess TMAO allows cholesterol to get into artery walls and also prevents the body from shedding extra cholesterol. Once there, the cholesterol accumulates on the blood vessels, causing atherosclerosis. Hazen’s research is only suggestive; it needs further replication in more human studies. But it suggests a profound departure from our conventional understanding of heart disease, and what role bacteria may play.
Other areas of noninfectious disease have also turned out to have infectious aspects in recent years. The best known example is that of cervical cancer, which was first associated with the human papillomavirus, or HPV, in the 1970s. A vaccine against the virus was developed in 2006, and is now frequently administered to young women before they become sexually active. These and other preventive efforts have helped reduce the rate of cervical cancer by more than 70 percent since the 1970s. But it turns out that HPV might be a more active virus than we have accounted for: It is likely also associated with rising rates of throat cancer, anal cancer, penile cancer, and other cancers. Though HPV is associated with women, a surprising 12,000 men each year develop an HPV-associated cancer, according to the CDC.
A similar blurring of the lines has happened in research into gastrointestinal and autoimmune diseases, driven by the growing awareness of a microbiome—those one trillion bacteria that live in our guts and on our skins, a trillion organisms that unwittingly affect the larger organism that is the human body. A study released last November suggested a strong connection between a bacteria named Prevotella copri and rheumatoid arthritis. Not only did researchers establish a significantly higher rate of the bacteria in humans with the disease, but when they administered doses of P. copri to mice the animals developed increased inflammation.
The first hint that these microbes might play a role occurred in 1982, when Australian scientists Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered helicobacter, a microbe that was persistently present in patients with chronic gastritis and gastric ulcers. At first, the notion that bacteria had anything to do with gastrointestinal ulcers seemed absurd; ulcers were well associated with stress and human biology.
Frustrated with the naysayers, Marshall decided to prove his point. In a classic demonstration of self-experimentation, Marshall swallowed a vial of helicobacter bacteria, and promptly developed a horrible ulcer. A subsequent round of antibiotics cleared the condition. Still, it would be a decade before other scientists had replicated their findings and changed the consensus opinion. In 2005, Marshall and Warren would be recognized with the Nobel Prize.
Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and even obesity may have a significant connection to infection. A December 2012 study found that Enterobacter, a kind of bacteria that produce endotoxins, were significantly elevated in morbidly obese volunteers. When samples of this gut bacteria were transferred to mice, the animals both gained weight and became insulin resistant—an early sign of diabetes. And this isn’t to mention the “hygiene hypothesis,” which suggests that the absence of germs in our systems may be linked to increasing rates of asthma, colitis, Crohn’s disease, and other inflammatory diseases.
Taken together, these insights argue for a new germ theory, one that would up-end our prejudices as profoundly as Robert Koch’s discovery did in 1882. This new germ theory would hold that the body is not a sterile instrument; that the interplay between our organism and those trillions of mircrobes is profoundly more complicated than it has seemed. It would allow that germs are not always, in fact, germs—that they can benefit us as well as harm us, and that knowing the difference is an essential challenge of 21st century medicine. Ultimately, the new germ theory would leave the door open to the fact that our convictions today might be proven wrong tomorrow.
Thomas Goetz is an entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the co-founder of Iodine, a digital health company. He is author of The Remedy.
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Why the US-Cuba Deal Really Is a Victory for the Cuban Revolution
The left should recall and applaud the long resistance of tiny Cuba to the northern Goliath.
By Tom Hayden
Cuba’s President Raul Castro (Reuters)
No one in the mainstream media will acknowledge it, but the normalization of American relations with Havana, symbolized by release of prisoners today, is a huge success for the Cuban Revolution.
The hostile US policy, euphemistically known as “regime change,” has been thwarted. The Cuban Communist Party is confidently in power. The Castros have navigated through all the challenges of the years. In Latin America and the United Nations, Cuba is accepted, and the United States is isolated.
It is quite legitimate for American progressives to criticize various flaws and failures of the Cuban Revolution. But the media and the right are overflowing with such commentary. Only the left can recall, narrate and applaud the long resistance of tiny Cuba to the northern Goliath.
For those actually supportive of participatory democracy in Cuba, as opposed to those who support regime change by secret programs, the way to greater openness on the island lies in a relaxation of the external threat.
Despite the US embargo and relentless US subversion, Cuba remains in the upper tier of the United Nations Human Development Index because of its educational and healthcare achievements. Cuba even leads the international community in the dispatch of medical workers to fight Ebola. Cuba is celebrated globally because of its military contribution to the defeat of colonialism and apartheid in Angola and southern Africa. Now a new generation of Cuban leaders who fought in Angola is coming to power in the Havana and its diplomatic corps. For example, Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Cuba’s representative to the United Nations, today walks on an artificial limb as a result of his combat in Angola.
When few thought it possible, Cuba has achieved the return of all five prisoners held for spying on right-wing Cubans who trained at Florida bases and flew harassment missions through Cuban air space. The last three to be released served hard time in American prisons, and are being welcomed as triumphant heroes on the streets of Havana. Three of the Cuban Five served in Angola as well.
Tens of thousands of Americans, from the veterans of the cane-cutting Venceremos Brigades to the steady flow of tourists insisting on their right to travel, deserve credit for steady years of educational and solidarity work and for pushing a hardy congressional bloc towards normalization.
President Obama has kept his word, despite relentless skepticism from both the left and the mainstream media. He is confounding the mainstream assumption that the Cuban right has a permanent lock on American foreign policy, especially after the Republican sweep in the November elections.
In this case, Obama’s extreme emphasis on diplomatic secrecy worked to his advantage. For over a year, leaders in both countries have conducted regular private debates and consultations, which resulted in the detailed normalization plan released in both capitals today. No one was more important on the American congressional team than Senator Patrick Leahy. Their tight discipline held until the final moment.
It is known that the private US-Cuba conversations about Alan Gross and the Cuban Five were the most difficult. The United States has never acknowledged that Gross was a de facto spy of a certain type, having traveled five times to Havana to secretly distribute advanced communications technology to persons in Havana’s small Jewish community before he was arrested in 2009. Also problematic for American officials immersed in decades of Cold War thinking was the task of wrapping their minds around the idea that the Cuban Five were political prisoners and not terrorist threats.
Finally, when both sides had achieved an internal consensus, the project was derailed by the furious Republican-led blowback against Obama’s trade of five Taliban captives for captured American soldier Bowe Bergdahl in May 2014. Then the November elections interfered with, and threatened to indefinitely delay, the beginning of normalization. Chanukah was the last date for an announcement before the installation of the new US Congress.
Because of the anti-Cuban slant of mainstream thinking, the media will make much of the anger of the Cuban right exemplified by Senator Marco Rubio. But while it’s too early to know, it’s hard to imagine his presidential ambitions being enhanced by arguing in 2016 that Obama should have tried to overthrow the Castros. Senator Bob Menendez has been a leading Democrat trying to block the Obama initiative from his chairing position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Most Democrats will be delighted to see Menendez, who represents Cuban exiles in Union City, diminished in the Senate.
Going forward, the United States will remove Cuba from the “state terrorism” listing, which will ease the possibility of funding from the international financial system. For American citizens, permission to travel to Cuba will be significantly widened. Business and trade possibilities will increase. Starting with the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama, the American and Cuban delegations will sit at the same table. The so-called interest sections will be upgraded to formal embassies. The embargo is going to be hollowed out from within, with American tourist and investment dollars permitted to flow. With or without congressional action to lift the 1996 Helms-Burton act, the embargo is being dissolved. More than 400,000 Cuban-Americans traveled to Cuba last year alone.
And here’s a prediction: if the president has his wish, the Obama family will be seen on the streets of Havana before his term is up.
Editor’s Note: “Two Old Guys Talking” is the introduction to Tom Hayden’s forthcoming book, Listen, Yankee!, Why Cuba Matters, to be published next year by Seven Stories Press. The piece was finalized last month. The “two old guys” are the author, now 75, who first visited Cuba in 1968, and Ricardo Alarcon, now 77, former president of the Cuban National Assembly, foreign minister, and UN representative.
Tom HaydenTom Hayden, the former California state assemblyman and senator, author, lifelong activist, and Nation editorial board member, died in Santa Monica on October 23, 2016. He was the author of more than 20 books, including most recently Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement (Yale) and Listen, Yankee! Why Cuba Matters (Seven Stories).
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Black Swamp Players Announces Cast for Clue: The Musical
Jeff "JP" Miklovic
(Bowling Green)—The Black Swamp Players has announced the cast for its first production of the 2018-2019 season, Clue: The Musical.
The cast includes: Heath A. Diehl (Mr. Boddy); Mac Ramsey (Detective); Bethany Mahl (Mrs. White); Andrew Varney (Colonel Mustard); Karla Richardson (Mrs. Peacock); Annelise Mason (Miss Scarlet); Garrett Hummel (Mr. Green); Matt Crawford (Mr. Plum); and Monica Hiris (Side-kick Character).
Based on the 1949 board game of the same name, Clue: The Musical is an interactive theater experience that invites audience participation. Like the board game, Clue: The Musical concerns the murder of Mr. Boddy and features all of the colorful characters made famous by Parker Brothers, including Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, and Mrs. White. But the musical also allows audience members to randomly select cards that will determine which suspect committed the murder, which weapon was used, and where the murder took place. The show has 216 possible endings.
The production will be directed by Melissa Shaffer.
Clue: The Musical will open on Friday, November 9 at 7:30 PM. Additional performance dates include: Saturday, November 10 at 7:30 PM; Friday, November 16 at 7:30 PM; Saturday, November 17 at 7:30 PM; Sunday, November 11 and 18 at 2:00 PM. Both Saturday evening performances will be preceded by a dinner, beginning at 6:00 PM, that will benefit the First United Methodist Church.
Tickets for the Friday and Sunday performances are $15/adults, $12/seniors and students. Tickets for the Saturday “Dinner and a Show” performances are $25/person and must be purchased one week or more prior to the show. All tickets can be purchased on the organization’s website.
Clue: The Musical is the first of three productions to be mounted by The Black Swamp Players for its 2018-2019 season. Clue will be followed by a production of Meredith Wilson’s 1957 Tony-Award-winning musical, The Music Man, which will be performed at the First United Methodist Church on February 15, 16, 22, and 23 at 7:30 P.M. and February 17 and 24 at 2:00 P.M. The Players will close their 51st season with the world premiere of an original play by local F. Scott Regan, titled Peanuts and Crackerjacks. Regan’s play will be performed in April/May 2019.
Black Swamp Players is nonprofit corporation that exists to provide opportunities for area residents to experience quality, amateur, live theatre in all its many aspects. Founded in 1968, Black Swamp Players has been providing community theatre to the Bowling Green and surrounding areas for the past fifty years. Those interested in volunteering for the organization should send an e-mail query to president@blackswampplayers.org.
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A Dose of Financial Reality
Anna writes in:
I’m amazed at how many people who write into your mailbags have enormous student loan debts and mortgages. I know that prices have increased, but whatever happened to just working at your job and using that money to pay for school and for your down payment?
I know how much you like to “run the number,” so I’d like to see the real financial situation of someone my age compared to someone today.
Unfortunately, the vision of someone working at a minimum wage job part time to pay for college or someone having a full down payment in their early twenties is simply not realistic today. The numbers simply don’t bear it out.
Let’s start digging through the data. I tried to provide sources for as much of the information below as I could.
In 1970, minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. Today, it’s $7.25 an hour. That’s a 353% increase over that period of time, which seems like a fair amount… until you actually start looking at how prices have increased.
What about average wages? I couldn’t find a document that laid out full details on average wages per year, but this document from the Census Bureau, laying out some average wage information, shows that average household income has roughly kept pace with consumer prices.
In January 1970, the Consumer Price Index was 37.8. In January 2011, it was 220.223. That’s a 482% increase over the period we’re looking at.
In other words, for every dollar increase in the minimum wage since 1970, the price of an average item has gone up $1.36. Even adjusting for inflation, a dollar today buys less than it once did for low income earners.
So, for a person freshly out of school, the initial income outlook is worse than a fresh graduate in 1970, but after some career advancement, their salaries end up being comparable given inflation.
In 1970, a year of tuition at a public university cost $1,207. In the most recent year of data available, 2007, a year of tuition at a public university cost $11,034. That represents an annual average increase of 6.2%, which, if you applied it to the 2007 price, gives you an estimated 2010 cost of a year of education as being $13,216. That’s a 994% increase in the cost of a four year degree.
So, let’s say you’re earning minimum wage and trying to make it through college.
In 1970, you could work 755 hours at a minimum wage job over the course of a year to earn enough to pay for a year of schooling at a public institution – about 14 hours per week.
In 2010, you would have to work 1,823 hours at a minimum wage job over the course of a year to earn enough money to pay for a year of schooling at a public institution – about 35 hours per week.
In other words, in 1970, you could work a part time job as a cashier or something to that effect and easily pay for college, enabling you to work and attend college without going into debt. In 2010, you have to work a full time job to pay for college, meaning you essentially have to choose between debt and an education or some other difficult plan.
Not only that, a college education is becoming much more of a requirement than it was in 1970. In 1973, the earlierst year that I could find firm data, 72% of jobs available for workers in the United States had only a high school diploma or had dropped out of school. In 2007, that number had dropped to 41%, and future projections show it only going lower. The jobs remaining that do not require a college education are primarily service jobs that do not pay a high wage.
In other words, in 1970, the choice to enter the workforce immediately after high school or work a minimum wage job while going to college was a real choice. Today, it’s not a real choice unless you want to agree to low income for life. You have to enter the costly bargain of secondary education.
The median price of a home sold in the United States in January 1970 was $23,600. The median price of a home sold in the United States in January 2011 was $240,100. That’s an increase of 917%, one on par with the jump in education prices.
In other words, even after the housing collapse, a home today costs approximately three times as much as a home in 1970 compared to the average wage that a person earns.
The Full Picture
The minimum wage in the United States has gone up 353% since 1970, and average incomes have gone up approximately 500%. In that same span, however, the cost of basic household goods has gone up 482%, the cost of a four year education has gone up 994%, and the cost of an average home has gone up 917%.
In other words, in the eyes of an average worker from 1970 compered to today, the prices at the grocery store have remained largely unchanged, but the cost of an education has roughly doubled (and it’s now required if you want to earn significant money, where it wasn’t in 1970) and the cost of a home has roughly doubled as well.
If you look at it through the eyes of a minimum wage earner from 1970 compared to today, the prices at the grocery store have gone up about 30%, the cost of education has roughly tripled, and the cost of a home has roughly tripled.
Like it or not, students of today, you’re likely not going to be able to follow the path of your parents – and especially not the path of your grandparents. If you want to have a financially healthy life, you’re going to need to keep an eye on every dollar much more than they had to. The ability to sensibly manage your money and make smart buying choices is much more of a requirement than ever before.
Parents and grandparents of today, give those kids a break. They’ve got a much worse financial reality than you did when you walked out of school. They’re facing bigger housing costs, bigger education costs, and a bigger requirement to have that education than you ever did. Don’t compare the path they’re following to the one you’re following. It’s an unfair comparison all around.
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WATCH: Adam Lambert harmonises with Queen backstage
Behind The Scenes 01/05/2019
Footage of Adam Lambert harmonising with Queen members, Brian May and Roger Taylor backstage before a concert has surfaced.
Taken from the new documentary, 'The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story', the clip aired on ABC, following Lambert's history with the band for over ten years since the first 'one-off' appearance just as he had completed running in 2009 season of 'American Idol'.
You can watch the video below.
"It’s very much like in the old days," May says. "We get together in the band room and we do harmonies – that’s what we do before a show. It oils up your vocal cords and it locks you in. You hear the other people and you rediscover how your voice fits into that structure; and I think it’s quite valuable for us to do that."
Queen + Adam Lambert will return to New Zealand in February 2020, following the soaring success of the biopic film, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. See the full tour details here.
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Sohe Chung remembered as a ‘genuine, kind person’
By Jesse McLeanInvestigative Reporter
Fri., April 27, 2018timer2 min. read
University of Toronto student Sohe Chung was among those killed in Monday’s van attack, friends have confirmed.
“She’s an amazing friend and everyone did love her. Everyone is absolutely in shock,” said high school friend Cora Cianni, who posted a memorial to Chung on Facebook. “There wasn’t a single person who didn’t get along with her. She was an amazing, well-rounded person.”
Chung worked at the luxury retailer Holt Renfrew, according to a LinkedIn account identified by a close friend as being authentic.
Born in 1995, Chung studied molecular biology at the University of Toronto, where she was a member of the university’s Korean Students’ Association.
The association posted on its Facebook page Wednesday that the van attack has affected “one of our own student members.”
A vigil is planned at Mel Lastman Square on Friday evening.
“Although we won’t understand what the affected victims’ family members are going through, we will be putting together a gathering in hopes to unite the community. We encourage you to attend,” said the message, originally written in Korean.
The University of Toronto posted a message from president Meric Gertler, saying “We are deeply saddened that a member of our community has died as a result of this terrible incident.”
“We mourn the loss of our student and want those affected to know that they have the support of the university,” he said in the message.
“In addition to those who are directly affected, we know that many at U of T are hurting. We encourage those in need of assistance to seek help through the services available to them on campus, as well as in the wider community.”
High school friend Cianni said Chung’s friends and family are grieving and are asking for privacy.
Friends remember Chung as a sweet, sincere person who loved fashion and was fiercely loyal to her friends.
“I remember her being a genuine, kind person,” said Gabby Prieto, who worked with Chung at Sketchers in the Eaton Centre around 2014.
“She was so caring and kind. She was a great person to work with.”
A memorial has sprung up along the stretch of Yonge Street in Toronto where Monday’s deadly van attack occurred. One resident who lives near Yonge and Finch says the area is usually very safe. (The Canadian Press)
Jodi Yeung said Chung was part of her close circle of friends at Loretto Abbey Catholic high school near Yonge St. and Wilson Ave.
“She’s kind of shy but when you get to know her she is really funny,” Yeung said. “She was super sweet.”
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Nigerian parents reunited with 21 schoolgirls released by Boko Haram
By Oyekanmi OlalekanThe Associated Press
Sun., Oct. 16, 2016timer2 min. read
ABUJA, NIGERIA—Joy, jubilation and dancing erupted Sunday when a group of Nigerian parents were reunited with 21 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram two and a half years ago and freed in the first negotiated release organized by the government and the Islamic extremist group.
The girls were hugged and embraced by their parents when they were presented by the government, according to video obtained by The Associated Press.
“I never expected I will see my daughter again and I pray that those girls still left behind, that God will bring them out safely the way our own daughter came out alive,” said a mother of one of the released girls, Raha Emmanuel, in the Hausa language.
The girls were released Thursday and flown to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, but it’s taken days for the parents to arrive. Most arrived Sunday after driving hours over potholed roads slowed by military checkpoints and the danger of attack by the insurgents, said community leader Tsambido Hosea Abana.
The parents came from the remote northeastern town of Chibok, where nearly 300 girls were kidnapped on April 2014 in a mass abduction that shocked the world. Dozens of schoolgirls escaped in the first few hours but after last week’s release, 197 remain captive. The government says negotiations are continuing to win their freedom.
Muta Abana, the father of one of the released girls, has been living in Nasarawa state neighbouring Abuja, expressed anxiety as many of the girls reportedly have been forced to marry Boko Haram fighters.
“Some of them came back with babies, but think about it, are we going to kill the children?” Abana said to The Associated Press, speaking in Hausa. “We won’t be able to kill the children because it would be as if we don’t want the girls to come back. God knows why it happened. It’s God’s will.”
He also said the girls’ abduction has been politicized, complaining that, “People’s children aren’t money, people’s children are not clothes you wear to campaign, people’s children are their pride.”
The girls are getting medical attention and trauma counselling in a hospital, said Tsambido Abana, the Chibok community leader in Abuja. Some are “emaciated” from hunger, he said.
There are conflicting reports about how the girls were freed, with two military officers telling the Associated Press they were exchanged for four detained Boko Haram commanders, and a Nigerian who negotiated previous failed attempts saying a large ransom was paid by the Swiss government on behalf of Nigerian authorities. The officers and the negotiator, who did not take part in the latest talks, spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter with the press.
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Daesh militants strike, attacking Iraq city of Kirkuk
By Emad Matti And Adam SchreckAssociated Press
Fri., Oct. 21, 2016timer4 min. read
KIRKUK, IRAQ—Daesh militants armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked targets in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early Friday, in an assault that appeared aimed at diverting Iraqi security forces from a massive offensive against the Daesh-held city of Mosul.
At least 13 workers, including four Iranians, were killed when militants of the Daesh group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, stormed a power plant north of Kirkuk and then blew themselves up.
Multiple explosions meanwhile rocked the city and gun battles were ongoing, said witnesses in Kirkuk, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were concerned for their safety. Much of the fighting was centred on a government compound in the city. They said the streets were largely deserted out of fear of militant snipers.
Daesh said its fighters targeted the provincial headquarters. The claim was carried by the Daesh-run Aamaq news agency and could not immediately be verified.
Local Kurdish television channel Rudaw aired footage showing black smoke rising over the city as extended bursts of automatic gunfire rang out. It quoted Kirkuk governor Najmadin Karim as saying that the militants had not seized any government buildings.
In the power plant attack, which took place in Dibis, a town north of Kirkuk, three Daesh suicide bombers entered the facility and took 13 workers hostage, said Major Ahmed Kader Ali, the Dibis police chief.
The attackers asked to be taken to the Iranians who worked at the plant, and one of the workers took them to the Iranians before escaping. The militants then killed the Iranians and the other workers, and detonated their explosive vests when police arrived, Ali said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi condemned the Kirkuk assault, which he said killed four Iranians and wounded three others, according to the official IRNA news agency. It was not immediately clear if Iranians were targeted in other attacks.
Kirkuk is some 170 kilometres from the Daesh-held city of Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been waging a wide-scale offensive since Monday.
The oil-rich city is some 290 kilometres north of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul. It is claimed by both Iraq’s central government and the country’s Kurdish region. Kurdish forces assumed full control of Kirkuk in the summer of 2014, as Iraq’s army and police crumbled in the face of a lightning advance by Daesh.
Later Friday, Rudaw TV said all Daesh militants who took part in the Kirkuk attack had been killed except for two who were holed up in a newly built hotel, which was damaged in the attack and from where they were battling Kurdish forces.
Kirkuk police commander Brig. Gen. Khattab Omer said clashes were still underway, without providing further details. There was no immediate word on casualties among civilians or Kurdish forces in Kirkuk, and the TV report could not immediately be confirmed.
Kemal Kerkuki, a senior commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces west of Kirkuk, said the town where his base is located outside the city also came under attack early Friday, but that the base was now under control.
He said Daesh maintains sleeper cells in Kirkuk and the surrounding villages. “We arrested one recently and he confessed,” he said, adding that the attackers may have posed as displaced civilians in order to infiltrate the city.
Kirkuk province has absorbed hundreds of thousands of displaced people from neighbouring provinces since Daesh first overran wide stretches of northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014, capturing Mosul, the country’s second-largest city.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition launched a multi-pronged assault this week to retake Mosul and surrounding areas from Daesh. The operation is the largest undertaken by the Iraqi military since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Iraqi officials said they had advanced as far as the town of Bartella, 15 kilometres from Mosul’s outskirts, by Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati of Iraq’s elite forces held a press conference Friday a kilometre away from the town and insisted the special forces had “full control.” He said special forces were clearing explosives and contending with some snipers who remained in the town. Gunfire could be heard in the distance.
Daesh, which still controls a swath of territory stretching across Syria and Iraq, has a history of launching diversionary attacks on distant fronts when it comes under pressure. In April 2015, Iraqi forces announced the liberation of the central city of Tikrit. The following month, Daesh militants captured the western Iraqi city of Ramadi and the eastern Syrian city of Palmyra. Both cities have since been retaken by Iraqi and Syrian forces.
Elsewhere in Iraq, the country’s top Shiite cleric called on forces taking part in the Mosul offensive to protect civilians, and for residents of Mosul, a mainly Sunni city, to co-operate with security forces.
“We stress today upon our beloved fighters, as we have before on many occasions, that they exercise the greatest degree of restraint in dealing with civilians stuck in the areas where there is fighting,” the reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said in a Friday sermon read by an aide. “Protect them and prevent any harm to them by all possible means.”
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Never before and never since has South Carolina spent as much money and energy improving public school facilities in such a short period as it did in the 1950s. But to call that period the golden era of school funding in the state would be using the wrong color. It was all about black and white.
BOON TO RURAL AREAS
Historians have taken to calling the program the "equalization schools" effort, a reference to the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision allowing "separate but equal" public facilities for black and whites.
With court threats to the Plessy ruling mounting nationwide and in South Carolina in 1951, Gov. Jimmy Byrnes pushed in his inaugural speech for the 3-cent sales tax to upgrade schools in poor areas.
"We should do it because it is right," Byrnes said. "For me, that is sufficient reason."
But later in the same speech, he touted the spending as a way to keep the races separate in schools. Later that year in a presentation at the S.C. Educational Association, Byrnes was even more strident.
"Of only one thing can we be certain. South Carolina will not now, nor for some years to come, mix white and colored children in our schools. ... If that is not possible, reluctantly we will abandon the public school system."
Despite its questionable goal, the equalization effort was a tremendous boon to the education of poor children in the state. By the end of 1954, the program had paid for 409 projects costing more than $80,000 - either new schools or major improvements to old schools.
Most of the new schools were in rural areas, sometimes replacing one-room wooden shacks. About 60 percent of the new buildings were "negro schools," according to a 1955 report by the state Education Finance Commission, which coordinated the effort. In the first four years, the program allowed local education leaders to close 824 inferior schools - 537 black schools and 287 white.
"Those in charge knew they weren't doing what they should be doing (before 1951)," said Val Littlefield, an associate professor of history at USC. In the early 1950s, "money was being spent on public schools at a rate much higher than ever before. It may have been for the wrong reasons, but the unintended consequence" was improvement in the education of African-American and poor white children.
Before that period, South Carolina's public education system was class-based, Littlefield said. The privileged upper class had good schools. The masses got just enough education to work in the fields or factories.
Littlefield described the attitude of state leaders to the poor: "They were worker bees, and they didn't need that highfalutin education."
But when parents in Clarendon County filed suit in 1947 against the local school board for not providing buses for black children, the tide of change began. The "equalization schools' program was an attempt to hold back that tide.
'BIG IMPROVEMENT'
In addition to schools, the equalization program paid for new buses. The state's school bus fleet went from 142,000 to 241,000 in three years. More than half of the buses were for black schools.
"We are doing in a few years what our fathers and grandfathers should have done during the past 75 years," Byrnes said in the Education Finance Commission's 1955 report entitled "Educational Revolution: A Report of Progress in South Carolina."
He noted that more than 60 percent of the $124 million spent in four years had gone to black schools. "Their facilities will be substantially equal to those for white pupils," Byrnes said.
Fourth-grader Alexzena Irving Furgess didn't have the perspective to judge equality in schools in 1954. But she knew how good it felt to walk the halls at the new Wheeler Hill Elementary School, which replaced the old Celia Saxon School on the edge of the USC campus.
"There was a sense of pride that everybody at Wheeler Hill felt at the time," Irving Furgess said. "It was the sense of having something of our own. We inherited Saxon," which had once been a school for white children.
The lower of the three tiers housed first and second grades. The second tier was third and fourth grades, and the upper tier fifth and sixth grades. They were attached on one end by an expansive hall that also led to an auditorium and the school administrative offices.
"I remember finally having an auditorium - they called it a cafetorium - where all the students could meet at one time," Irving Furgess said. "We had to gather outside to do that at Saxon."
Wheeler Hill Elementary was renamed Benson Elementary in 1958 after longtime teacher Florence Corrine Benson. Along with neighboring Booker T. Washington High School, Benson was the heart of the community, which has since been pushed aside by the growth of the USC campus.
The Benson school "was a big improvement over Saxon," said Stonewall Richburg, who served as principal at Benson in the late 1950s. "It accommodated so much more. And it had such community support. You couldn't have had a better school."
As USC bought property in the Wheeler Hill area, the elementary school population fell. Benson's life as a school ended in 1975, but USC bought the building, made minor renovations and began using it for offices a few years later. It currently is home to some public safety staffers and the Center For Child and Family Studies.
In 2008, USC's long-term construction plan called for tearing down Benson at an expected price tag of $4.5 million. But many of the projects on that construction list have been stalled by the economy. USC officials now say they have no short-term plans to raze Benson.
The buildings earned a spot in the National Register as part of a multiple property listing for the equalization schools in S.C. Those schools "represent the intersection of modern, national architectural trends and the postwar baby boom with South Carolina's fight to maintain racially segregated public schools," according to the National Register application prepared by Rebekah Dobrasko at the State Historic Preservation Office.
Most of the schools built with state funds from 1951-1960 could be added to the National Register, as long as they're still standing and haven't had major renovations. Wright Elementary in Spartanburg, Dennis High School in Bishopville and Benson are among those already in the National Register.
Dobrasko has had trouble finding a complete list of equalization schools. The Education Finance Commission records were spotty after its thorough 1955 report.
Dobrasko has compiled a partial list of the equalization schools online at scequalization.schools.officelive.com/default.aspx. Some of the Richland County schools built in that period included Anna Boyd Elementary (for blacks) and St. Andrews Elementary (for whites).
Many legislators and local school leaders balked at approving the equalization program unless the funds also could be used for white schools. After the first four years, more of the money was used for white schools than black. The education committee accounting of the entire program in 1963 indicated the state spent $214 million in the decade-long building spree, and about 54 percent was on white schools.
After the U.S. Supreme Court shot down the "separate but equal" provisions with the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, South Carolina still fought to keep schools segregated. The first 11 black children attended previously all-white schools in Charleston County in 1963. By 1970, schools throughout the state were integrated, with many white children ending up in former black equalization schools, and vice versa.
Forty years later, young people are stunned to learn how hard state leaders worked to avoid integration.
"As a history major, I had an idea of the lengths that people were willing to go to preserve inequality and separation in public schools," said Paige Fennell, a USC graduate student from Columbia who took Littlefield's history of education class last year. "One always has the belief that things of that nature do not impact you or only occur in cities far removed from the places we call home. ...
"This is an impossible concept for people of my generation to imagine, but for those who came before us, it was a reality. ... Sadly this is something that the state continues to struggle with today."
In recent years, schools in the poorest areas of the state have suffered because funding formulas put much of the burden for school construction on local property taxes. The long-running Corridor of Shame lawsuit shined a light on those inequalities.
Statewide, many of the schools on the 1950s equalization list are still in use. Some have been torn down. Littlefield hopes some of the schools, possibly even Benson, could be transformed into living memorials of an important era in the state's history.
"If something isn't there physically for us to see and talk about, we lose that documentation," Littlefield said. "It's our responsibility to talk about what was here before."
S.C.'s Equalization Schools
See the crowds, signs from Columbia’s March For Our Lives movement
Shocking 50-year-old photos from SC’s bloodiest Civil Rights protest
Kamala Harris to organize on SC historically black campuses as inroad for 2020
By Lucas Daprile
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris will be organizing support at SC historically black colleges, or HBCUs, ahead of the South Carolina primary, which is the first in the south.
MORE CIVIL RIGHTS IN COLUMBIA
Candidate who edited neo-Confederate magazine not recommended for SC higher ed job
Benedict commencement speaker champions the college’s civil rights role
Finalist for SC higher ed overseer once was editor of a neo-Confederate magazine
Report: free speech on college campuses is not facing a crisis
USC student protesters may have made history last week. Is more activism to come?
Amid criticism, USC refuses to say whether all presidential semifinalists were men
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Of the 600 voters surveyed who said they planned to cast a ballot in the 2020 S.C. Democratic primary, Biden led with 36 percent support.
Sanders, who ran in 2016 and announced Tuesday he was running again, followed with 14 percent. Harris, who made her second campaign appearance in South Carolina last weekend since announcing her candidacy, garnered 13 percent support.
The poll also found support for Booker, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, with each at about 10 percent support among likely Democratic primary voters.
Other likely candidates hoping to defeat Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 — including U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — had 2 percent or less support each.
Fifty-five percent of the likely S.C. Democratic primary voters surveyed were African-Americans, who account for more than 60 percent of the state’s Democratic voters.
“When we only asked about already declared candidates (not including Sanders who hadn’t yet declared), black voters overwhelmingly supported Booker (38 percent) and Harris (37 percent),” said polling firm chief executive Mike Greenfield. “But with Biden, Sanders (and) Beto in the race, Biden has a clear lead among black voters, with 43 percent,” and Booker, Harris and Sanders all at 13 percent.
The poll also suggests ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley would be Trump’s strongest opponent in a S.C. GOP primary match-up. Still, Haley loses to the president by a 67-21 margin, according to the poll. Haley, a former S.C. governor, has said she has no plans to run in 2020.
A vast majority of Republican voters in the Palmetto State, 62 percent, said they want a 2020 GOP presidential primary. The S.C. Republican Party could decide this summer to pass on holding the primary — a move that is not unprecedented — to help Trump’s re-election bid.
GOP voters are also poised to support U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 2020 re-election bid. But the Republican senator was generally unpopular among all voters, with 36 percent viewing Graham favorably compared to 44 percent who viewed him unfavorably.
Earlier this month, Democrat Jaime Harrison, a former S.C. Democratic Party chairman, announced he was exploring running against Graham.
Graham, a 24-year incumbent, has aligned himself with Trump closely. He finished his last reelection campaign, in 2014, with $2.4 million in cash on hand.
The top concerns among S.C. Democratic voters polled were health care, voting rights and the economy. For all voters, including Republicans and independents, the top concerns were illegal immigration, followed by jobs and the economy, and health care.
Asked whether they support Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to build a steel wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, S.C. voters were split. Forty-three percent strongly supported the idea and 43 percent strongly opposed the move. Among Democrats, 94 percent strongly opposed the move, while 85 percent of Republicans were strongly in favor.
A majority of all voters, 55 percent, also supported a law restricting the sale of military-style assault weapons and requiring universal background checks before buying a gun, including at gun shows.
The poll’s margin of error for the 2020 Democratic race is plus or minus 4 percentage points, and 2.5 percentage points for the entire sample.
This story was updated to remove the reference of Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s planned visit to Columbia. Klobuchar visited this past Saturday, Feb. 23.
Follow more of our reporting on First in the South
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Which 2020 Democrat is raising the most cash in SC? The answer could surprise you
politics-government
2020 Democratic candidate Klobuchar heads to Columbia this week. How to meet her
Gillibrand tells SC Democrats she can turn red places blue ahead of 2020 primary
As politics pulls us apart, Cory Booker tells SC Democrats he can bring us together
2020 hopefuls Booker, Sanders evoke MLK’s vision while courting SC’s black voters
He’s not yet in the race, but former Vice President Joe Biden leads in a new SC poll of likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Catherine Avalone Catherine Avalone/New Haven Register via AP
Tom Barton
Tom Barton covers South Carolina politics for The State. He has spent more than a decade covering local governments and politicians in Iowa and South Carolina, and has won awards from the S.C. Press Association and Iowa Newspaper Association for public service and feature writing.
Santee Cooper CEO explains why he thinks the utility shouldn’t be sold
Battle lines drawn in South Carolina’s abortion debate
By JIM MUSTIAN Associated Press
Court records released Thursday show that President Donald Trump took part in a flurry of phone calls in the weeks before the 2016 election as his close aides and allies scrambled to pay porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
Sanford suspends use of medical devices amid investigation
Benson seeks input on redistricting forms, eligibility
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Movie review: Stones bassist Wyman still evasive in new documentary
For most, The Rolling Stones are about Mick and Keith. But I’ve always been more intrigued by the group’s tight, underrated rhythm section of drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman, the “stone-faced” Stones who happily faded to the background anonymously making time keeping time as the lifeblood of “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” Don’t know about you, but I’m convinced the Stones haven’t been the Stones since Wyman walked away from his mates in 1993 to - as former Supreme Mary Wilson says - not just “smell the roses, but to name them.”
While watching “The Quiet One,” Oliver Murray’s dive into Wyman’s climb from an impoverished, war-torn youth to a well-funded blissful retirement, you get the feeling he has seen it all from the perspective of both a participant and an observer. And he has the photos and home movies to prove it - an entire room full. You wind up convinced he’s the Stones’ most ardent fan, having archived so much memorabilia he’s run out of space to store it all. You name it, it’s there: demo tapes, posters, badges, costumes, albums and cameras all neatly stowed away on shelves that climb from floor to ceiling.
We’re made privy to much of it, as Wyman sits at his computer at the end of the room reminiscing with his back to the camera, much the same way he saw Mick and Keith over his 31 years as a Rolling Stone. It’s interesting from an aesthetic vantage, but what’s the point? I’m not sure even Murray knows. I suspect it’s merely a device to break up the succession of photos and clips accompanying Wyman’s voice-overs, as he takes a chronological trip through the years, beginning with the London Blitz and continuing through his present incarnation as a devoted husband, father and lover of American blues.
It’s strangely unemotional, including his recollections of the summer and fall of 1969, when his Stones running mate, Brian Jones, drowned and four of the group’s fans were killed at their infamous concert at Altamont Speedway in Northern California. “I really don’t like talking about it,” he says.
The only time we get close to a waver in his voice is when talk turns to his meetings with his two “heroes,” Ray Charles and Howlin’ Wolf, both of whom invited him into a world of rhythm and blues that was largely a domain in which whites were persona non grata. For Wyman, they not only offered friendship, but validation of his place in their world.
Still, it would have been nice if Murray had encouraged Wyman to dig deeper into his emotions, especially when it comes to Jones’ mysterious death and Wyman’s bizarre dalliance with Mandy Smith, the second of three Mrs. Wymans, who he started dating when he was 47 and she was all of 13. But both are barely touched upon. Same with his feelings toward Keith Richards’ well-chronicled drug habits, which you’d assume would be appalling to a teetotaler like Wyman.
But, then if he did push the issues, Murray might well have been denied access to all the never-before-seen videos and photos Wyman took of his mates casually being themselves between recording sessions and tour stops. It’s all great stuff, especially if you’re a Stones fan. Yet, you’re left wanting. Part of it is because Wyman, like his stoic stage presence, isn’t nearly as colorful as his flamboyant bandmates. True to his blue-collar roots, he was there to do a job, not to be flashy. He’s immensely proud of that, too. And you respect him for it. Dullness was his virtue. Besides, he was happy to make his unmistakably thundering bass lines do all the talking. Just imagine songs like “Brown Sugar” and “Paint It Black” without him.
You admire him even more for the man he’s become, a happy octogenarian grateful that he jumped off the rock merry-go-round at precisely the right time so he could finally enjoy a life away from recording and touring. Today, playing is just a hobby, one he indulges through his blues band, appropriately called The Rhythm Kings. Yes, he’s now old and gray, but deep inside he’s joyously in the pink, finally having found his satisfaction.
A documentary by Oliver Murray featuring ex-Rolling Stones guitarist Bill Wyman.
(Not rated.)
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‘Ready Player One’ Film Review: Spielberg’s Weaponized Nostalgia Is an Exercise in Overkill
Gen X cultural references pack every overcrowded frame, but the pop-spotting quickly ceases to be fun
Alonso Duralde | March 27, 2018 @ 1:55 PM Last Updated: March 27, 2018 @ 2:11 PM
Jaap Buttendijk/WB
Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” might mark the beginning of a new era in filmmaking or the end of an old one, but either way it feels like a failed experiment in building a new story on the carcasses of old movies, TV shows and video games.
Granted, I’m also not sure if this movie is aimed squarely at me or if I’m the last person who should see it: the screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline (based on Cline’s novel) seems to be weaponizing my own personal nostalgia for John Hughes, Monty Python, “Buckaroo Banzai” and other objects of obsession from my late teens and early 20s. On paper, I’m this movie’s target audience, but in practice — to put it in terms of the film’s endless quoting and referencing — it’s like being trapped in the “Ironic Punishment Division” on “The Simpsons,” only I very quickly got sick of being force-fed all those delicious donuts.
“Ready Player One” takes a fairly recognizable through line right out of “Charlie”/”Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” — eccentric creator uses a contest to search for the heir to his cuckoo kingdom — and buries it in virtual reality simulations and a hodgepodge of pop-culture nostalgia. The results are a murky mishmash that reminds us that, for all of Spielberg’s many appreciable strengths as a filmmaker, comedy and animation aren’t necessarily at the top of the list. (By the same token, if you love “1941” and/or “Tintin,” this might be the movie for you.)
Watch Video: Steve Spielberg's 'Ready Player One' Trailer Dives Deeper Into the Oasis
Our Wonka is Halliday (Mark Rylance), who created a vast and intricate virtual world known as Oasis, which has become a respite for residents of the grimy post-apocalyptic 2045. (Oasis is supposed to be a global phenomenon; we’re apparently not meant to notice that, in the non-virtual world, all of the characters in the film live in or near Columbus, Ohio.) Upon his death, Halliday announced that he hid three keys in the recesses of the Oasis, and whoever finds them will inherit ownership of the whole kit and caboodle.
While the evil IOI corporation enslaves workers in an elaborate attempt to solve the clues and find the keys, Oasis is also full of independent treasure hunters like young Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who is known in the virtual world as “Parzival,” or “Z” for short. When he and pals H (Lena Waithe), Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki) aren’t playing Halliday’s games — including a virtual road race through Manhattan where the obstacles include dinosaurs and King Kong — they’re studying Halliday’s memories and his cultural obsessions for hints and guideposts.
Also Read: Why Ben Mendelsohn's 'Ready Player One' Baddie Won't Be Faithful to the Book
Along the way, Z. falls for fellow treasure hunter Art3mis (Olivia Cooke, “Thoroughbreds”), although she is at first hesitant to let him get to know her in the real world as Samantha. But the closer that Wade/Z. and his friends get to Halliday’s treasure, the more that IOI bigwig Sorrento (an entertainingly hammy Ben Mendelsohn) tries to destroy them and take over Oasis for himself.
The main selling point of “Ready Player One” has been the plethora of pop-culture icons from anime, TV, video games and movies that are woven throughout the movie; there will no doubt be a fascinating Blu-ray extra in which “Pop-Up Video” bubbles appear throughout to point out all these hidden nuggets, but the camerawork is so hyperactive and the Oasis scenes are so often muddy that most of these details were lost.
Part of why we’re supposed to hiss Sorrento is his inability to tell “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (while, presumably, we notice that both “Watts” and “Samantha” are characters from “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Sixteen Candles,” respectively). But “Ready Player One” doesn’t do much with its trove of references beyond baking a Memberberry Pie. It certainly doesn’t earn the right to have its characters blunder through a Stanley Kubrick movie at one point, although if that segment plays for you, so will the rest of the film.
Also Read: Steven Spielberg Reveals 'Indiana Jones 5' Production Start Date
And as someone who was an architect of so much 1980s pop culture (as both a director and producer), maybe Spielberg wasn’t the right fit to examine these obsessions from a fanboy perspective. (Z. drives around in the DeLorean from the Spielberg-produced “Back to the Future,” for example, and at one point he purchases a “Zemeckis Cube” that allows him to reverse time.) It’s like when a “Saturday Night Live” cast member does a devastating impersonation of a celebrity, and then the real-life celebrity shows up to stand next to the impersonator, effectively killing the joke for all time.
Spielberg is too much of a craftsman not to create at least a little delight, and “Ready Player One” comes alive every so often, whether it’s a band of player-less instruments heralding the finding of Halliday’s first key or the chemistry between Sheridan and Cooke in those rare moments that they’re interacting as flesh and blood rather than ones and zeroes.
But overall, the movie left me feeling bombarded with images, bored by the lack of an interesting story, and irritated with my own cultural past. I’ve never been much of a video-game player, but by the finale, I was ready to “Leeroy Jenkins!” my way out of the theater.
'Ready Player One': All the Easter Eggs From the New Trailer (Photos)
Ernest Cline's sci-fi bestseller "Ready Player One" is a love letter to the 1980s wrapped around a plot. Easter eggs and pop culture references abound throughout the novel, and Steven Spielberg's blockbuster adaptation appears to have ripped a couple of pages from the book. Here are all the easter eggs we were able to spot in the new trailer.
Remember Madballs? If not, you aren't alone. The rubber bouncing balls were popular throughout the 1980s, continuing into the next decade. As the audience sees this bleak new world, we encounter a trailer with one of these objects as graffiti art.
There's definitely a huge race taking place, if the number of cars, bikes, and other vehicles are to be trusted. Among what we've been seen include Mach 5 from "Speed Racer," the original Batmobile from the "Batman" TV series, as well as Ryu from the "Street Fighter" video games. Some spotted Mad Max's Interceptor from "Fury Road," as well.
Protagonist Wade Watts, aka Parzival (Tye Sheridan), will drive the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" in the race. Fans were caught off-guard with the brief glimpse of the iconic vehicle in the original trailer, and now it's getting the attention it deserves.
There was some confusion over whether Parzival's competitor/love interest, Art3mis (Oliva Cooke), was driving a Light Cycle from "TRON" or Kaneda's futuristic bike from "Akira" in the first trailer. Now we can call it: that is definitely the "Akira" bike.
During the race, King Kong appears perched above his own Empire State Building with biplanes circling overhead.
We see a newspaper that references "Oasis Coin," a clear reference to Bitcoin, that shows the movie goes beyond the 1980s for its cultural knowledge.
During a party scene where we get our first good look at Art3mis, we're treated to a cameo appearance by Commander Shepard from "Mass Effect" and Blanka from "Street Fighter" (nope, we're not done with those yet).
There's too much going on in the aforementioned shot for just one slide. On the other side of the screen, a bartender wearing a Devo hat is seen to be taking an order from Lara Croft.
Fans quickly noticed Harley Quinn in the Comic-Con trailer, and now we've gotten a look at this rather dapper version of her beau, the Clown Prince of Crime himself.
One of the classic vintage relics of the era that "RP1" cherishes, this boombox also calls to mind a certain movie...
Here's Parzival, pulling a full John Cusack from "Say Anything..." as DC supervillain Deadshot and Sagat from "Street Fighter" lead the charge into the final battle between Oasis users and the sinister IOI corporation.
As part of the final battle, we notice the early-1990s video game characters Battletoads as well as a flying ostrich from the arcade game "Joust."
The battle is going to be massive. In this shot, we can see Tracer from "Overwatch," Chun-Li from "Street Fighter," FemShep from "Mass Effect" and Lara Croft (again).
Yes, you really saw iconic horror villain Chucky pulling a full-on, CGI Yoda and kicking some serious IOI butt in the process.
One of the most popular franchises in Japan, "Gundam" plays a vital role in the book, and we're glad to see that Spielberg kept the giant hero robot.
Arguably the biggest surprise from the Comic-Con trailer was the inclusion of Iron Giant. Spielberg was quick to note that the robot was not just to make fans feel good, but he would be an important part of the story. Here he is now, diving headlong into the final battle.
Just when you think the trailer has offered plenty, there's one final treat: the instantly recognizable musical twinkle from "Back to the Future." March 30 can not come soon enough.
New fan favorites and Bitcoin are introduced to screen version of the sci-fi bestseller
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Alonso Duralde, TheWrap's reviews editor, has written about film for Movieline, Salon, MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on Who Shot Ya? and Breakfast All Day. Senior Programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, he is also a consultant for the USA Film Festival/Dallas, where he spent five years as artistic director. A former arts and entertainment editor at the Advocate, he was a regular contributor to FilmStruck and to "The Rotten Tomatoes Show" on Current. He is the author of two books, "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas" (Limelight Editions) and "101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men" (Advocate Books).
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StanCorp Reports 54% Increase In Net Income
NU Online News Service, Oct. 23, 2003, 5:22 p.m. EDT -- StanCorp Financial Group Inc., Portland, Ore., says solid renewal revenue from group products, ...
By Staff Writer | October 23, 2003 at 08:00 PM | Originally published on Lifehealthpro
NU Online News Service, Oct. 23, 2003, 5:22 p.m. EDT – StanCorp Financial Group Inc., Portland, Ore., says solid renewal revenue from group products, rising individual sales and a modest increase in the yield on disability reserve investments helped it increase its third quarter earnings 54%.
StanCorp, the parent company of Standard Insurance, is reporting $42 million in net income for the latest quarter on $525 million in revenue, up from $28 million in net income on $425 million in revenue for the third quarter of 2002.
Operating revenue increased at the employee benefits unit, the individual insurance unit and the retirement unit, and total net investment income increased 19%, to $113 million.
At the group benefits unit, StanCorp was able to increase the interest rate used to discount new long term disability reserves to 4.90%, from 4.75%, the company says.
At the individual insurance unit, disability insurance sales were up and the ratio of claims to premiums was down, StanCorp says.
A Low-Tech Retirement Strategy to Make Savings Last
Ginger Szala | July 18, 2019
Advisors can pick up some tips to help clients in a new paper that outlines best practices to guarantee income in retirement.
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Despite TicketFly Hack, Eventbrite Reportedly Moving Forward With IPO
IndustryTop Story August 1, 2018 TicketNews Staff
eventbrite24 ticketfly11
Despite a highly public data security breach at subsidiary Ticketfly earlier this year, Eventbrite is reportedly planning to go forward with an Initial Public...
Despite a highly public data security breach at subsidiary Ticketfly earlier this year, Eventbrite is reportedly planning to go forward with an Initial Public Offering later this year, according to several sources. The event planning and ticketing company powers ticketing for millions of events in over 180 countries and has rung up more than $10 billion in ticket sales since its founding 12 years ago, according to Tech Crunch. The IPO will be underwritten by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase & Co, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There has long been an expectation that the company would be going public, according to the Tech Crunch article. It has raised roughly $330 million in capital over its lifetime, and acquired several companies along the way. Ticketfly was purchased for $200 million from Pandora in 2017, a steep discount from the $335 million that the streaming company reportedly paid for the primary ticketing platform in 2015. Eventbrite also acquired international ticketing platforms Ticketea (Spain) and Ticketscript (Netherlands) in recent years.
For some, the lack of an IPO after such a stretch begged the question of whether or not the company was holding back for unknown reasons.
Beyond speculation, the potential for going public took a serious hit earlier this year with the revelation that TicketFly was the victim of a serious data breach. The saga began on May 31 with a cryptic message posted to the company’s homepage indicating that owners had lost control of the property. Soon, all systems were pulled offline, including the websites and ticketing ability for a large number of venues and promoters who relied on the service. In all, an estimated 27 million users saw their data exposed by the hack, which reportedly followed a ransom attempt by the hacker who was able to access the company’s systems which they ignored.
It wasn’t until more than a week later that the company’s systems were restored.
Eventbrite’s website was never a part of the hack, but the question of how much damage the company absorbed due to its subsidiary suffering such a major public breach hung in the air in the wake of the issue.
Per Billboard:
To date, neither Julia Hartz (who took over the company from her husband due to an illlness) nor head of music Andrew Dreskin have publicly addressed the crisis or made any real attempt to explain what happened or what the company is doing to protect itself going forward. As a result, a number of clients have quietly left Ticketfly, including Largo in Los Angeles which signed with See Tickets shortly after the “cyber incident.” Rival firm eTix also pounced on the breach and attempted to lure a number of clients away from Ticketfly, arguing the outage was a breach of contract for Ticketfly clients. Several clients told Billboard that Ticketfly officials have offered cash settlements to keep clients on the platform.
But it would appear that the damage was of a scale that didn’t frighten the company leadership away from its planned IPO, which is expected to take place in the latter half of 2018.
TicketNews Staff
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Home > Heavylift / Breakbulk
Transporting the test load took three nights.
18.08.2014 By: Christian Doepgen
Artikel Nummer: 6921
A well-prepared route
34 nations supply components to the Iter project, a nuclear fusion reactor in the Cadarache research centre (see page 22 of the Heavylift Special in ITJ 45-46 / 2013). A second three-night pilot shipment for Iter, with a 600 t test load, has now been successfully completed in the Marseille area. Klaus Schymke of the Hanau-based German entity Nuclear Cargo + Service told the ITJ about the operation.
Following a first pilot shipment, carried out in September 2013, a second one reached the Cadarache research centre in April, as training for the Iter project’s global procurement processes in southern France. Once again, a 600 t load measuring 19 m by 9 m width and 9 m height was transported a distance of 104 km. It was possible to reduce the transit time to three nights on this run. The heavylift division of the transport service provider Daher-HCS, based in Hanau (Germany), handled the heavy consignment.
Coordination and speed
The first pilot shipment with an identical weight and volume was initially carried out to confirm the load capacities of the bridges involved and the general efficiency of the route. Following its completion, the second test run primarily facilitated the efficient coordination of all parties involved, that is to say the authorities and the police, Iter itself and the logistics service provider’s transport management. Another aim was to achieve the fastest possible speed through the city.
44 parallel-coupled heavylift axle lines were used, each equipped with a 680 hp engine unit and driver’s cab at the front and rear. The 600 t pilot load consisted of 360 concrete blocks.
Between 2008 and 2011 the French public sector invested a total of EUR 110 million to prepare the route for the transportation of the experimental reactor’s components. The overland and inland canal option covers 104 km from the Mediterranean port of Fos-sur-Mer to Iter’s Cadarache site at Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, via the Canal de Caronte and the Port de la Pointe-de-Berre.
26 bridges have been rebuilt or strengthened, four bypasses created, 19 roundabouts upgraded, four level motorway crossings developed, 35 km of roads straightened and another 10 km specially rebuilt, amongst other things, to accommodate the heavylift shipments.
28 loads weighing more than 500 t
Following the successful second pilot run, the main phase of the project can now begin. A total of 212 heavy components, including 28 with a load weight of more than 500 t, will be transported on the route till 2019, when the reactor is due to be completed.
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Asian Aviation Flying High But United States Carriers Still Tops
10 September, 2018 Martin Kelly
Four of the world’s top five airlines may be from the United States but it’s Asia-Pacific that rules the global skies with a 36% share of the 4.1 billion passengers flown during 2017 – a record, of course.
Asia-Pacific was also the fastest growing aviation market at 10%, well ahead of the rest. No surprise there.
And yet not a single Asia-Pacific carrier made the top five carriers.
Leading the way was American Airlines (324 million passenger kilometres), closely followed by Delta Air Lines (316.3 m), United Airlines (311 m), Emirates Airlines (289 m) and Southwest Airlines (207.7 m).
Weird, right?
These and other amazing facts are included the recently released 62nd Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) – an outstanding read for travel and data nerds. Even better if you’re both.
For mine, the most telling stat is that “in 2000, the average citizen flew just once every 43 months. In 2017, the figure was once every 22 months.
In other words, the average person (whoever that may be!) is flying twice as much as they were 17 years ago.
If that rate of growth continues – well, you know the rest….
“Flying has never been more accessible. And this is liberating people to explore more of our planet for work, leisure and education. Aviation is the business of freedom,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
Highlights of 2017 airline industry performance include:
System-wide, airlines carried 4.1 billion passengers on scheduled services, an increase of 7.3% over 2016, representing an additional 280 million trips by air.
Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region once again carried the largest number of passengers. The regional rankings (based on total passengers carried on scheduled services by airlines registered in that region) are:
Asia-Pacific 36.3% market share (1.5 billion passengers, an increase of 10.6% compared to the region’s passengers in 2016)
Europe 26.3% market share (1.1 billion passengers, up 8.2% over 2016).
North America 23% market share (941.8 million, up 3.2% over 2016)
Latin America 7% market share (286.1 million, up 4.1% over 2016)
Middle East 5.3% market share (216.1 million, an increase of 4.6% over 2016)
Africa 2.2% market share (88.5 million, up 6.6% over 2016).
The top five international/regional passenger airport-pairs were all within the Asia-Pacific region, again this year:
Hong Kong-Taipei Taoyuan (5.4 million, up 1.8% from 2016)
Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta-Singapore (3.3 million, up 0.8% from 2016)
Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (3.1 million, increase of 3.5% from 2016)
Singapore (2.8 million, down. 0.3% from 2016)
Hong Kong-Seoul Incheon (2.7 million, down 2.2% from 2016)
The top five domestic passenger airport-pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region:
Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (13.5 million, up 14.8% over 2016)
Melbourne Tullamarine-Sydney (7.8 million, up 0.4% from 2016)
Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.6 million, an increase of 6.1% from 2016)
Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.4 million, up 4.6% from 2016)
Beijing Capital-Shanghai Hongqiao (6.4 million, up 1.9% from 2016)
One of the interesting recent additions to the WATS report is the ranking of passenger traffic by nationality , for international and domestic travel.
United States of America (632 million, representing 18.6% of all passengers)
People’s Republic of China (555 million or 16.3% of all passengers)
India (161.5 million or 4.7% of all passengers)
United Kingdom (147 million or 4.3% of all passengers)
Germany (114.4 million or 3.4% of all passengers)
Globally, cargo markets showed a 9.9% expansion in freight and mail tonne kilometers (FTKs). This outstripped a capacity increase of 5.3% increasing freight load factor by 2.1%.
• The top five airlines ranked by scheduled freight tonne kilometers flown were:
Federal Express (16.9 billion)
Emirates (12.7 billion)
United Parcel Service (11.9 billion)
Qatar Airways (11 billion)
Cathay Pacific Airways (10.8 billion)
Star Alliance maintained its position as the largest airline alliance in 2016 with 39% of total scheduled traffic (in RPKs), followed by SkyTeam (33%) and oneworld (28%)
././././.
Qantas United States Sales Up, Prices, Yield Down
Asia-Pacific Carriers Leads Global Aviation Growth Through 2017
High Noon For Richard
Asia Pacific Dominates Global Aviation Passenger Traffic
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In the New Alphabet Order Google X is now just X
Chris Smith, January 14, 2016 8:56 am GMT
A report on Wednesday indicates the Google X “moonshot” division is beginning to trim the fat – and that appears to include the name.
According to an exploratory Re/code piece, Google X is now just X, with the re-branding also featuring a fancy new animated logo (below).
The report claims: “[X] has this nifty new logo that’s meant to capture the X blueprint of incubating a “radical solution” to a “really big problem in the world” that deploys some “breakthrough technology.”
In the light of the Google Glass failure, the new company will take less risks and will focus on products that can graduate into separate companies; the self-driving cars scheme, for example, which is now a division of its own under the Alphabet banner.
“It’s going to be much more scaled back,” an ex-X employee reportedly said, speaking of the increased accountability.
As part of the more considered approach, the newly named X division will be assisted by a group known as The Foundry, which will help projects through “life-or-death” situations.
This group will be a voice of reason when it comes to deciding whether the ideas should move forward to become start-ups in their own right – or whether they’re shuttered.
Another former X employee remarked: “Somebody would get too attached to the project and not kill it,” something that’s no longer likely to happen.
Related: What is Alphabet? Google’s new parent company explained
Regardless of the upheaval, Astro Teller will remain in charge of X, but he may be presiding over more “cloudshots” than moonshots during the new era.
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Home » Media » Media Room » Press Releases » DHS awards $898,530 transit security grant In Pittsburgh to protect bus and rail systems
DHS awards $898,530 transit security grant In Pittsburgh to protect bus and rail systems
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Local Press Release
PITTSBURGH - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today an $898,530 transit security grant to the Port Authority of Allegheny County to deploy rail emergency carts and perimeter security systems ($259,830) and bus closed-circuit television and security systems ($638,700). Since 2003, DHS has provided $3,396,517 million to Pittsburgh through grants and equipment transfer programs administered by the Department's Office of Grants and Training.
These awards are part of $136 million in grants to cities across the nation to protect transit systems and the traveling public. The Transit Security Grant Program (TSGP), which is part of the department's Infrastructure Protection Program (IPP), strengthens the nation's ability to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies that could impact this country's critical infrastructure.
"These awards bolster our nation's ability to protect and secure important critical infrastructure sectors, particularly rail, bus and ferry systems," said Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Pittsburgh Federal Security Director Joe Terrell. "The two-tiered approach used this year ensures that transit systems with the highest risk receive the greatest amount of funding."
The TSGP utilizes a two-tiered, risk-based approach that focuses on high risk and high consequence transit systems. In July, DHS announced $123 million in funding to Tier 1 urban areas, which are comprised of high passenger density and rail systems with significant infrastructures, such as underwater tunnels and stations and ferry systems. Urban areas that received funds in previous years, but were not eligible in Tier 1, qualified to apply and compete for TSGP Tier 2 funds.
TSGP Tier 2 allocations, totaling $13 million, place a strong emphasis on the prevention and detection of Improvised Explosive Devices. Eligible Tier 2 transit systems were also permitted to focus on other priorities, including emergency drills, employee training, and public awareness programs that support overall system preparedness.
This year, nearly $400 million has been allocated for IPP programs.
"We are grateful to the Department of Homeland Security for providing these much-needed funds and continuing to make a commitment to the safety and security of those who use public transportation in this country," said Port Authority Chief Executive Officer Steve Bland. "We are working hand-in-hand with Homeland Security to protect our bus and rail customers, and this funding will enable us to enhance our system's safety and improve our response to emergencies in the future."
Infrastructure protection grants considered threat, vulnerability and consequences, and recognize the unique characteristics of our nation's seaports, transit systems and other critical infrastructure assets. Since its inception, the IPP has awarded more than $1.5 billion to critical infrastructure sectors.
For information on allocations, please visit www.dhs.gov.
For more details on transit security grants, please read our information on the Transit Security Grant Program.
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Bret Burchard named NAZ Suns head coach
Bret Burchard was named the NAZ Suns third head coach. (Matt Hinshaw/NAZ Suns)
Originally Published: July 26, 2018 1:22 p.m.
PRESCOTT VALLEY – The Northern Arizona Suns announced Wednesday that former associate head coach Bret Burchard has been hired to serve as head coach for their 2018-19 season.
Burchard was a Northern Arizona Suns assistant coach during the team’s inaugural season in 2016-17. He was promoted to associate head coach entering their 2017-18 campaign shortly before getting called up to the Phoenix Suns, where he spent last season as a player development assistant.
Burchard replaces Cody Toppert at the helm of the NAZ Suns, who was called up by the Phoenix Suns to serve as Director of Player Development. Toppert is one of four coaches who has received a call-up to the NBA (Ty Ellis, Burchard, Brandon Rosenthal) in the team’s history.
This will be Burchard’s first year as a head coach in the NBA G League as he becomes the third head coach in Northern Arizona Suns history (Ellis, Toppert).
“We are thrilled to welcome Bret back to the Northern Arizona Suns family as our next head coach,” NAZ Suns General Manager Louis Lehman said. “Bret has been with the Suns organization since before I began over six years ago and we’ve been able to build a great relationship with each other throughout the years. I’ve witnessed Bret’s rise through the video room to the coaching ranks and seen a tremendous amount of growth in not only his coaching ability, but also his leadership. Bret’s core values align with what the Suns organization looks for in a head coach and I’m excited to watch him develop our talented group of G League players and coaches.”
The Northern Arizona Suns tied the best start through the first 11 games of a season (10-1) in NBA G League history under Ellis’ and Burchard’s watch in 2016-17. The team finished 22-28 in its inaugural season, which was also Burchard’s first year coaching at the professional level.
Burchard, 32, has spent the last eight years with the Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Mercury and Northern Arizona Suns. He worked 2013-16 as the Phoenix Suns’ video coordinator after spending 2010-13 in the basketball communications department for the Mercury and Suns.
“I am very excited to return to the Northern Arizona community and build upon the young tradition of our G League program,” Burchard said. “I thank Ryan McDonough, Louis Lehman and the entire Suns front office for continuing to invest in my growth as a coach and professional, and Coach Kokoškov for trusting me to assist in the development of our team’s young talent. I’m looking forward to doing my part in Prescott Valley to continue the NAZ Suns’ brand of elite-level basketball the community can be proud of, while also helping the rise of the Phoenix Suns.”
Before joining the Suns organization, Burchard was an assistant coach for two years at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, where he also went to school and played basketball. A Columbia, Missouri, native, Burchard earned his degree in sports management and public relations from Taylor in 2008.
‑NAZ Suns
Northern Arizona Suns head coach Bret Burchard to return
NAZ Suns announce 2018-19 regular season schedule
Northern Arizona Suns single game tickets go on sale
Ellis on USA coaching staff for FIBA AmeriCup 2017
Sports briefs: NAZ Suns’ Cody Toppert joins Phoenix Suns coaching staff
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History of Design: Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer
Revolutions in design are most often driven by advancements in material and technology. The famous Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer is precisely one of these, the first ever chair to feature a bent-steel frame. While it was first created in 1926, it marked the beginning of a new era in modern furniture with a design that maintains a progressive look even today.
The Wassily Chair was first built by Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus institution in Dessau, Germany. Breuer found his inspiration for the chair in the bent form of a bicycle handlebar, available for the first time in steel due to a development in technology. The German steel manufacturer Mannesmann had developed a process to produce seamless steel tubing, the first to allow tubes to be bent without breaking at the seam. Breuer’s Adler bicycle featured such tubing, which inspired the designer to employ this material in furniture.
The Wassily Chair was originally known as the Model B3 Chair, but was later marketed as the Wassily Chair after a story about Breuer’s friend and colleague at Bauhaus, artist Wassily Kandinsky. After first producing the Model B3 Chair prototype, Kandinsky was so enthralled with the chair that Breuer decided to produce another for Wassily Kandinsky himself. This friendship, and the later popularity of Kandinsky led the producers of the Model B3 Chair to change its name to the now famous Wassily Chair.
After going out of production for a number of years, the Wassily Chair was produced again shortly after World War II. The original Model B3 Chair featured a fabric seat, back and arm rests, but the re-introduced version was also available in white, black or brown leather. This design remains today, where it is still in production by Knoll Furniture and knocked off by many other producers.
The Wassily Chair is a classic like none other. Its design remains progressive even in comparison to the design world’s latest furniture. Its build is complex in appearance but simple in construction, a contrast which has earned its place in museums throughout the world, and in thousands of modern-minded homes. We have a pair here at TheCoolist, and we can say without a doubt that the Wassily Chair is one of history’s greatest pieces of modern furniture. Marcel Breuer may have passed in 1981, but we believe his legendary piece of furniture will never lose its relevance to the world of modern design.
Wassily Chair Gallery
Phaidon Design Classics iPad App
Modular Lounge Chair by Balint Kormos
Bufa Chair by MOWOstudio
Disco Chair by Kiwi & Pom
Mariposa Chair by Kate Rider
The Snug Lounge Chair
Zetel Furniture by Muller and Van Severen
The Ladybug Sofa and Lounge Chair
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Photo London’s 2019 Master of Photography
in partnership with Photo London
Photo London’s 2019 Master of Photography -
Meet renowned photographer Stephen Shore
To celebrate the fifth edition of Photo London (15-19 May 2019), the internationally acclaimed art fair specializing in photography, we invite you to join us for a special talk with the internationally renowned photographer Stephen Shore, who has been announced as the Fair’s 2019 Master of Photography. Shore will be joined in conversation by photographer, publisher and curator Peter Kayafas. This will be an exclusive opportunity to gain insight into Shore’s pioneering work and career.
About Stephen Shore:
Stephen Shore's work has been widely published and exhibited for the past forty-five years. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, forty years earlier. He has also had one-man shows at George Eastman House, Rochester; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art opened a major retrospective spanning Stephen Shore's entire career. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked new interest in color photography and in the use of the view camera for documentary work.
More than 25 books have been published of Stephen Shore's photographs including Uncommon Places: The Complete Works; American Surfaces; Stephen Shore, a retrospective monograph in Phaidon's Contemporary Artists series; Stephen Shore: Survey and most recently, Factory: Andy Warhol and Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1973-1981. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art published Stephen Shore in conjunction with their retrospective of his photographic career. Stephen also wrote The Nature of Photographs, published by Phaidon Press, which addresses how a photograph functions visually. His work is represented by 303 Gallery, New York; and Sprüth Magers, London and Berlin. Since 1982 he has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he is the Susan Weber Professor in the Arts.
About Peter Kayafas:
Peter Kayafas is a photographer, publisher, curator and teacher who lives in New York City where he is the Director of the Eakins Press Foundation. His photographs have been widely exhibited, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He has taught photography at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn since 2000. In addition to two other monographs (The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta and O Public Road! Photographs of America) his most recent book Totems, with an essay by Jed Perl, is available from the Purple Martin Press.
About Photo London:
Photo London is an internationally acclaimed art fair and is the key global destination for anyone who is fascinated by the rich history and future directions of photography. Featuring over 90 leading galleries and a wealth of special exhibitions, the Fair is the place to discover new artists, new work by established masters and gems from the dawn of photography.
Photo London returns for its fifth edition at London’s iconic Somerset House 16-19 May 2019, with a VIP Preview Day on 15 May.
www.photolondon.org | vip@photolondon.org
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The Pressure to Appear Consistent: American POWs in Korea
April 26, 2016 by Sam Spurrell in Psychology, Sales
Why did so many American Prisoners of War (POWs) collaborate with the Chinese during the Korean War? In 1950, with the Cold War in full swing, Korea's northern communist faction invaded their Southern compatriots with the support of China and the USSR. In response, the United Nations, led by the USA, came to the South's aid leading to the establishment of two countries - one that would become the 11th largest economy in the world, the other going on to become an oppressive dictatorship with third world levels of famine and poverty. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
nk vs sk
However, the most fascinating part of the Korean war is not what happened on the front lines, but what was going on at the Chinese-run prisoner of war camps. According to American investigators after the war, nearly every captured American soldier collaborated with their captors in some form, at some point during their imprisonment. How can this be? These were highly trained Americans who were surrounded by the Anti-Communist sentiments that dominated US politics so completely. The whole reason that they were even in Korea was because Communism is such a bad thing that it's worth going to war over! Some were so convinced by the Chinese that they decided to stay there after the war!
So, what did the Chinese do that led to such extraordinary results? The answer is that they had a sophisticated understanding of human psychology. In particular, they understood one of the most powerful driving forces behind human activity: the desire to appear consistent.
Below is a short passage from 'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' by Robert B. Cialdini where he outlines the source of their success:
An examination of the Chinese prison camp programme shows that its personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn-in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was elementary: start small and build.
For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-american or Pro communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor request were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who has just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.
The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other p.o.w. camps in North Korea, as well as to American Forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator” having given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.
Pages 70-1
The Desire to Appear Consistent
The passage above highlights clearly how the pressure to appear consistent with your previous actions can lead to dramatic results. What makes this process so insidious is the fact that an individual's self image can change so rapidly and without them even being aware that they are being manipulated.
At no point did the Chinese torture their prisoners or threaten them with punishment if they refused to sign their name to an anti American letter. In fact that would have made it so much easier for the Americans to remain resistant. The genius of the Chinese approach is that each tiny step was one that you freely chose (or at least it felt free). If you chose to write that letter admitting that China is a pretty great place then you take inner responsibility for it, almost guaranteeing that your self image would change to become consistent with your actions. Here's Robert Cialdini again:
Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions. What the Chinese have discovered is that the man himself uses the same evidence to decide what he is like. His behaviour tells him about himself; [emphasis mine] It is a primary source of information about his beliefs and values and attitudes. Understanding fully this important principle of self perception, the Chinese set about arranging the prison camp experience so that their captives would consistently act in desired ways. Before long, the Chinese knew, these actions would begin to take their toll, causing the men to change their views of themselves to align with what they had done.
What does that mean for me?
As fascinating as this story is, the implications are very significant!
The fact is that we all tell ourselves a story about what sort of person we are and what sort of things we believe in. While we like to believe that there is a consistent, immutable part of us that never changes - the truth is that our beliefs and our character are very malleable indeed. Most people think that they know who they are thanks to their ability to 'look inside themselves' and judge their innermost beliefs. In fact, we build our picture of our selves in much the same way that we build a picture of any one else - we look at the things we do and the words we say and draw a conclusion on the evidence.
The scary side of this realisation is that it's possible for other people to attempt to influence your character without you ever realising it. By getting you to make some small concession today, they can change the story that you tell yourself in a way that has very significant long term consequences.
The more optimistic view is that if there are beliefs you have or behaviours you exhibit which you're not happy about - it's quite possible to change those things about yourself! How to do that? Take a lesson from the Chinese Army:
Small actions now can build up into radical changes of perspective - so DO worry about the small stuff and don't brush off seemingly inconsequential actions as harmless if they are not the sort of person you want to be.
The story you tell to yourself about who you are and what you believe can lead to enormous behavioural changes, so protect your story and don't let other people have too much control over it.
The drive to be consistent is understandably powerful and resisting it is uncomfortable, but sometimes it's okay to be inconsistent if you realise that you've started down a path you didn't choose.
If you enjoyed this post, I would seriously recommend buying a copy of 'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' by Robert B. Cialdini. It's a really well written book that examines the most powerful ways that people are influenced, and ways to avoid being manipulated.
For a really great summary of why the Korean War happened and why North and South ended up so differently, check out this youtube video.
April 26, 2016 /Sam Spurrell
china, consistency, consistent, influence, north korea, pressure, psychology, south korea
Psychology, Sales
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Agnostic Ecstasy: A Conversation with Coleman Barks
by C. J. Bartunek
On the last evening in January 2013, I had the good fortune to stop by Coleman Barks’s home in Athens to interview him about his long poem “The VOICE inside WATER,” which appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of The Georgia Review and subsequently in his recently released collection, Hummingbird Sleep: Poems, 2009–2011 (University of Georgia Press). We sat by the fire in the spacious front room where Barks works (the fire wasn’t just for ambience; the house really was drafty), and Barks mused on the workings of the poem. Written in part as a meditation on the stroke he suffered in March 2011, it pulls together some of Barks’s eclectic enthusiasms, including rare endangered animals, esoteric color words, and the sublimely demented eighteenth-century poem Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart.
Barks doesn’t remember what inspired him to order a copy of Jubilate Agno—though in the 1970s his friend Galway Kinnell used to recite his favorite lines from it when they did readings together—but the Oxford edition serendipitously arrived at his house twelve days after his stroke. “You see?” he said, showing me where he had written the date in his copy.
Smart’s lines on voice are eerily relevant; Barks had physically lost his own with his stroke. This loss must have been a particularly cruel reality for a poet whose exuberant, almost mystical bearing when reading aloud bonds him to his listeners. “You trance when you read,” Michael Stipe of R.E.M. once told him.
Barks began including lines from Jubilate Agno in the poem, which became a way for him to express his “love for a kind of lunatic wandering.” It provided “a sort of shelter for me,” he said, “like Christopher Smart found in Mr. Potter’s Asylum. He found a place where he could heal, along with his cat Jeoffrey, and make himself more presentable to the public again, where he liked to walk around and pray loudly and in inappropriate ways. And I like to do the same. One internal reason for the poem is to give me some place to rest and just to relax in a kind of sublime way and feel healed.”
Thankfully, Barks’s voice did return, and on that winter evening he spoke of coming to terms with his fears of death and another stroke, of his desire for a “physical theology” grounded in experience, and of the pleasure of reading Christopher Smart. He read to me some of the more bizarre passages from Jubilate Agno as well as excerpts from the haunting “The VOICE inside WATER”; the latter may offer a rare opportunity for listeners, because in one of the poem’s copious footnotes he writes that “Most likely . . . I will never bring this poem and its notes to a reading. Too long, too willful in its wandering.”
Well-known for his versions of the Persian mystic Rumi’s poetry, Barks has an affinity for the ecstatic tradition which manifests itself in his life and his work. “You can’t aspire to be an ecstatic,” he told me. “I think you just have to live it. I don’t know—you can be a fake ecstatic, I guess. Lot of that going around. . . . In its indulgences, the poem is kind of carelessly ecstatic, I think.”
“I’m not faking the joy,” he said, and I believe him.
Listen to the entire interview:
http://localhost:8090/audio/Barks_Interview%20with%20CJ%20Bartunek,%20January%2031,%202013.mp3
Hear Barks reading from Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno:
http://localhost:8090/audio/Barks_On%20_Jubilate%20Agno_.mp3
C. J. Bartunek received her PhD in English from the University of Georgia and her BA from the University of Southern California. Before that, she grew up in a small town in northeastern North Dakota. Her writing has appeared in The Smart Set, Pacific Standard, The Big Roundtable, and elsewhere. Prior to joining The Georgia Review’s staff in June 2018, she taught as a lecturer at Piedmont College in Demorest, GA.
“Look at the World as It Is”: An Interview with Sir Salman Rushdie
Identifying with Valentine: An Interview with Anya Silver
Fall 2018 / Winter 2018
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What If Latin America Ruled the World? by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Richard Gott is engaged by a perverse and complicated account of the rise of Latin America
Richard Gott
Fri 2 Jul 2010 19.05 EDT First published on Fri 2 Jul 2010 19.05 EDT
Waiting for the bus . . . La Paz, Bolivia. Photograph: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images
Everyone knows that interesting things are happening in Latin America, though their exact significance is not always immediately apparent. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been around for more than 10 years and is still going strong; Lula of Brazil is just coming to the end of his second successful presidential term; Evo Morales of Bolivia has outmanoeuvred his internal (and external) opponents, and is now safely established; Rafael Correa of Ecuador is in charge of a secure and radical government, as is Cristina Kirchner of Argentina.
All of them, and 32 other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, came together this year in Mexico to form "a community" of nations from "the South" that excludes the United States and Canada and challenges the existing economic and financial order controlled by "the North". While the world's richest countries have been trembling on the brink of bankruptcy and collapse, many of the formerly ignored governments of Latin America, firmly supported by mass mobilisations of their peoples, have been constructing a radical, local and sustainable alternative to the recipes imposed on them until the end of the 20th century by the false prophets of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. How and why did all this happen?
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, a philosopher from Colombia who teaches at the University of London, seeks to make sense of this development in a book that ranges from the most obscure corners of prehistory to the most recent press cuttings of 2010. It is a large, rambling, anecdotal and ultimately confusing book, yet along the way it provides a handful of vignettes that illuminate and assist our understanding of an unfamiliar series of historical events. He starts by recalling a time, long before the Aztecs and the Incas, when the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon basin were agents of their own history. They were not the idealised peoples of European imaginings who lived in a prehistoric garden of Eden but a people who bent nature to their own purposes, creating canals and irrigation schemes and places above the water where large civilisations could flourish. Owning their world in common, their daily struggle was to secure their survival in a sometimes unfriendly environment.
Guardiola-Rivera traces the significance of common land-ownership, through various examples elsewhere, including the Levellers in Britain and the Wampanoag in America, to the contemporary community battles in the Andes over land and water rights that have led to the electoral victory of Indian-backed governments in Bolivia and Ecuador. He goes on to reflect on the development of European capitalism, constructed from the flows of silver from Mexico and the Andean silver mine at Potosí, and then writes, via an account of the independence struggles of the early 19th century, of the centrality of race in Latin American politics and the economy until today. This argument relies heavily on the recent pioneering work of George Reid Andrews and Walter Mignolo on Afro-Latin America, although Guardiola- Rivera brings his own specialist knowledge of Colombia and Panama to illuminate aspects of the story that are often ignored in conventional histories of the continent.
The great mass of the peoples of Latin America are Amerindian and black, and their daily struggle has been (and still is) with the wealthy white elites, the heirs to the settlers from Europe, settlement having been vastly expanded in the 19th century. Yet this internal struggle is also part of a wider battle against the white-dominated outside world, which controls the global economic system and its ancillary activities – mining and plantations, the extraction of oil and gas – that usurp the lands of the indigenous population.
Guardiola-Rivera delves finally into the recent history of development economics, praising the work of Raúl Prebisch and his later followers at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Much criticised during the years when the proponents of the neoliberal "Washington consensus" brooked no opposition, they campaigned for import substitution and later for endogenous development; it is their ideas that are now being revived by the new radical governments of the region. Guardiola-Rivera also nods favourably in the direction of Che Guevara, whose unorthodox economic philosophy has recently been uncovered in a brilliant book by Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution, and towards the late Stafford Beer, the British cybernetician who gave Salvador Allende a helping hand.
So what of the title of the book? Here Guardiola-Rivera predicts the imminent Hispanic takeover of the United States, some time before the middle of this century. The US is already on the way to becoming a Latin American country, with the immense pro-immigrant marches of recent years in American cities resembling the huge popular mobilisations that have led to political change in Latin America. Until recently, the Latinos in the US were perceived as the children of the white elites, refugees from the radical black and Amerindian governments in the south. Now, especially among those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Latinos of a different complexion are beginning to look to the startling developments in their original homeland for political inspiration.
Do not despair, the book concludes. "There may be confusion, but there are in the world peoples who do not sit waiting for some priest to tell them where to go." These peoples, poor and oppressed, are motivated, at least in part, by "a memory of the lost commons of their Indian and African ancestors". This is a perverse and complicated book, but one that puts the solutions to the current economic crisis of the rich world into their proper global perspective.
Richard Gott's Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is published by Verso.
Politics books
Society books
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NewsCall 6 Investigates
CALL 6: New twist on old scam using familiar faces to target you
Beware of Facebook message from "friends"
By: Kara Kenney
INDIANAPOLIS-- Call 6 Investigates has uncovered a new twist on an old scam targeting people in central Indiana.
Chances are, you’re already used to scammers sending you snail mail, email or calling you on the phone.
In the new twist, the scammers are hacking into Facebook and sending you messages that appear to come from a friend of yours.
The offer seems legitimate because it’s coming from a Facebook friend.
Camby resident Rodney Clark considers himself savvy when it comes to scammers.
“I’m not a dummy,” Clark said. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
So when Rodney received a Facebook message from a friend of his, he didn’t think much of it.
Rodney’s friend told him about the New United Nations Funding program or NUF.
"She had received $90,000 through this program, and it's not a loan, it's just something you apply for and she gave me the phone number to call," said Rodney.
Rodney called the phone number, which had a 727 area code, and gave them his name and address.
“Probably a big mistake,” said Rodney.
Rodney stopped short of revealing his bank account information and called Call 6 Investigates.
“I wanted to find out from you if you thought it was actually a scam or not,” said Rodney.
Call 6 Investigates did some checking and found this is a new twist on a scam that’s been around for years.
Only this time, the scammers are hacking into your friend’s Facebook accounts and messaging you to get your attention about the United Nations fund.
We called the 727 number and left a message, and we received a text message back saying we’re approved for free cash.
In order to get our cash, the text told us we needed to provide personal information within five minutes.
Call 6 Investigates didn’t provide any personal information, but we did ask the scammer why we were entitled to money from the UN.
“You are eligible to get the money because you are one of the people the (sic) pay tax regularly,” read the text.
Call 6 Investigates contacted the United Nations, and a spokesperson told us it’s a scam and the United Nations does not solicit personal information or offer money.
The UN is working with the authorities to put a stop to these scams, and directed consumers to this fraud alert on their website.
Here’s what they want people to know:
The United Nations does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, processing, training) or other fee, or request information on applicants’ bank accounts. To apply for a job go to careers.un.org and click on Vacancies.
The United Nations does not charge a fee at any stage of its procurement process (supplier registration, bids submission) or other fee. Visit the Procurement Division to see the latest business opportunities with the United Nations.
The United Nations does not request any information related to bank accounts or other private information.
The United Nations does not offer prizes, awards, funds, certificates, automated teller machine (ATM) cards, compensation for Internet fraud, or scholarships, or conduct lotteries.
The United Nations does not approve military vacations or pensions, or release packages in exchange for a fee.
As for Rodney Clark, he’s relieved he reached out to Call 6 Investigates.
"I'm glad to know that and I'm glad to know I didn't give them any bank numbers or anything like that," said Clark. “I appreciate you looking into it.”
The Better Business Bureau has more information on Grant Scams and tips for avoiding them here. In addition, here are some tips you should always keep in mind on Facebook:
Be careful with friend requests from strangers. We all want to have new friends, but try to keep your social networking friends to folks you know outside of the social media platform. If it appears the request is from a business contact or friend of a friend, send them a message after accepting to test their legitimacy. If they don’t seem real or connected to your life, un-friend them.
Don’t blindly trust your current Facebook friends. You may receive a message from someone you have known all your life. That doesn’t mean you must trust them inexplicitly. If the message seems out-of-character their account may have been hacked or cloned. Contact them offline and let them know.
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David McSavage - National Treasure
Main Artist: David McSavage
Line Up/ Support: David McSavage
Watergate Theatre - Kilkenny / September 7th, 2019
David McSavage is a self proclaimed national treasure. It has been said he is to comedy what the Abbey is to theatre. Maybe because he believes he's more important than he is, or that the majority of the country doesnt care about him.
But unlike the Abbey theatre Davids best days aren't behind him, his intention for this new show which he has yet to write is for you the audience member to feel "wow that was one of the funniest things Ive ever seen, it was so original, courageous, and yet very flawed. I would really like to be his friend"
A regular guest on TV and radio shows in Ireland for many years, David has also appeared at all the major comedy festivals including the Edinburgh Festival and internationally in Australia, Germany, Japan and Scandinavia.
As an actor, he features in the film Calvary by John Michael McDonagh starring Brendan Gleeson. His other recent film roles in Traders, Gold and Our Robot Overlords.
The Savage Eye (RTÉ), has been critically acclaimed was nominated for an IFTA award for Best Entertainment Series and Best Director.
Comedy Live Irish
Watergate Theatre - Kilkenny
Box Office: +353 056 776 1674
Address:The Watergate Theatre, Parliament Street, Gardens, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny, Leinster, R95 V6TE, Ireland
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April 10, 2018 / 10:55 PM
Many parents unsure of talking about sex with LGBT kids
HealthDay News
TUESDAY, April 10, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Many parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens feel uneasy and uninformed when it comes to talking to them about sex and dating, a new study shows.
The study included 44 parents of LGBT teens between the ages of 13 and 17. The parents cited many challenges in trying to educate their teens about sex, including general discomfort in talking about it, and feeling unable to offer accurate advice about safe LGBT sex.
"Parents play an important role in helping their children learn how to have healthy sexual relationships, but they really struggle when discussing this with their LGBTQ teens," study author Michael Newcomb said. He is associate director for scientific development at Northwestern University's Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.
RELATED Certain teens more likely to get hooked on opioids
The study was published recently in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
"We need resources to help all parents -- regardless of their child's sexual orientation or gender identity -- overcome the awkwardness and discomfort that can result from conversations about sexual health," Newcomb said in a university news release.
He noted that a healthy and supportive relationship with parents is a key predictor of positive health outcomes in teens of all sexual orientations.
RELATED Sex, racial disparities found in cardiac rehab referral
"Many parents and their LGBTQ teens want to have supportive relationships with one another, so if we can design programs to strengthen these relationships, it could have a tremendous impact on LGBTQ teens' health and wellbeing," he said.
In a separate study, institute researchers examined how gay and bisexual boys between 14 and 17 felt about talking to their parents about sex.
"We found that many of the gay and bisexual male youth in our study wanted to be closer to their parents and to be able to talk about sex and dating," study lead author Brian Feinstein said in the news release.
RELATED Key factor raises suicide risk for gay, lesbian teenagers: Experts
"However, most of them said that they rarely, if ever, talked to their parents about sex and dating, especially after coming out. And, even if they did talk about sex and dating with their parents, the conversations were brief and focused exclusively on HIV and condom use," Feinstein said. He is a research assistant professor.
That study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers resources for LGBT youth and their families.
Genetic factors are primary cause of autism, study finds
Evolutionary guard against starvation linked to difficulty losing weight
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FBI examining 2010 domestic fight involving acting defense secretary Shanahan; accounts differ on aggressor
Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan and his then-wife each told police they had been hit by the other. He denies striking her.
FBI examining 2010 domestic fight involving acting defense secretary Shanahan; accounts differ on aggressor Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan and his then-wife each told police they had been hit by the other. He denies striking her. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/18/defense-secretary-fbi-patrick-shanahan-wife-domestic-violence-altercation/1470811001/
Tom Vanden Brook and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY Published 11:44 a.m. ET June 18, 2019 | Updated 6:40 p.m. ET June 19, 2019
Before he worked at the Pentagon, Patrick Shanahan spent over 30 years at Boeing. Now, he's the new acting secretary of defense. Wochit
WASHINGTON — The FBI has been examining a violent domestic dispute from nine years ago between acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan and his then-wife as part of a background investigation ahead of his possible confirmation hearing to be President Trump’s permanent defense chief.
Tuesday afternoon, Trump said he would replace Shanahan as acting secretary.
The incident, in which Shanahan and his then-wife Kimberley both claimed to the police that they had been punched by the other, did not surface when Trump nominated Shanahan to be the Pentagon’s second-in-command two years ago, or when he was selected to be the interim defense chief this year.
Shanahan said he "never laid a hand on" his former wife. His former wife, who now goes by the name Kimberley Jordinson, said she stands by her account.
The episode could have been a potential roadblock for Shanahan if Trump formally nominated him for the secretary’s post, which requires Senate confirmation, because a key lawmaker and Senate aides said it could have raised questions about his ability to combat longstanding problems of violence against women in the military. Among the concerns of Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services committee, and Senate aides: They were not fully aware of the incident when Shanahan was confirmed for the No. 2 position; and the Senate should have the opportunity to assess whether he was the aggressor or victim and how that could affect his ability to lead the armed forces.
“The question is going to be whether or not he’s credible on the issue. If he’s credible, he’ll be OK,” said Leon Panetta, who was defense secretary and CIA director during President Barack Obama’s administration. “These days nothing is out of bounds.”
Shanahan said in a statement that the episode documented in his divorce and police records “is not dissimilar to those of the many families facing the difficult challenges that come when a loved one struggles with substance abuse and other emotional issues. I wish nothing but the best for her and regret that my children’s privacy has been violated and they are being forced to relive a tragic situation that we have worked so hard as a family to put behind us.”
Asked for comment early Tuesday on the FBI review and whether it would affect Shanahan's nomination, the White House referred questions on the incident to the Pentagon.
Picking Shanahan: President Trump chooses Patrick Shanahan as next defense secretary
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan arrives at the Pentagon for the first time in his official capacity, on Jan. 2, 2019 in Arlington, Va. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
Diverging accounts of incident
Both Shanahan and Jordinson acknowledged in court filings and police reports that a late-night argument on Aug. 28, 2010, after both had been drinking, spilled from their bedroom to the front yard of their Seattle home. The incident escalated into a clash that police said left him with a bloodied nose and hand and her with a blood-stained forearm. But their accounts diverged on who was to blame, as well as the claim Jordinson reported to officers and later outlined in divorce papers: that Shanahan punched her in the stomach.
Shanahan denied hitting her and told police that she was the aggressor and that she had punched him “10 to 20 times,” according to police records obtained by USA TODAY. Officers – noting in part that Jordinson’s bloody forearm appeared consistent with her having attacked her husband – arrested Jordinson on suspicion of domestic violence. Prosecutors later dropped the charge, citing a lack of evidence.
The competing accounts of the fight are outlined in hundreds of pages of court files and police records, as well as police photographs, audio recordings and an interview with USA TODAY in which Shanahan’s former wife reiterated her accusations.
“Though my marriage ended in sorrow and disappointment, I never laid a hand on my then-wife and cooperated fully in a thorough law enforcement investigation that resulted in her being charged with assault against me,” Shanahan said in a prepared statement late Monday.
Read Shanahan's full statement: Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan's statement about a 2010 domestic case
Acting defense secretary since January
Shanahan, 56, has been the acting defense secretary since January, the longest period the Pentagon has been led by a temporary chief. Trump said in April that he planned to make Shanahan his permanent defense secretary, putting him in command of the military’s 2 million active and reserve troops and 700,000 civilian employees. The White House has yet to formally nominate him for the job, and the delay has raised questions in political circles as to why.
Reed, the Rhode Island senator, had known that Shanahan had been involved in a contentious divorce when he was confirmed as deputy defense secretary but was unaware of the domestic violence allegations, said spokesman Chip Unruh. He said the episode could have been overlooked in an earlier background check or might have surfaced now because he is in line for a more sensitive post.
“Senator Reed is going to take that very seriously because the job of secretary is very different than the deputy spot,” Unruh said.
It took 125 days, but President Donald Trump finally nominated Patrick Shanahan to be the next Secretary of Defense. Time, Time
Two FBI agents questioned Jordinson for several hours in early June about her allegations as part of a background examination of the presumptive nominee, she said.
The FBI declined to comment. A Senate staffer with knowledge of the matter said the bureau’s inquiry into Shananan’s background was ongoing as part of the vetting process.
That renewed inquiry has come as the Pentagon is weighing its options with Iran, which the United States blames for attacks on two oil tankers this month in the Gulf of Oman. The Trump administration ordered another 1,000 troops deployed to the region Monday.
Jordinson has maintained that Shanahan struck her as the two struggled over a briefcase, an allegation she repeated that night to Seattle police, in a later divorce filing and in her recent interview with USA TODAY.
“My husband is throwing punches at me,” Jordinson told a Seattle 911 operator that night, according to a recording of the call. “He’s been hitting me. … I don’t need a medic, I need you guys to get him out of the house. ... He’s just swinging punches at me.”
A 911 call recording over a 2010 domestic fight involving acting defense secretary Shanahan; accounts differ on aggressor USA TODAY
One of the couple’s sons, who witnessed part of the argument, later submitted a statement to his mother's criminal lawyer recounting a physical struggle and her calling to him for help, though he said he did not see either parent strike the other.
The son, Will Shanahan, who was 15 at the time of the incident, now asserts his mother “coerced” him to sign the document meant to assist her defense, according to a statement he provided to USA TODAY. He said the initial declaration, which indicated that police had treated his mother “unfairly,” was “false, dishonest and did not represent the accurate facts.”
“I did what she told me,” he said.
Jordinson stood by her account in an interview with USA TODAY and said her son’s 2010 statement was his idea.
She also acknowledged receiving care for post-traumatic stress disorder. During her divorce, Jordinson was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, though she disputed that conclusion. And police records in her new hometown of Sarasota, Florida show officers have expressed concerns about her mental stability when responding to multiple calls from her home.
Divorce and accusations
The bitter clash between Shanahan and his wife began after an evening at a friend’s house, where both had been drinking, according to court documents. During the argument, Jordinson ordered Shanahan to leave their home and began to throw his clothes and other belongings out the front door.
Shanahan told police that night that she also attempted to light the pile of clothing on fire.
Jordinson said in a court filing in the couple’s divorce that before Shanahan left the house, he went to retrieve a briefcase from a closet near the bathroom where she was getting ready for bed.
“We have had arguments over this briefcase and its contents before,” Jordinson stated. “I did not want him to take the briefcase. I picked up the briefcase and Pat slugged me in the stomach. I stood up and he tried to hit me in the stomach twice more, but the briefcase was in the way. ... Pat eventually yanked the briefcase from my hands, breaking my fingernails.”
During the struggle, according to Jordinson’s declaration in the divorce proceedings, she called out to her son, who “appeared with a baseball bat” to defend his mother. The confrontation ended, she said, after she called the police.
Officers dispatched to the family’s home in Seattle’s exclusive Laurelhurst neighborhood concluded that Jordinson, not Shanahan, was the aggressor, producing photographs of his bloodied nose, blood-stained hand and scratched chin.
While Jordinson reported being struck “several times” in the stomach, officers found no apparent injuries and noted that her description of the attack was inconsistent. In their report, police noted that no injury photos were taken of Jordinson. The report, however, indicates that Jordinson had “blood stains” on her right forearm that police suggested were consistent with offensive actions against Shanahan.
“Though she stated that she was struck in the stomach, she demonstrated she was struck on her face,” police said, adding that Jordinson “appeared to be intoxicated.” She was later arrested on a domestic assault charge. Prosecutors dropped the case the next year because of “proof problems,” though Shanahan wrote in court filings that he had asked them to do so.
Jordinson maintained her version of the account during an interview with USA TODAY in May, saying Shanahan, who police also described as intoxicated, dragged her from the couple’s home, mocked her and grabbed her wrists after he locked the briefcase in the trunk of his car. “I was like fighting … trying to get my wrists loose, and, um, he was just shaking me, saying, ‘You’re a joke! You’re a joke! You’re a joke!’ Then I got one hand loose, and that’s when he punched me … in the stomach,” she said.
Corroboration and contradiction
Two weeks after the episode, will shanahan, the couple's oldest son, submitted the declaration in support of his mothers's defense in the assault case.
The notarized statement also asserted that officers “omitted” parts of her account from their report.
In his statement this month to USA TODAY, Will Shanahan asserted that his mother was, in fact, the aggressor, though he said he did not see either parent strike the other.
Patrick Shanahan also denied his wife’s account in court documents and in a statement to police.
After packing his car with the clothing and other belongings tossed in the front yard, Shanahan said he went to the bathroom to gather toiletries that had been strewn across the bathroom floor by his wife, who “continued to drink.”
“I took belongings out of my closet,” he said in a court filing. “When I started to carry my briefcase and other items to the car, Kim attacked me. I did not hit her in the stomach or anywhere. I tried to exit the house to put the briefcase in the trunk of my car but she wouldn’t let go. … Kim followed me outside and then punched me repeatedly in the face. I told her to get away from me and to leave me alone.”
Shanahan told police that as his wife continued to swing at him, he did not retaliate. “I defended myself by blocking her punches with my hand,” he said.
Who is Patrick Shanahan?Five things to know about the acting Secretary of Defense
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan (L) speaks to members of the media as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R) listens after a closed briefing for Senate members May 21, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Acting Secretary Shanahan and Secretary Pompeo joined Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford to brief Congressional members on Iran. (Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images)
The charges and counter charges are part of a bitter legal battle that spanned more than six years, as the couple waged an extensive fight over the care of their three children and the division of the family’s significant financial holdings.
Jordinson’s post-divorce life has not been without its troubles. In 2014, she was charged with burglary and criminal mischief in separate disputes with a former business partner. The burglary charge was subsequently dismissed, as was the criminal mischief charge after she completed a pre-trial diversion program.
In Florida, she is self-employed in property management and interior design.
Have a story tip? Drop us a note.
Battle against domestic abuse
The military has struggled for years to deal with violence against women, including sexual harassment and assault and domestic abuse.
Last year, Congress changed military law, making domestic violence a separate crime. The move was made after a former airman, Devin Kelly, gunned down 26 people at church services in Sutherland Spring, Texas, in 2017. Kelly had been convicted of beating his wife and child, but the Air Force failed four times to notify federal authorities who could have prevented him from buying firearms.
Veteran Air Force prosecutor: Military court goes light on domestic abuse for Texas shooter
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said Kelly’s rampage prompted her to push for domestic violence to be made a stand-alone crime under military law. “We know that domestic violence is a prevalent issue in the military,” Rosen said.
In 2018, the military received 8,039 reported of incidents that met the criteria for domestic abuse, according to the Pentagon. About three-quarters involved physical abuse. Since 2009, the rate has remained at 2% reporting being abused by a spouse.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that millions of people are abused each year in instances of “intimate partner violence.” Nearly one in four women and one in seven men report having experienced severe physical violence at the hands of partner during their lifetime.
Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan (C) meets with Border Patrol Agents during a tour of the US-Mexico border at Santa Teresa Station in Sunland Park, New Mexico, Saturday, February 23, 2019. (Photo: PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS, AFP/Getty Images)
Don Christensen, the former chief prosecutor in the Air Force and president of Protect Our Defenders, a group that advocates for victims of sexual assault in the military, said it would be “devastating to have a secretary that has a history of domestic violence” if such allegations were true. That choice would “send the message that solving sexual and domestic violence is not a priority.”
If, however, Shanahan was the victim, Christensen said it could be valuable experience for leading the armed forces. “He’d have a better understanding of the seriousness of the issue, and I think especially the reluctance of victims to report or go public,” he said. “I’d hope he’d appreciate it's not easy for victims to ‘just leave’ as so many think should happen.”
Contributing: Lindsay Schnell in Seattle, Christal Hayes in Sarasota, Florida, and David Jackson in Washington.
Hiding the USS John McCain: Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan will investigate reports of shielding it from Trump
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/18/defense-secretary-fbi-patrick-shanahan-wife-domestic-violence-altercation/1470811001/
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2018, Articles, CEO of the Year, March, Monthly Magazine, Nonprofits, Small Business
2018 CEO of the Year
By Utah Business
It’s true: it can be lonely at the top. But the CEOs honored in these pages don’t believe in isolation—they use their leadership to bring together teams, to support and mentor junior executives, and to reach into the community. While being the one to make tough decisions is, at times, painfully difficult, our 12 CEO of the Year recipients take a collaborative approach in order to ensure their decisions have the support of company leaders and employees all through the ranks. Join us in paying tribute to these remarkable chief executives.
John B. Lund
President and CEO, America First Credit Union
John Lund took a job at America First Credit Union in 1975—and never left. He began working as a clerk for the credit union while he was in school, but stayed after graduation. There were always opportunities to learn new things, he says, and he steadily advanced up through the organization. Lund was named president and CEO in 2012.
That longevity and commitment to the organization is apparent in Lund’s passion for what he calls the credit union’s purpose: “Our purpose is to help individuals and families achieve financial wellbeing. We feel it’s very important to promote financial literacy and understanding and responsibility,” he says. “We want to create a long-term, lasting relationship with our members. And that purpose is very, very satisfying to me.”
America First aims to build “lifetime” relationships with its members, says Lund. “We take a long-term perspective on our success. We’re not just trying to meet a quarterly number or a yearly number.”
That long-term perspective has propelled the credit union to a dominant position. With 125 branches in Utah and Nevada, it boasts over 918,000 members. It’s the No. 1 credit union in Utah, and it’s the 10th largest credit union in the nation in terms of assets, says Lund, and the sixth largest in terms of membership.
One reason for that success is the credit union’s commitment to staying at the forefront of tech innovation. America First was only the second credit union in the nation to launch Apple Pay. It also developed a security tool called Card Guard, which gives members control over when and how their credit, debit or ATM cards are used. Over half a million America First members use online banking, and 350,000 members use mobile banking.
“John has a good technological background, and I think he is able to communicate with the techies of the organization and those of us who are not quite so technologically adept. John can simplify technical concepts and make them easier to understand,” says James Wendler, chair of the board of America First Credit Union.
Lund was an executive vice president when Wendler first joined the board 25 years ago, so Wendler has a deep perspective on Lund’s leadership at America First.
“John is recognized by my fellow board members as one of the most valuable assets the credit union has,” says Wendler. “He has an innate ability to pick the right people to do the right job. John is an excellent motivator of people. I think that comes from the fact that John is very trustworthy. People like John; people trust John. … He’s a person of high integrity.”
Large Company
Scott Beck
President and CEO, CHG Healthcare
For most of his life, Scott Beck thought he would follow in his oncologist father’s footsteps and become a doctor. At the University of Utah, Beck took some marketing and business classes and fell in love with entrepreneurship instead—but he never stopped wanting to work with physicians and in healthcare. Beck went to work at CHG Healthcare in 1999, a company that recruits and places healthcare providers in areas they are most needed, and served as CMO, group president, COO—and finally, CEO.
CHG Healthcare has thrived under Beck’s leadership. It has expanded internationally, surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, and placed 14,000 providers across the country and internationally, in every state and specialty and in five foreign countries. This has provided healthcare to over 26 million people, says Beck, and is an achievement he takes particular pride in.
Also impressive is CHG’s employee retention rate: 84 percent, far above the 50 percent average for the healthcare industry. Beck attributes that loyalty to the fact that, at CHG Healthcare, employees are first—even above customers.
“My personal philosophy is that if we do a really good job of taking care of our people, our people will reward us by staying with us and taking really good care of our customers,” says Beck. “I think a lot of companies look at it the other way—it’s all about profits and customers. I’m happy to tell our customers that our employees are more important than they are, because they’re actually the ones that serve our customers.”
Beck says he didn’t realize the importance of people and culture until after getting his MBA—“nobody talked about building a connection with purpose,” he says—and began working. It was then he realized that creating a work environment built on “trust and helping people reach their full potential” is what leads to the best success.
For example, during the Great Recession, Beck says the company brought employees together in small groups to brainstorm about how to “tighten our belt and save resources … so that we could keep the family together.” After the recession, Beck saw the return on CHG’s investment in taking care of their employees by how many stayed with the company and helped it grow through its expansion.
“I think it really cemented this idea that putting people first isn’t just something we say or an emblem on the wall, but it’s something we believe and we use it to guide the decisions that we make inside of CHG,” he says.
Medium Company
Jim Carlson,
CEO and Co-Founder, Zurixx
After years of helping start and grow several other businesses—in industries ranging from multimedia publishing to financial sales—Jim Carlson and business partners, Cris Cannon and Jeff Spangler, decided to start a new venture in the financial education industry. It’s an industry that is “focused on teaching people how to be successful and how to create a legacy for their families,” says Carlson. “You are surrounded by so many good people that are truly trying to improve students’ lives. The ability to come in to work every day and watch people change their lives for the better is a rewarding experience, and why I initially started in this industry.”
Since Zurixx’s founding in April 2012, Carlson took on the role of CEO and has never looked back. The company has received nine recognitions over the past two years for exponential revenue growth, including being named the No. 1 fastest-growing company in Utah Business’ Fast 50, and the No. 43 fastest-growing company of the Inc. 500 in 2016 with $130.1 million in revenue.
As Zurixx enters a new phase after five years of rapid growth, Carlson feels excited about the company’s future—and that of its employees. Carlson makes sure that Zurixx isn’t just focused and invested in its students’ futures, but that it’s also invested in its employees. “Jim’s very good at taking people who have a desire to want to get better, and he recognizes that in them—sometimes even before they recognize that in themselves,” says Spangler, who is president and co-founder of Zurixx. “He’s able to put them in positions where they can take that desire and grow and expand. It creates a good team environment.”
And while Carlson is often in the difficult position of making tough business decisions, says Spangler, he remains interested and involved in the lives of his employees, making sure they have what they need—be that the funds and time for continued education or even for cancer treatments. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in late 2017 (and thus, Zurixx’s Puerto Rico office), Carlson brought all 15 Puerto Rico-based employees and their families to Utah as soon as he could, while he went down to Puerto Rico with suitcases full of batteries, food, flashlights, generators and other goods. “When he sees opportunities to help out with different individuals within our organization, he’s very good at jumping in and making sure that that happens,” says Spangler.
As a company, Zurixx has given over $2.2 million to various organizations in the community such as Courage Reins and The Road Home.
“We also put an emphasis on employees taking work time to volunteer,” says Carlson. “We want our people to give back and we support those efforts wholeheartedly.”
Small Company
Andrew Limpert
CEO and Director, FireFly Automatix, Inc.
When Andrew Limpert was a child, he and his friend Steve Aposhian would play baseball together—with no idea that later in their lives, they would work together on a turf harvesting agricultural technology company: FireFly Automatix.
Limpert’s career path was in investment banking, where he was happy being what he calls “mostly retired.” In that role, he founded, consulted on and funded many business ventures, and provided strategic financial consulting for several investment banks. He also served as the CFO at Profire Energy for eight years. But when his old friend Steve called him up in September 2015 to tell him about his technology company and ask for business advice, Limpert felt “called” to the business.
“I don’t feel I was looking for FireFly or AgTech, I feel I was called to it,” says Limpert. “I wouldn’t say I sought it out. I would say it called me out.”
As an investment banker, Limpert knew to expect that turning FireFly from a small, struggling technology company into a profitable AgTech leader would take “twice as long and twice as much money as you think,” he says.
“I was wrong. It was four times as long and four times as much money,” laughs Limpert. “It took a lot of guts to actually get involved in an industry I didn’t know much about. But what gave me a lot of confidence was looking at the intellectual DNA that we had in this company—the engineering team and the work ethic is unmatched.”
Under Limpert’s leadership, FireFly’s revenue has grown from $2.2 million in 2014 to over $15 million in 2017. The company added 35 new employees last year, won a 2017 Stoel Rives Utah Innovation Award, opened new service locations in Florida and Alabama, and went from manufacturing its equipment in four to six weeks to about four days. Limpert calls the increased manufacturing speed “a miracle.”
“Andrew brings the kind of experience and vision needed to help an innovative product not just gain a foothold within a competitive industry, but also to dramatically increase its market share,” says Gov. Gary Herbert.
Even aside from his business savvy, it’s the care Limpert puts into developing and cultivating relationships with people that makes him such an effective leader, says Matt Aposhian, Steve’s brother and president and COO of FireFly Automatix.
“Andrew is a people builder. He builds us all up and gives us confidence. He sees the potential in people and brings it out of everybody,” he says. “Just as an example, when he comes into the business in the morning, he walks the production floor. He talks to our welders and assemblers and get to know them on a personal level. He makes them understand the important work they’re doing for the company. He cares about people. He’s hard working, he’s very loyal and he’s dedicated.”
Large Tech Company
Steve Daly
President and CEO, Ivanti
For Steve Daly and the company he leads, 2017 was a big year—and it was a year that topped off a half-decade of growth through strategic acquisition and new technology development. From 2012 through 2016, the company acquired six different tech companies. Then, in early 2017, Daly oversaw the formation of Ivanti through the merger of Landesk and HEAT Software in a deal backed by Clearlake Capital.
“This last year, we sold the company to new investors and they merged us with another company,” explains Daly. “That was a huge accomplishment for a lot of different people that had spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears building the company. And we had a lot of our own employees who had put their own money into it, so for me the greatest payoff was to see the trust that they had put into us, the work that they had put in, finally pay off for a lot of people.”
The acquisitions were part of Daly’s strategic vision to unify IT and security operations to better manage and secure the digital workplace. That vision is paying off, with the company doubling in size by all measures: Ivanti now has more than 2,000 employees in 23 countries and serves over 22,000 customers in all industries. It has reached nearly $500 million in revenue, with a goal to hit $1 billion in revenue.
“This past year we’ve grown the business almost two times its traditional size,” says Steve Morton, CMO of Ivanti. “We’ve really stretched the limit of our people and our processes. And Steve has been a very good steady hand through that process. … He gets the fact that he has to rally a team—he has to bring people together from multiple acquisitions and multiple companies.”
Part of the secret to Daly’s success, says Morton, is that he’s a well-rounded leader who approaches his role “from multiple dimensions, not just the traditional business-only approach, which is one of the reasons people love working with him.”
Indeed, Daly embraces curiosity and intellectual exploration. He says he changed his major five times while he was in college, and during his career he has worked in roles ranging from mechanical engineering to marketing, sales and strategic planning.
“Be curious. Try new things,” is his advice to those just starting their careers. “I’ve tried a lot of different things and I think it’s prepared me really well for the job I’m in today. I would say don’t get so worried about this roadmap for your career. Try new things and be very curious about what you can do, and it will all work to bring together a well-rounded person.”
Medium Tech Company
Ryan Westwood
Co-Founder and CEO, Simplus
Ryan Westwood founded Simplus in 2014 and in less than four years has turned the company into a Platinum Salesforce Partner with Series A and B funding rounds under its belt. The company ranked as the No. 78 fastest-growing company in North America on Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500, and it more than doubled its workforce in 2017.
The key to Simplus’ success, says Westwood, has been a hyper focus on its market niche. “Some people think that as you get bigger, you have to broaden either your products or services. And there is a time for that. But I think especially for startups, you cannot be all things to all people. So we narrowed our focus, cut out about some services and revenue—about $1 million in revenue—and got hyper focused on only one market, and that’s what’s got us to where we are today,” he says.
Under Westwood’s direction, Simplus pared its focus down from three software vendors to just Salesforce—and then to a specific niche within Salesforce. “Within two months, we were all thinking, ‘Wow, that was a great decision,’” Westwood says.
Simplus’ funding rounds have enabled it to grow through targeted acquisitions—beginning in the third quarter of 2016, Simplus began a buying spree that snatched up Salesforce ecosystem partners BaldPeak, EDL Consulting and Basati. The Series B funding round, which finalized in late 2017 and totaled $17.3 million, enabled Simplus to nab Salesforce heavyweight CRM Manager.
Simplus’ investors include EPIC Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Cross Creek Advisors and others. Kent Madsen, managing director at EPIC Ventures, says Westwood perfectly synthesizes a visionary leadership style with a practical, get-things-done management approach. “Ryan contains both these skills,” says Madsen. “Very few are able to do both.”
Westwood is a serial entrepreneur—Simplus is his fourth venture—and Madsen says each endeavor was both successful and unique, from tech-focused PCCareSupport to an online floral company. “I’ve been impressed and surprised at how well he’s been able to spread the gamut and build all these companies into successes,” he says.
As for Westwood, he’s focused on the future of Simplus. “We have the right product/market fit. We have a phenomenal team; we’re well capitalized,” he says. “I fully believe we have an enormous opportunity ahead of us at Simplus.”
But the thing that gives him the greatest satisfaction is the culture he’s helped create at Simplus, and the opportunities the company creates for its employees. “I love seeing our teams and our people advance their careers, advance their lives,” he says. “The thing I’m most proud of is creating an environment that’s positive and people are cared about.”
Small Tech Company
Chris Klomp
CEO, Collective Medical Technologies
When Chris Klomp left college with a degree in Economics, he embarked on a marvelous career at Bain & Company, transitioning to Bain Capital. He was a member of the firm’s private equity team, and he was really good at it.
“He was a star at Bain Capital,” says Clint Peterson, managing partner at Peterson Partners. “When he left, many of the people at Bain Capital said, ‘Whatever you do next, Chris, we want to back you.’”
Despite his success at Bain Capital, says Klomp, “In the back of my mind I had this itch. … I wanted to be an operator, instead of just an owner or a board seat holder or an investor. I wanted to be one of the ones really driving change.”
So Klomp left Bain Capital to help his best friends with Collective Medical, a company based around a software solution his two friends had developed. It was created to address the problem of patients who were accessing care at different emergency departments, without those EDs being able to coordinate, collaborate or even be aware of all the clinics where their patients were going.
“The notion of payers and providers really collaborating together around their common shared patients in a way that facilitated seamless transitions of care from hospitals to hospitals and ambulatory clinics and post-acute facilities—that really didn’t happen,” he explains. “And everyone really lacked the data, especially in real time, to really figure that out.”
While the software solution took direct aim at a persistent and complex problem, Klomp says getting potential customers to catch the vision was the real challenge. But the founding team persevered, travelling the country to pitch their product to health systems and care providers. Klomp says what kept him going was the belief that “if they could just catch the vision, if they could just see it, then they’ll jump on it and they’ll participate and amazing things will happen.”
Klomp strives to help his team catch the vision as well. “Leaders inspire,” he says. But leaders must balance that vision building with pressure and incentives to perform. “Great leaders show us what can be … and then they show us how to get there.”
That leadership and perseverance has paid off. Collective Medical now serves every health plan in the country, covering tens of millions of lives, he says, and the company has been able to amass “extraordinary data on outcomes.”
What keeps Klomp motivated is his belief in the incredible potential of Collective Medical. “We have the chance to build a truly iconic healthcare company, and one that changes the world on a fundamental level. That’s amazing, if you just step back and think about that,” he says. “Not just to talk about changing the world, but to actually change it and see it changing.”
Large Consumer Products Company
Randall Hales
President and CEO, ZAGG, Inc
When Randy Hales was just starting his first job out of college, he had an extremely demanding boss. He flew all around the country, taking “airplanes like some people take buses to work,” he says. He would show up to work at 6 a.m. and wasn’t allowed to have a scrap of paper on his desk. While it was a strain then, says Hales, that experience of being held to a very high standard only helped him as he continued on with his career.
Today, Hales still holds himself to that same high standard. While not employing the same tactics as his old-school boss, he enjoys coaching, training and mentoring those he leads, setting strategic direction and helping people mature into their roles. “The same way I had some great mentors early in my career, I love helping to influence others to have that same opportunity to grow and develop professionally,” he says.
It’s perhaps that love of coaching that makes Hales so passionate about what he does: lend his business expertise to consumer product brands and help them flourish. “I’ve been very fortunate in my career. I’ve been able to go into these little companies that are just starting to grow, needing maybe a little extra leadership and extra guidance,” says Hales. He was introduced to ZAGG in 2010, joined the board, and then became president and CEO in 2012.
Since Hales has been at ZAGG, the company has enjoyed robust growth. ZAGG has made strategic acquisitions to diversify its product portfolio, including iFROGZ and mophie. While many in the industry were skeptical about the mophie acquisition, Hales and his team decided that mophie was a great brand that had been mismanaged from the operational side. Hales takes pride in the work ZAGG has done since the acquisition to bring mophie into the fold and recreate the brand.
When Hales joined ZAGG, yearly revenues were somewhere around $170 million—in 2017, the company took in close to half a billion. He’s also instilling what Brian Stech, chief commercial officer at ZAGG, calls “a winning culture” at the company. For instance, Hales and his team promised employees that when cumulative revenue hit $1 billion, they would build a new, state of the art office building. It was a big milestone that took nearly a decade to achieve, says Hales. But more impressively? The company’s second billion was achieved a mere 24 months after its first. And their new office building is indeed much beloved by employees.
“Randy is a very dynamic leader,” says Stech. “First, he’s a very empathetic leader. He truly cares about our employees, our customers, our shareholders and the community. He connects with everybody very easily. I think he drives accountability across the organization. He truly gives the best of himself and expects the best of his team.”
Medium Consumer Products Company
Vivien Böhme
CEO, Böhme
It may look like fun and fashion, but the retail game is not for the faint of heart, says Vivien Böhme. “Women’s apparel is really fun, because you get to deal with designers, but there’s also a lot of stress because it’s a gamble. Until a customer touches it, you don’t know if it’s going to work or not, and sometimes the trends aren’t there,” she says. “Know your numbers in and out. Retail is a very hard numbers game masked by pretty theatrics, and you really have to put that numbers game first.”
When Böhme, a self-proclaimed “numbers queen,” took the reins a decade ago, the women’s apparel company was just a temporary location during the holiday season at a local mall. But encouraged by the success she saw during those weeks, Böhme went to Home Depot and learned the basics of everything from flooring to fixtures to build the company’s first permanent location.
Today, the business has 16 locations throughout the West and Midwest, as well as a thriving online presence, and boasts 30 percent in gains, 20 percent of which comes from brick-and-mortar growth.
There have been tough times, says Douglas Tilton, director of stores and operations for the company, but Böhme’s leadership has pulled the company through. “Retail is a very volatile career choice and the business is very up and down; it ebbs and flows with the economy, and we have certainly had our challenges here at Böhme. Vivien has been able to steer us through turbulent waters to be focused on what we were going after,” he says. “She was able to lead us through that difficult time to come out stronger on the other end.”
The success of the company validates the approach the company takes to help bring out the inherent beauty in each customer, Böhme says. “We’ve had customers come out of fitting rooms with tears streaming, saying, ‘yes, I finally found something.’” She says those moments give employees great satisfaction from being able to help women who “maybe other retailers have ignored … I think every woman deserves to be thought of as the most beautiful person in that minute. If Böhme can be, in that moment, part of that, we’ve done our job.”
But keeping that individual approach as Böhme has moved into different parts of the country has been a challenge, she says. “While my Utah customer zagged, my South Dakota customer zigged. … That was a struggle to figure out: the clean Utah woman with the very Bohemian South Dakota woman,” says Böhme. “We’ve figured out where the puck is going. It took years to trust our instincts again, but when we did, the clarity that came, and the sheer numbers that came, validated that we were right.”
Small Consumer Products Company
CEO, Kodiak Cakes
When Joel Clark was 8 years old, he was a fixture in the neighborhood, selling lunch sacks filled with his mother’s pancake mix to neighbors. “She always thought there was a market for more healthy products, but this was the ‘80s, and there were some but not as many,” Clark recalls.
When Clark was in college, his brother started Kodiak Cakes, but offered the reins to Clark a couple of years later. Surprised but interested, Clark jumped at the opportunity. The next 16 years would prove to be an exercise in grit as the company grew with agonizing slowness to its first million, and was bootstrapped every step of the way.
“That was a big, big challenge for me, just thinking, can I see it through, can I hang on long enough to see Kodiak Cakes off the ground,” he says. “I’m really grateful I did, and the last few years we finally started to see rapid growth.”
A turning point came in 2014, when the company got two major shots to the arm: an appearance on Shark Tank and the launch of the high-protein line of pancake mixes called Power Cakes. The former brought explosive new visibility, while the latter quickly became the No. 1 selling mix in the stores carrying it and made Kodiak Cakes the fastest-growing pancake mix company in the country.
While Clark knew he would relish the sense of entrepreneurship that comes with building a company, even amid highs and lows, he says he was surprised to find how much he has enjoyed leading the team that is growing the brand. “I used to think I would really dread being a manager of people. I used to be scared of that,” he says. “But it’s become one of the most fun parts of my job. I really love the people I work with and I really love building teams and thinking through how we want to build our culture at Kodiak Cakes, and that’s been a ton of fun for me.”
Cameron Smith, COO of Kodiak Cakes who has been with the company for nine years, says Clark’s willingness to get feedback from all levels and his obvious care for the people around him is the epitome of strong leadership and has helped Kodiak Cakes find success.
“Joel loves collaboration. He loves everyone’s ideas, everyone’s thoughts. Since the beginning, it’s been always about brainstorming. He’s never been a top-down leader,” says Smith.
The company continues to grow. Its frozen waffle line, launched last fall, has fast become a strong seller, and in some stores has even upended Eggo. Clark says his mother isn’t surprised. “I don’t think for one day she doubted this would work,” he says. “She’s been so supportive and believed in me and this company this whole time.”
Nonprofit – Business Services
Nathan Rafferty
President and CEO, Ski Utah
On a day when the mountains are blanketed with a fresh coat of white powder, you won’t find Nathan Rafferty or anyone else from Ski Utah in the office—they’ll be hitting the slopes, practicing what they preach.
“We made an official policy that when it snowed over a foot, there was going to be an option for everybody in the office to go ski. So ski in the morning and obviously come back and work that afternoon and then into the evening to make up that time,” says Rafferty. “Maybe it doesn’t surprise people about our office, but it keeps the stoke level high and people’s passion, and gives them a reason to work at Ski Utah. I would hate to be sitting there looking out the window at the mountains and not have a chance to ski except on weekends. Two days a week? That’s not enough.”
It’s a quality evident to others in the industry, including Bob Wheaton, president and CEO of Deer Valley resort. “Nathan’s passion for skiing and the ski industry is extremely infectious, and that infection starts with the staff and grows from there. When you walk into the Ski Utah office, you’re not walking into an office, you’re walking into the ski industry. Everybody there is so engaged, and that feeling is fed by the daily direction, almost, that the staff get out and enjoy what they represent,” says Wheaton. “That’s the engagement Nathan brings to the industry and Ski Utah in particular.”
Rafferty’s passion for the sport and the industry built around it is obvious, which is part of what has made him so effective at promoting the state and the ski industry to locals, the nation and the world. The Utah native has always felt most at home on the slopes, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that there were careers in the industry. In 1994, he started at Ski Utah as an unpaid intern; when the previous president and CEO of Ski Utah stepped down in 2005, Rafferty had worked his way up through the nonprofit and was ready to take the reins.
Utah’s ski industry has “come of age” since the state hosted the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, but the last handful of years have seen broken record after broken record for attendance, visitors and spending. “The spending is more than a billion dollars now and that equates to state and local taxes that helps pave our roads, educate our kids,” he says. “It’s not just a small industry with a couple of rinky-dink ski hills like it was many decades ago, but it’s a well-known, worldwide, thriving business that contributes to our state’s economy.”
Nonprofit – Social Services
Mircea Divricean
President and CEO, Kostopulos Dream Foundation and Camp Kostopulos
When Mircea Divricean worked as a counselor Camp Kostopulos one summer during college, he thought he was just there for a job. But one summer became two, and two became three. After graduating with a degree in finance, Divricean spent a year working in finance before realizing that something was missing.
“Something was just holding me back. Something just wasn’t fulfilling enough for me. It would have been great career path. I got into a great bank and it would have been a phenomenal opportunity, but there was a little bit of an empty spot not connecting to or being part of this beautiful ecosystem at Camp K,” he says.
Divricean returned to Camp Kostopulos in 2001, this time as a full-time employee, and climbed the ranks until being named president and CEO. But through the years—and Divricean will mark 20 years this summer since first stepping onto Camp K—one thing has remained unchanged: the inspiration from the people the foundation serves.
“They’re probably some of the best teachers in the world. They teach you kindness, they teach you honesty, they teach you mutual respect, they teach you love and appreciation. I get those lessons every day. Another lesson I get is resilience: when you have an individual who has to deal with certain challenges that are unimaginable to us—and we are so blessed that we don’t have to deal with those challenges—and yet you see a smile on their faces, you see a drive every day to go forward. That’s the most important thing of all,” says Divricean. “And that grit they have, that passion for life, is tremendous.”
Although he doesn’t strictly work in the financial sector, Divricean’s education hasn’t gone to waste. With the foundation’s financials on public display and donors wanting to make sure every hard-earned dollar is helping as many people as possible, Divricean says his background has proven to be invaluable in helping him make the organization flourish and grow. Since assuming the top job nearly five years ago, he has expanded new and existing partnerships and government contracts, but his primary goal is in improving resources and assistance for the participants in the Kostopulos Dream Foundation’s programs.
“What Camp K used to be, which was providing life skills and social skills, training and opportunities for people of all abilities, has become a full circle,” he says. “It’s not about learning life skills now, it’s about learning job skills and vocational skills and having the opportunity to be fully independent in your own life and living the best life you can.”
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