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Playing Games in Extra Dimensions
Here's a video demonstrating a new iPhone/iPod Touch game created by Brazil's Roger Sodré, of Studio Avante: the game is called Hipercubo.
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIapNngcOtI
Roger tells me he's a long time fan of Imagining the Tenth Dimension. This game allows you to manipulate a four-dimensional hypercube, and if go to Apple's Apps Store, you'll see it's available free in a basic version, with additional levels available for purchase. You'll also see in the description that Roger suggests we could use this game as a way of thinking about how our universe is finite but unbounded (as opposed to infinite), a concept we've talked about in previous blogs like Are We a 3D Sphere on a 4D Hypersphere and Life is But a Dream. In fact, there's a poll question running here at the tenth dimension blog right now that asks whether you support that idea or not.
Music and sound effects for Roger's game are by Cromo.Sonica. I've just downloaded the free version and it's quite the brainbuster, really a fine way to force your brain into thinking about how the shadows of extra dimensional objects behave as you manipulate them. We're going to talk about hypercubes next week again in an entry called Dancing on the Timeline: and one of my more popular blog entries from a couple of years ago called Hypercubes and Plato's Cave also shows my suggestion for a way of visualizing how we could exchange the word "duration" for "length" in imagining the fourth spatial dimension. As we can see in this game, there is no way for us to appreciate the shape of this hypercube when it's static and unchanging. Only by using "time" to manipulate the object can we begin to visualize how, just like with a 3D cube, with this 4D cube every edge is the same length, and each side is at a 90 degree right angle to the next.
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkQGsmaG-Ec
Here's another game for you to play online: a 4D Rubik's Cube called Magic Cube 4D. Superliminal Software has a number of interesting links on their pages, check 'em out. The above video shows the 4D cube being solved automatically by the program, it would of course take much, much longer for a human being to solve this crazy-looking puzzle, but there are definitely people out there who have mastered such a feat!
And if you get the hang of this 4D version, then go one further with Magic Cube 5D!
This image is from the web page for Magic Cube 5D, which is posted at Gravitation3D. I love what they say in the text above this image:
In the spirit of taking things too far, here is a fully functional 5-dimensional analogue of Rubik's cube.
"In that blessed region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger on the threshold of the Fifth, and not enter therein?"
- Edwin Abbott, Flatland
I hope you enjoy playing Hipercubo and these extra-dimensional Rubik's Cube puzzles! Next time we're going to keep things on the lighter side with something that ties back to our last entry: "I'm You From the Future".
Posted by Rob Bryanton at 12:24 AM 4 comments Links to this post
Labels: hypercubes, visualizations
Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - January Report
Previous lists:
. April 08 . May 08 . June 08 . July 08 . August 08
. September 08 . October 08 . November 08 . December 08 .
Top 100 Blog Entries of 2008 . May 09 . June 09 . July 09
. August 09 . September 09 . October 09 . November 09 .
. December 09 . Top 100 Blog Entries of 2009 .
Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days. As always, the number in brackets is the entry's position in the previous month's report.
1. Consciousness in Frames per Second (new)
2. Time is in the Mind (new)
3. Flow (new)
4. Life is But a Dream (8)
5. Coconut-Carrying Octopus (new)
8. You Are the Point (new)
6. The Very Model of a Singularitarian (new)
7. Time and Schizophrenia (new)
9. Skhizein (new)
10. Time and Music (new)
And as of January 26th, 2010, here are the twenty-six Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time. Items marked in bold are new or have risen since last month.
1. Jumping Jesus (1)
2. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (2)
3. Augmented Reality (3)
4. What's Around the Corner? (7)
5. The Holographic Universe (4)
6. An Expanding 4D Sphere (6)
7. Slices of Reality (5)
8. Just Six Things: The I Ching (8)
9. Poll 44 - The Biocentric Universe Theory (9)
10. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (11)
11. Urban Garden Magazine (10)
12. Alien Mathematics (13)
13. Seeing Time, Feeling Colors, Tasting Light (22)
14. Polls Archive 43 - Is the Multiverse Real? (24)
15. The Quantum Solution to Time's Arrow (18)
16. Modern Shamans (12)
17. When's a Knot Not a Knot? (16)
18. Mandelbulbs (new)
19. The Comedian (14)
20. Scott McCloud and the Brothers Winn (15)
21. The Big Bang is an Illusion (21)
22. The Shaman (17)
23. Beer and Miracles (25)
24. Poll 46 - Big Bang an Illusion? (new)
25. Our Non-Local Universe (19)
26. Astrotometry (20)
Which means that these worthy submissions are leaving our top 26 of all time list this month:
Going to the Light (23)
Norway's "Reverse Deja Vu" (26)
By the way, if you're new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project. If you are interested in the 26 songs attached to this project, this blog shows a video for each of the songs and provides more links with lyrics and discussion. The Annotated Tenth Dimension Video provides another cornucopia of discussion topics to be connected to over at YouTube. And as always, here's a reminder that the Tenth Dimension Forum is a good place to converse with other people about these ideas.
Next: Playing Games in Extra Dimensions
What would you say to this as a description of my project?
Imagining the Tenth Dimension makes use of several interpretations of quantum physics, particularly Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, which views the universe as branching off into an infinity of possible states of varying probability. It also draws from the Copenhagen Interpretation, which suggests that an observer or measurement is important in determining the decoherency of the probability.
I would say this description fits quite well. But the above description is actually from the wikipedia article on a Japanese anime series from a couple of years ago called Noein. Watch this two minute clip from the series:
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8bldfMXf0s
One small quibble with the wikipedia description above: the Copenhagen Interpretation says observation collapses the wavefunction, causing all other possible outcomes to disappear. I side with Everett on this one: his theory says we don't collapse the wavefunction, we merely observe it in a particular state, and the other "many worlds" continue to exist as part of the wavefunction for our universe even though we're not observing those other possibilities. Here's more from that wikipedia article on Noein:
In the anime, Haruka possesses "supreme observer" status in the multiverse, thus enabling her to determine the sole outcome of an event just by "observing" one of the possible futures of the event. These themes also underpin an existential ideology that permeates the anime.
Regular readers of this blog may remember another anime series with a similar theme which I talked about almost two years ago in an entry called Anime, Gaming and Cusps: that series was called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In the video I made for that blog entry I played a clip from the show, watch from about the 1:50 mark if you just want to see a bit of this other anime series:
A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOWWafK3U4
There seems to be something about Japanese culture that makes them more inclined to embrace as their entertainment the heady extrapolations that can be drawn from modern quantum theory. I suspect this is because there is something essentially holistic about the conclusions that can be drawn, making these ideas easier to align with ancient Eastern philosophy. As I've mentioned before, though, many North American teenagers and young adults have been introduced to related concepts in the Japanese video games they have played as youngsters. In Placebos Becoming More Effective?, we discussed the scientific evidence that placebos are twice as effective as they were a few decades ago. Could the Eastern viewpoints that have been introduced to the western world over the last few decades through entertainments like Noein be part of that shift?
On a more serious scientific note, here's a paper by physicist Max Tegmark called "Many Lives in Many Worlds".
Many lives in Many worlds-Max Tegmark
Other blogs where we've talked about Max Tegmark include Polls Archive 24, Aren't There Really 11 Dimensions?, and Quantum Suicide. We're going to continue exploring these extra-dimensional ideas from a more playful perspective next time with an entry called "Playing Games in Extra Dimensions".
Labels: many worlds, Max Tegmark
Monkeys Love Metallica
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82zjaUNmvj0
Photograph: Andy Fossum/Rex Features. As seen in The Guardian UK article referenced below.
Sometimes we talk about ideas that seem to contradict each other. In a number of entries, like Jumping Jesus, Evolution's Fast Lane, and The Stream, we've looked at mounting evidence that we're in a constantly accelerating meme-space, where ideas are connecting together more and more quickly, and the amount of information that each of us is asked to process on a daily basis is constantly increasing. In Placebos Becoming More Effective? we talked about an editorial the New York Times published earlier this month called "Old Fogies at 20". This article suggests that university age students are seeing a generation gap between them and their high-school aged siblings: particularly in the world of technology and the internet, trends and expectations are changing so quickly now!
It can be hard to perceive an acceleration when you're within a system where everything is accelerating, but we do catch glimpses. So on the one hand we talk about The Stream, The Singularity, Transhumanism, Artificial Intuition, Conscious Computers, and so on. On the other hand, we talk about time being an illusion and parts of each of us being connected to patterns that exist well outside of the limits of the "now" of our 4D spacetime. How do the two ideas fit together? First of all, let's look at some recent examples of these big picture patterns.
We've talked a few times about the deep underlying connections of sacred geometry and how the Golden Ratio has been considered a thing of beauty for thousands of years. Like fractals, shapes and patterns such as these occur naturally, and perhaps that's why we're so attracted to them, because they represent deeper connections to reality that are outside the limits of our observed spacetime. Here's a Science Daily article from earlier this month that extends this idea even further: it suggests that scientists have now discovered evidence of the Golden Ratio in the quantum world!
Music and sound also seem to connect us together in powerful ways that speak to a more timeless perspective. In The Big Bang and the Big O, I referred back to sections in my book where I discuss how certain sounds seem to reach us at a primal level: could the dreaded chalkboard squeal connect us to genetic memories of some ancient flying predator who swooped down from the sky making a similar sound? Here's a great TED Talks video featuring sound consultant Julian Treasure, it's called The Four Ways Sound Affects Us. It speaks very effectively to the idea that we are all connected together by the ways we react to sound. Watch this five minute video:
A direct link to the above http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRepnhXq33s
Julian is the chair of the Sound Agency, a firm that advises worldwide businesses -- offices, retailers, hotels -- on how to use sound and music more effectively. This leads us to the title of this entry, Monkeys Love Metallica. Okay, I admit it, "love" is overstating the case for dramatic effect but here's a link to a New York Times article my friend Pete Chema of Ten Feet Deep sent to me a couple of weeks ago, please check it out: "Music for Monkeys".
The Guardian UK also published a related article this past September that goes into more detail about this research, here's a link to that: Scientists create music that helps monkeys chill out. Both articles are linked to a study, published this past September in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, that (to quote from The Guardian article):
...will help psychologists understand the evolutionary roots of music and its effect on the brain, the authors said.
"The emotional components of music and animal calls might be very similar, and from an evolutionary perspective, we are finding that the note patterns, dissonance and timing are important for communicating affective states in both animals and people," said Chuck Snowdon, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Now, what Dr. Snowdon is talking about here seems to easily connect to ideas we've talked about in entries like The Geometry of Music and Disorders of the Mind: music, like the the other patterns we've just looked at, connects in ways that go beyond the limits of our 4D spacetime. But at first glance, the results of Dr. Snowdon's study seem to contradict the ideas he tells us he was exploring.
In the study, 14 cotton-top tamarins were played clips of music while the researchers noted any changes in behavior. Pieces included Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, a soft piano piece from The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails, Metallica's Of Wolf and Man and Tool's The Grudge.
According to the Guardian article, the monkeys didn't exhibit any clear response to these piece of music one way or another, except for the Metallica song,which had the unexpected effect of calming them down.
Interestingly, the New York Times article claims the scientists saw a similar soothing effect on the monkeys with the Tool song, but most of the other articles I found reporting on this study appear to only single out Metallica. Frankly, I have to suspect that most reporters covering this story grabbed on to the "Monkeys Like Metallica" angle because it makes for a more memorable story. Unfortunately, singling out Metallica from Tool does create some misperceptions here, though.
The monkeys did not respond one way or another to the other pieces of music. Does this mean that farmers who play classical music to their cows to keep them calm might be kidding themselves? Shouldn't Adagio for Strings have made these monkeys sad? If animals are part of the same continuum that we are, shouldn't they respond in ways similar to we humans to the joy, the sorrow, the anger, the range of human emotions that we can hear in a powerful piece of music?
Perhaps what we're talking about is more related to this accelerating generation gap we looked at above. Are our more subtle responses to music mainly cultural, mainly a learned behavior? In the same way that a young child might now expect that all viewing screens are multi-touch displays, perhaps our varying emotional responses to the music of the last four hundred years or so is something we've been trained into through repetition?
The key here is understanding that the monkeys responded to the highly rhythmic music of Tool and Metallica, and didn't respond to the long phrases and more free tempos of the other two pieces. What is the common denominator behind the development of music? Repeating structures. The drum. Patterns that can entrain the heartbeat and breath, that make a creature feel a certain way when they move along with the music. Adagio for Strings, then, is just a too subtle for our monkey friends to hear as a communication of emotion: this a generation gap of a different magnitude but similar nonetheless.
But where this gets even more interesting is when Dr. Snowdon brought in David Teie, a cellist with the American National Symphony Orchestra, to create some pieces of music that were inspired by (but to be clear, not specifically based upon) the sounds these monkeys use to communicate to each other. Here are a couple of the pieces: first, one inspired by the sounds these animals commonly produce when things are fine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2009/sep/02/monkey-music-calls-example
This second piece has melodic and rhythmic connections to the calls the tamarins produce when they are anxious or alarmed:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2009/sep/02/monkey-music-calls-science
Certainly, this music sounds odd to our ears, but the tamarins responded as you might expect: they lounged around and ate more when the first piece of music was playing, and became upset when the second piece played. Any film soundtrack composer exercises their creativity in plugging into these same underlying connections, finding ways to soothe us, or ways to upset us with the palette of sounds, the melodic shapes and the rhythmic structures they choose. Clearly, Dr. Snowdon would have to experiment with a much larger range of musical compositions that are generally agreed to communicate a variety of specific emotions to humans, and I'm certain that such experiments would help to reveal what is primal and what is learned in modern humans' reactions to music of all kinds.
So, do Monkeys Love Metallica? Definitely a gross generalization, even if it's fun to use as a headline! But can monkeys respond emotionally to some kinds of music? This scientific study points to "yes".
Next: Noein
Labels: music, sacred geometry, The Singularity, The Stream
Do you remember Alfred Korzybski? We've talked about him in past blogs such as The Map and the Territory and Jumping Jesus. Korzybski was responsible for creating general semantics as a new approach to thinking about the relationship between language and our perceptions of the world around us.
One of the youtube video channels I like to watch is "ProfessorAnton". It features Corey Anton, who is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Grand Valley State University and (perhaps not so coincidentally) is on the Board of Trustees for the Institute of General Semantics. Most of Professor Anton's videos are simple in design, just him talking into the video camera about ideas, but here's one he just put up which plays with low-resolution images and occasional overlapping of sound in ways that really appealed to me. Check out "Nothing is Real":
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qefA-xrA5EU
If you enjoyed the ideas presented in this video check out the rest of Professor Anton's channel. Since we could say this blog entry uses a Beatles lyric for its title, you might also see some interesting tie-ins between this and the ideas we explored in You are Me and We are All Together, I Know You, You Know Me, Scrambled Eggs and Happy Birthday Paul.
Next: Monkeys Love Metallica
Labels: general semantics
Dark Flow
A couple of weeks ago we looked at a concept called "Flow": being in the moment, in the groove, completely centered, a very internal idea connected to the nature of consciousness and our interface with reality. This time we're going to look at a very different and much more external concept from cosmology called "Dark Flow". The illustration below is credited to NASA and comes from an article published a few months ago in New Scientist magazine, entitled "Mystery 'dark flow' extends towards edge of universe". The article, written by Marcus Chown, begins with these paragraphs:
SOMETHING big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door.
Last year, Sasha Kashlinsky of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues identified an unusual pattern in the motion of around 800 galaxy clusters. They studied the clusters' motion in the "afterglow" of the big bang, as measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The photons of this afterglow collide with electrons in galaxy clusters as they travel across space to the Earth, and this subtly changes the afterglow's temperature.
The team combined the WMAP data with X-ray observations and found the clusters were streaming at up to 1000 kilometres per second towards one particular part of the cosmos (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 686, p L49).
Many researchers argued the dark flow would not turn up in later observations, but now the team claim to have confirmed its existence. Their latest analysis reveals 1400 clusters are part of the flow, and that it continues to around 3 billion light years from Earth, a sizeable fraction of the distance to the edge of the observable universe (arxiv.org/abs/0910.4958). This is twice as far as seen in the previous study.
What does Mr. Chown mean when he says this force is coming from "beyond the edge of the universe"? Is he talking about a concept we explored in The Statistical Universe? Here's the new video for that previous entry:
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDfIRMeOkY
In that entry we looked at a Seed magazine article by Raphael Bousso, a theoretical physicist at The University of California, Berkeley. The image he painted for us of the multiverse is that if we were to head off in a particular direction in our universe, we would eventually (after traveling for a very very very long time!) get to some other universe with different basic physical laws. This might seem to imply that we need no more than 4D spacetime, but also then presents us with a difficult to imagine process where once we got to the "edge" of our universe with its unique physical laws, we would encounter some kind of a difficult transition to another universe that has its own unique physical laws.
In You are the Point we talked about the cosmological horizon, and the idea that no more matter where you go in our universe you will ultimately observe yourself to be at the center. Doesn't Dr. Bousso seem to be opposing this viewpoint? Isn't this like claiming the world is flat and that if we travel far enough we will fall off the edge? One might get that impression. But since Dr. Bousso is a string theorist, I would say that what he's really telling us is that we would need to be moving through the extra dimensions to make such a journey to another different-initial-conditions universe, an idea that would then connect much better with my approach to visualizing the dimensions. We looked at similar concepts in The Holographic Universe, here's the video for that one again:
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMLVjFrtq6Q
Coincidentally, in this video we looked at another New Scientist article written by Marcus Chown, and at about the 1:14 mark we show the cover of the issue that article came from, which has the headline "You are a Hologram Projected from the Edge of the Universe". At the 5:55 mark, I show some animations demonstrating some of the ways I'm proposing it's more useful to think about what the "edge of the universe" really is. This takes us back to the spatial dimensions that our reality comes from, and the important concept that each additional dimension is at "right angles" to the previous one. "What's Around the Corner" has turned out to be one of my more popular recent blogs showing how we can work through this logic one dimension at a time, please check it out if you still have questions about the validity of my approach and see if it helps to convince you.
Magnets and Flatlanders
Here's a visualization: imagine that our 4D spacetime is like the 2D plane that is home to our old friend, the flatlander. What would happen if we moved a magnet near that plane? In the flatlander's world, he would see objects moving towards the magnet's location, but have no way to see the magnet itself. That magnet is, in a sense "beyond the edge of the flatlander's world", in that it is in the third dimension rather than the second, at and additional right angle that is beyond his perception and perhaps even his ability to conceive.
Likewise, when cosmologists are suggesting that the observed evidence of "dark flow" is evidence for "universes next door" I would say the same analogy holds: this dark flow would be evidence of gravitational attraction coming from an additional dimension, one that is "outside" of our 4D spacetime in the same way that magnet was "outside" of the flatlander's 2D world.
"Dark flow" is still somewhat controversial, and even those scientists who accept its existence as a phenomenon have a variety of opinions on what its source might be.
As you'll see if you read the whole article, one theory is that this is evidence of certain regions of our universe having quantum entanglement with other universes, and if that turns out to be the case I would refer back to a recent entry I called The Fifth Dimension is Spooky. It seems that dark flow is very similar in nature to the dark energy that accelerates our universe's expansion and the dark matter that has held our universe together: I am proposing that all would appear to be evidence of different kinds of gravitational attraction from additional dimensions. Regular readers of this blog will recognize that this is not a new concept for me, but is rather one of the central ideas from my book. Another blog entry that explores this concept of how dark energy and dark matter are evidence for the existence of extra dimensions is Dark Gravity Across the Dimensions. Here's the video for that entry again:
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGOgKIWBaQ
I was surprised to recall now that this blog entry looks at yet another article written by Marcus Chown: clearly I'm a fan!
Next: When we talk about dark flow, dark energy, and dark matter we're talking about something that is undetectable except for indirect evidence. Next time we'll take another tangential leap from that idea with an entry called "Nothing is Real".
Labels: dark matter, holographic universe, visualizations
Placebos Becoming More Effective?
Since Imagining the Tenth Dimension began, I've talked a lot about the idea that there are patterns and shapes, fractal structures and waveforms, outside of our spacetime that contribute to the reality we are currently observing. Here's how I described it in Logic vs. Intuition:
"...our world is now starting to move away from scientific materialism (the idea that what we observe around us is all there is to reality, and that everything about our reality is logical and predictable if only we collect enough data). Instead, we're starting to move towards a more holistic paradigm. That's true as we see the growing acceptance that our universe is only one of many, that roughly 96% of our own universe is completely invisible and undetectable, that the way our genes are expressed and even which genes are passed on to our offspring is strongly connected to our attitude and lifestyle, and that our holographic universe comes from the fifth dimension, connected together outside of fourth-dimensional space-time in ways that boggle the mind".
I've also been marveling in the almost four years since this project started at the shifting sands of public opinion, as more and more people find ways to connect my way of visualizing reality to their own schools of thought. In recent blogs like You are the Point and An Expanding 4D Sphere, we arrived back at the conclusion that we are each at the center of a universe which is now continually accelerating its expansion, and in entries like Jumping Jesus and The Stream we've talked about how an acceleration is happening in our meme space just as much as it is in our physical space. There was a great editorial about this acceleration in The New York Times a few days ago, which includes this quote from Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project:
“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology. College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”
When you're within a system where everything is changing and accelerating, it can be hard to tell what's really happening. The child who is immersed in today's rapid-fire world of instant communication and multi-touch screen displays will grow up seeing that as the expected norm. On the other hand, a person who gradually loses their perception of color or some part of their hearing could go for a long time before they realize that their perception has changed, because the slowly modified version of their senses becomes their expected norm. Here's the tricky part: if the way we are perceiving the world is changing, and the world is changing in the same way, would there be any way for us to tell? We might each go for a long time believing that nothing has changed at all! What we need, then, is some way to gain an objective viewpoint that is outside of our own perception.
My old friend John recently sent me a link to the following article from a few months back in Wired Magazine (thank John, I can't believe I missed this!). The name of the article is "Placebos and Getting More Effective. Drugmakers are Desperate to Know Why". This article, written by Steve Silberman, really is worth reading in its entirety, and I invite you to do so. It begins with a story about pharmaceutical giant Merck, which in 2002 was falling behind its rivals in sales, and planned to regain their status with a new antidepressant codenamed MK-869:
The drug tested brilliantly early on, with minimal side effects, and Merck touted its game-changing potential at a meeting of 300 securities analysts.
Behind the scenes, however, MK-869 was starting to unravel. True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health—the so-called placebo effect—has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.
MK-869 wasn't the only highly anticipated medical breakthrough to be undone in recent years by the placebo effect. From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in R&D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007—the fewest since 1983—and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.
Okay, you might be thinking, maybe the reason these new drugs aren't working so well in tests is because we've hit some kind of limit in what can be done with pharmaceuticals? Here's where things get really interesting: some older drugs that were previously proven effective and used for successful treatment are also now faring less well when compared to placebos! The article continues:
Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.
It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.
What do you think? Does the information that the placebo effect is now twice as strong as it was roughly twenty-five years ago not sound like a strong indication that something fundamental about our world (or our interface with the world!) is changing? I would say that as people have become more connected to each other, we are now seeing a new force come into play: more and more of us are gradually waking up to the possibilities. The hard determinists who say we each have no control over our future are being overtaken, and a child born today will assume that people have always had a substantial amount of control over their health and their future: certainly, much more than people raised in the twentieth century were taught to believe was possible. The Wired article has many more fascinating tangents, then concludes with this powerful paragraph:
Ironically, Big Pharma's attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That's potent medicine.
Indeed! In Do Animals Have Souls, I described the old way of thinking this way: "the only thing that matters is matter, and consciousness has no part in the universe we are observing". Why was that viewpoint promoted so aggressively for so many years?
Do you remember the article I published in the North American version of Urban Garden Magazine last year, called "Why the Fifth Dimension is a Dangerous Idea"?. In it, I suggested that it seemed very strange that scientists like Einstein embraced the idea that our reality is defined at the fifth dimension almost a century ago, and yet most of the general public are not familiar with this concept. Could there have been reasons why certain factions would rather we not know just how much power we all really have, and could this be connected to the knowledge that we are navigating within a fifth-dimensional probability space rather than a linear fourth-dimensional "line of time"?
I'm pleased to tell you that the next issue of Urban Garden magazine will have another article I've written, this one also connects the fifth dimension to the some of the ideas we're talking about in this entry, and in other past entries such as Placebos and Nocebos and Now vs. the Future. The article will be called "Placebos and Nocebos".
Ever hear of the Global Consciousness Experiment? It was a study run by Princeton University which looked for correlations on people's ability to predict what random number would be generated, and discovered that these abilities rose slightly on days when events captured the attention of larger parts of the world population, such as September 11 2001. It also showed that this ability to predict a random number was slowly rising over the course of the study, from 1998 to 2002. More evidence that our awareness and our interface with reality is changing?
In entries like The Long Undulating Snake, What's Around the Corner and Consciousness in Frames Per Second we've looked at other ways of fitting these ideas into my approach to visualizing the dimensions that our reality springs from. There is a beautiful and complex interaction between the observer and the observed happening here, and we can see evidence of that interplay in many surprising ways. We're going to continue this discussion with an upcoming entry called Monkeys Love Metallica.
P.S. - I should also mention that New Scientist magazine published an article a few months ago called "Placebo Effect Caught in the Act" in which it described how scientists were actually able to track how the brain responded differently to pain when a patient was told a painkiller had been administered but it was really a placebo: more evidence of the amount of power our minds have over the reality we're observing.
Next: Dark Flow
Labels: consciousness, epigenetics, fifth dimension, placebo effect
You are the Point
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUgeevkwoIs
(This entry completes a longer thought which encompasses 7 posts. If you're interested in seeing how I unfolded this argument, please read these blogs in the following order: Life is But a Dream, Time is in the Mind, Time and Schizophrenia, Consciousness in Frames per Second, Time and Music, Flow, and You are the Point.)
In "Life is But a Dream" we discussed the surprising conclusion that not just philosophy but quantum mechanics tells us each of us is an observer at the center of our own particular version of the universe. Likewise, cosmology tells us that we are at the center of the known universe, and this lovely new video from the American Museum of Natural History takes us on a journey from the planet earth out to the huge bubble of the cosmological horizon, the bubble that we are always at the center of.
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U
As it says in the above video at the 3:36 mark, this cosmological horizon is not only a 3D space object, but a 4D spacetime object. Because space and time are so intimately connected for us, we have to keep reminding ourselves of this important fact: we look out into space and it's so easy to forget that we are looking back in time as we do so. We've talked about this idea in blogs like An Expanding 4D Sphere, What's South of the South Pole and What's Around the Corner. Taking this idea even further leads to blogs like The Biocentric Universe Part 2, which is about a scientific theory stating that without life there is no time, space, or the cosmos, an idea which some people strongly dislike because it feels like a return to the geocentric model - hasn't it been proven long ago that the universe does not revolve around the earth? And yet the above animation shows that in a real sense it is true that we are at a point right at the center of the known universe, and that an observer ten billion light years away from here would have the same experience, seeing themselves to be right at the center of their own version of the universe.
Let's work through my approach to visualizing the spatial dimensions again keeping the above ideas in mind.
"In science, a physical picture is often more important than the mathematics used to describe it."
- Michio Kaku, in his 2008 book Physics of the Impossible
Zero - a Point
We start with a point of indeterminate size. Like the point we know from geometry, this point has no size, no dimension: which means we can think of it as being infinitely large, or infinitesimally small. What does it mean if we say a point's size is not just very very small or very very large, but indeterminate? If we consider every size of this point simultaneously, all of the possible values cancel each other out, and we end up in what physicists call the "underlying symmetry state": a perfectly balanced zero, which contains within it the unobserved potential of all other states. One good word to describe this "set of all possible states" when it's considered simultaneously like this is the omniverse.
Now, let's imagine that you are that point of no size, no dimension, and think about how a point is useful for indicating a position within a system, and how our universe or any other springs from a breaking of that underlying symmetry state.
"In my beginning is my end"
- T. S. Eliot, from his poem East Coker published in 1943
One - a Line
You are a point on a one-dimensional line. Your options are very limited - you can move forward, you can move backward, there are only two directions you can travel. But here's another fact to consider: because you are a point of indeterminate size, you can imagine yourself as being an infinitely tiny point someplace on that line, or you can imagine yourself as an infinitely large point some place on that line, which means you would encompass the entire line. Since a line extends to infinity in both directions, making yourself this large would allow you to see how it doesn't really matter where you are on the line, because ultimately you can end up in the same place: the enfolded symmetry of all possible positions on that line considered simultaneously.
Now let's add some other spatial dimensions. But to keep our frame of reference, let's imagine that no matter how many other dimensions we add, this very first point on this very first one-dimensional line we've just looked at will always be the same one.
"Blue is blue and must be that, but yellow is none the worse for it"
from a poem by Michael Nesmith (attributed to his fictional character Carlisle Wheeling)
printed on the back cover of the 1968 record album
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees
Two - a Plane
Okay, so here we are now in a two-dimensional plane. Our point on our original line continues to have its forward and backward directions, but now there are two new directions at right angles to the first set that we can use to view that line and that point from. Regardless of where we go in our 2D plane, we can still always see that 1D line as a subset of that plane. And if we now imagine our point as being infinitely large it will encompass the entire plane and end up in that very same place once again - infinity, indeterminacy, the omniverse.
Way back in 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote a book called "Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions". In it, he introduced the world to the concept of imaginary creatures called "flatlanders" living in a flat, two-dimensional world.
Humans and the rest of the matter in our universe are all made out of 3D atoms and molecules, so we often say that we live in a three-dimensional universe. If you were a 2D flatlander, you would have a much more limited range of motion - you could only move in four directions rather than the six that 3D people are used to, and if you were to look at a circle you would not be able to see inside it. In fact, because you would be living within this 2D plane, all that you would see as you looked around you would be lines all constrained within this flat 2D world: some of those lines would be near, some would be further away, and whatever shape was closest to you would keep you from being able to see any other shapes that were further away. The only way that you could deduce you were looking at a circle, then, would be to move around it and see it against the background of the other more distant shapes.
"No matter where you go, there you are".
- Although this phrase has been attributed to various sources,
many people know this as a line from the 1984 movie
Buckaroo Banzai.
Three - a Space
Now let's move to the dimension we're most familiar with, the third. If we go back to thinking about you as a point at that position we started from, there are now six directions you can view yourself from. You can still be infinitesimally small, but now when you expand you will become a 3D sphere that eventually grows so large that it encompasses infinity. You can think of that point as your awareness of the universe at this very specific "now", and that awareness can be as broad or as tight as you care to make it - because you are right at the center of this particular version of the universe, right at this very instant.
What we have just imagined is like a gigantic photograph of our universe at a particular instant. Because light takes a certain amount of time to get here, that photograph is different from what you see when you look through a telescope - because the light from those distant objects takes so long to get here, a telescope is like a way of looking back in time. The further away the star or the galaxy, the longer it took for the light to reach us. Thinking of you as a 3D point of infinitely large size requires us to think of something completely different - if a star is ten light years away, then the photograph we're thinking about here will show us how that star will look to us through a telescope ten years from now! This is a very important difference in what we're imagining here.
"Time may change me, but I can't trace time"
- David Bowie, from his 1971 song "Changes"
Four - a Line
Thinking of that entire snapshot of the universe as a single point, then, allows us to imagine how the fourth dimension would be a way of joining one snapshot, one "now", to another, and this is how some people come to think of the fourth dimension as being "time". There are two things wrong with that generalization - first of all, "time" is not a spatial dimension, it's just a way of describing change. At best, it's a direction, not a full dimension. And secondly, you can think of any dimension in a particular state, think of that dimension in a different state, and think of how the next dimension up would be how you change from one state to another. For a 2D flatlander, then,"time" would be one of the two possible directions in the third dimension, and it would be how our imaginary 2D creature changes from state to state.
For a 3D person, time is one of the two possible directions in the fourth spatial dimension, and the other opposing direction can be called "anti-time". If you are a point, you can be any place on that line, and you can be infinitesimally small, or you can be infinitely large, which once again would show you that ultimately this spatial dimension is just like all the others - you can imagine that eventually you can grow to encompass the same state at either end of the line, and we use words like infinity, eternity, and enfolded symmetry to discuss what you are heading towards in both directions.
"The further back one looks, the further ahead one can see"
- a decidedly fifth dimensional way of viewing reality commonly attributed to Winston Churchill
Five - a Plane
As I've always said, my proposed way of visualizing the dimensions is not the explanation for string theory, but it does have many interesting tie-ins to various schools of thought. The starting point for string theory came from Theodor Kaluza back in 1919, when he proposed that the field equations from gravity and electromagnetism are resolved when they're calculated in the fifth dimension. Einstein eventually embraced this startling new theory and gave it his full support in 1921. With additional input from Oskar Klein, the resulting Kaluza-Klein theory became the starting point for the exploration of how our reality comes from extra dimensions that rose to dominance in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Here's something to consider - if there really are ten spatial dimensions, then the fifth dimension is the halfway dividing point.
In the original tenth dimension logo we see the "zero" and the "ten" as being the two extremes of a line, and if we were to think of that line as being like a guitar string then the "five" would exactly divide that string in half, with 1,2,3, and 4 being part of a wave below, and 6,7,8 and 9 being part of a complimentary but opposing wave above. Persons familiar with my book will recognize the following diagrams. The three images below were accompanied by the following text:
a. The concept of "harmonics" might be more familiar to anyone who has played a stringed instrument. When you pluck a string on a guitar or violin, the action is not as simple as you might imagine. While it might appear to your eye that the string is simply moving back and forth to describe a gentle curve that is widest at the middle of the string, there are other vibrational patterns that are also part of the string's motion, and the proportion of those other vibrational patterns is what gives each instrument its unique timbre.
b. We can more clearly see the other competing patterns by lightly touching the string at various points along the string when we strike it, and we call these other vibration modes "harmonics" or "partials'. So, by touching the string at its half way point we cause the perceived note to jump up an octave, and a high speed photograph would show us that the string is now vibrating in a pattern that describes two equal curves rather than one, with each curve occupying half the length of the string. The point we touched in the middle of the string would now appear to not be vibrating, and we can call that point a node.
c. Now, if we touch the string at the one third point we can create a note which is an octave and fifth higher, which would be the next harmonic, and our high speed photograph would show the string now vibrating with two nodes dividing the string into three equal sections. Dividing the string at the one-quarter mark produces a note two octaves up, and so on up through a series of harmonics, all of which are part of the main vibration of the open string when we pluck it.
Looking at the second of the three images above then, helps us to imagine the symmetry we're thinking about here - when the left hand side of that waveform is going up, the right hand is going down, and so on. But let's be clear here: even when the string is vibrating freely as in the top image, all those other vibration modes are happening. A high-speed strobe light set to very specific frequencies would be able to reveal (though interference between the frequency of the strobe and the patterns of the vibrating string) the other vibration modes such as the two we're picturing here.
What does all this have to do with the fifth dimension? In entries like The Flipbook Universe, Slices of Reality,and The Holographic Universe, we keep returning to the idea that our reality is not continuous, and our experience of the fifth dimension is divided into planck-unit-sized "frames" (which is what leads some physicists to say that the fifth dimension is "curled up at the planck length"). Those planck frames are the "strobe light" that reveals how freely moving patterns that exist across the dimensions contain a node at the fifth dimension, the strongest harmonic as pictured in the middle of the above three images. Since holograms are observed through interference, when a cosmologist says "our spacetime universe is the shadow of a fifth dimensional hologram" that is what we're talking about here.
Imagining then, that anything above the fifth dimension is how we get to the other versions of our universe that don't connect to the one we're currently in, and to the other universes that have different basic physical laws, and even the patterns of information that are not part of our underlying reality, is all part of what this particular visualization should help us to hold in our minds.
And likewise, just as we did with the previous dimensions and could continue to do with each additional spatial dimension beyond this one, we can imagine how the "point" that represents us in our current state within the fifth dimension could be infinitesimally small, or infinitely large, or some place in between, and this is how I suggest our reality is really connected together in ways that seem much less mysterious when we realize that what we are observing is defined at the fifth dimension rather than the fourth. For more about all that from a variety of perspectives, please check out blog entries like The Fifth Dimension is Spooky, Creativity and the Quantum Universe, The Statistical Universe, and Now vs. the Future.
Next: Placebos Becoming More Effective?
Labels: fifth dimension, six, tenth dimension
Skhizein
Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.
This multi-award winning short film from 2008 appeals to me for obvious reasons - it's a unique exploration of dimensions, and gives a fanciful new interpretation to what it could mean to be "beside yourself". According to this blog from Short of the Week, the film's creator Jérémy Clapin says the title of this movie derives from the Greek, meaning “to split” or “to cleave” — sharing that root with schizophrenia. As a little bit of synchronicity, you might want to go back to a blog entry published here a couple of weeks ago, called Time and Schizophrenia.
Next: You are the Point
Labels: schizophrenia
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgnkjab1pP4
Last entry, in Time and Music, we looked at a brief video clip of the classic Canadian rock band Lighthouse performing live in an experimental setup where different members of the band were in different cities, and the "latency" or time lag introduced by the technology of the time (1996) resulted in them hearing each other as much as 200 milliseconds out of sync with each other. The solution was that they had to somehow re-calibrate their brains, so to speak, so that their impetus to play the notes was way ahead of when they actually wanted the notes to sound. Still, as Paul Hoffert - one of the founding members of Lighthouse who participated in this experiment - remarked in that same blog entry, there are musical instruments and musical situations where musicians regularly have to adjust their playing to compensate for a certain amount of delay, or to play ahead/behind the beat to create a certain feel - musicians use phrases like "playing in the pocket" or "finding the groove" to describe the satisfying feeling of playing with other musicians when it all falls into place, and years of practice create the ability for musicians to play with a seemingly effortless flow.
"Flow" is an interesting word. In my project, I often talk about how for us time seems to flow in only one direction, but that physics places no real restriction on which direction time should happen to occur. In recent entries like The Quantum Solution to Time's Arrow and The Statistical Universe, we looked at some new scientific theories that explore what it can mean if time and causality are not limited to the entropy-driven single direction that we have traditionally believed time to occupy, and my insistence that "time" is just one of the two possible directions in the fourth spatial dimension is very much a part of all this as well.
My use of the word "flow" led a friend of mind from facebook, Jacob Wennerqvist (a talented heavy metal musician from Sweden) to ask me about the word, as he was familiar with it from a different context. Here's what I wrote back to him:
Are you familiar with "flow" in the sense that psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi uses the term? Here's an article from wikipedia:
"In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as 'being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.'"
Let me pause in my letter to Jacob and expand upon this a bit. First of all, according to wikipedia, Mihaly's last name is pronounced "cheek-sent-me-high-ee". The diagram we're looking at here relates to his seminal work, 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience'. It shows how a high challenge level can combine with a high skill level to allow us to enter a state of "flow". To quote further from that same wikipedia article, he states that "people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove." Now let's continue with what I had said to Jacob:
When I use the word "flow" in my writing, I'm usually using it to describe the mainstream science idea that time can flow in either direction. "Flow", in this sense, means that there are logical connections between what happens in one time-unit and the next, which means that some "next possible state" outcomes in the following time-unit are very likely, some unlikely, and some impossible to get to. That idea, physicists like Sean Carroll and many others have explained, makes just as much sense no matter what direction you are observing those slices of time - forward or backward, there is still a logical progression to the "flow".
I see that you are an excellent musician, watched a few of your clips. Using the term "flow" as it applies to time and music is very apt - whether you're writing a song or improvising a lead line, there are a great many choices for "what happens next" but the choices are not limitless - if they were then your music would become random white noise.
If you were to take a recording of your music and play it backwards, it would still have logical connections within it that make sense, and if you were to play a solo over top of that backwards recording there would be many options that make sense, that go with the musical "flow" of what's created by moving in time's opposite direction.
Does this help to illuminate what I'm thinking about?
Thanks for the question!
I've talked before about Sean Carroll's approach to the symmetric nature of time and the underlying timelessness of our universe in entries like Time in Either Direction, The Spacetime Tree, Scrambled Eggs, What's Before and After, and The Big Bang is an Illusion. Most recently, in How to Time Travel, I mentioned that Dr. Carroll has a new book coming out this month called From Eternity to Here: the Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, which I'm very much looking forward to reading.
In my book and this blog, one of the central themes has been the nature of time and how our participation in that process creates the dividing line between a sea of indeterminacy and the beautiful world we see around us. The concept of "flow" as a process that allows us with practice to do this better is an important one. It points to a real tension we feel in these modern times: how can I tell when I'm "in the zone" as opposed to "just zoning out"?
My song "Automatic" is about those moments when we stop analyzing what we're doing and just go with the flow. This song also mentions Julian Jaynes, whose challenging book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind proposed that the splitting apart of our minds into a conscious "narrator" and an underlying "just being in the moment" is a recent event, perhaps from only the last few thousand years. The fact that our narrator voice gets in the way and keeps us from doing some of our most difficult activities is also what we're talking about in this song: despite the fact that we've been taught to sometimes ridicule those moments as being a bad thing because it means our conscious minds were wandering, there is really something very useful about this state of mind. That will be just as true when a musician is trying to play 200 milliseconds ahead of the beat as it is for someone trying to hit a golf ball or even someone driving a car - removing distractions and just zeroing in on the flow helps us to do these activities better.
A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBJnWADnJr4
Labels: Julian Jaynes, Sean Carroll
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Dozens of Christian Egyptian Families Fleeing After Targeted ISIS Attacks - Impunity Watch
Dozens of Christian Egyptian Families Fleeing After Targeted ISIS Attacks
by Yesim Usluca
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
CAIRO, Egypt — On Friday, February 24th, hundreds of Christian Egyptian families fled the country’s northern Sinai Peninsula after the Islamic State (“ISIS”) killed another member of their community following several weeks of targeted killings in the area.
Families brought only their children and a suitcase of clothing (Photo courtesy of Reuters)
At least seven people have been killed as a result of ISIS’s attacks in the past three weeks. The fleeing Egyptians escaped their homes after ISIS released a video on Sunday, “vow[ing]” to increase their attacks on Sinai’s Christian minority. Following the video, numerous attacks were carried out by gunmen in Sinai over the course of several days. ISIS claimed responsibility for beheading one man, while setting another on fire. On Wednesday, a man was killed in front of his pregnant spouse by gunmen who “then calmly drank a bottle of Pepsi” before departing. On Thursday, a plumber was shot dead at his home in front of his wife and children.
After the series of killings, most families fled their homes with nothing more than their children and some clothes. They then sought refuge at a church compound in the city of Ismailia. A volunteer with the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms stated that ISIS “want[s] to send a message that nobody is safe[.]”
The deacon of the church in Ismailia, Mr. Nabil Shukrullah, stated that the situation is extremely difficult, and that approximately fifty to sixty more families are expected to arrive. The fleeing Egyptians indicated that they are “scared of [their] shadows,” and cried out against being “targeted in an ugly way.” A refugee from the town of Arish stated that waiting for death was not an option, while characterizing ISIS militants as “ruthless.” Residents of the town reported that Christians were warned to “leave or die” after the terrorists “circulated death lists online and on the streets[.]” A vegetable seller who fled the town on Friday, Mr. Munir Adel, indicated that anyone who is Christian was put on the list. Although his father is the second name on the list, he was unable to leave his home due to his old age. Mr. Adel stated that his father “could be killed at any moment.”
The Christian Egyptians, who belong to the Coptic faith, comprise the Middle East’s largest Christian community, and make up approximately 10% of the country’s population, currently estimated to be around 90 million. Christians of the nation declared that the security measures taken towards protecting them are insufficient, while claiming that “nothing” is being done to ensure their safety. The Coptic church, which stated that the attacks were directed towards “dividing Egyptians[,]” subsequently condemned the attacks.
For more information, please see:
The New York Times—Targeted by ISIS, Egyptian Christians Flee Violence—24 February 2017
BBC News—Egypt’s Coptic Christians flee Sinai after deadly attacks—25 February 2017
Reuters—Egypt’s Christians flee Sinai amid Islamic State killing spree—24 February 2017
Fox News—Christians flee Egypt’s Sinai after militant killings—24 February 2017
Daily Mail—More Egypt Copts flee jihadists in Sinai—25 February 2017
Washington Post—Christians flee Sinai Peninsula in fear of Egypt’s Islamic State affiliate—24 February 2017
Author: Impunity Watch Archive
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Home » Features » The new punks: updating the sci-fi of Ghost in the Shell
The new punks: updating the sci-fi of Ghost in the Shell
Posted on February 15, 2017 by Dominic in Features // 4 Comments
Nineties nostalgia sees the collective consciousness turn to simpler times; the pre-digital age that was a cornerstone in speculative fiction. It was the decade that gave rise to the cyberpunk subgenre and its pluckier, more optimistic cousin – the Y2K aesthetic. Here, distant futures were exactly that, and the world we’ve evolved into is a satire of our own predictions. eSports are a lucrative career pursuit, breath masks are fashion accessories, and artificial intelligence is coming along in leaps and bounds. Sci-fi is no longer the speculative sounding board it once was. We instead inhabit the shades of the world we imagined just two decades before.
Ghost in the Shell (GITS), Masamune Shirow’s seminal cyberpunk manga, came out of Japan’s technological revolution. Through time and erasure, this meaning has fallen into obscurity as the franchise adapts to the changing world around it. Even by the time we get to The New Movie, these themes are positively passé. The forthcoming live-action movie, starring Scarlett Johansson, seems to have done away with this idea, offering instead a simplified through-line concerned more with the state of humanity in a technological world, than technology in a human world.
If anything indicates the shift between the nineties and now, then it’s the adjustment in attitude, with the argument focussed on what role humanity will play in the digital world. Ghost in the Shell is no longer a speculation on the state of our future technology, mediating on the amalgamation of flesh and tech, but rather a reflection of the world as it is now.
We’ve discussed Elon Musk before on the blog, and his ideas have caught the zeitgeist, with a mix of dizzy optimism and terrifying insights. His earlier claims that humans were probably living in a simulation were one thing, but he now argues that in order to stay relevant, humans must become cyborgs. We’re through the looking glass, leaving Ghost in the Shell struggling for meaning and relevance in a world it predicted.
Musk isn’t the bearer of bad news, as industries across the board have expressed deep-rooted fears that artificial intelligence and automation herald mass job losses. It’s the inherent irony of robotics, that instead of playing god – i.e. creating life in our own image – we make our creations better, and bemoan the consequences later. Vying for relevance in this new paradigm means redefining what it means to be human, and jump-starting the next chapter of our evolution. In Ghost in the Shell, set in a near future, we’ve already arrived at a vastly different time where humans are linked with technology, both physically and psychologically.
As far as the economy is concerned, it makes little difference whether one process or another is realised by man or machine, already suggesting the redundancy of flesh. Musk argues that we as humans must augment ourselves through a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence”. He claims that if we fail to develop in this way, that we’ll become subservient, totally reliant and vulnerable to artificial intelligence.
The arrival of Ghost in the Shell in its original manga form came before the commercial rise of the internet, when the CD was the height of consumer electronics. Mamoru Oshii’s movie adaption followed some six years later, when the internet had been adopted with aplomb, and its possibilities were beginning to be realised. Within the story, human minds are technologically augmented, able to connect to one another. The idea was revolutionary, especially at a time when the web was viewed with suspicion by some, and outright condemned to failure by others. Yet in a world of increasing interconnectedness, where we wear literal computers on our wrists, this idea has become reality. Even the cybernetic beings in GITS relied on wires, rather than the pervasive wi-fi and mobile networks we enjoy today. The burgeoning internet of things (IoT) is testament to the capabilities of wireless technology, with GITS looking outmoded in comparison.
Re-contextualising Ghost in the Shell
Combing human wetware with technology – or ‘neuroprosthetics’ – is still some way off, but there have already been tentative steps. Brain-computer interfaces have, for example, been able to restore motor function to paralysed patients, and enabled communication in others with locked-in brain injuries. The abstract is for this technology to allow us to communicate ideas telepathically, or give us extra memory or night vision – a better human being, in other words. From what we already know, Hollywood’s forthcoming Ghost in the Shell sees cyborg cop ‘Major’ (Motoko by any other name…) learn of her former humanity and try to find out why she was made this way. The struggle to define our humanity in a digital existence, outpaced by artificial intelligence, is no longer a sci-fi narrative; it’s contemporary, leaving Ghost in the Shell a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there’s a lasting relevance for the franchise in this landscape, then it’s the idea of hacking into consciousness, and even that notion is no longer the far off concept it once was. But that’s a deep dive for another post.
For more on futurology, reality and anime, check out Futurology on screen, and The medium is the message.
4 Comments on The new punks: updating the sci-fi of Ghost in the Shell
mattdoylemedia // February 15, 2017 at 20:24 // Reply
I hadn’t thought of the new film as moving more towards humanity in a technological world before. It’s almost like the franchise is moving (at least in the live action strand) from cyberpunk to soft sci fi.
Dominic Cuthbert // February 15, 2017 at 20:58 // Reply
Fore sure, which is a shame given directors like Chris Nolan prove you can be intellectual and still make a ton of money in Hollywood.
Takuto's Anime Cafe // February 15, 2017 at 23:20 // Reply
I LOVE THIS, especially that point about the movie delving into humanity in a technological world rather than the other way around. Despite the popular opinion, I’m positively stoked for the film. I’ll be diving into all of the franchise this weekend, so this served as a lovely prelude!
Thanks again ☺️ I’m looking forward to it to and I’ll probably be watching it on release. I’ve been meaning to get my Stand Alone Complex box set out as well 🤗
Peace is power: pacifism in shonen
News: Tony Luke, creator of Dominator, passes away
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Collector's Calendar for November 2012
Posted by Kevin Segall on November 1, 2012 at 2:06pm
Collector's Shangri-La provides a monthly calendar of selected celebrity autograph signings, collector's conventions, and other events through our blog at:http://collectorsshangrila.blogspot.com/
Breakfast Club Cast Photo Signed by Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall
11/1/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Grove Drive. Los Angeles, CA.
Molly Ringwald, 1980s "Brat Pack" star, signing her book When It Happens To You
11/1/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Union Square. New York, NY.
Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the 1980s band The Cars, signing his book Lyrics & Prose
On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation Signed by Ol...
11/1/2012 6:45 PM at the Aero Theater - Montana Avenue. Santa Monica, CA.
11/2/2012 7:00 PM at Book Soup - Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA.
11/10/2012 8:00 PM at the 92nd Y - Lexington Avenue. New York, NY.
11/13/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Union Square. New York, NY.
Oliver Stone, director "Natural Born Killers" and "JFK", signing his book Untold History of the United States
KISS Psycho Circus Autographed by Todd McFarlane, Gene Simmons, Pau...
11/2/2012 6:00 PM at Changing Hands Books - South McClintock Drive. Tempre, AZ.
Peter Criss, drummer of the band KISS, signing his memoir Makeup To Breakup
11/3/2012 2:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Americana Way. Glendale, CA.
Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, signing his book It Worked For Me
Art-Toys Limited Edition Book Autographed by 17 including Attaboy, ...
11/3/2012 DesignerCon at the Pasadena Convention Center, CA.
Scheduled Guests include: Frank Kozik, Miss Mindy, Kathie Olivas, Brandt Peters, Ragnar, Jeff Soto, and many more!
Near Dark Photo Signed by Lance Henriksen
11/3/2012 - 11/4/2012 Long Beach Comic & Horror Con at the Long Beach Convention Center, CA.
Scheduled Guests include: Neal Adams, Brom, Howard Chaykin, The Chiodo Brothers, Amanda Conner, Lance Henricksen, Thomas Jane, William Stout, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Bernie Wrightson, and many more!
11/3/2012 2:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Tysons Corner Mall. McLean, VA.
Valerie Bertinelli, star of "One Day at a Time", signing her book One Dish At A Time
Dark Shadows Poster Signed by Kathryn Leigh Scott and Lara Parker
11/3/2012 2:00 PM at Dark Delicacies - West Magnolia. Burbank, CA.
Kathryn Leigh Scott and Lara Parker, stars of "Dark Shadows", signing their book Dark Shadows: Return To Collinwood
Original Ren and Stimpy Drawing Autographed by John K. and Billy West
11/3/2012 to 11/4/2012 Rhode Island Comic Con at the Rhode Island Convention Center - Providence, RI.
Scheduled Guests include: Nicholas Brendon, Richard Hatch, John DeLancie, Erika Eleniak, Gil Gerard, Peter Mayhew, Lee Merriwether, Robert Picardo, Billy West, and many more.
11/7/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Route 17 South. Paramus, NJ.
Cyndi Lauper, 1980s pop music star, signing her book Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir
Kevin Pollak, actor "The Usual Suspects" and "A Few Good Men", signing his book How I Slept My Way To the Middle
My Word is My Bond Book Signed by Sir Roger Moore
11/9/2012 6:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Fifth Avenue & 18th Street. New York, NY.
Roger Moore, star of the James Bond film series, signing his book Bond on Bond
Jimmie Walker Autographed Photo
11/9/2012 - 11/10/2012 Hollywood Showat the LVH - Las Vegas, NV.
Scheduled Guests include: Julie Adams, Chris Atkins, Linda Blair, Morgan Fairchild, Donna Loren, Butch Patrick, Jimmie Walker, Johnny Whitaker, and many more!
11/11/2012 2:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Grove Drive. Los Angeles, CA.
Kirstie Alley, star of the TV comedies "Cheers" and "Veronica's Closet", signing her book The Art Of Men
11/14/2012 6:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Warren Street. New York, NY.
Penn Jillette, magician and host of "Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t", signing his book Every Day Is An Atheist Holiday!
11/15/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble -Union Square. New York, NY.
Fred Armisen, comedian, "Saturday Night Live"and co-creator of "Portlandia", signing Portlandia
11/15/2012 12:30 PM at Barnes & Noble - Grove Drive. Los Angeles, CA.
Caroline Kennedy, author and daughter of JFK, signing the book Listening In
Highwaymen Guitar Autographed by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson
11/15/2012 3:00 PM at Bookpeople - North Lamar. Austin, TX.
11/19/2012 1:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Fifth Avenue. New York, NY.
Willie Nelson, country musician, signing his book Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die
Mike Huckabee Signed Photo
11/15/2012 7:30 PM at Barnes & Noble - Southwest 17th Street. Topeka, KS.
11/23/2012 11:00 AM at Barnes & Noble - Airport Blvd. Pensacola, FL.
11/24/2012 8:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - East Colonial Drive. Orlando, FL.
11/25/2012 3:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Old Camp Road. The Villages, FL.
11/29/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - 28th Street SE. Grand Rapids, MI.
11/30/2012 4:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Miller Road. Flint, MI.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor and former presidential candidate, signing his book Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett
To Save America Book Signed by Newt Gingrich
11/16/2012 6:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Legacy Avenue. Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
11/19/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - West Northwest Highway. Dallas, TX.
Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Speaker of the House, signing his book Victory at Yorktown
Cry-Baby Photo with Johnny Depp Signed by Traci Lords
11/17/2012 to 11/18/2012 Super MegaFest at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel in Framingham, MA. Scheduled Guests include: Traci Lords, David Prowse, John Wesley Shipp, and many more.
11/23/2012 4:00 PM at Bookends - East Ridgewood Avenue. Ridgewood, NJ.
11/24/2012 7:00 PM at Book Revue - New York Avenue. Huntington, NY.
Tony Bennett, Jazz and pop singer, signing his book Life Is A Gift
Lois & Clark Cover Story TV Guide Signed by Dean Cain
11/24/2012 11:00 AM at The Frank & Son Collectible Show - City of Industry, CA.
Dean Cain, Superman of "Lois & Clark", will be signing autographs.
Billy Ray Cyrus, country music star, signing his CD Change My Mind
11/28/2012 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Richmond Avenue. Staten Island, NY.
Jane Seymour, star of "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman", signing her book Open Hearts Family
The Amazing Spider-Man #50 Signed by Stan Lee
11/30/2012 - 12/2/2012 New Orleans Comic Conat the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Scheduled Guests include: Dean Cain, Eliza Dushku, Stan Lee, David Mack, Kevin Sorbo, Patrick Stewart, and many more!
Tags: Hollywood, actors, book, books, calendar, celebrities, celebrity, music, musicians, photos, More…signed, signings
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Regulatory Impact Assessment: Repealing the legislative framework for Funded Family Care
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Home 24/7 News Mexico’s National Day
Mark Mitchell
National-led Government - 2014-2017
Mexico’s National Day
MIL OSI – Source: New Zealand Government – Release/Statement
Headline: Mexico’s National Day
Ambassador Traslosheros, Parliamentary colleagues, the Dean and members of the Diplomatic Corps, distinguished guests, members of Mexico’s community in New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen.
While it’s an honour and a privilege for me to join you in celebrating Mexico’s National Day, can I first say that I and I’m sure all New Zealanders were deeply saddened to hear news of the devastating earthquake that struck Mexico last week.
On behalf of the New Zealand Government, Ambassador, please accept our sincere condolences and please convey that message to the people of Mexico. The thoughts of all New Zealanders are with the injured, the loved ones of those affected, and the emergency services staff at the forefront of the response.
As you will all know, New Zealand is no stranger to dealing with the tragic impact of earthquakes and their aftershocks. We understand the effect that these events can have at a national level and recognise the importance of international solidarity.
So as a nation, we wish you both strength in dealing with the consequences of this event and resilience as you begin to recover and rebuild.
Our two countries enjoy a strong and well-established friendship. With partnerships in trade, agriculture, sport, and the arts, our two countries have an excellent relationship, full of opportunities.
Recently we made good progress on one of those opportunities. In June, my colleague Gerry Brownlee, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, attended the Pacific Alliance summit in Cali, Colombia, where he met with Secretary Videgaray.
Thanks to the support of Mexico, we were able to announce the launch of free trade negotiations with the Alliance at the summit, and we are very grateful to Mexico for that support.
An agreement with the Alliance will provide a host of new opportunities for New Zealand and Mexican businesses, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of greater collaboration between our countries.
Mexico and New Zealand also work closely together in agriculture.
Earlier this year, we hosted a study tour from Mexico organised through the New Zealand-Pacific Alliance Agricultural Cooperation Initiative.
Our Special Agricultural Trade Envoy visited Mexico this year and we are looking forward to signing our Agricultural Cooperation Arrangement in the near future.
In June we welcomed a four-person all-female delegation from the Mexican Senate led by Senator and track and field Olympic silver medallist Ana Gabriela Guevara.
The delegation met with members of the New Zealand-Latin America Parliamentary Friendship Group and the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians.
They also called on the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and met with officials to discuss issues of common interest between New Zealand and Mexico, including a discussion with the Ministry for Women.
2017 has been a good year for our cultural and sporting links with Mexico. In May, the New Zealand Film Festival opened in Mexico City.
With six feature films, including the instant classic Boy, and a selection of shorts, the festival encouraged audiences to immerse themselves in the language, culture, lives and society of New Zealand. It was a great success and was attended by over 1,200 people.
Then in June, our All Whites football team played Mexico in the Confederations Cup. Despite taking a strong first-half lead, the All Whites were not quite up to the challenge: Mexico came back for a deserved win.
Finally, I am proud to note that our growing friendship with Mexico is echoed by our growing embassy in Mexico City. Over the past year, we have added two new permanent positions, and next year we will add a third.
With our new ambassador, Mark Sinclair, starting work soon in Mexico, and the hard work of Ambassador Traslosheros here in Wellington, I know that the friendship between our countries is in safe hands.
Recognising and honouring the valuable friendship and the many threads of a relationship that continues to expand and deepen, on behalf of the Government of New Zealand, I propose the toast: to President Peña Nieto and to the Government, the representatives, and the people of the United Mexican States.
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BGI Nobel Laureates Archives established at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Posted on 13th May 2019 by admin
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has been granted a gracious and generous USD $5 million donation from BGI Group, the global genomics leader headquartered in Shenzhen, China. The gift establishes and preserves the BGI Nobel Laureates Archives, comprising all of the current and future personal collections of Nobel laureates held by the CSHL Archives.
The BGI Nobel Laureates Archives currently include Sydney Brenner, Francis Crick, Walter Gilbert, Carol Greider, Alfred Hershey, Barbara McClintock, Hermann Muller, Richard Roberts and James Watson.
The late Sydney Brenner, whose personal collection of laboratory notebooks, communications, and other original materials constitutes a portion of the new archives, said, “It pleases me greatly to hear that BGI will join in this venture.” Walter Gilbert praised the new archives: “This will be great for BGI, for CSHL, and for science in general,” he said.
(l to r) BGI Group’s Co-Founder and Chairman Huanming “Henry” Yang, CSHL’s President and CEO Bruce Stillman, and CSHL’s Executive Director of Library & Archives Ludmila Pollock. Photo Credit: Connie Brukin/2019
BGI shares the roots of human genetics history with CSHL, starting from the Human Genome Project (HGP). BGI, originally called the Beijing Genomics Institute, grew out of the vision of its founders to participate in the Human Genome Project, and they led China’s contribution to that international effort.
The Nobel Laureates Archives at CSHL is an invaluable asset for the global community of genetics. BGI and its employees strive to join the effort of CSHL to protect the heritage, and to digitize the archives so that this resource is more accessible to mankind. Many BGI employees contributed donations to make the new Archive possible.
“We appreciate this opportunity for BGIers to contribute to the great course of inheriting, preserving, and more importantly, sharing with and learning from the common heritage of mankind,” said Huanming “Henry” Yang, BGI co-founder, Chairman of BGI Research, and frequent participant in CSHL’s annual Biology of Genomes meeting.
The CSHL Archives, located in the Laboratory’s historic Carnegie Library building, house the personal collections of nearly two dozen influential and highly regarded scientists, from the dawn of the modern biological era to today, as well as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Institutional Archives (which document CSHL’s near 130-year history), a rare books collection, and an oral history collection.
This gift will help archivists curate and maintain the collections of Nobel Laureates, and will also provide an untold wealth of opportunity for historians and scholars of all stripes who wish to conduct research in numerous areas pertaining to the history of the life sciences.
CSHL President Bruce Stillman with Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert. Photo Credit: Thomas Adams/2019.
BGI is using genomics to benefit mankind and has since become one of the largest genomics organizations in the world, operating in more than 100 countries. The organization has achieved many milestones in genomics research, including completion of 1 percent of the HGP, sequencing the first rice genome, the first Asian genome, helping to lead the international 1000 Genomes Project, de novo synthesis of the yeast genome, and establishing the human gut microbial catalog.
CSHL President & CEO Bruce Stillman described the donation by BGI as “instrumental to the maintenance and growth of these very important collections at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,” adding that it was “especially meaningful to have our two institutions linked together in perpetuity.”
Learn more about the CSHL Archives and explore their extensive digital collections.
About BGI Group
BGI Group was founded in 1999 with the vision of using genomics to benefit mankind and has since become one of the largest genomics organizations in the world. With a focus on research and applications in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, conservation and environmental fields, BGI has a proven track record of innovative, high profile research, which has generated more than 2,000 publications. BGI’s goal is to make state-of-the-art genomics highly accessible to the global research community and clinical markets by integrating the industry’s broadest array of leading technologies, including BGI’s own sequencing platform, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI also offers a wide portfolio of transformative genetic testing products across major diseases, enabling medical providers and patients worldwide to realize the promise of genomics-based diagnostics and personalized healthcare.
The post BGI Nobel Laureates Archives established at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory appeared first on Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Remembering John Cairns, CSHL Director, 1963-1968
Enzyme PHLPP2 could be a viable drug target for treating prostate cancer
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How Self-Reflection and Embracing Our Flaws Can Change Our Lives
By Purnima BalrajuMay 24, 2017
It is a Friday night and your friend asks you to go along with them to meet their other friends. You’ve never met them before and why would you want to spend your night making small talk? Why catch up with your friend in-person when you can do the same over a Whatsapp?
Find yourself making these similar excuses?
This is the story of Steve Ong.
Steve, was a guy just like that. A conversation is just about pleasing the other person and telling them what they wanted to hear. Yes, telling them. No connection, no exchange of ideas, just passively talking to people. To Steve, this was not wrong. How can it be when he wasn’t actually doing anything wrong?
This problem was manageable until he almost lost $6 million dollars for the company he worked for. His inability to make a connection with his client, to reach out to them and understand their concerns was what almost cost him his job. It was then that he realised that his inability in making a connection with others was rooted in his confidence level.
To gain confidence, one has to confront the fear that’s holding them back. A lot of times, courage goes hand in hand with confidence and fear. Courage is about overcoming an obstacle which you thought it wasn’t possible. The result: courage in overcoming the fear and gaining confidence.
For Steve, going through the program helped him to do just that. He and his coach worked on his challenge in relating to others and built his confidence. It was a process and Steve’s efforts showed! His opinions were respected and his performance at work skyrocketed – he was getting noticed by his boss and was offered a promotion.
As for his personal life, his relationship with friends and family got better. He not only found a way to make a connection with people, but he learned new ways to express himself. Steve was a person who did not have major flaws. Through The Courage to Create, he freed himself from his limits and got out of his comfort zone.
For a limited time only, Live Your Mark’s top personal development program, (The Courage to Create + Making Courage Work) is 50% off. Why live an ordinary life when you can unlock your potential and be more?
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Bombshell claim about JFK Jr death
by Stephanie Nolasco
Steve Gillon said July 16, 1999 will forever haunt him.
That was the day when the plane of his pal, John F. Kennedy Jr., crashed into the waters off Martha's Vineyard, killing him and his two passengers, wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette.
Gillon, who first met Kennedy at Brown University, wrote the upcoming biography America's Reluctant Prince, which is scheduled to hit US bookstores on July 9.
It offers an in-depth reflection of Kennedy's life based on personal conversations from over the years. It also highlights interviews with some of Kennedy's closest friends, including some who are speaking out for the first time.
People magazine recently reported that in his book Gillon described how on the afternoon of July 16, Kennedy, 38, checked the weather before he left the office for the New Jersey airport where he kept his plane.
John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were the most famous couple of the 1990s. Picture: AP Photo/Douglas Healey.
The forecast indicated clear skies, which "was crucial since he was flying under visual flight rules rather than relying on instruments," Gillon wrote. According to the outlet, Kennedy had only completed half of the lessons in his instrument training course at that time.
However, the weather deteriorated between the time Kennedy left the office and when he arrived at the airport.
By the time his plane took off at 8.38pm, Kennedy was heading into a thick fog. People shared that shortly after 9.40pm, Kennedy became disoriented and his plane entered a downward spiral.
"He should not have gone up that night," Gillon told the outlet. "At the first sign of danger, he should have done what a lot of pilots did that night and flew inland, away from the ocean, spend the night somewhere and then pick up the next morning."
Gillon said that this realisation "was difficult to write."
"It was (John's) poor judgment that led to his death and the death of his wife and his sister-in-law, and there's no way around that," said Gillon.
President John F. Kennedy, working late in his White House Oval office as son, John Jr., explores under his desk. Picture: AP Photo/Look/Magazine, Stanley/Tretick.
"John bears the responsibility of his recklessness that night and John alone. That is not easy for me to say, but when I wrote this book I decided my responsibilities as a historian superseded my responsibilities as a friend. The historical truth is what it is."
But Gillon didn't just focus on Kennedy's tragic death. He also explored the many traumatic events that shaped the son of late president John F. Kennedy over the years. He also interviewed a psychologist at Columbia University who specialised in trauma to make sense of it all.
"John experienced more death in his brief life than most people do," said Gillon, noting his father's assassination in 1963, as well as the killing of his uncle Robert Kennedy in 1968, among others.
"When you think about the trauma that John had, it's not just his father's assassination, it's his uncle who became like a father figure, and then Aristotle Onassis, who was his stepfather," explained Gillon.
"The trauma is compounded by the fact that John leaves the only house he ever knew, the White House," he continued.
"They moved to four different homes in the year after the assassination. And then there's the Secret Service, a constant reminder of what happened to his father and that his own life might also be in danger."
Cover of People magazine's 1988 cover proclaiming John F Kennedy Jr “The Sexiest Man Alive".
"What I learned was that one of the ways people respond to that type of trauma is to seek out danger. Because they realise life can be snuffed out at any minute, they want to live life to the fullest.
"At the same time, they're drawn to danger and the possibility of further trauma … (John) had escaped death and danger so many times … I think John just always believed something was going to save him, but it just didn't that night.
"It's just one possibility among many."
Gillon said that his book will shed new light on not just Kennedy's death, but also the incredible life he briefly led.
"He will always be remembered for the promise that went unfulfilled," said Gillon. "(John should) be remembered for who he was: a complicated and an extraordinarily decent human being."
Back in 2017, Kennedy's former assistant Rosemarie Terenzio told Fox Newsshe had a difficult time coping with her friend's death. At the time, Carolyn was stressed by her husband's non-stop schedule with George magazine, along with the growing attention from pestering paparazzi, compelling her not to attend a Kennedy family wedding.
Terenzio said she convinced the 33-year-old to attend to avoid questions being raised on any reported marital woes. Carolyn would go on that fatal flight, which haunted Terenzio for years.
"It was very difficult," Terenzio admitted at the time. "It took time for me to get back up and figure out what I wanted to do next … there was a lot of trial and error."
Terenzio chronicled her memories with Kennedy in the 2012 memoir Fairy Tale Interrupted, which helped her cope. Today she is the founder of a publicity firm. And while Terenzio's career continues to flourish, she still thinks of her friends and what could have been.
"I don't think he felt any pressure or felt any burden (to pursue politics) because of his name," she said.
"I think he saw it as a wealth of opportunity. And that he was very lucky. He thought about it. He certainly talked about running for office, but his priority was to makea success."
This story first appeared on Fox News and is reproduced with permission
Twin sister who escaped Kennedy curse
book death editors picks story
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Home Perspectives The Organisation of the African Unity (OAU) and The African Union (AU)
The Organisation of the African Unity (OAU) and The African Union (AU)
Mustafa Bothwell Mheta
The Organisation of the African Unity (OAU) establishment, was the culmination of a number of diverse and far-reaching historical currents and political trends both on the African continent and abroad. Of particular importance to the ideological formation of the OAU was the late 19th century Pan Africanist movement which emerged in the United States of America (USA) among Black American intellectuals such as Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, who drew similarities between Africans and Black Americans. The sentiments among these intellectuals centered on the belief that in order for black civilization to prosper, it was necessary to establish their own identity, free from the USA influence and oppression.
On the continent itself, a number of prominent intellectuals and heads of states such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia took up the cause of advancing the Pan-African ideal. To this list, one must add Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as having been amongst the founding members of the OAU.
A series of Pan-African congresses were convened to further the interests of African peoples and discuss methods to achieve unification. At the fifth congress held in Manchester, England and attended by Nkrumah, among others, a number of significant aspirations and concerns were voiced. The Congress advocated for the “complete independence of the African continent and total rejection of colonialism and exploitation in all its forms”. It called for the unification of Africa through regional blocks and the adoption of democracy. The congress also advocated the importance of economic regeneration to replace colonial economies geared towards primary resource extraction and exploitation resulting in a phenomenon that would later be termed “Dutch disease”.
Regarding security matters, the Congress preferred to assume a stance of “positive neutrality”, in line with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or non-interference, for which the OAU would later come under scrutiny. However, many of our leaders remained aligned to their former colonial masters, either by choice or political pressure.
Among the colonial masters, we must include the illegal Zionist entity of Israel. Israel actively participates in the economic re-colonization of our continent in the guise of “homeland security”. They provide countries on the continent with military weapons. These armies secure the ruling elite who allow their western / Zionist masters to loot the country and the continent. How does militarising the African continent secure Israel?
With the political landscape in the Middle East changing, Israel’s colonial project is facing a new threat. With the Chinese and Russian influence in the region increasing it can no longer rely on the unconditional support of the US. Hence its expeditions into Africa.
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was established on May 25, 1963. It was disbanded on July 9, 2002, by its last chairperson South African President Thabo Mbeki and replaced by the African Union (AU). The last Secretary General of the OAU was Mr. Amara Essy from Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa.
The Organisation of African Union had a clear mandate, which was detailed in its charter and the accompanying structures and mechanisms. To understand the establishment and development of the OAU, it is important to consider the specific foundations of and reasons for the establishment of an International Governmental Organization (IGO). Such reasons include:
The exploitation of technological progress for commercial purposes;
The pursuit of peace; and
The promotion of human rights
In a nutshell, the OAU did realize most of the mandates that it set for itself in the OAU Charter. Chief amongst them was the liberation of the entire continent from Colonialism which was achieved in its life span. However, it left behind one “black hole” in the form of Western Sahara which remains under occupation by Morocco. It is very disappointing to note that some Francophone West African countries have pushed the agenda of reinstating Morocco into the AU before any resolution on the issue of Western Sahara.
Diverting from the topic, allow me to mention a new development that has occurred at the time of my writing this article. This development must be understood in the light of what I refer to as the “French-African Connection”. Relations between French and Italian authorities are severely strained to say the least. On Sunday 20th of January 2019, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, set the cat amongst the European Union (EU) Pigeons when he openly accused France of continuing to colonize Africa, including the CFA franc. This currency was created specifically for the West African Francophone countries. It is monitored by the French reserve Bank. Hence the currency of these West African Francophone countries remains colonized to this day. French policy in Africa has always been suspect as it seeks to perpetuate its colonial muscle on its former colonies. It’s no coincidence that the readmission of Morocco into the African Union has been aided mainly by the West-African Francophone countries at the instigation of France. When Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma left the AU, these Francophone countries stepped in and started to implement pro-France policies in Africa.
Fast forward to the present day. One is tempted to pose a few questions. Who builds the African Union headquarters? Are there any strings attached to the project? Is Africa indebted to its donors? If so, for how long? The project seems rather dubious. Is it not re-colonization being implemented covertly?
In conclusion, I argue that the stationing of the African Command (Africom), and the Russian, and Chinese militaries on our continent must be viewed with distrust and cynicism. The conditions of the agreement between these governments and the African leaders should be made public. These clandestine agreements should not be happening in the 21st century. African leaders must realize that re-colonization is taking place while they, i.e. leaders, are looting the wealth of the poor.
Africa’s development must be initiated by Africans led by African intellectuals and morally upright politicians with a constructive and affirmative vision for our future generations.
We cannot mortgage the wealth of the continent to outsiders. This development only benefits the few who are in “leadership” positions and their cronies. African leaders should be moral and ethical enough to enable them to make decisions that benefit their own people and not those of the colonial masters.
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Mustafa Bothwell Mheta, Ph.D. in Semitic Languages and Cultures, contributed this article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from South Africa.
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Archive for category 05. MAY 1998
Posted by Mr. DJ in 05. MAY 1998 on July 28, 2012
Week of May 2, 1998:
04/30/1998: “Frozen” is certified GOLD
#1 “Too close” NEXT
#2 “You’re still the one” SHANIA TWAIN
#3 “Let’s ride” MONTELL JORDAN
#4 “All my life” K-CI & JO JO
#5 “Frozen” MADONNA (7 weeks/7 weeks at Top 10)
#6 “Body Bumpin Yippie Yi Yo” PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT
#7 “Truly, madly, deeply” SAVAGE GARDEN
#8 “Everybody” BACKSTREET BOYS”
#9 “Romeo and Juliet” SYLK-E FYNE
#10 “Sex and candy” MARCY PLAYGROUND
#1 “Titanic” SOUNDTRACK
#2 “Let’s talk about love” CELINE DION
#3 “City of Angles” SOUNDTRACK
#4 “Savage garden” SAVAGE GARDEN
#5 “Backstreet boys” BACKSTREET BOYS
#6 “I got the hookup” SOUNDTRACK “Still standing” GOODIE MOB
#7 “Love always” K-CI
#8 “Ray of light” MADONNA (7 weeks/7 weeks at Top 10/81,000 copies/1,169,000 total)
#9 “Come on over” SHANIA TWAIN
#10 “Left of the middle” NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
HOT 100 SINGLE SALES: “Frozen” #18 (7 weeks)
HOT 100 AIRPLAY: “Frozen” #8 (10 weeks)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/CLUB PLAY: “Frozen” #1 (6 weeks/2 weeks at #1)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/MAXI SINGLES SALES: “Frozen” #3 (6 weeks)
ADULT CONTEMPORARY: “Frozen” #13 (8 weeks)
ADULT TOP 40: “Frozen” #9 (9 weeks)
RHYTHMIC TOP 40: “Frozen” #19 (9 weeks)
TOP 40 MAINSTREAM: “Frozen” #9 (9 weeks)
POP CATALOG ALBUMS:
”Frozen” #34 (9 weeks)
#1 “Mezzanine” MASSIVE ATTACK
#2 “Life thru a lens” ROBBIE WILLIAMS
#3 “Walking into Clarksdale” JIMMY PAGE/ROBERT PLANT
#4 “The Best of” JAMES
#5 “International Velvet ” CATATONIA
#8 “Urban Hymns” VERVE
#9 “Ray of light” MADONNA (8 weeks/8 weeks at Top 10)
#10 “Esssentials…The very best of” GEORGE BENSON
#1 “My heart will go on” CELINE DION
#2 “Frozen” MADONNA (9 weeks)
#5 “Gettin’ jiggy with it” WILL SMITH
#6 “Torn” NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
#7 “It’s like that” RUN DMC VS JASON NEVINS
#8 “Stop” SPICE GIRLS
#10 “Too close” NEXT
“Ray of light Single” Debuts in the UK at #2
#2 “My all” MARIAH CAREY
#10 “Turn it up” BUSTA RHYMES
“Ray of light” #13 (8 weeks/66,000 copies/1,235,000 total)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/CLUB PLAY: “Frozen” #3 (7 weeks)
ADULT TOP 40: “Frozen” #10 (10 weeks)
RHYTHMIC TOP 40: “Frozen” #26 (10 weeks)
TOP 40 MAINSTREAM: “Frozen” #8 (10 weeks)
#1 “Under the bridge/Lady Marmalade” ALL SAINTS
#2 “Ray of light” MADONNA (DEBUT/1 week at Top 10)
#3 “Feel it” TEMPERER FEAT. MAYA
#4 “All that I need” BOYZONE
#7 “Last thing on my mind” STEPS
#8 “Dance the night away” MAVERICKS
#9 “Push it” GARBAGE
#10 “Teardrop” MASSIVE ATTACK
#44 ”Frozen” MADONNA (10 weeks)
#8 “Esssentials…The very best of” GEORGE BENSON
#10 “All Saints” ALL SAINTS
#2 “Frozen” MADONNA (10 weeks)
#8 “Jet Coaster Romance” KINKI KIDS
#10 “It’s like that” RUN DMC VS JASON NEVINS
Week of May 16, 1998:
“Ray of light Single” Debuts on the Airplay Chart at #72
HOT 100 AIRPLAY: “Frozen” #10 (12 weeks)
HOT 100 AIRPLAY: “Ray of light” #72 (DEBUT)
ADULT CONTEMPORARY: “Frozen” #8 (10 weeks)
RHYTHMIC TOP 40: “Frozen” #28 (FINAL WEEK/11 weeks)
TOP 40 MAINSTREAM: “Frozen” #13 (11 weeks)
#1 “Turn back time” AQUA
#3 “Gone till November” WYCLEF JEAN
#4 “Life ain’t easy” CLEOPATRA
#6 “Dreams” CORRS
#7 “Say you love me” SIMPLY RED”
#10 “Dance the night away” MAVERICKS
#4 “Ray of light” MADONNA (10 weeks/10 weeks at Top 10)
#5 “All Saints” ALL SAINTS
#6 “From the Choirgirl Hotel” TORI AMOS
#10 “Titanic” SOUNDTRACK
#3 “Yuwaku” GLAY
#4 “Soul Love” GLAY
#10 “All my life” K-CI & JO JO
05/21/1998: “Like a virgin Album” is certified DIAMOND
“Frozen” #14 (10 weeks)
HOT 100 SINGLE SALES: “Frozen” #20 (10 weeks)
HOT 100 AIRPLAY: “Ray of light” #47 (2 weeks)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/CLUB PLAY: “Ray of light” #27 (DEBUT)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/MAXI SINGLES SALES: “Frozen” #11 (9 weeks)
TOP 40 MAINSTREAM: “Ray of light” #31 (DEBUT)
“The Immaculate Collection” #47 (FINAL WEEK/93 weeks)
#1 “Version 2.0” GARBAGE
#7 “Sketches for my sweetheart the drunk” JEFF BUCKLEY
#8 “Talk on corners” CORRS
#10 “The Best of” JAMES
#5 “I get lonely” JANET JACKSON FEAT. BLACKSTREET
#10 “Torn” NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
HOT DANCE MUSIC/CLUB PLAY: “Frozen” #19 (10 weeks)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/CLUB PLAY: “Ray of light” #10 (2 weeks)
HOT DANCE MUSIC/MAXI SINGLES SALES: “Frozen” #8 (10 weeks)
TOP 40 MAINSTREAM: “Ray of light” #20 (2 weeks)
RHYTHMIC TOP 40: “Ray of light” #40 (DEBUT)
”Frozen” #68 (FINAL WEEK/13 weeks)
#1 “Blue” SIMPLY RED
#7 “My way-The Best of” FRANK SINATRA
#10 “Mezzanine” MASSIVE ATTACK
#8 “Pink Spider” HIDE FEAT. SPREAD BEAVER
#10 “Stop” SPICE GIRLS
Madonna-Frozen, Madonna-Frozen-chart run, Madonna-Ray of light, Madonna-Ray of light-Chart run
You are currently browsing the archives for the 05. MAY 1998 category.
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image/svg+xml Intro
The USC Viterbi School of Engineering has already raised more than $290 million on its way toward its established goal of $500 million.
Visit the USC Viterbi Initiative page for more information.
USC Viterbi’s fundraising goal supports transfor- mative faculty, students and curricula and fosters global-impact research while supporting engineering advances through innovation and entrepreneurship. It is the most exciting chapter in the school’s history, build- ing on more than a century of excellence.
At USC Viterbi, we know that fulfilling the potential of engineering as an empowering force in society relies upon the excellence of our students. Therefore, recruit- ing and retaining top candidates are at the heart of our campaign.
The need for scholarship and fellowship support is more urgent than ever. We are constantly competing with other leading academic institutions for the best and the brightest. We never want to lose a potential student because we didn’t have the ability to help them.
Through scholarship support, we can ensure that USC Viterbi has the financial resources to offer compelling aid packages, thereby enabling the university to attract top students. Because of our academic breadth, they will be part of an exciting environment rich in resources and opportunities. They will become future leaders — leaving USC with a well-rounded background — and will go on to succeed in a global economy as well as con- tribute to solving the world’s problems.
Scholarship and fellowship endowment provide re- sources that have a long-lasting and meaningful impact, not only on the students who pursue studies at USC, but also on the university itself and the world beyond. Gifts to support USC Viterbi students ultimately translate into discoveries, innovations, leadership and insights that will touch thousands of lives for many generations to come.
We invite you to join us in supporting the USC Viterbi mission and vision.
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Daniel Barenboim meets Martha Argerich
In 1999, music conductor Daniel Barenboim and literary scholar Edward Said founded the West Eastern Divan Orchestra in Weimar. Since then, young Israeli and Arab musicians have been playing together around the world, under Barenboim's baton. For violinist Georges Yammine, the orchestra is “a fixed star, a source of inspiration and strength, and the hope of understanding”. His aim is to use the M9 to “capture the transformational magic of music, which seems able to break through the silence of darkness and dissolve torpor with amazing ease”. We spoke to him about good portraits, inspiring passions and very special birthday presents.
For a number of years you've been portraying the West Eastern Divan Orchestra of which you are also a member. Why? What gave you the idea to do this?
The West Eastern Divan Orchestra has been my greatest intellectual and artistic challenge since 1999. I wanted to capture the musical moments in pictures, and I had the wish to dedicate a special gift to Maestro Barenboim on his 70th birthday. The idea that emerged went on to become the photo book A Spark of Hope.
When musicians play their instruments they are often immersed their own world. Does that make it easier for you to photograph them?
When musicians are immersed in their own musical world, their expressions convey a naturalness and a spiritual strength that makes it easier for the photographer to take a good portrait.
On our blog, you’re presenting pictures unpublished till now. Do you have a favourite among them?
During the West Eastern Divan Orchestra's 2014 summer tour, I dreamt of taking a joint portrait of Maestro Barenboim and the legendary pianist Martha Argerich. I managed to take my favourite picture during a brief moment of quiet, of introspection, where each listened carefully and with room to align with each other. In that moment, during the rehearsal, I only had a few seconds to put the violin aside and grab the M9.
You’re passionate about making music and about taking photographs: imagine you had to give up one or the other – which would it be?
Both my passions inspire and strengthen each other, so one without the other is inconceivable.
You will find an introduction to his photo book A Spark of Hope in LFI 1/2015.
© Georges Yammine
Georges Yammine
Georges Yammine was born in 1979 in Zekrit, Lebanon. He moved to Germany in 1999 to study violin at the Franz Liszt Music School in Weimar. He has been a member of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra since 1999 and of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra since 2008.
A self-taught photographer, his book A Spark of Hope was published in 2014 by Corso Verlag.
www.yamminegeorges.com
Françoise Callier – Angkor Photo Festival
Anton Kusters – Japan's Godfathers
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The LPC maintains a list of jobs that incorporate library publishing roles. To be included in this list, the position must be located administratively in a library, or report directly to a library-based supervisor. The primary function(s) of the position must directly engage in the creation, dissemination, and/or curation of scholarly, creative, and/or educational works. Administrative positions that do not directly engage in these functions may be included if they include supervisory responsibility primarily for employees who are performing these functions.
Journals and Serials Strategic Manager
Purdue University Press
This new role will be part of a new leadership team in the Press and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Purdue University Libraries. Reporting to the director of Purdue University Press (PUP) and head of Scholarly Publishing Services (SPS), and working with the other strategic managers reporting thereto, the Journals and Serials Strategic Manager oversees the retention, publication, and management of all journals (with journals broadly defined to include all serial publications by PUP and SPS, including select annual or recurring conference proceedings). In collaboration with the Press Director and other managers, the Journals and Serials Strategic Manager takes the lead on strategic planning for PUP/SPS journals and serials; fosters an environment of continual innovation and process improvement; contributes to the success of others; and facilitates beneficial change in the division.In addition to direct reporting responsibility of project editors who work on journals and serials for PUP/SPS, the Journals and Serials Strategic Manager has indirect reporting responsibility of all managers and staff who work on journals and serials, as the Journals and Serials Strategic Manager is charged with ensuring that all journals and serials published by PUP and SPS receive the best services. This role offers the successful candidate the opportunity to take full ownership of a swiftly growing journals program and to inform the trajectory of such a program in an innovative press that sees publishing differently.
This position has a limited duration of three years with continuation dependent upon additional funding. Benefits do apply.
Bachelor’s degree in English, Literature, Communication, Humanities, Business, Chemistry, Engineering, Biology, or related field.
Three or more years of work experience with modern publishing best practices, including those related to scholarly articles, conference proceedings, and/or journals.
Experience in supervising, mentoring, and developing in-house personnel, as well as in managing relationships with freelancers and vendors.
Ability to manage multiple competing projects; superior organizational, project, and time management skills.
Superlative written and oral communication and interpersonal skills.
Ability to work under pressure while paying close attention to detail.
Ability to manage own time efficiently, and delegate tasks effectively.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook) and Adobe applications (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator).
Master’s degree in the Humanities or STEM field or MBA.
Five or more years of relevant professional experience in scholarly journals publishing.
Experience of modern publishing production techniques, including journal, and e-content design and production.
Experience working with scholarly societies or editorial boards of journals.
Experience in strategic planning.
Experience in coordinating all aspects of journal production and manufacturing.
Experience of estimating costs and reviewing publishing contracts.
Purdue will not sponsor an employment related visa for this position.
A background check will be required for employment in this position.
FLSA: Exempt (Not Eligible For Overtime)
Retirement Eligibility: Defined Contribution Waiting Period.
Purdue University is an EOE/AA employer. All individuals, including minorities, women, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply.
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Support of Israel Wanes Among Younger Evangelicals
By Bob Smietana
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Older American evangelicals love Israel—but many younger evangelicals simply don’t care, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.
Three-quarters (77 percent) of evangelicals 65 and older say they support the existence, security and prosperity of Israel. That drops to 58 percent among younger evangelicals, those 18 to 34.
Four in 10 younger evangelicals (41 percent) have no strong views about Israel.
Fewer younger evangelicals (58 percent) have an overall positive perception of Israel than older evangelicals (76 percent).
And they are less sure Israel’s rebirth in 1948 was a good thing.
“For the most part, younger evangelicals are indifferent about Israel,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research.
Most evangelicals support Israel
LifeWay Research asked 2,002 Americans with evangelical beliefs about a wide range of issues involving Israel—from its place in the Bible to its treatment of Palestinians. The survey focused on Americans with evangelical beliefs rather than self-identified evangelicals.
Overall, this group was supportive of Israel.
Sixty-seven percent have a positive view of that nation. Nine percent have a negative view. Twenty-four percent are not sure.
One-fourth (24 percent) support the existence, security and prosperity of Israel, no matter what Israel does. Forty-two percent support Israel, but not everything Israel does. One percent do not support Israel. Thirty-two percent have no strong views about Israel.
Few (14 percent) agree when asked whether Israel’s rebirth was an injustice to Arabs in the Middle East. Fifty percent disagree. Thirty-six percent are not sure.
About a quarter (22 percent) say modern Israel has been unfair to Palestinians. Forty-one percent disagree. Thirty-seven percent are not sure.
Younger evangelicals (19 percent) are more likely to see the rebirth of Israel as an injustice. Only 34 percent disagree. Forty-seven percent are not sure.
Among older evangelicals, 9 percent see the rebirth of Israel as an injustice, while 62 percent disagree. Twenty-eight percent are not certain.
Older evangelicals (49 percent) are more likely to disagree that Israel has been unfair to Palestinians. Young evangelicals (32 percent) are less likely.
Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries, which helped underwrite the survey, said he was glad to see that most evangelicals support Israel.
Still, he found the decline of support among younger evangelical believers worrisome.
“I am concerned for the obvious decline in support for Israel among millennial followers of Jesus, who either do not know what they believe or do not seem to care,” he said.
Darrell L. Bock, a board member for Chosen People Ministries and director of cultural engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary, wonders if Israel is on the back burner for many younger evangelicals.
When they think about the Middle East, they’re more likely to think about Iraq or Iran or the impact of terrorism in the world, he said.
“The terror attacks on 9/11 changed the Middle East equation, and young people just aren’t sure where Israel is supposed to fit,” he said.
The Bible plays a big role
Most evangelical believers in the LifeWay Research survey say faith shapes their views on Israel.
Three-quarters (76 percent) say Christians should support the right of the Jewish people to live in the sovereign State of Israel. Five percent disagree. Twenty percent are not sure.
Sixty-nine percent say the Jewish people have a historic right to the land of Israel. Six percent disagree. Twenty-five percent are not sure.
Only 19 percent say Palestinians have a historic right to Israel. Forty-six percent disagree. Thirty-four percent are not sure.
Forty-one percent say Jewish people have a “biblical right” to Israel but have to share it.
Twenty-eight percent disagree. Thirty-one percent are not sure.
African-Americans with evangelical beliefs are least likely (54 percent) to say Jewish people have a “biblical right” to the land of Israel. They are also least likely (50 percent) to have a positive view of Israel.
Among other findings:
Forty-five percent say the Bible has had the biggest influence on their views of Israel.
Sixty-three percent say they support Israel primarily because “God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.”
Twenty-two percent are not sure if biblical promises about the land of Israel are still in force.
Eighty percent say God promised the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants for all time.
Eighty percent say the rebirth of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
Author Joel C. Rosenberg, who also helped underwrite the survey, said most evangelicals see a connection between the Bible and the modern nation of Israel. But he said he’s worried that’s not the case for younger evangelicals, which could cause evangelical support for Israel to drop in the future.
“Unless the church gives younger believers a healthy, balanced, solidly biblical understanding of God’s love and plan for Israel, overall evangelical support for the Jewish state could very well plummet over the next decade as millennials represent an ever-larger percentage of the overall church body,” Rosenberg said.
Israel and Palestinians
Evangelical believers are uncertain how to resolve differences between Israelis and Palestinians. A quarter (23 percent) say Israel should sign a treaty allowing Palestinians to have a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza. Thirty-one percent disagree. Forty-six percent are unsure.
Six in 10 (59 percent) say Christians should do more to love and care for Palestinians. Sixteen percent disagree. Twenty-five percent are not sure.
Among younger evangelicals, two-thirds say Christians need to do more to care for Palestinians. That drops to 54 percent among those 65 and older.
Most evangelical believers (73 percent) agree they are concerned for the safety of Christians in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Five percent disagree. Twenty-two percent are not certain.
Evangelicals are certain God wants the State of Israel to exist, said McConnell. But they think Christian love should include Palestinian people.
“They believe God wants Israel to be there,” he said, “but they also think God cares how the nation of Israel acts.”
Bob Smietana is senior writer for Facts & Trends.
LifeWay Research conducted the study Sept. 20-28, 2017. The study was sponsored by Chosen People Ministries and author Joel C. Rosenberg. The survey was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. People in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®. For those who agree to participate but do not already have internet access, GfK provides at no cost a laptop and ISP connection.
Sample stratification and weights were used for gender by age, ethnicity, region, education and household income to reflect the most recent U.S. Census data. The completed sample is 2,002 surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 2.7 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.
Respondents were screened to include only adults with evangelical beliefs. Evangelical beliefs are defined using the NAE LifeWay Research Evangelical Beliefs Research Definition based on respondent beliefs. Respondents are asked their level of agreement with four separate statements using a four-point, forced-choice scale (strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree). Respondents are categorized as having evangelical beliefs if they strongly agree with all four statements:
The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.
LifeWay Research is a Nashville-based, evangelical research firm that specializes in surveys about faith in culture and matters that affect churches.
Download the research
Download the Evangelical Attitudes Toward Israel Research Study Report
Filed Under: American Views, Uncategorized Tagged With: featured
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International DJs that have Graced Marinis on 57
admin Music Archives December 30, 2015
Planning to head out for an unwinding night to nonchalantly sip shooters or trip the light fantastic? If you happen to be in the heart of the Kuala Lumpur and would love to be part of the party scene, then head on to Marini’s on 57!
Marini’s on 57 is a multi-international-award winning venue which includes the highest rooftop bar, restaurant and lounge in Malaysia. It sits on the 57th floor and faces the iconic Petronas Twin Towers, giving guest 360 degree panoramic views of Kuala Lumpur city. Founded by Modesto Marini, an award-winning chef from Italy, Marini’s on 57 not only offers the most exquisite contemporary Italian fine-dining experience but also music involving various international DJs, featuring some of the best house music to modern beats from Ibiza! Great food, tasty signature cocktails, beautiful panoramic views of the night city, and amazing music all night long, what more can you ask for?
Here is a list of some of the notable global DJs who have graced Marini’s on 57 in 2015.
Jose Padilla – The Launch of Sunset Hours Vol. One
Jose Padilla was born in Barcelona who later moved to Ibiza where he became a Dj resident in Cafe del Mar, one of the most popular bars in Ibiza known for its chill-out music to accompany the spectacular sunset views its famous for. His first album “Cafe del Mar” was launched in 1994 and showcases his most popular ‘balearic’ tracks the café has come to be known for. Today, the “Cafe del Mar album, remixed by Jose has sold over 5 million copies across the world.
Jose partnered with Modesto Marini for Marini’s on 57 Sunset Hours Volume One album, which includes tracks from Trevor Deep JR, Mark Barrott, 40 Thieves, and Jose Padilla himself.
Chris Coco – Launch of Vol. Two
Chris Coco is a multi-talented music writer, broadcaster, producer and DJ, and known for his music in dance and electro since the ’80s. Some of the big compilations he has done have been for Playboy, Ministry of Sound, EMI Classical and Trojan Records. Not to mention, his music has appeared on several compilations including Cafe Del Mar and Hotel Costes. Chris Coco has marked Ibiza Night Club with electronic and deep house music, standing between the chill and downtempo tunes.
In contribution to Marini’s on 57’s new album launch in 2015 (Sunset Hours Volume Two), Chris Coco joined forces with After Life by creating storytelling track selections in accordance to Sunset Hour’s first album, to weave a perfect chill-out, Balearic, and deep electro music tapestry.
Joey Negro – F1 2015
Joey Negro, a.k.a Dave Lee , is one of the most well-known British DJ/producer/remixers in the international music scene. Under a superfluity of monikers for a multitude of record labels, Dave was one of the firsts to incorporate disco samples in house music during the beginning of his production career in the late 80’s. Dave scored a number of Top 40 hits, among them being are all under Jakatta, namely “American Dream”, “So Lonely” and “My Vision”. Dave’s impressive discography defines his deep understanding as a creator for anything soulful and house. Dave continues to release House music and other disco-influenced styles on his own label Z Records, as well as DJing regularly in the UK and around the world. His witty self describes his music genre as “baby ducks quacking on a hot summer’s day with a loud 4/4 beat”.
On 27th March 2015, DJ Joey Negro/Dave Lee headlined Marini’s on 57’s “Party Paddock At The Top”, an exclusive event that was Kuala Lumpur’s ‘ F1 kickoff party for the F1 season . Fans were left with a fresh and electrifying repertoire on the decks.
Jeff Jefferson
Jeff Jefferson began his DJ career by entertaining the troops in Germany during his time in the military in the early 90’s. Jeff’s remarkable collaboration with Miss Moneypenny puts him at the forefront of the music industry and garnered him three decades of experience in the music scene. It was this heavyweight of international glamorous clubbing that noticed Jeff Jefferson’s talent and his popularity in music production heightened around Europe. Currently Jeff resides in Malaysia as music director and resident DJ at Marini’s On 57.
It all began at his local record shop ‘Stop On By Records’. Here he worked on developing his skills and quickly developed a love for house and electro music. Mark regularly plays all over the world with shows as far afield as Canada, USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Estonia, Lithuania, Egypt, Dubai, France, Scotland, Ireland and all parts of Asia including Malaysia. Mark recently held an Asia Tour in Kuala Lumpur, bringing his talent to Marini’s on 57.
Mark Robinson graced the decks with his euphoric and uplifting music alongside Marini’s on 57’s resident DJ Jeff Jefferson, during Marini’s on 57’s WNight’s Annual ‘White’ Party held on 9th December 2015.
Felix da Housecat is dedicated to making the people dance through the night. Felix Stallings or better known as Felix Da Housecat, is an American born music DJ and record producer who is famously known for house music and electroclash. Felix gained mainstream exposure in 2001 with the release of Kittenz and Thee Glitz, written and produced alongside famous DJs. Later that year, Felix won the Best Album at the now-defunct Muzik Awards, leading to his ensuing fame to make remix works for billboard artists like Madonna, Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue.
This year at Marini’s on 57, Felix made a spectacular appearance during their Merdeka eve party, heating up the dancefloor with awesome upbeat tracks as guests danced to amazing views of Kuala Lumpur City.
Ron Carroll – KL GP Party at the Top 2015
Ron Carroll aka DJ R.O.N.N is a Chicago based DJ, singer, songwriter and producer known in the house music circuit. In the early beginnings as a vocalist, Ron Carroll wrote and produced various singles. Carroll then started performing as a DJ in the late 1980s.
Ron brought the roof down at Marini’s on 57’s “KL City GP at the Top” this August, in conjunction with Kuala Lumpur premier Grand Prix. Winner of KL GT City Cup Race 2015 Naoki Yokomizo popped by after his win and gracefully took photos with guests and fans.
C. Castel Rocked Us Into The New Year
Date: Thursday, 31st December 2015
Time: 9 pm onwards
Cover Charge: RM150 nett
Theme: Glamourous
We treated guests to 2016 marking fireworks at the Marini’s on 57’s Annual New Year’s Eve party. With an international lineup that included DJ Lee Kemp and Spanish sensation C. Castel, we were headlining one of the most anticipated NYE parties in Kuala Lumpur. We hope you enjoyed the best views of the fireworks and the city as you danced to amazing music, only at Marini’s on 57.
Mambo Brothers
Originally from the the isle of lochs and legends, the Scottish brothers, Christian and Alan Anadon were born and raised in the world’s party capital in Ibiza. The Mambo Brothers sparked interest in electronic music ever since listening to the best DJs at the Cafe Mambo since their early age. Being part of the evolution of electronic music since the very beginning, they both gained knowledge in electronic music from various house genres. They took a leap and stepped out of Ibiza to DJ internationally for “Mambo On Tour” in cities like London, Miami, Copenhagen, Lugano and Barcelona.
Mambo Brothers Christian and Alan will kick start Marinis on 57 ‘It’s All About House Music’ series with sounds from IBIZA! Get ready to be transported to the beach this Friday along with DJs Riesa Anne and DJ Jeb.
It’s All About House Music Series 2016 will bring you only the best in International DJs under one glass roof. Get ready to dance with the stars at Marini’s on 57, elevating you higher through music.
Date: Friday, 8th January 2016
Time: 9:00 pm on wards
Cover Charge: RM 88 nett.
We’re About To Make This Year End Special For You
History of Ibiza: The cafés that chilled the world
The Only Way Is Up: Celebrate Your New Year’s Eve At The Top
The Origins Of House Music: From A Niche Genre To Mainstream Following
Marini’s on 57 Sunset Hours Album Vol. 2 Launch Party turns the Kuala Lumpur City Skyline red
Marini’s on 57 Launches Sunset Hours Album Vol.2
Variations on Pesto Pasta
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Faces of the Living Dead
The Belief in Spirit Photography
‘Faces of the Living Dead’, lecture, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, November, 2002.
In Britain in the 1920s a group of Spiritualists formed the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures. They were convinced that spirit photographers were able to capture images of the dead returning from the other side to be photographed with their loved ones. Their belief was disputed by the Society for Psychical Research, a society (that exists to this day) that dedicated itself to the objective scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena. The SPR successfully exposed as frauds several spirit photographers supported by the SSSP.
To members of the SPR, once exposed as fakes spirit photographs could be only one thing, incontrovertible evidence not of spirit return, but of human stupidity. However recently the student of photographic culture, rather than psychic phenomena, has become interested in spirit photographs. Historians, curators and artists have realized that although ‘fakes’ on one level, they nonetheless remain powerful photographic evidence on another level. They now speak to us more strongly of faith, desire, loss and love than gullibility. They raise new questions: not are they fake or are they real, but how and why did they come to be made, and what did they mean, emotionally, to the people who once treasured them? Looking into these portraits now their fakery seems crude and self-evident, but if we keep on looking another very real quality emerges from the faces of the people who were photographed — their ardent desire to see and touch a lost loved-one once more.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century the advances of modernity seemed to offer to the people in these photographs the incredible possibility that the eternal desire to communicate with the departed might finally be realizable. The belief in this possibility was called Spiritualism. Modern Spiritualism traced its origin back to one day in 1848, when two young sisters apparently began to here mysterious rapping noises in their house in upstate New York. They supposedly worked out a simplified Morse code by which they could rap back questions to the spirit who haunted the house, and receive answers. The two girls, Kate and Margaret Fox, went on to become Spiritualism’s most famous mediums, holding séances throughout the US and the UK for the rest of the century. Many other mediums, professional and amateur, also began to hold private and public séances. At these séances the mediums would communicate with the dead through raps, or they would fall into a trance and, supposedly under the control of an intermediary spirit guide, speak in the voices of spirits who had messages for the living. As the ranks of believers in these phenomena swelled, they formed themselves into associations and churches and Spiritualism became a widespread social movement. [i]
But it is not only the elaborate paraphernalia of Spiritualism that makes spirit photographs continue to be so compelling for us now, it is something about the essential nature of photography itself. Photography stops an image of a living person dead in its tracks, and peels that frozen image away from them. In this sense all portrait photographs are spirit photographs because they all allow us to see, and almost touch, people as they lived in the past. The people in these images, once so desperate for an image of their deceased loved ones, are now themselves all dead also, but ironically revenant in their portraits. Perhaps we too can almost reconnect with them, in a way not dissimilar to their own attempts to reconnect with those on the other side of the veil.
One of Spiritualism’s most energetic and public converts was the notorious reformist journalist and publisher William T. Stead. In 1893 Stead re-published a report on spirit photography in his popular magazine, the Review of Reviews. The report was by the editor of the respected professional publication the British Journal of Photography, J. Traill Taylor. Taylor was also a Spiritualist who had been investigating spirit photography since the 1860s. Although he was convinced that the phenomenon was genuine, he had to admit to his more sceptical photographic colleagues that the spirit figures, which were called ‘extras’, behaved badly before the camera. Some were in focus, others not. Some were lit from the right, while the living sitter was lit from the left. Some monopolized the entire plate, obliterating the sitter, while others looked as though they had been cut out of another photograph by a can-opener and held up behind the sitter. In addition, when photographed with a stereoscopic camera the spirits appeared in two dimensions, not three, and were out of alignment on the stereo plates. This led Taylor to the conclusion that the images were produced without the aid of the camera, at some other stage in the process than the initial act of portraiture. ‘But still the question obtrudes, how came these figures there? I again assert that the plates were not tampered with, by either myself or anyone present. Are they crystallizations of thought? Have lens and light really nothing to do with their formation?’[ii]
For the Spiritualists one fact again and again dispelled all the doubts and ambiguities that surrounded spirit photographs — that fact was the incontrovertible thud of recognition they felt in their chests when the belief that they were seeing a familiar face once more hit home. During this period big companies such as Kodak were marketing their cameras by heavily promoting the mnemonic value of amateur family snapshots, and more and more people were able to afford regularly updated professional portraits for their family albums. Amateur and professional photographs were gaining new authority as the prime bearers of family memory. The photographic portrait became an even more intense arena for experiencing, nurturing and sharing feelings of affection and connection. In this context, when the spirits revealed, through the voices of the mediums, that they had specific emotional and filial motivations for appearing within the family portrait, the act of recognition was sealed even more strongly onto the amorphous face of the extra.
At a séance the medium was controlled by the spirit of a woman who had returned to her husband as an extra on spirit photograph of him. She tried to explain the process by which spirits such as herself established an ethereal connection back to our side of the veil through the force of spirit memory itself.
When we think of what we were like upon the earth, the ether condenses around us and encloses us like an envelope. […] our thoughts of what we were like, and what we would be better known by, produce not only the clothing, but the fashioning of the forms and features. It is here that the spirit-chemists step in […] using their own magnetic power over the etherealised matter [they] mould it so, and give to it the appearance such as we were in earth life.[iii]
One Saturday afternoon in 1905 a carpenter from the English town of Crewe was experimenting with photography with a friend. To his surprise on one of the plates he found a transparent form, through which a brick wall remained visible. The friend recognised it as his sister, who had been dead for many years. Shortly afterwards the carpenter, William Hope, formed a séance circle with the medium Mrs Buxton, the wife of the organist from the Crewe Spiritual Hall. The circle concentrated on spirit photography, with Hope photographing in a ramshackle glasshouse behind his house. Hope and the Crewe Circle came into their own immediately after the First World War, when the world was swept with a new craze for Spiritualism following the immense combined death-toll of the war and the influenza epidemic. Their work was eagerly examined, promoted and endorsed by the SSSP
If clients made the pilgrimage to Crewe, Hope charged four shillings sixpence for a dozen prints, based on his wages as a carpenter. As his fame grew he regularly travelled to London to hold sittings at the imposing premises of the British College of Psychic Science. The BCPS had been set up in opposition to the SPR in 1920. It was owned by Mr and Mrs McKenzie, two zealous promoters of Spiritualism who had lost their son to the war. They charged two guineas for a sitting with Hope. For some reason spirit extras eschewed the multi-exposure roll-film cameras that were becoming standard in the post-war period, and would only appear on glass-plates in old-fashioned plate-holders, where each negative had to be individually handled by the photographer. On departure sitters signed an agreement indemnifying the BCPS against any legal action. And they were not allowed to take the negatives from the premises.
The famous creator of that arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had been a jingoistic propagandist during World War One. Following the deaths of his brother and his eldest son, Kingsley, as a result of wounds received in the war he became an evangelical Spiritualist. He used his wealth and fame to proselytise the cause in bluff pugnacious lectures delivered from platforms across the world. In 1920 and 1921 he spoke to 50,000 people in Australia alone. He was feted by Spiritualists, and criticized by churchmen, while he lobbied the press and courted politicians. He was even occasionally attended by the odd unexplainable psychic phenomena of his own. In Brisbane, for example, he showed his good will by investing £2000 in Queensland Government Bonds. The government photographer turned up to take his portrait handing over the cheque on the steps of parliament house, but Sir Arthur was obscured by what appeared to be a cloud of ectoplasmic light on the plate. Doyle’s equable comment was:
I am prepared to accept the appearance of this aura as being an assurance of the presence of those great forces for whom I act as humble interpreter. At the same time, the sceptic is very welcome to explain it as a flawed film and a coincidence [iv]
Conan Doyle’s lectures provided implicit comfort to the bereaved. The Melbourne Age reported: ‘Unquestionably the so-called ‘dead’ lived. That was his message to the mothers of Australian lads who died so grandly in the War, and with the help of God he and Lady Doyle would ‘get it across’ to Australia’.[v] In the context of collective post-war grief the spirit photographs that Doyle projected worked in quite a different way, in their open-endedness, to the monumental and mute funeral portrait. In 1919 the Australian Spiritualist newspaper Harbinger of Light took delight in quoting the Rev. T. E. Ruth, the minister of the Collins Street Baptist church, Melbourne:
I have been impressed by the fact that [spiritualist literature] has been concerned with the practical comfort of mourning multitudes, while ordinary church papers have been almost as deficient in spiritual consolation and guidance as that dreadful ‘In Memoriam’ doggerel about there being nothing left to answer but the photo on the wall.[vi]
Doyle was one of the vice-presidents of the SSSP, and a key promoter of Hope. He went to Hope to obtain a photograph of his fallen son, and published the resultant image in newspapers and magazines around the world. The Sunday Pictorial reproduced the photograph flanked by a photographic reproduction of Doyle’s handwritten testimony:
The plate was brought by me in Manchester. On reaching Mr Hope’s studio room in Crewe, I opened the packet in the darkroom and put the plate in the carrier. I had already carefully examined the camera and lens. I was photographed, the two mediums holding their hands on top of the camera. I then took the carrier into the darkroom, took out the plate, developed, fixed and washed it, and then, before leaving the darkroom, saw the extra head upon the plate. No hands but mine ever touched the plate. On examining with a powerful lens the face of the ‘extra’ I have found such a marking as is produced in newspaper process work. It is very possible that the whole picture, which has a general, but not very exact, resemblance to my son, was conveyed onto the plate from some existing picture. However that may be, it was most certainly supernormal, and not due to any manipulation or fraud.[vii]
Spiritualism was always followed for selfish reasons. It was not concerned with the transcendently numinous, so much as the immediate desires of each individual soul for solace. When, in 1888, forty years after they began modern Spiritualism, the Fox sisters publicly confessed to their childhood fraud in front of a packed house at the New York Academy of Music, Spiritualists throughout the house cried out at having to face again the loss of loved ones they thought restored to them for ever.[viii]
Although the product of extreme credulity, spirit photography was nonetheless a collective act of imagination which in many ways was no more than an amplification of the way normal photographs were coming to be used every day in people’s habitual processes of remembering and mourning. In many ways spirit photographs served the same function as precious family photographs. But they were not snapshots of passing events, rather, they were the central magic objects in elaborate rituals and performances. They didn’t find their truth in the documentation of a prior reality, they created their truth within the wounded psychology of their audience. Their truth was manifested and sealed by the undeniable thud of recognition viscerally felt by the customers for whom they were made.
The power of the spirit photograph was not built around the conventional mechanism of the snapshot — the camera, the lens and the shutter. Instead it was compressed into the sensitive photographic plate alone. Photographic emulsion was imaginatively linked to ectoplasm and activated as a soft, wet, labile membrane between two worlds — the living and the dead, experience and memory. The spirit photograph’s emulsion was sensitised chemically by the application of developers, and psychically by the meeting of hands and the melding of mutual memories. No spirit photographer exemplified this better than Mrs Ada Emma Deane, who joined William Hope on the British Spiritualist scene in 1920.
Late in 1920 Deane visited the Birmingham home of Fred Barlow, secretary of the SSSP, to submit herself to a series of tests and experiments. He had supplied Deane with a packet of photographic glass-plates two weeks before the tests for her to pre-magnetize them to psychic impressions by keeping them close to her body. On development, the portraits Deane took held the faces of psychic extras swathed in chiffon-like and cottonwool-like surrounds. ‘It appears’, Barlow reported, ‘as though the plates in some peculiar way became impregnated with the sensitive’s aural or psychic emanations’.
If Barlow was seeking any further proof that Deane was genuine he found it a year later in August 1921. In the interim his father had died, and in the last solemn moment of his father’s earthly life Barlow’s repeated but unspoken cry was: ‘Father, if it is possible, come back and prove to us that you still live.’ Barlow’s young female cousin was visiting the family, and at a home séance Barlow’s father manifested himself and told her, ‘Don’t return home yet — stay on a little longer!’ The following day Deane and her family arrived to spend their August holidays with the Barlows. After a short religious service, Deane photographed Barlow’s cousin, who had taken the spirit’s suggestion and decided to stay on. On one of the plates they secured as an extra a likeness of Barlow’s father which was immediately recognised by all of the family as very similar to how he had appeared during the last moments of his earthly life. Barlow concluded: ‘Our would-be critics are silenced! How can they be otherwise in face of perfect proof, such as this, which week by week is steadily accumulating?’[ix] A year or so later Barlow and three sceptical friends motored to Crewe for a sitting with Deane’s fellow spirit photographer William Hope. They disturbed the family at tea, but Hope agreed to make some exposures by magnesium light. The four received as an extra an image of Barlow’s father that was identical with an extra previously received on Deane’s plate.
But, rather than evidence of collusion, Barlow speculated that this duplication was because the subconscious portion of his mind was being employed to project, or print, the picture onto the plate. But how was the psychic investigator to know whether the images he was examining originated entirely in the mind of the sitters, or whether their unconscious minds had become instruments used by the invisible operators for the production of phenomena originating on the other side?
Is it blind or automatic intelligence that sends these photographs in response to the prayers of the widow and the cry of the mother for proof that the dead still live. Are they just brain freaks? Chemical results produced by ourselves to deceive ourselves? Man’s commonsense and woman’s intuition revolt against such a likelihood. In many instance we see clear evidence that other minds are at work, distinct from and often superior in intelligence to those of medium and sitters. These intelligences claim to be the so called dead. They substantiate their claims by giving practical proof that they are those who they purport to be. In no uncertain voice they claim to be discarnate souls. Surely they ought to know![x]
The Occult Committee of the Magic Circle also tested Deane and found the sealed packet of plates they sent to her for pre-magnetisation had been tampered with. (See Figure 89) But without hesitation Doyle, who had sat for Deane himself and got a female face smiling from an ectoplasmic cloud, (See Figure 90) sprang to her defence:
The person attacked is a somewhat pathetic and forlorn figure among all these clever tricksters. She is a little elderly charwoman, a humble white mouse of a person, with her sad face, her frayed gloves, and her little handbag which excites the worst suspicions in the minds of her critics.[xi]
F. W. Warrick, the wealthy chairman of a of wholesale druggist firm, became progressively obsessed by Deane and her predominantly female household. Over eighteen months from 1923 to 1924 Warrick visited Deane’s house twice a week for personal sittings during which she exposed over 400 plates, mostly of Warrick himself. Deane’s seemingly ingenuous personality immediately convinced him that her psychic powers were real, a view he never wavered from even after 1400 inconclusive experiments with her. He assured Dingwall:
She makes no profession of honesty, but she is just honest. […] Mrs Deane is very friendly towards me. I now know her family well and have entree to their kitchen and scullery. I am perfectly convinced that Mrs D. practices no fraud. I admire her character and the sturdy independence of her spirit. She is not ‘out for money’.[xii]
Nonetheless Warrick imposed increasingly rigorous conditions on his experiments, cunningly sealing the packets of plates he gave to Deane for pre-magnetisation, and insisting on using his own camera and, most importantly, plate-holders. Although, as he admitted to Dingwall, the imposition of these stringent conditions resulted in the departure of the veiled extras, he determined to go on as long as Deane was willing, and his opinion of her remained the same. He switched his attention from the extras to the multitude of ‘freakmarks’ — chemical smudges and smears, and bursts of light — which appeared on her plates. These further investigations were also fruitless, but they did eventually lead him to undertake another 600 inconclusive thought transference experiments on Deane over the next three years. These tested her ability to write letters on sealed slates and to make marks on pieces of cartridge paper placed against her body. For the purposes of these experiments Warrick had Deane and her family move into a house he owned. One room was reserved for séances and a darkroom was built into it, as well as a small sealed cabinet for the thought transference experiments. Whilst Deane sat in the cabinet with her hands imprisoned in stocks, Warrick crouched outside and attempted to transmit his thought images to her.
Warrick scrupulously recorded all of his experiments. In the tradition of previous obsessive psychic researchers he compiled and published them, along with his extended but inconclusive reasoning as to what they might mean, in a monumental 400 page book. She gave him access to her negative collection and he had 1000 of them printed up and bound, in grids of twelve per page, into four large albums, embossed with her name, which he presented to her. He asked the Society for Psychical Research to be responsible for their eventual preservation because, ‘the prints may be of great value — and may be sought after the world over for the purposes of study. They are unique in the world.’[xiii]
Deane’s greatest fame came in the mid 1920s through her involvement with Estelle Stead, another eminence of the Spiritualist movement who ran a Spiritualist church and library called the Stead Bureau. Estelle Stead was the daughter of the W. T. Stead who had been photographed in the 1890s with the ‘thought mould’ extra of his spirit guide Julia. Stead was clairvoyant, but this faculty didn’t prevent him from booking a passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Shortly after he drowned, however, his spirit reappeared at a London séance and continued his Spiritualist activities as busily as ever. In 1923 Estelle Stead received another ‘wireless message’ from her father that they should arrange for Deane to take a photograph in Whitehall during the Two Minutes Silence that year. A group of spiritualists were placed in the crowd to produce a ‘barrage of prayer’ and so concentrate the psychic energy, and Deane took two exposures from a high wall over the crowd, one just before the Silence, and one for the entire two minutes of the Silence. When the plates were developed the first showed a mass of light over the praying Spiritualists, and in the second what was described by the discarnate W. T. Stead as a ‘river of faces’ and an ‘aerial procession of men’ appeared to float dimly above the crowd. The images were commercially printed together and distributed amongst Spiritualists.
Conan Doyle took this image with him on his second tour of America, which featured an entire lantern-slide lecture on spirit photography. In April 1923 he lectured to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. When the image was flashed upon the screen there was a moment of silence and then gasps rose and spread over the room, and the voices and sobs of women could be heard. A woman in the audience screamed out through the darkness, ‘Don’t you see them? Don’t you see their faces?’, and then fell into a trance.[xiv] The following day the New York Times described the picture on the screen:
Over the heads of the crowd in the picture floated countless heads of men with strained grim expressions. Some were faint, some were blurs, some were marked out distinctly on the plate so that they might have been recognised by those who knew them. There was nothing else, just these heads, without even necks or shoulders, and all that could be seen distinctly were the fixed, stern, look of men who might have been killed in battle.[xv]
Two more photographs were taken during the following year’s Silence. Although the heads of the fallen were impressed upside down on Violet Deane’s plate, the pictures were circulated through the Spiritualist community. Many people recognised their loved ones amongst the extras, and those on the other side often drew attention to their presence in the group. H. Dennis Bradley, for instance, was in contact with the spirit of his brother-in-law who told him, through a medium, that he was, ‘on the right-hand side of the picture, not very low down’. On the following day Bradley obtained a copy of the photograph and, to his astonishment, among the fifty spirit heads visible in the picture he found one in the position described which, under the microscope, revealed a surprising likeness to his deceased brother-in-law.[xvi] A Californian woman, Mrs Connell, received a copy of the picture from a friend. Intuitively feeling that it might be meant for her particularly, she got out her ouija board to communicate with her fallen son David. She asked him if he was in the picture. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘to the right of Kitchener’. She found Lord Kitchener’s face and there, to the right of it, was a face she recognised as her son’s.[xvii]
At her discarnate father’s suggestion Estelle sent copies of the two photographs to the medium Mrs Travers-Smith asking her to submit them to her spirit guide, Johannes, to get further comments from the other side. He said, through the medium:
This is an arrangement prepared beforehand from our side. The person who took this (Mrs Deane) must have been very easy to use. I see this mass of material has poured from her. It is as if smoke or steam were blown out of an engine. This material has made the atmosphere sufficiently clear to take the impress of the prepared mould which you see here. It is not as it would be if the actual faces had pressed in on the medium’s mind. A number of faces were wanted for this photograph, so a mould was prepared. The arrangement is unnatural and does not represent a crowd pressing through to the camera because it has all been carefully prepared beforehand.[xviii]
Seventy years after the heyday of Spiritualism, the belief in spirit photography is now only maintained by a few of the most wilfully credulous. While the general belief in the presence of ghostly experiences has not substantially diminished since the 1920s,[xix] the faith in photography as a foolproof way for positively recording them is now only found scattered at the outer limits of paranormal enthusiasm, or in the furthest reaches of the World Wide Web. The Spiritualist religion, once a mass-scale social movement, has given way to a plethora of New Age spiritualities. Plenty of earnest psychic investigators still exist, but they have shrunk in eminence and shifted their attention to other supposedly paranormal phenomena, such as ESP. And the great celebrity mediums of the past, who conducted their séances before batteries of scientists, have been succeeded by either franchised telephone psychics or tabloid TV entertainers.
But during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Spiritualism implanted its powerful visions and mysterious characters deeply into popular consciousness. Even non-believers couldn’t help but be fascinated. And this legacy of ideas and images is still very much with us. Spiritualism’s phantasmagoric images haunted our entertainment media right from the start. Spiritualist thaumaturges shared many of their surreptitious techniques — phosphorescence, ventriloquism, and sleight-of-hand — with the impresarios of eighteenth-century magic-lantern shows or a nineteenth-century stage-magic acts. Within a few years of the invention of cinema trick films such as G. A. Smith’s Photographing a Ghost, 1898, or Georges Melies’ The Spiritualist Photographer, 1903, were openly displaying in the film theatre the same special effects of double exposure and superimposition as the spirit photographers were cunningly deploying in the séance. The films were explicitly tricks, and generally poked fun at Spiritualism, but they too relied on evoking, within the conventions of entertainment, a parallel sense of wonder at the uncanny visual world the new technology of the cinema was opening up.[xx]
Later, in the 1920s, Hollywood responded to the post-war craze for Spiritualism by making many films featuring Spiritualistic phenomena, which were represented as being either fake or real depending on the plot of the film. For example Darkened Rooms, 1929, starred a fake spirit photographer who is tricked by his kind-hearted girlfriend, posing as a spirit, into renouncing his dubious profession; while Earthbound, 1920, featured the apparition of a murdered man, earthbound by his allegiance to the worn out credo of no God and no afterlife, being finally able to release himself by appearing to his wife and making amends for his sins. Films such as this, even though they used special effects to recreate spiritualistic phenomena, received the warm approbation of Spiritualists. One Spiritualist, Dr Guy Bogart, even visited the set of another film with a pro-Spiritualistic theme, The Bishop of the Ozarks, which featured a séance and mental telepathy, and was convinced he saw a real spirit manifest itself on the set to complement the film’s special effects.[xxi]
The Spiritualists were modernists, they understood the phenomena they witnessed, and believed in, to be part of the same unfolding story of progress as science and technology. Even if they failed in their expectation that they would be the heralds of a new dawn of expanded awareness, the imaginative world they created for themselves still provides compelling ideas and powerful images for the present. In the last decade or so, the relatively dormant ideas and images of Spiritualism have undergone a resurgence in contemporary culture. The plots of many contemporary horror films are twisting again on the spectral convergence of the ghost and the photographic image that spirit photography has always shared with cinema.[xxii] The enigmatic figure of the spirit photographer is making occasional appearances in novels.[xxiii] Various contemporary video and installation artists are using new technologies to create spectral effects borrowed from the history of Spiritualism. In their art works these phantasmagoric images of disembodied entities are cast adrift into a technologically occulted ‘beyond’. Like the Spiritualists before them the artists imagine this as an electromagnetic world sundered from our own, yet still connected to it by the various media technologies, new and old.[xxiv] Historians of cinema, photography and visual culture have begun to pay attention to spirit photography and to treat it as an important part of the experience of modernity.[xxv] And finally the idea of ‘haunting’ — where unquiet ‘ghosts’ from the historical past return to the present to challenge us to redeem them — is being increasingly invoked in contemporary philosophy and cultural studies. It even has its own name: hauntology. [xxvi]
There is no doubt that the Spiritualists were extremely credulous. But credulity is a relative term, most often used by those with social or intellectual authority to dismiss those who have none. The Spiritualists’ legacy can still be felt today because they used their credulity actively and creatively. Most people buffeted by the incredible wars, deaths, losses and changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kept their insistent thoughts and desires safely internalised as psychological fantasy, private reverie, or familiar ritual. But the Spiritualists externalised them — they collectively dramatized them in their séances, or projected them into new and uncanny technologies such as telegraphy, the wireless, or photography.
The Spiritualists’ sense of themselves as pioneers of a new age meant that they were able to take large ideas and use them for their own ends. They took the idea of the afterlife, present in the Judeo-Christian tradition for thousands of years, and domesticated it, bringing it down to the scale of the parlour. They took the idea of the photograph, which had been touted for decades as a personal mnemonic machine able to capture and fix shadows, and enlarged it to fill the universe. In the end, spirit photography turned out to not be a scientific truth, or a religious miracle. But, for its historical time, it remains an extraordinary act of collective imagination. Together, gullible clients, cunning mediums, opportunistic mentors and hubristic investigators created a rich imaginative economy where ideas, images and interpretations circulated, cross infected and interpenetrated each other.
Photography remained the central tool in the psychic investigator’s arsenal for so long because it promised mechanical objectivity. In 1891 the scientist and Spiritualist Alfred Russel Wallace challenged the SPR to properly investigate spirit photographs because they were ‘evidence that goes to the very root of the whole inquiry and affords the most complete and crucial test in the problem of the subjectivity or objectivity of apparitions.’[xxvii] But what ensnared those who looked to photographic evidence as a forensic test was that photographs had the same problem of subjectivity and objectivity as apparitions. The faces they documented changed, depending on who was looking at them. Eleanor Sidgwick, the SPR’s most clear headed thinker, pointed out: ‘It must be remembered that if one frequently sees a portrait of an absent person, one’s recollection is of the portrait, not really of the original, so that once a person has clearly made up his mind as to the likeness, his recollection of the original would adapt itself.’[xxviii]
When a client chose to believe that the dead lived and were struggling to transmit news of their continued existence back from the other side; and when, in the mysterious alchemical cave of the darkroom, that client saw before their very eyes a face emerge to join their own face on a photographic plate; and when they decided, perhaps even after some initial trepidation, to let themselves be flooded with the absolute conviction that they recognised that face as a lost loved one; then a certain photographic truth was revealed. Not a forensic truth, but an affective truth. That incontrovertible truth remains as relevant today as it ever was. Photographs are never just simple images of reality, they are also ideas and interpretations. The portrait photograph is not just made by the bald technical operation of snapping someone in front of the camera, it is also constituted by the context of the ‘performance’ of the portrait, and by the way the resultant image is incorporated into people’s lives after it is made.
Despite all the subsequent technological changes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, despite the complete digitization and computerization of the photographic process, in looking back to spirit photography’s overheated milieu and intense images, we can still our own attitudes to, and uses of, the portrait photograph written large — very large. For us, as for those that made the decision to visit spirit photographers, by looking into a photograph we believe that we can see and feel the presence of someone sundered from us by death, or by time itself.
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P. C. Phillips, ‘Close Encounters — Thematic Investigation: Photography and the Paranormal’, Art Journal, 62, (Fall 2003), 3
J. Sconce, Haunted media : electronic presence from telegraphy to television, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000)
E. Sidgwick, ‘On Spirit Photographs: A Reply to Mr A. R. Wallace’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1891-1892 (1891-1892),
E. Stead, Faces of the Living Dead, (Manchester: Two Worlds Publishing Company, 1925)
J. T. Taylor, ”Spirit Photography’ with remarks on fluorescence’, British Journal of Photography, 17 March (1893),
P. Thurschwell, ‘Refusing to Give Up the Ghost: Some Thoughts on the Afterlife from Spirit Photography to Phantom Films’, in The Disembodied Spirit, ed. by A. Ferris (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 2003)
Deane Medium File, SPR Archives, Cambridge University Library, F. W. Warrick, Letter to Eric Dingwall, 25 May 1923, 1923, Deane Medium File
Society for Psychical Research, Cambridge University Library, F. W. Warrick, Letter to Eric Dingwall, 28 January 1924, 1924, Deane Medium File
J. Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural history, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
R. Wiseman, M. Smith and J. Wisman, ‘Eyewitness testimony and the paranormal’, Skeptical Inquirer, (November /December 1995),
R. Wiseman, C. Watt, P. Stevens, E. Greening and C. O’Keefe, ‘An investigation into alleged ‘hauntings”, British Journal of Psychology, 94, (2003),
[i] See, R. Brandon, The Spiritualists : The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, (London: Weidenfeld And Nicolson, 1983); J. Oppenheim, The other world : spiritualism and psychical research in England, 1850-1914, (Cambridge Cambridgeshire ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985); A. Owen, The Darkened room : women, power and spiritualism in late nineteenth century England, (London: Virago, 1989) and the indispensable N. Fodor, Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, (London: Arthurs Press Limited, 1933).
[ii] J. T. Taylor, ”Spirit Photography’ with remarks on fluorescence’, British Journal of Photography, 17 March (1893), p. 34.
[iii] J. Coates, Photographing the Invisible: Practical studies in Spirit Photography, Spirit Portraiture, and other Rare but Allied Phenomena, (London: L.N. Fowler & Co, 1911)p. 199.
[iv] A. C. Doyle, The wanderings of a spiritualist, (London,: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921), p. 252.
[v] ‘Conan Doyle in Australia’, Light, December 18 (1920),
[vi] ‘Different Viewpoints!’ Harbinger of Light, October (1919),
[vii] ‘Mysterious ‘Spirit’ Photograph’, Sunday Pictorial, 13 July 1919,
[viii] Brandon, , pp228-229.
[ix] F. Barlow, ‘Psychic Photography. Perfect Proof’, Light, 20 August, p. 453.
[x] F. Barlow, ‘Does Psychic Photography Prove Survival’, Light, 28 October (1922),
[xi] A. C. Doyle, The Case for Spirit Photography, (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1922), p.53.
[xii] Deane Medium File, SPR Archives, Cambridge University Library, F. W. Warrick, Letter to Eric Dingwall, 25 May 1923, 1923, Deane Medium File.
[xiii] Society for Psychical Research, Cambridge University Library, F. W. Warrick, Letter to Eric Dingwall, 28 January 1924, 1924, Deane Medium File.
[xiv] K. Jones, Conan Doyle and the Spirits: the spiritualist career of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Aquarian Press, 1989), p. 193.
[xv] ‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Carnegie Hall’, Harbinger of Light, July (1923).
[xvi] Fodor, p. 79.
[xvii] Society for Psychical Research, Cambridge University Library, M. Connell, Letter to SPR, 4 March, 1925, Deane Medium File.
[xviii] E. Stead, Faces of the Living Dead, (Manchester: Two Worlds Publishing Company, 1925)p. 59.
[xix] See R. Wiseman, M. Smith and J. Wiseman, ‘Eyewitness testimony and the paranormal’, Skeptical Inquirer, (November /December 1995), ; R. Wiseman, C. Watt, P. Stevens, E. Greening and C. O’Keefe, ‘An investigation into alleged ‘hauntings”, British Journal of Psychology, 94, (2003),
[xx] For more on magic, spirit photography and cinema see T. Gunning, ‘Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theatre, Trick Films, and Photography’s Uncanny’, in Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, ed. by P. Petro (Bollomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
[xxi] Letter to Dr Prince from Dr Guy Bogart American Society for Psychical Research, File #21, 05028/05028B. See the Americam Film Institute Silent Film Catalog, www.afi.com/members/catalog/silentHome.aspx?s=1. For contemporary ghost films see P. Thurschwell, ‘Refusing to Give Up the Ghost: Some Thoughts on the Afterlife from Spirit Photography to Phantom Films’, in The Disembodied Spirit, ed. by A. Ferris (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 2003).
[xxii] For instance The Others, 2001 and The Ring, 2002. See also M. Jolly, ‘Spectres from the Archive’, in Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal, ed. by M. Langford (Montreal: McGill-Queens University, 2005).
[xxiii] H. Norman, The Haunting of L., (London: Picador, 2003); G. Jones, Sixty Lights, (London: Random House, 2004)
[xxiv] For instance the work of Susan Hiller, Tony Oursler, Zoe Beloff and many others. See also A. Ferris, ‘The Disembodied Spirit’, in The Disembodied Spirit, ed. by A. Ferris (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 2003).
[xxv] J. Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural history, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); T. Gunning, ‘Haunting Images: Ghosts, Photography and the Modern Body’, in The Disembodied Spirit, ed. by A. Ferris (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College, 2003); P. C. Phillips, ‘Close Encounters — Thematic Investigation: Photography and the Paranormal’, Art Journal, 62, (Fall 2003), 3; J. Sconce, Haunted media : electronic presence from telegraphy to television, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
[xxvi] J. Derrida, Specters of Marx : the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the New international, (New York: Routledge, 1994); A. F. Gordon, Ghostly matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); F. Jameson, ‘Marx’s Purloined Letter’, New Left Review, 209, January/February; U. Baer, Spectral evidence : photography and trauma, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002).
[xxvii] Quoted in E. Sidgwick, ‘On Spirit Photographs: A Reply to Mr A. R. Wallace’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1891-1892 (1891-1892), p. 268.
[xxviii] p. 282.
Posted on October 2, 2013 by martynjolly. This entry was posted in Writing and tagged 2002, Spirit photography. Bookmark the permalink.
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MassArt Ciné Culture: Cristina Kotz Cornejo
The department of Film and Video presents the final installment of the Fall 2019 MassArt Ciné Culture (MACC) screening series: Cristina Kotz Cornejo. The artist will be in attendance for the program and a post-screening Q&A.
Raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the US, Cristina Kotz Cornejo is an independent filmmaker. 3 Américas (2007) marks her feature film debut. She has shown the film around the world, ranging from Mexico City to Montevideo, Uruguay to New York City. 3 Américas was in the official script competition (as Soledad) at the 2003 International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba. She is the recipient of 2004 & 2007 Moving Image Fund Grants from the LEF Foundation in support of 3 Américas’ development and was invited to attend the Sundance Institute’s 2004 Independent Producer’s Conference with 3 Américas (as Soledad). 3 Américas is distributed by Vanguard Cinema and Cinetic Rights Management and can be found on Netflix. Her short film, La Guerra Que No Fue/The War That Never Was (2004) screened at over 25 national and international festivals in over 10 countries and is distributed by OUAT! Media. Her shorts, Despertar (2011), Hermanas (2013) and Buena Fé (2014) have played festivals around the world. She is in the development stage of a new feature screenplay. (via d-word.com)
Image: Cristina Kotz Cornejo (via wildwimminfilms.com)
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Creationism, geology, and a scientist’s soul
Posted by metaphorical on 14 February 2007
At first, I thought Marcus Ross was an idiot and the University of Rhode Island was wrong to grant his Ph.D. in geosciences. But then I started to think about my mathematical logic professor, Andrzej Mostowski, and I’m not entirely sure.
As described the other day in a NY Times article (“A creationist takes a place in the world of fossils,” reprinted in the International Herald Tribune here):
Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young-Earth creationist.” He believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe and that the Earth is at most 10,000 years old.
For him, Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young-Earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
A friend of mine believes this to be possible to do, comparing it to believing “both Euclidian and non-Euclidean geometries as valid in their own contexts.”
Of course, on the face of it the paradigm talk is absurd, and the comparison to geometry inapt. Plenty of people, such as another friend, a retired geology professor in Connecticut, believe the Bible and contemporary ideas of evolution and geologic history to be true, but they believe the Bible to be allegorically true, or true in principle, but not literally. To say you are a “young-Earth creationist” and the Earth is at most 10,000 years old is to believe that the Bible is literally true. And if the Bible is literally true, it’s not just one of several paradigms in the sense of alternate geometries, it’s true, as in a-man-is-on-trial-for-murder-and-you-as-a-witness-have-to-tell-the-truth true.
So really, for Ross only the paleontological paradigm is a paradigm, something that can be supposed for the sake of argument to be true, in the same way that when Hilbert came along with non-Euclidean geometries at the turn of the 20th century, everyone still believed Euclidean geometry to be true-true, while Hilbert spaces were “interesting” and “valid,” meaning self-consistent and internally coherent.
And so I thought the paradigm talk to be bullshit, and a smokescreen, and the university to be complicit and culpable.
But then I remembered Mostowski. When I met him, it was the summer of 1973, between my freshman and sophomore years of college. For some reason I had got it into my head to spend the summer at Berkeley. Mostowski was teaching a math logic class, which I was utterly unprepared for, even more than I knew beforehand. I also signed up for an epistemology class, which I wasn’t worried about it, but the math class had me terrified as well as excited.
I knew that set theory, or “abstract algebra” as it was called at my school, was absolutely required for the class, but in my program it was taken in the first semester of the sophmore year; I was already enrolled in it for the following fall semester. Nevertheless I bought the textbook that was used in that spring and read it in the weeks before Berkeley’s summer term began, hoping for the best. 1973 was still, culturally, the summer of love, for me at least. The day before seeing California for the first time it occurred to me that everyone at Berkeley would have a pony tail and I told my stepmother to cut mine off.
The first day, I figured out I was the lone freshman in the whole class, and when Mostowski asked if any in the class hadn’t had topology, only a few of us raised our hands. I went to see him in his office. He listened patiently and then told me that he would explain all the topology concepts as he used them, and topology wasn’t very hard anyway. I realized almost instantly that he was one of the kindest, clearest men I would ever meet, and I was suddenly filled with confidence that he would make those explanations and I would understand them. I also realized, somehow, without seeing the numbers on his arm, that he had been in a Nazi concentration camp. It didn’t surprise me, even though I knew little of his background.
Mostowski was the youngest of the great Polish logicians, the greatest school of mathematicians of the early 20th century. As a group they took the unfinished science of mathematical logic, as formed by Frege and Russell and Whitehead and Hilbert and others, and turned it into a mature branch of mathematics. One of their number, Tarski, came up with a functional definition of truth that’s still used today. He also worked with von Neumann on applications of these math subjects to physics. The Polish logicians broadened the connections between logic and algebra to include geometry and topology, which was another branch they contributed to greatly. Tarski’s mentor, Stanislaw Lesniewski, invented probability logics, about which I had written a term paper in the spring—which is how I first discovered the Polish logicians.
As it turned out, in 1944 Mostowski was deported, assigned to a concentration camp, and had a number tattooed on his arm, but two nurses helped him escape back to Poland, where he hid till the end of the war.
Rather than hardening his heart, Mostowski’s was as open as an angel’s wings.
Early on in our class, he started talking about the Intuitionists. This was a school of mathematicians that believed in unbounded sets but didn’t, strictly speaking, believe in infinities. Intuitionism is a form of constructivism, in which a mathematical entity can be said to exist only if it can be constructed, so among other things, intuitionists don’t believe in negative proofs. (A negative proof is one in which a theorem can be proven by first supposing it is false and then deriving a contradiction.)
Mostowski wasn’t himself an intuitionist but he was extremely concerned that some of his students might be—even if they didn’t know that about themselves yet. So he carefully distinguished all proofs as being ones that intuitionists couldn’t accept from ones that everyone could. He would sketch out alternative, constructivist proofs, whenever possible. He tried at all times not to, as he put it, crush the intuitionist student’s soul. I will always think of him as a kind of mathematical bodhisattva.
When I think of Mostowski, the Euclidian vs. nonEuclidean comparison to Marcus Ross doesn’t seem so inapt. Mostowski wasn’t an intuitionist and yet was prepared to accept it as true for his students, and not merely as some abstruse theory bearing no relation to reality. Indeed, the intuitionists rather aggressively make existence claims for the entities their theorems describe; they feel entitled to do so by their constructivist methodology.
In the end, I still think very little of Marcus Ross. I don’t trust his motives—I think he will take his degree and wield it as a credential in the creationist war against science, and, indirectly, the university that awarded it to him in good faith. I also think any Bible literalist wanders dangerously on sad and shaky ground, lost to himself intellectually and ethically, because fundamental beliefs about science, reality, and morality are too important to be grounded in the circular logic of believing the Bible is the word of God because God, in the Bible, says it is.
In the end, though, I have only sympathy for the University of Rhode Island. Withholding a degree from someone it accepted into a program, even when the person has fulfilled all the requirements of the program, would be troubling. Perhaps it hopes that Ross will wake up one day and be freed of promises he made to his evangelical family when he was, surely, too young to know any better. Perhaps it took pity on a soul that must be, intellectually, in torment, and decided, like Mostowski, not to be the one to crush it.
This entry was posted on 14 February 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under philosophy, politics, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
34 Responses to “Creationism, geology, and a scientist’s soul”
augustrose said
“To say you are a “young-Earth creationist” and the Earth is at most 10,000 years old is to believe that the Bible is literally true.” Hey, guys, I’m no geologist or even familiar with the ins and outs, but I do know the earth is more than 10,000 years old and the Bible even shows that. It’s a pretty detailed study into Genesis and another old testament book. If anyone is interested I can get you the info.
fredericthewise said
Augustrose, what are you saying the bible shows the earth to be over 10,000 years old? The bible shows the earth to be closer to 6000 than 10,000 – 10,000 is the upper limit that could be deduced by the biblical chronologies.
And metaphorical, it would be nice if you’d explain why evolution is ‘science’ and creationism not. They both are based on unprovable, and in evolutions’ case, improbable hypotheses.
metaphorical said
The fellow in question believes that the Bible says the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and it’s his beliefs that are the ones at issue. Furthermore, if a person finds his geology lessons in the Bible instead of the modern science of geology, then it hardly matters what those lessons turn out to say, he’s looking in the wrong place and any correct beliefs he has will strictly the result of accident and coincidence.
What I was saying was that though I do use the bible as my basis for belief and interpret the evidence accordingly, there is much evidence to substantiate my belief.
The evolutionary geologist does the same, he believes the earth to be millions of years old and twists the evidence to fit. Some evidence does appear to fit this paradigm but to me it just doesn’t appear to fit very well.
Frederic, this blog isn’t the place to rehearse tired generic debates. There are plenty of other places that will welcome that sort of thing, and if you can’t find any I’d be happy to help you with that. The comment spaces on this blog are for comments on the posts they’re attached to, not hang-ups, pet peeves, fascinations, or idées fixe. I’m serious about this. To be a guest in this house you have to take off your shoes.
Metephorical, you were being insulting as well as false by indicating that only people using a long age paradigm were being rational in their beliefs.
My comments were not, whatever you say ‘tired generic debates’ and were directly related to your blog.
However, if you are upset about my comments, I can only assume that you
cannot answer them, and will, due to your request, not post on this blog any longer.
Best regards, frederic.
I’m far from upset and there are a thousand possible things that are “directly related.” The subject of this entry was the apparent inconsistency between Ross’s professed literalist Christianity and his Ph.D. dissertation, and the propriety of URI granting him a degree for the one in the face of the other.
I invite you to look here for an example of another potential hot-button political topic that was discussed with restraint and grace by all parties.
papalovesmambo said
And for how many years dinosaurs were lizards and now they were chickens?
*running around the room in muddy shoes cackling hysterically*
Blue Athena said
I guess the only thing I’m not sure about here is Mostowski’s motivation. Might it not have been merely as pragmatic as that of the University of Rhode Island? Or might he not also have had longer term goals of persuasion?
No, he was really agonizing over the possibility of damaging a student’s mathematical soul. I think he admired the Intuitionists, the way we might look at a Hindu ascetic, as people who have forgone certain conveniences and comforts. Maybe that’s the comparison: he was afraid he was making sure his class had some vegetable dishes for people whose souls would be damaged by eating meat.
I hope my response to frederic hasn’t shut down the possibility of discussion. Viewership of this page is pretty high, according to WordPress’s stats, but only BlueAthena has commented today. I’m convinced the issues here can be examined rationally and reasonably.
I think this one’s just kind of heavy reading. Unless someone has a background in mathematics or philosophy they’re probably going to have to consult a dictionary here. Even with a [distant] related background, there are one or two subjects here I’m not sure I remember clearly. Good and interest post, but if you want to encourage more comments I might cut out mention of any of the mathematical or philosophical fields not directly important to the comparison.
Greetings again. Would you be interested in the scriptural (not chronological) information that supports the “way out” statement I made? If you’re game to be open-minded enough to consider it’s validity I will do the homework.
Augustrose, I appreciate the offer, and I appreciate your asking first. I still can’t see how it matters. My first comment was directed at your original question. Either the Bible gives the same age for the Earth as geology or it doesn’t. If it does, it’s either by coincidence or not.
To learn the age of the Earth, you start empirically, with shovels and hammers and chemicals and brushes and a thousand other tools that geologists use in the field. You can’t do geology with textual analysis.
I respect your stand, Metaphorical.
ClaireDePlume said
at issue here are two diametrically opposed systems of viewing our world. we all know these two opponents, and we all come to the table with a reasonable view of each side of the story.
there is room for both to be heard, for both viewpoints to be expressed. is it essential for us to “take sides”? no. we should learn from the example of Mostowski in this piece. while he may have favoured his own interpretations of his chosen field of expertise, he honoured himself and others too, those who held seemingly conflicting views of their worlds. he accomplished this equilibrium by not being owned by his own convictions. it requires true adherence, true core authenticity to love all knowledge, and be true to one’s own values in a balance of embodying power without yielding to one’s own force.
this post’s message – i think – is a simple lesson in higher wisdom; a wisdom which supersedes all other reactions to blind faith in any discipline no matter the root.
When you say that you think that if the university didn’t grant the degree it would be “troubling”, do you mean as a precedent for future academic integrity, or as a political move that could cause a rallying point for fundamentalists?
If it is the first, what do you mean by “fulfilled all the requirements of the program”? Do you include having a relevant dissertation as a requirement?
If it is the second, do you think it is worth it? Or might the precedent do more harm than good?
Athena, I meant that if someone writes a dissertation that would stand up to an oral defense on its merits, and if he university withheld the degree for some reason that didn’t concern its merits (and was illegal, etc.), then the university would have trouble justifying itself, to itself, and to the outside world. Certainly if I were a Ph.D. geology student one year behind Ross, I’d find it pretty disturbing to see Ross’s thesis turned down even though it was a perfectly valid thesis.
I have no doubt it would be a rallying point for fundamentalists as well, but that’s not the university’s concern, per se, and it’s also worth noting that they’d be screwed either way, because Ross’s every pronouncement, CNN interview, etc., will now be a fundamentalist rallying point in another way, now that he has the Ph.D.
God, the universe, and nothing else « Politics, Technology, and Language said
[…] Creationism, geology, and a scientist’s soul […]
Kevin T. Keith said
Re: granting the degree:
My undergraduate institution faced the same problem with a fundamentalist MA candidate in biology who didn’t out herself as a nutter until she’d almost finished the degree, then announced she didn’t “believe in” evolution. Many of the faculty were very reluctant to grant the degree, but agreed she’d met the legal requirements. Some felt it was their fault for setting the requirements for the degree in such a way that a nutter could meet them, but, as was apparently the case with Ross, it would always be possible for somebody to simply fake it until they got the degree and then renounce their own studies. I don’t think there’s a requirement that you believe your own thesis or dissertation (though one could make an argument that submitting one you don’t believe in is a form of academic dishonesty).
Re: Mostowski’s tolerance:
I think there are several things going on here that are important, and make the case of your logic class very different from that of a nutjob religious rockhound.
First, as I suggest above, while one can admire the rigor of logical theories, that is not the same as agreeing they reflect physical reality. So one can acknowledge theoretical standpoints on purely logical issues that would not be rational for observation-based empirical descriptions of the world. Second, both of the alternative viewpoints Mostowski highlighted existed within the realm of an ongoing debate within the professional community that was conducted under standards of reasoned professional discourse; neither position claimed non-rational access to special knowledge that is incompatible with rational thought. (If the Intuitionists had claimed they could just “intuit” proofs, or that certain theorems should be accepted because they “just knew” they were true, or “God said so”, I’m sure Mostowski would never have countenanced their bullshit.) Third, Mostowski was in a pedagogical role, not simply acting as a professional in his field; he therefore had at least some obligation to accommodate respectable alternative beliefs within his field. I presume he did not express open-mindedness about proof methods in his own published works, but in the classroom he, properly, did not shut out students who might be inclined to hold (rationally-defensible) beliefs he did not share. Fourth, as Mostowski noted, the students themselves were in an unformed state regarding their understanding of the field and its controversies. To insist upon only one resolution of such controversies would be indoctrination, not teaching. Although he may feel strongly that one particular answer to such a controversy is correct, his perception that the controversy is a live one in the field – that rational and knowledgeable persons are not in consensus regarding it – should raise for him an obligation to maintain the students’ intellectual “equipoise” on the subject until they are ready to come to their own informed opinions. Finally, and not insignificantly, the “alternative” beliefs Ross endorses are empirically testable and factually false even on the grounds its supporters claim make them true – they can only be held consistently by invoking nonsensical special pleading (such as that God made fossils and distributed them as they are specifically to fool us); the theory of logic Mostowski opposes at least has the advantage of resting on assumptions that are not observably in conflict with the way the world actually is.
For all these reasons, there is justification for Mostowski’s behaving in the classroom, with regard to a theory he does not endorse, that does not apply to Ross either inside or outside the classroom.
Re: Ross’s “paradigms”:
As an academic philosopher, I’m certainly sympathetic to the belief that philosophical and logical proofs are (in many cases) at least as reliable as scientific ones, often more so. I’m even willing to grant the realist position about the subjects of those proofs, though I’m still vague as to exactly what it means to say numbers “exist”. But that does not mean that just any internally consistent (and let’s skip even that question in regard to the Bible) description of how the world might be is an equally valid description of how the world actually is.
Scientific descriptions of physical reality beat carefully crafted Just So Stories all hollow. The logic used to structure both is the same, but only one insists on points of contact between the theory and the actual, physical world, and objective (i.e., not easily misinterpretable) demonstrations of the truth of the claims the theory makes at those points of contact. And I take Quine’s point that we can resolve contradictions in any theory by making the necessary “adjustments to the web” of facts and beliefs, but even he was forced to add that that adjustment could in some cases require “pleading hallucination” about our observations. Logically, he’s right, but I think we are entitled to be skeptical of theories that require us to plead hallucination about otherwise obvious physical facts, and even more skeptical (to the point of dismissal) of ones that exist only on the evidence that God spoke to you. The lunatics’ world is just as real to them as our world is to us, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lunatics, and if your scientific theory involves supernatural beings telling you things secretly then you’re one of them.
Finally, I’ll note that Ross’s use of the term “paradigm” (as with so many others who have picked up on it) is at odds with the meaning intended by Kuhn, who introduced it in that context. For Kuhn, “paradigm shifts” occurred because of unresolvable tensions within a given theory, forced both by the accumulation of new data and its perception by younger, differently-socialized scientists. They were a mechanism by which theories were upgraded and improved – but fundamental to that is the traditional picture of science as upgrading and improving its theories.
Kuhn never meant – and there is no reason to believe – that scientific theories did not become more accurate over time, or that some theories were not better than others. He was merely describing the process by which theories are compared and accepted/rejected. And if, during that process, both theories are endorsed by knowledgeable persons during some given period, that too is merely part of the process (during which the consensus will shift to one or the other theory and the less-supportable one will be dropped). He did not mean that one particular person could endorse both of them, or that there was no question of truth involved as to which one you endorsed.
If Ross thinks you can just “switch paradigms” without switching your beliefs, he understands science in general even less than he understands geology. Saying he can work in the scientific “paradigm” in some contexts (when he’s trying to winkle a degree out of a real science program) and the supernatural “paradigm” in other contexts (when he’s using his scientific credentials to undermine science with irrationality) is just nonsense. The point to the notion of paradigms is that they are all-encompassing: they invoke a general worldview that makes it difficult to shift one’s beliefs, and from which embracing the new theory requires a radical revision of one’s sense of how large parts of the world really work. That is, paradigms exist, and there is tension between competing paradigms, because they rest on a firm belief in the actual truth of the theory one holds.
Ross seems to suggest (and I can’t believe a fundamentalist could mean this honestly) that you can endorse both incompatible “paradigms” simultaneously. That makes no sense, and also flies in the face of the sincere conviction that makes a theoretical standpoint a “paradigm” in the first place.
It may be unfair to say so without being more familiar with his actual work, but from what you say above, I’d go with “idiot”.
Kevin, you’re absolutely right to go back to Kuhn himself to see how Ross is misusing the term “paradigm.” My impression, though, is that even though Kuhn’s model carries over imperfectly to mathematics, because it’s not grounded in the same way by points of contact between the theory and the actual, physical world, the Constructivists were, if not empiricists, skeptics (in the classical sense), who did expect there to be points of contact between theory and experience. (They remind me of Descartes, in fact, and my own flirtation with Intuitionism ended when I saw that they were no more successful than Descartes was at starting with their own indubitable experience and constructing a world much like ours.)
An interesting twist on this story is a friend of mine who was not a Christian but attended a strict Catholic school, in a largely non-Christian country. The minority status of this belief made the church relatively fandamentalist and tight in its beliefs–something not always the case in Catholicism.
The Catholic schools, spead accross the country, had standardized religious education requirements. My friend received the first ever perfect score in religion by any student in any of the numerous schools. She was awarded with recognition for the achievement. But horror followed with the realization of just who had earned this award.
The next year the standards were quickly changed to make perfect scores impossible, on the grounds that no one could really know that much about god.
Kevin said: “The point to the notion of paradigms is that they are all-encompassing: they invoke a general worldview that makes it difficult to shift one’s beliefs, and from which embracing the new theory requires a radical revision of one’s sense of how large parts of the world really work. That is, paradigms exist, and there is tension between competing paradigms, because they rest on a firm belief in the actual truth of the theory one holds.”
I think this is a psychological and not a philosophical statement. The fact that it is difficult for any particular individual to make succh a shift should not be taken itself as evidence that it is difficult for any other individual to do so without some very clear evidence.
To say that another cannot is no different than those who believe in free will saying that determinists cannot, of course *really* believe what they say they do because then they couldn’t function. It is the assumption that others suffer from your own limitations–a rather common assumption, but a dangerous one. In this case it is an argument that I think unfairly discredits a man who, I will certainly admit, may very well be a “nut job” for many other reasons.
[KTK:] “paradigms exist . . . because they rest on a firm belief in the actual truth of the theory one holds.”
I think this is a psychological and not a philosophical statement.
Exactly – or, more precisely, it is a sociological statement. Kuhn was describing the phenomenology of “paradigm shifting” – the process whereby the scientific community as a whole abandons a once-favored theory and adopts a new one. He was not describing the truth or falsity of any given theory, or how one can prove a theory true or false. (He was mostly pointing out that the mythological view of science, whereby scientists simply confront one another with facts and then everyone immediately sees the logical implications and adopts the new beliefs automatically, is false. There is a sociological complexity to a group-wide shift in allegiance to scientific beliefs just as much as there is to a shift in religious beliefs, political parties, or what have you. But that does not mean the successful theories are not more true than their rivals, only that truth does not guarantee success, either immediately or at all.) The process depends upon human psychology and sociology as much as it does facts and logic.
The fact that it is difficult for any particular individual to make succh a shift should not be taken itself as evidence that it is difficult for any other individual to do so without some very clear evidence.
“Making the shift” is not the problem here. Precisely because people react somewhat differently to challenges to theories they hold, the “shift” does not occur instantly and simultaneously for all; this was Kuhn’s major observation, and it is hardly surprising. (Indeed, some never manage to embrace the new, with important examples including Agassiz on evolution and Einstein on quantum mechanics.) Because the “shift” takes place over an extended period throughout the larger scientific community, there is a period – possibly generations in length – during which both competing theories may be supported by (different groups of) knowledgeable people. Gradually, individuals may switch camps (usually mostly in one direction, as one theory supplants the other) as their personal convictions change; that process may be delayed but is usually relatively quick in completion for each individual, and usually irreversible. Thus, many individuals wind up supporting both theories at different times, but nobody should be supporting both theories simultaneously – nor should they switch back and forth frequently or without compulsion by new data.
The problem with Ross is not that he supports one theory that no rational person supports (though you could make a case that way); the problem is that he apparently supports two incompatible theories that no rational person could hold simultaneously, and seems to suggest you can freely switch back and forth between them for the sake of convenience, and not in response to new data. That is nuts.
It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve read Kuhn, so I’m not going to argue with any quotes–especially since I do remember having a number of issues with his presentation. However, I think here you are talking about a general statement of the sociological origins of a paradigm, which will, I agree, come from those with generally a firm belief in their truth (leaving questions about Leibniz’ influence, for instance, aside).
But this is a general sociological observation (as you yourself state). It does not necessaarily apply to each individual, who may act independently of the society in moving between paradigms, from week to week, day to day, or even hour to hour. Kuhn simply did not have the psychological data to state that this is or isn’t possible, all he can do is theorize abstractly about what he believes is happening in general.
So is it psychologically possible? Not to hold two paradigms simultaneously (although I don’t throw that out), but to hold one at 1:00 and one at 3:00? I don’t personally see a reason to say this isn’t possible. Assessment of what counts as evidence may vary depending on your needs of the moment. If you accept, say, divine inspiration as evidence at one moment and not at the next you may logically slip between different paradigms, one which accepts this as evidence and one which does not. You can replace this suggestion with different and less controversial examples of contestable data.
I don’t see any absolute reason why such an activity would be unacceptable.
This mental activity, as I see it, would be fairly psychologically similar to the shift required in switching from artists (2 dimensional) to engineers (3d) perception of reality in a short period of time. Difficult and unusual, but not, from my experience, impossible. Or seeing the world as a Platonist at one moment, and only hours later seeing through Aristotle’s eyes (a vivid memory from freshman year in college). And in each case, then going back. A neurological explanation would probably involve something on the lines of coexisting networks between which one could switch. I don’t think our neurobiolgy excludes such a possibility.
And as for picking on specific uses of the word “paradigm”, didn’t someone once do an analysis of Kuhn that found he used the word 14 different ways himself?
Kevin’s the last person to need any help in a blog discussion, and certainly not from me, who misses half the nuances he sees, so I’ll just say on my own that I think Kevin has a fair point in that the very meaning of the term paradigm (or the family of 14 very closely meanings) is the sociologically-based on Kevin described. To then use it on the individual level invites misuse, and that’s exactly what Ross has done. Substitute for a moment a phrase like “worldview,” and any thoughts of holding one at 1:00 and another at 3:00, and flipping between them as often as a kitchen light quickly becomes a picture of extreme psychological infirmity, or worse.
Put another way, because “paradigm” involves only a weak notion of group belief, some other notion is needed to capture true belief when you move to an individual. (I suggest worldview.) Ross’s statements trade on that difference; by using the word paradigm as he did we lose touch with the fact that these ideas – creationism and evolution – are ideas that are held, believed, committed to, and in fact are at the very center of an entire network of beliefs that we commit to.
Even when cop or a spy infiltrates an organization and pretends to be a Mafia soldier, a drug dealer, a counterfeiter, or what have you, only pretense is needed, not genuine belief. I can easily believe that Ross did a great job of pretending to believe in evolution. I can’t believe he believes it.
I agree that it may be better to use “worldview” in the individual case…although it makes for less convenient transitions from general to personal examples. However, if you aren’t talking about something as all-encompassing as we think of a worldview, then even just “theory” may be a closer substitute. I’m not sure that that makes any difference to Ross’ position, since it is whether he can switch between worldviews or theories becomes the question which I see as little different given that we know exactly what aspect of reality he has issues with.
I also think, for the record, that he is lying, but I still argue that it is not unbelievable that someone in a similar position (alternating between worldview/paradigms/theories) would not be lying. If you move from alternating to simultaneously holding I would be more hesitant.
I also don’t know that I would diagnose the ability to make the flip in such different understandings as “extreme psychological infirmity” but might equally call it “extreme psychological agility”. Are you saying you think it would cause psychological harm to have such a capacity or that it would hinder the coherence of any arguments based on either of your worldviews?
I guess I had in mind that someone that mentally double-jointed would have trouble doing the equivalent of ordinary things like throwing a baseball.
But if I think about it, I’d say that someone can’t do that flipping back and forth without wanting to. I don’t think of beliefs and emotions as wholly separate from one another, they each imply the other. If you want x, there have to be a y and a z that you believe to support that, and vice versa. (And I think “X is good” is both a belief-statement and an emotion-statement.)
So while I can’t really imagine the desires behind this flipping, because I don’t believe Ross or anyone could actually do it, supposing he did, I wonder what that desire is like, and what beliefs and emotions would support it. I can only imagine them to be incompatible with a sound mind.
In Sartrean terms, this is so extreme a version of bad faith, that is, self-deception, that it’s hard to imagine someone functioning in the real world. I mentioned cops pretending to be drug addicts.
Consider when pretense becomes belief. Consider the Jennifer Jason Leigh role in the movie “Rush,” a cop who falls into that world and becomes a drug addict herself. Supposing for a moment that she believes the things needed to be in both the drug culture and the cop culture, she’s not exactly a picture of mental health. I think also of the sister in Joyce Carol Oates’ them, bouncing between “nice girl” and “prostitute” – until her mental breakdown.
Forgive me following up my own remark, but I just had one of those shower thoughts. Having taken ballet classes and been in dance concerts in college, when I see the Nutcracker, especially the Russian/candy-cane dance, I have very specific thoughts based on having done the role and danced the dance. “It’s hard to come out of that plie and into the extension…nice!” “Here’s come the fouetté turns…”
My question is, when Ross drives past a road-cut, with 5 million years of strata exposed, what is he thinking? It seems to me that whether it’s “5-million years,” or “5000 years that god cleverly made to look like 5 million years” (or whatever his ilk of creationists thinks), he can only think one or the other, and he consistently, in the privacy of his own car, thinks only one or the other. Which is it?
Substitute for a moment a phrase like “worldview,” and any thoughts of holding one at 1:00 and another at 3:00, and flipping between them as often as a kitchen light quickly becomes a picture of extreme psychological infirmity, or worse.
This is what I had in mind (and what I meant in using the word “worldview” in expressing it).
People can certainly change their minds – one hopes they will. But that change, to be rational, should result from an encounter with new data or a better explanation of existing data, sufficiently compelling to outweigh one’s allegiance to the old theory (and one’s socialization into having accepted it). One can even, in principle, shift allegiances back and forth between theories, but, again, in each case the shift should be in response to a new construction of the theory that is reasonably perceived as better than the old – and even here, if one is frequently shifting in response to a rapid influx of new data on both sides, it is probably more rational just to regard the issue as undecided until the balance tips definitively. But whatever one does, it should be a response to a change in the perceived evidentiary basis for the competing theories – either the accumulation of new data, the falsification of an existing datum or theoretical point, a better theoretical construction of existing data, or possibly one’s internal response to arguments that have been recognized but not fully accepted until some time has passed. In any event, something must happen that influences, in a reasonable way, one’s perception of the logical soundness of one argument or the other. That change in perception of the rational grounds for accepting a theory should then reasonably prompt a change in one’s willingness to accept theory. That is a rational process.
What one cannot rationally do – whether or not one does in fact make these changes in belief – is shift one’s allegiance between theories, one time or repeatedly, at whim or in response to no change in the rational basis for accepting them. To do so is not rational, precisely because it is not prompted by a rational re-evaluation of the factual and logical grounds for the theory. It’s not a question whether some people (like, some people named “Ross”) are capable of believing 6 impossible things before breakfast; clearly some people are so capable. But they are not rational in doing so. It is also not a question whether they “really believe” what they claim to believe, “really believe” they’re entitled to believe contradictory things simultaneously, or in fact “really do believe” contradictory things simultaneously. Clearly many people are capable of doing those things, too. But, again, none of them are rational. And, again, whether they are rational or not is not a subjective question. Such beliefs are not rational because they do not result from rational processes. Changes in one’s beliefs that do not result from changes in perception of the rational grounds for a claim are likewise not rational. Claiming you can believe one theory at 1:00pm and a contradictory theory at 3:00pm, to be rational, must imply that something happened between 1:00pm and 3:00pm that changed the rational grounds for accepting or rejecting either theory (and that you were sufficiently insightful to perceive and evaluate that new evidence, and then revise one’s understanding of a major scientific issue, in the space of two hours). Changing back at some later time implies a similar development prior to that change back. And so on for every change in position one claims to make as a rational act.
It’s not impossible that such changes can occur, or even that they can be evaluated and accepted rationally almost immediately, but that seems unlikely in most scientific situations. It seems vastly unlikely that such changes would be rationally justified on a daily or weekly basis for any current scientific controversy. And it’s simply false in the case of evolution – there has been no accumulation of new evidence, or even theoretical explanation, regarding the fact of evolution or its basic mechanisms that would have justified any shift away from the standard position (broadly described) for several lifetimes now. The field is certainly not in such flux that any rational and informed person should shift back and forth between evolution theory and creationism on a daily basis (or at all). And, aside from the lack of rational grounds for doing so, Ross, again, appears to claim he is entitled to do so without rational grounds, which he surely is not as a rational act. He may very well be psychologically capable of changing perspectives, but that does not speak highly of his psychology. And he is legally free to spout whatever nonsense he wants. But he cannot accurately claim to be behaving rationally in doing so, for reasons that have nothing to do with his personal beliefs or inclinations.
“that change, to be rational, should result from an encounter with new data or a better explanation of existing data, sufficiently compelling to outweigh one’s allegiance to the old theory”
And what if the observer finds the evidence for both cases equally compelling? Leaving Ross aside, for the moment. Perhaps you answer that here:
“it is probably more rational just to regard the issue as undecided until the balance tips definitively”
Why? Is this the same sense of “rational”? Could not it be argued that one can better persue a line of thought and investigation by adopting a temporary belief state and taking on the worldview? I use as examples simple beliefs, such as the existence of an external world, continuation of time and the usual skeptical hand basket as examples of how psychologically it is more useful (asuming in some cases the truth of these premises) to believe them in the face of lack of definitive, or even (in my opinion) convincing evidence. If I am willing to (temporarily and tentatively) jump to an assumption of validity on such simple beliefs, why not elsewhere as it serves the purpose of usefulness? I wonder if those of us for whom skepticism is real, and not just an intellectual game, take a different view here…recognizing the need to make “irrational” choices of belief?
“Such beliefs are not rational because they do not result from rational processes.”
Could you define rational beliefs without reference to “rational processes”? I wouldn’t normally ask anyone to define “rational” (heck, I’m a linguistic pragmatist and this one is way out there), but since you are relying so heavily on it I think it would help.
Actually, as something of an eliminitive materialist this belief state talk is giving me a bit of a headache. I think I really should probably bow out of this one. I’m afraid my faith in both human language and absolute progress of science are too weak to be a true participant in such discussions, and I see no real purpose to be gained in trying to convince others to abandon their faith in these niceties.
[metaphorical…I’m not logged in, so, yes, this is serious cheating on my effort to get off the whole blog scene. But in fairness, this is just continuing a conversation…]
I’ll leave the definition of rationality to Kevin.
As to materialism, I can point out that while some people would find this problematic, you can define a belief that x fairly neutrally as a disposition to act in accord with the truth of x. If I take an umbrella today, then I probably think it’s going to rain. If I *say* it’s going to rain, that’s also a behavior that suggests I believe it will rain.
For the rest of it, rational belief has to do with its evidentiary conditions, and for most philosophers, the outlines of that are fairly straightforward. I’ll let Kevin explain as much of that as he cares to.
As to logging in, hey, I’m just glad whenever you come back.
I, unfortunately, am among those for whom the definition of rational belief was not clear–a large set, at least in my time, though that may have changed.
Just to be overly picky in case anyone might misunderstand, while I work psychologically from something akin to the eliminative materialist “paradigm” (“world view” doesn’t work in this sentence), I am not actually a “materialist” in any traditional sense of that term and understand why some would prefer I simply say “eliminitivist”, though I do have reasons for not doing so. Just keeping the record straight since I have likely made negative comments about materialists somewhere out in the great void.
“Rationality” here takes on aspects both of conditions for ascription of belief and of practical reason. One must be rational in granting credence to particular beliefs or scientific theories, and doing so precludes, as it happens, granting credence to unfounded beliefs or to contradictory beliefs simultaneously. One must also conform one’s behavior to conditions in the world in rational ways, such that (among other things), one does not behave in keeping with facts or conditions that do not actually obtain. Clearly, the two constraints are mutually interdependent.
As to what it means to believe, or to act, “rationally”, I have only a loose sense of that as involving the application of fairly standard and uncontroversial rules of logic to propositions or facts encountered in the world. Which system of logic to use should not be too controversial in arguments over everyday subjects such as basic science; there is a large family of logics whose basic rules of reasoning are the same for most purposes (and whose divergence in abstruse contexts such as quantum phenomena usefully reflects the still-poorly-understood nature of those phenomena). Pranksters who claim to be operating under non-Aristotelian systems of logic or the like can easily be eliminated from the debate by virtue of the fact that their arguments lead to impossibilities when applied to simple situations in real life. (I do not think that a “true” logic can be identified by empirical test – but empirically non-useful ones can be eliminated.) As for facts and propositions, here again there is a broad enough agreement on non-controversial ones to serve as starting point for argumentation, and to which other accepted facts and propositions can be added if they pass the test of empirical grounding and logical compatibility with our existing set of beliefs. (I reiterate that Quine’s point – that it is possible to ratify any proposition by arbitrarily falsifying others, “if necessary, by pleading hallucination” – is logically true but not recommended as an empirical strategy.)
So I don’t think “rationality” is that much of a problem, or that technical difficulties in defining it precisely preclude us from behaving rationally in everyday contexts, or distinguishing those who do and do not. (You disagree? Fine. Abandon any attempt at rational reflection on your behavior for the next few days – make all your choices without any rational process – and see what happens. If you find that doesn’t work, then the conclusion must be that rationality does work – and that there is such a thing as rationality.) To be rational, to oversimplify it, is simply to think and act logically in response to conditions in your world. It requires, among other things, that you should have logical reasons for what you believe, and you can’t believe two mutually contradictory things at the same time. That, in turn, implies that if you do rationally believe a thing, it is because you do have logical reason for believing it, and if you rationally change your beliefs it is because something about the grounds for those beliefs has changed. It means as well that if you do hold two contradictory beliefs, you necessarily aren’t being rational.
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After Williamsburg’s Gentrification Began, Bushwick’s Was Inevitable
Source: Gothamist
Subject: Housing & Environmental Justice
As different as Brooklyn and Queens are in the public mind, the border between the two boroughs is barely noticed by most New Yorkers. The only major city border not marked by a waterway—both Brooklyn and Queens are, geographically and geologically, part of Long Island—it evolved organically starting in the seventeenth century, when the British crown first established Queens and Kings Counties as separate bureaucratic jurisdictions. At one point, the Kings County town of Bushwick and the Queens County town of Newtown engaged in a decades-long dispute over just where the border lay, until the issue was resolved by the designation of a small boulder dubbed Arbitration Rock as the boundary.
Bushwick’s western border, initially, was the East River, where the community known as Bushwick Shore grew up in the early 1800s. In 1840, the former Bushwick Shore seceded from its namesake parent and renamed itself the town of Williamsburgh, after Colonel Jonathan Williams, the Army Corps of Engineers chief whom a local developer had hired to survey the land for development. The new town’s independence didn’t last long: Fifteen years later, both Williamsburg (the “h” had been dropped in the intervening decade) and Bushwick were annexed by Brooklyn, then still an independent city.
From its early days, Williamsburg was a mishmash of a neighborhood. Tenements and other small apartment buildings shared streets with light industry; its defining feature for many years was the sickly sweet smell emanating from the Domino Sugar factory on the East River waterfront. By the middle of the 20th century, Williamsburg’s mostly German and Jewish population had given way to a melting pot of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Italians, and Hasidic Jews. Then, starting in the 1980s, the neighborhood began to draw a different kind of migrant: artists and musicians fleeing the high rents that were quickly making unaffordable the Lower East Side. The derelict factories and warehouses of Williamsburg may have been unsightly to some, but they offered dirt-cheap rents and the ability to blast music at all hours without worrying about waking the neighbors. By the mid-2000s, Kent Avenue along the waterfront was home to homegrown clubs like Death By Audio and Glasslands, and the heart of New York’s new music scene had relocated to Brooklyn.
As Williamsburg became a hip address, landlords began to notice, raising rents and tearing down old buildings to put up new ones. Rents soared and soon young college graduates seeking a place to lay their futons began turning their gaze to what was formerly known as the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, a square mile of warehouses, breweries, and factories on the Williamsburg-Bushwick border that had been gradually emptying out as light industry exited the city. A few landowners, seeing the housing boom underway immediately to the west in Williamsburg proper, began clearing out old buildings and offering them as “lofts” to young artists and musicians who cared more about space, cheap rent and easy access to Manhattan than about having any neighbors or local shopping.
“We didn’t know anybody who was living out here, and we didn’t know anything to do out here,” recalled Jesse Jarnow, a musician and journalist who after graduating from college in 2001 moved back to the Brooklyn that his parents had abandoned, settling on Bushwick in large part because of its easy accessibility to more known quantities like Williamsburg and Manhattan. “This was the home base from which we went to go do things. The idea was it was cheap and available and we could make noise. It was a way we could extend our adolescence, probably.” Shortly after he and several friends moved into a former factory building in the industrial park, they took the freight elevator down to the first floor. “It was as if the factory had been closed, and people had just said ‘go home,’” he recalled. “There was literally still food in the fridge and on some of the tables—it was actually a good sign that there weren’t rats in the building.”
With lots of empty—if not exactly finished—available space, young musicians frustrated with the difficult-to-break-into club scene began setting up recording studios and DIY performance spaces (“DIY” in this case being code for “not actually licensed by the city”), and often added living spaces for themselves as well. The owner-occupants of Shea Stadium—”not the original Shea Stadium, obviously,” noted Jarnow—installed bathrooms and other amenities, and lived upstairs from the club. Soon, the Williamsburg-Bushwick border had a burgeoning art scene of its own, with not just musicians but young activists and artists who saw the largely abandoned properties as a blank slate in which to create a new community. Huge graffiti murals began to appear on long-unused roll gates. “One day there was some dog poop and someone painted it gold,” recalled Jarnow. “That was one of my favorites.”
Because the industrial park had never been residential, the new loft dwellers weren’t directly displacing any existing residents with their new music spaces and shops. Soon enough, though, realtors seeking new frontiers noticed the success of the new neighborhood on the Bushwick border and began setting their sights farther east. Listings began to pop up for properties well into Bushwick, advertised as East Williamsburg (or even “Far East Williamsburg”) and touting their proximity by subway to Manhattan.
Among the earliest Williamsburg refugees to venture past the industrial park, across Flushing Avenue and into the vicinity of Bushwick proper, were the members of the experimental band Skeletons. Having been evicted from their warehouse building at 184 Kent Avenue on the Williamsburg waterfront in 2004, the band started looking on Craigslist for “raw, industrial live/work spaces that were along the L train,” as Skeletons founder Matt Mehlan later recalled. They ended up on Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood, just across the Queens border from Bushwick. (Prior to the blackout, the two neighborhoods had even shared a zip code, until Ridgewood residents petitioned the post office to be distinguished from Bushwick’s now-sullied 11237). In Ridgewood, the band founded Silent Barn, pouring sweat equity and sheetrock into an old warehouse to create a performance/residential/work space that soon housed both hip bands and a video game designers’ collective in the basement.
Taking the L train, which makes 12 stops across Williamsburg and the heart of Bushwick, and riding it until you arrived at the first affordable apartment listing became a common tale told by new young residents, most of whom were, unusually for Bushwick, white. “In 2000, we started getting hints of people from Williamsburg trickling into the community—a lot of young professionals, a lot of artists,” said Jose Lopez, an organizer with the community group Make the Road New York. It was “something completely foreign to community members in Bushwick,” said Lopez. Previously, he said, “people were scared to step into Bushwick.”
The migration was accelerated after the city moved to rezone Williamsburg in 2005, ostensibly to protect that neighborhood from developers who were aggressively plotting to erect buildings as tall as possible to cash in on its new popularity. The final Williamsburg zoning map limited high-rises to the largely industrial waterfront; developers promptly moved to take advantage of the new rules while simultaneously rushing to beat the clock on the old ones, erecting new condo towers on the waterfront, plus a swarm of hastily constructed apartment buildings wherever they could break ground inland before the new zoning went into effect. (One tower on North 7th Street, derisively nicknamed the “finger building” by neighbors, got in under the gun to rise 200 feet tall, more than triple the height of its neighbors; the resulting building offered apartments listing for anywhere from $640,000 for a one-bedroom to nearly $2 million for a three-bedroom.)
The new housing brought with it new residents willing to pay more for pricier amenities. It was the rezoning, in fact, that first drove Mehlan and his housemates to first move to Ridgewood and launch Silent Barn: after six months in a warehouse building on the Williamsburg waterfront, explained Mehlan, they had been kicked out of their cheap loft space, along with their neighbors, to prepare for its conversion to “authentic loft rentals.”
It was around this time that Bushwick first began to see not just new residents in old buildings, but new construction as well. For Lopez, this was brought home when 358 Grove Street went up on the next block over from Make the Road’s headquarters. A 13-story tower moated by parking lots, the building’s opening was advertised to prospective residents—or mocked; no one could be quite sure whether it was too dumb to be real or too dumb to be a joke—via a bizarre YouTube music video. In it, a blonde woman in sunglasses, identified as Daphne B, looked out over Bushwick from her rooftop perch and reminisced in song about her ostensible Manhattan past: “the memory of us/sitting in Washington Square on summer nights.” The video’s final shot showed Daphne skipping down the sidewalk, framed by a Puerto Rican flag and the tenements that the 358 Grove apartments looked down on. “These hopes, hopeless jokes all rest on you,” she sang. “In Bushwick, I hope, someday.”
To view the original article, click here.
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Matt Lazarus
Bay Area Guitarist Singer Songwriter
Considered to be one of the rising stars of the San Francisco music scene, Matt Lazarus continues to win new fans with his guitar playing. Combining rock, jazz, funk, and the blues with his own innovations, his sound and style is recognizable and current and is rooted in the sounds of yesterday. Believing that music allows the listener and performer to tap into the underlying spirit of creativity and beauty that runs through all things, Lazarus plays with soul.
Matt’s journey as a guitarist began with hearing Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, John McLaughlin, and Carlos Santana. Matt picked up a guitar at age 14 and never put it down again. He played and wrote songs and committed to music for his life. With his beloved ’78 Stratocaster, Matt traveled north to Humboldt State, where he received a B.A. in music and formed the rock group Joint Chiefs. They soon became Arcata legends and performed on the local scene for years. The more Lazarus played, the more influences – Grateful Dead, Jeff Beck, Neil Young, and David Lindley – changed and evolved his guitar style, which took center stage at the Joint Chiefs performances.
He started performing with Tom Gears, Greg Brown, and others and continued recording and performing with Motorhome, Greenlight, and as an original trio. Joining the Gluey Brothers in Santa Fe, New Mexico and touring across the country playing over 100 shows a year over a four-year span and appearing on The Penn and Teller Show allowed Matt to reach more people. Returning to California and settling in the East Bay, Matt formed the instrumental jazz fusion group Snake Plissken Quintet with Gears. Beginning as a trio they soon added saxophone player Michael Myers and keyboard player Adan Schwartz and recorded the album Live at Grant and Green in 2008. Later, Ari Margolis replaced Schwartz on keyboards before relocating to Denver, CO.
To showcase his talent, Matt has formed the Matt Lazarus Band, and he has continued to be a part of the San Francisco music scene as a member of Dredgetown, Mike Emerson Project, Mo’lassas, and Paige and the Rage.
Matt Lazarus music on Reverbnation
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mayo615
The harder I work, the luckier I get
Professional Me
Personal Me
Category Archive: Global politics
2020: Looking Ahead To Greater Uncertainty
I want to share my thoughts on what the new year may have in store as it applies to small startup companies, and entrepreneurs. This is the time of year to consider macroeconomic issues and your company’s potential exposure. Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff in November warned of global trade and recession fears among CEO’s.
January 2, 2020 China, Donald Trump, Economy, France, Global, Global politics, Globalization, International Relations, La French Tech, Strategic Inflection Points, United States, venture capital, World Wide Web
Does the U.S. have a case against Julian Assange?
UPDATE November 8, 2018: This mayo615 post from October 2016, discusses the legal complexities of a potential espionage […]
November 8, 2018 Anonymous, Big Ideas, cyber attacks, Espionage, Ethics, Global politics, Globalization, International Relations, Julian Assange, Wikileaks
Catherine Deneuve defends men’s ‘right’ to hit on women and warns of a new “puritanism” – BBC News
Legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve and over 100 other prominent French women have today written a poignant editorial […]
January 9, 2018 Communication, Ethics, France and My French Culture, gender issues, Global Culture, Global politics, Globalization, sexual harrassment
OECD Apparently Believes Global Tax Evasion Is A Legacy Issue: A Pigs Will Fly Moment
Amid another leak of documents revealing large-scale international tax avoidance, the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Monday that tax avoidance was fast becoming a thing of the past. “When we’re talking about the ‘Panama Papers’ or ‘Paradise Papers’we’re talking about a legacy that is fast disappearing,” Angel Gurria said. Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference in London, Gurria said governments were working hard to stop tax avoidance and evasion.
November 7, 2017 Banking and Investment, Big Ideas, Business Ethics, Corporate Culture, Corporate Fraud, Corporate governance, Economy, Global, Global politics, Globalization, International Business, International Relations, Investment, Tax havens
Trump’s radical new foreign policy portends much worse to come
As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out this week in the Washington Post and on CNN GPS, we now have a Trump foreign policy doctrine, and it is not reassuring for the World. Obviously heavily influenced by Bannon, who many had thought had been relegated to backseat status by McMaster, we have been fooled again. As Trump demonstrates his RealPolitik admiration for authoritarians like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, and Duterte, more sinister scenarios begin to crystallize. Trump’s speech justifying the withdrawal of the United States from the COP21 Paris Climate Change Agreement is a frightening exposition of this new Trump Doctrine. It is Trump thumbing his nose at the World. It is the United States against the World, led by a coterie of plutocrats and their money. The reality is that the evidence points to an ongoing seizure of executive power by Trump that destroys our Constitution in the name of our national security. The question is what we can do about it.
June 4, 2017 Big Ideas, Canada, Carbon, China, China, Clean tech, Climate Change Research, Economy, Environment and Lifestyle, Europe, Global, Global Climate Change, Global Culture, Global politics, Global Populism, Globalization, International Relations, Leadership, UBC, United States
UPDATE: This mayo615 post from October 2016, discusses the legal complexities of a potential espionage or conspiracy charge against Julian Assange by the United States. My reading that such a charge was likely and possibly imminent, is now fact. Ecuador’s newly elected government insistence that it will continue to provide Assange with diplomatic protection is becoming very thin. It is more likely that time and diplomatic pressure will force Ecuador to give up Assange and cause his extradition to the United States by Great Britain. The increased likelihood of moving against Assange has been heightened in my opinion, by two factors: Obama’s announcement on October 7th that the United States officially holds Russia responsible for the cyber theft of the Democratic National Committee documents released by Wikileaks, and Assange’s own statements of his intent to harm the United States, most recently in a video interview with Bill Maher, which are now coming back to haunt him.
April 21, 2017 Anonymous, Big Ideas, cyber attacks, Espionage, Ethics, Global politics, International Relations, Julian Assange, Wikileaks
Vancouver Real Estate Foreign Money Laundering: Nothing Has Changed
Despite all of the revelations of the sources and methods of the Vancouver housing bubble over the last two years, the situation remains largely unresolved. Ditto in Toronto. The foreign buyers’ tax has had only a limited effect and has problems. Fueled by dark foreign money housed in anonymous offshore shell companies like those disclosed in the Panama Papers, the money is managed by local financial manipulators at the behest of unidentifiable persons overseas. The foreign buyers continue to enjoy the weakest enforcement jurisdiction in Canada
April 1, 2017 Banking and Investment, British Columbia, Business Ethics, Canada, Economy, Global politics, Globalization, Housing market, International Business, Tax havens, Vancouver
Risk of Global Financial Contagion Is Growing
Wall Street is currently basking in a vigorous “Trump rally,” with the Dow rising more than 1000 points since the election. The rally is driven by analysts who are salivating over the future prospect of sweeping deregulation of many markets. But there is also chorus of concern from dozens of financial experts, that the global financial markets are “whistling in the graveyard,” acting in a classicly irrational manner. Experts cite a host of issues both financial and geopolitical, among them Trump’s intention to exit TPP, NAFTA, and the COP21 Climate Agreement. Combined with rising geopolitical tensions with China, North Korea, and Iran, a perfect storm of global uncertainty and instability is forming.
December 13, 2016 Alberta, Asia, Banking and Investment, Big Ideas, Brazil, British Columbia, Canada, China, China, Economy, Europe, Global, Global politics, Globalization, International Business, Investment, Monopoly, Sharing Economy, Silicon Valley, Strategy, Sustainability, United States, Venture Capital
How to write to the Electoral College
Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has evolved into a genuine and unprecedented national crisis. The Electoral College meets December 19th. Over the years, the Electoral College has deteriorated into a quant rubber-stamp of each state’s elector outcome. Some states have even passed laws that prohibit electors from changing their votes. However, this is patently un-Constitutional and not the intent of The Founders. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that the intent was for the Electoral College to be a check on exactly the situation we are facing. Meanwhile, a group of electors has demanded that the CIA share its evidence with the Electoral College.
December 12, 2016 Big Ideas, cyber attacks, Cyber Intelligence, Donald Trump, Ethics, Global politics, Global Populism, Globalization, Hacking, International Business, International Relations, Julian Assange, Personal Stuff, Russia, United States, Wikileaks
The Collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
The Trans-Pacific Partnership began modestly years ago with New Zealand and a few other southeast Asian countries and mushroomed into a Pacific regional plan as the cornerstone of Obama’s pivot towards Asia. It has attracted the ire of both left-wing progressives and now Donald Trump, who has announced his intention to cancel U.S. participation in TPP. The criticism has ranged from it being part of the New World Order conspiracy to loss of jobs, damage to the global environment, and a host of other issues. It is considered to be a crucial factor in the populist revolt against so-called “free” international trade, and the rise of protectionism. Regrettably, it will likely go ahead in some form, regardless, with China in the leadership role, not the United States. The probable consequences of this are grave
November 24, 2016 Asia, Big Ideas, Canada, China, China, Economy, Global, Global politics, Globalization, International Business, International Relations, New Zealand, United States
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MCQ is taking a break in 2020!
Posted on November 17, 2019 December 6, 2019 by M. C. QuestgendCategories:My Thoughts
The title says it all, but I wanted to share with you why I’ll be taking a break from writing next year. Many who know me know that writing has been a side career for me. It is a passion I hold dear, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I have been working in an industry that has taken me all over the world and I love what I do and it pays the bills and then some. It gives me the chance to write in the spare time I have. I love writing and making money at it has never really been the goal for me. I wanted to reach others like me who want to be entertained and informed. Stories… especially fictional stories can be filled with fantastic and unbelievable situations and some can pull at your heart and I think I have delivered on that and reached a number of “friends” (not just fans) who have enjoyed my stories, but I have a new opportunity that has put me in a challenging position.
My “bill paying” career has allowed me to meet some incredible people and one of them reached out to me recently about a new position that I just couldn’t pass up. It’s not a new career for me, but a leadership position that will help me shape a new company. The work involved is going to take me away from this keyboard for a while and put me in front of another one. I am excited about the opportunity and how it came about and can’t wait to get started in January, but this decision was not an easy one. I have been very happy in my current role with my current company and it has allowed me to expand the horizon in different areas of my professional life. It has also allowed me to expand other areas of my personal life as the traveling has given me the chance to step out more and meet some incredible people, but as it sometimes happens, the company pulled back on the reigns a little bit and my traveling decreased over the last couple of years. While my job was safe, I was spending a great deal of time working from home or our corporate office in California and the job was not as much of a challenge as it once was. This new position presents a challenge that I couldn’t wait to jump at. Bringing young talent into a new company that is run by some amazing people who have the same excitement.
What does this mean for MCQ? Well, the new job is going to take a lot of time away from me that I once had and my writing will continue but will take longer to see in print. This job also puts me in a familiar territory, but a territory I haven’t seen in almost 10 years. I have been able to work from home for a number of years giving me more of an opportunity to expand myself emotionally. Reporting to an office in the past forced me to put on a act while at work. Working from home allows me the freedom to do what I want and what I enjoy. Yes I am still in the closet and some may think it’s a prison of sorts, but it is the life I have chosen and I am very happy. One thing that will pick up is the travel and this presents a new opportunity to visit with friends I have met online. Discretion is of course the better part of valor… and all that cliche crap, but it will be nice to get out more and see the world again in a new capacity and I hope that if I come to your town, we can get together for a drink or two in a subtle and quiet way. I know that might be difficult, but it is worth a try.
So, this is not the end for MCQ… just a diversion until the dust settles. In the meantime, I hope you take the opportunity to check out my current books and short stories and I will have two new pieces coming out just in time for the holiday season. From Sissy to Sensational and a multipart book series called High Rise Trap.
From Sissy to Sensational is a story that took me in a different direction and had me question the future of my writing. This story is about Jamie, a young closet crossdresser, just trying to make it through life without being bullied or hurt. While Jaime continues to try and break the bonds of his confusing prison, his inexperience makes him weak and vulnerable to the strong and his confusion puts him in a difficult position when he is discovered, humiliated and eventually rejected by members of his family. Their disgust makes Jamie’s situation more humiliating as word is leaked to the university where Jamie is attending and he is faced with a difficult decision, but an opportunity to work off campus is presented to give Jamie a chance to continue his education and let the dust settle. In the process, Jamie learns more than he ever thought possible – about his employer, his family and friends and most of all himself. This story does include some explicit and graphic scenes, but not the typical scenes you have come to expect from me.
High Rise Trap is brand new and still being written and edited, but I hope to have it out around Thanksgiving. This multi-part series includes many different aspects of sexual exploration and excitement and is told by the main character Dean who is a young man who is not afraid of exploring. His college days saw him dating both women and men and even a transgender person or two. After college he moves to the city in hopes of building a nice career for himself but after six months, he feels somewhat isolated and his personal life is suffering because of it. After he meets someone online, he is invited to join an exclusive club that is very private and even more mysterious. The High Rise Club is not just a place to meet with other members, but includes a very interesting activity in the form of a game. The game is simple… get to the top level, but in order to get there you must try and avoid the distractions and find clues that will help you get through each level. The distractions are real but almost unbelievable as Dean becomes obsessed with the game and some of the members who play it along with him. So obsessed that he takes risks that could impact the game and his life. This book series is not just focused on one form of sexual exploration, but several (voyeurism, transgender romance, homosexual role play, sissification and feminization as well as a twist that will take the story into a gender transformation fantasy that is not only unexpected but takes Dean’s game in a completely different direction.
M. C. Questgend
mcquestgend.com
Want to know more about M.C.? Follow MCQ on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/mcquestgend).
TaggedAuthorsCareerclosetjobLGBTQmoneyprivacystabilitytransgenderWriting
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The Royal Titles Crash Course You've Been Waiting For
Where Do Royal Titles Come From?
21 May, 2018 by Sabienna Bowman
Pinkies up, everyone — it's time for a crash course in British titles. As any fan of the royal family knows, their titles aren't as simple as "prince" and "princess." No, they carry much longer official monikers like The Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke of York. For Americans, these designations can seem baffling. Where do royal titles come from anyway? Was Prince William always going to be the Duke of Cambridge? Who comes up with this stuff? The answers to all of these questions are at once complicated and weirdly simple.
The Peerage System
It comes down to Queen Elizabeth II to bestow titles on her family members, just as the task belonged to the reigning monarchs before her. She can also give titles to non-members of the royal family. The British have a system known as peerage, which is a guide to ranking members of the nobility and aristocracy. This system has been in place for hundreds of years, which means some titles were earned through service to the crown, doing good deeds, or simply being wealthy. Many of these titles later became inherited titles that were passed down through families.
However, when it comes to the royal family, the titles are fairly straightforward. For example, there is no title higher than "duke," aside from king, queen, or prince. That's why Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh, and not the king. If he were known as the king, his rank would be higher than his wife's. The title was given to him by King George VI after Prince Philip renounced his Greek and Danish titles in order to marry Elizabeth. Like all of the titles, Duke of Edinburgh is part of the British peerage system. Originally, the owner of a title would also rule the area attached to their name, but in modern times, it's an honorific that doesn't come with the right to control the land.
The wife of the Prince of Wales has the right to be called the Princess of Wales, but because the title is so closely associated with Princess Diana, Charles's second wife, Camilla, has never used it.
The title for the male heir apparent is a bit different. Beginning in the 13th century, the heir to throne became known as the Prince of Wales. No one has carried that title longer than Prince Charles. The wife of the Prince of Wales has the right to be called the Princess of Wales, but because the title is so closely associated with Princess Diana, Charles's second wife, Camilla, has never used it. As for Charles's brother, Andrew, he carries the title of the Duke of York because it has been granted to second born sons of English monarchs since the 15th century. Before he became King George VI, Prince Albert was known as the Duke of York until his brother's abdication led to him becoming the King of England.
Royals and Commoners
Next comes everyone's favorite royal couple, Prince William and Kate Middleton, better known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Queen Elizabeth gave her grandson the title of the Duke of Cambridge shortly before his wedding to Kate. Cambridge is one of the many dukedoms in England, but it's especially fitting for William, because as The Telegraph points out, the previous owner of the title also married a commoner for love. It's possible that's why Queen Elizabeth II chose that particular dukedom for her grandson.
Royal titles, like so many things concerning Britain's most powerful family, come down to a combination of tradition and history. Titles like the Prince of Wales were established long ago and continue to be used by the heir apparent, while others, like the Duke of Cambridge, are given at the Queen's discretion. Now that you finally know why Kate is actually the Duchess of Cambridge, go pour yourself a hot cup of tea and prepare to mesmerize your fellow Royal family devotees with your in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of all those British titles.
Image Source: Getty / Max Mumby
Queen Elizabeth IIThe British RoyalsPrince WilliamRoyals
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Dangal Star Zaira Wasim Quits Bollywood
date: June 30, 2019 | duration: 16:36
National Award-winning actor Zaira Wasim has decided to quit acting saying she is not happy with the line of work as it interfered with her faith. In a detailed post on her Facebook page, which she later shared across all social media platforms, the Kashmiri-born actor who hit the big league with her role in Aamir Khan's Dangal said she realised "though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here" in a reference to Bollywood. The 18-year-old actor said as she completed five years in the profession, she wanted to "confess that I am not truly happy with this identity i.e my line of work".
Dangal Actor
Zaira Wasim Quits Bollywood
Left Right And Centre
Bollywood Actor Zaira Wasim
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The Movie Blog
Recent Movies Everyone Should See pt.2
jortegad Uncategorized December 13, 2018 3 Minutes
A continuation of one of my older posts. Here are some more of the best movies that everyone should watch in recent memory.
Anything by director Edgar Wright should be experienced since he’s an incredible director working today. But this is by far his best film in my opinion. In does such an great job of weaving together the music with what’s going on in the story and has some incredible symbolism that takes a couple of viewings to catch them all. The acting is absolutely incredible and includes some of the best actors in the industry such as Jamie Foxx, John Hamm, and Ansel Elgort. As mentioned above, the music is a big part of the film whether it’s during an action sequence or in a calm setting with nothing going on. The driving scenes are visually pleasing and makes you believe that you can easily escape the police in a high speed chase through the city. The whole film has twists and turns and definitely needs all the love in the world.
Rise/Dawn/War of the Planet of the Apes
This is the series that sparked my interest in film and the whole entertainment industry. Andy Serkis is the king of CGI and it definitely shows in all three of these movies. Everything about this series is absolutely incredible in my opinion. The story is intriguing and heartbreaking, who knew we would care so much over a bunch of CGI apes but the whole world fell in love with Caesar and his clan. Only Andy Serkis can create revive a dead franchise and make it even better than before. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is arguably the weakest of the three since it is an origin story for the virus that caused the downfall of humankind and the origin of our main protagonist, Caesar. Matt Reeves came in to direct Dawn for the Plane of the Apes and made the series even better. He did something which a lot of people deem impossible, he made a sequel that was better than an already incredible film. And he did it again when he came back to direct War for the Planet of the Apes, which is unheard of. This is one of the few franchises that gets even better as the series went on. I think the series ended on a high note and there should not be a fourth film.
Anything by Phil Lord & Chris Miller
Here is another combo. Anything by directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller is absolute gold. Comedy is supposed to be the hardest genre to do but these guys are so talented and hilarious that it is no problem for them. They have made modern classics such as 21 and 22 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and The Lego Movie. They are one of the best comedic directors working right now and whenever their name’s are a part of the project, then you know its going to be a high quality film. They were recently set to direct this years Solo: A Star Wars Story, but after creative differences they decided to part ways with Disney. But their whole vibe and style is still present in the film. They leave such an incredible footprint on all the movies they work on whether they direct it or not. They both put so much care and effort to make films for the whole family while also pleasing to older audiences. Their more adult films like 21 and 22 Jump Street are some of the funniest films in recent history. Their next film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has already been crowned as the best animated feature of 2018, which is pretty incredible to say the least.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-han-solo-movie-firing-new-details-behind-phil-lord-chris-miller-exit-1016619
https://www.tvovermind.com/caesars-transition-planet-apes-trilogy/
https://www.slashfilm.com/baby-driver-volume-2/
Published by jortegad
View all posts by jortegad
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Tag: L
La Trilogie Marseillaise
The La Trilogie Marseillaise trilogy kicked off in 1931 with the first movie in the series Marius. In 1932 a second film was released staring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, Horst Buchholz, and in 1936 the series was completed with C
Les Ripoux
The Les Ripoux trilogy kicked off in 1982 with the first movie in the series Les Ripoux. In 1990 a second film was released staring Philippe Noiret, Thierry Lhermitte, Lorànt Deutsch, Chloé Flipo, and in 2003 the series was completed with Ripoux 3
Lyubit po-russki
The Lyubit po-russki trilogy kicked off in 1989 with the first movie in the series Lyubit po-russki. In 1996 a second film was released staring Galina Polskikh, Nikita Dzhigurda, Larisa Udovichenko, Yevgeni Matveyev, and in 1999 the series was completed with Lyubit po-russki 3: Gubernator
Lucky Stars (Primary Trilogy)
The Lucky Stars (Primary Trilogy) trilogy kicked off in 1983 with the first movie in the series Winners and Sinners. In 1985 a second film was released staring Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, Richard Ng, Eric Tsang, Kiu Wai Miu, and in 1986 the series was completed with Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars
Lucky Luke (live-action films)
The Lucky Luke (live-action films) trilogy kicked off in 1991 with the first movie in the series Lucky Luke. In 1991 a second film was released staring Ron Carey, Bo Greigh, Terence Hill, Nancy Morgan, and in 2004 the series was completed with Les Dalton
Love Hunter
The Love Hunter trilogy kicked off in 1972 with the first movie in the series Love Hunter. In 1972 a second film was released staring Milan Mumin, Jelena Stupljanin, Eleanor Hutchins, Brian Berrebbi, and in 1973 the series was completed with Love Hunter: Lust
The Legally Blonde trilogy kicked off in 2001 with the first movie in the series Legally Blonde. In 2003 a second film was released staring Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Regina King, Jennifer Coolidge, and in 2009 the series was completed with Legally Blondes
The Left Behind trilogy kicked off in 2000 with the first movie in the series Left Behind. In 2002 a second film was released staring Bob Carlisle, Russ Lee, Bill Corcoran, Kirk Cameron, and in 2005 the series was completed with Left Behind: World at War
The La Cage aux Folles trilogy kicked off in 1978 with the first movie in the series La Cage aux Folles. In 1980 a second film was released staring Michel Serrault, Ugo Tognazzi, Marcel Bozzuffi, Michel Galabru, and in 1985 the series was completed with La Cage aux Folles 3
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Home / Biography / David Mallett
admin August 15, 2018 Biography Leave a comment
David Mallett was focusing on your garden on his family’s plantation in rural Maine when he was motivated to run in to the house, have a pencil and pad, and write a fresh track. In the years since, “YOUR GARDEN Song” continues to be covered by performers which range from Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie to John Denver as well as the Muppets. Besides becoming translated and documented in an extended list of dialects, the song motivated a book, Inches by Inches, published by Harper Collins. Mallett, nevertheless, is not restricted to just one tune. An experienced songsmith, Mallett provides regularly captured the frosty winds and warm hearts of north New Britain and the easy lifestyle of rural America through his music. Not only is it highlighted on Mallett’s many albums, his music have been included in a growing set of performers, including Emmylou Harris, who documented Mallett’s “Crimson Crimson Rose,” and Kathy Mattea, who documented his “Summertime of My Dreams.” Mallett enticed interest along with his music at an extremely early age group. By enough time he was ten, he was executing throughout north New England within a country-folk music group that he distributed to his brother. However the group was most widely known for its fresh renditions of nation music by Buck Owens and Johnny Money, the music group also included a lot of folk music by Peter, Paul and Mary as well as the Kingston Trio in its repertoire. While participating in the School of Maine, Mallett became ingested by the music of Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, and additional contemporary vocalist/songwriters. Leaving the institution, he embarked on the career like a soloist. Mallett’s 1st break arrived in the middle-’70s when he fulfilled Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary. Stookey, who possessed a recording studio room in South Blue Hillsides, Me personally, became Mallett’s coach and created his 1st three albums. He was also instrumental in getting “YOUR GARDEN Song” towards the interest of Pete Seeger, who included it on his 1979 recording Circles and Months. In the first ’90s, Mallett remaining his home condition and moved briefly to Nashville hoping of becoming an effective songwriter. Through the six years that he resided in Tennessee’s Music Town, he co-wrote many tunes with nation music songwriter Hal Ketchum and documented a country-folk recording, This City, that was made by Jim Rooney in 1993. Mallett came back to north Maine in 1997, and a live recording, Parallel Lives, which reprised music from throughout Mallett’s profession, was released from the Soaring Seafood label that 12 months. A songbook of his compositions, The Tunes of David Mallett, was released by Cherry Street in 1997 aswell. Soaring Fish released the Ambition recording in 1999, and Mallett’s documenting output continued in to the 21st hundred years using the discharge of 2003’s Musician in Me, 2006’s Midnight in the Drinking water, 2007’s The Fable Accurate, and 2009’s Alright Today.
As a sibling duo who began in Toronto by booking a four-track and saving covers …
1951 in Sebec 1970s - 1990s Bill Morrissey Contemporary Folk Country Country-Folk David Mallett David Mallett - Alright Now David Mallett - For a Lifetime David Mallett - Inches & Miles David Mallett - Midnight on the Water David Mallett - Open Doors & Window David Mallett - Parallel Lives Earnest Folk Folk-Pop Gentle Gordon Lightfoot Greg Brown Hal Ketchum John Hall ME Noel Paul Stookey Reflective
The Sona Family
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You are here: Home Madviolet takes east coast sound around the globe
Madviolet takes east coast sound around the globe
Posted on March 4, 2011 by Ken Kelley |
Folk-rock duo Madviolet, comprised of native Nova Scotians Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern, is returning to the Maritimes for a run of approximately 14 shows as a part of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Café tour, including a date tonight in Moncton.
The duo’s international profile has been on the rise over the past five years, thanks to the incessant touring that they have been putting into countries including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany.
The group has also managed to complete five tours of Australia in the past four years.
“International touring has been the focus of our career since the very beginning,” MacIsaac says. “It has just been with No Fool For Trying that we have really focused upon Canada.
“It is not to say that the international territories are more important to us than Canada is, it just seems like it has been more lucrative and easier for us to get work in international territories.”
Both MacIsaac and MacEachern agree that no matter where in the world they happen to find themselves on stage, audiences don’t tend to vary all that much.
“We have found that once you get on stage, the audience is the same no matter what country you are in,” MacEachern says. “As long as you’ve got the songs, it doesn’t really matter if the audience is familiar with you or not.”
Both members of Madviolet enjoy the nomad lifestyle that touring gives them.
Dubbing themselves as “foodies”, they are fortunate to experience the cuisine of many different cultures and territories all over the world.
“We are able to recall towns and venues by the meals we had there,” MacEachern says.
When the conversation turns towards their upcoming performance as a part of the Vinyl Café tour, MacIsaac and MacEachern say that they are looking forward to the tour for a couple of different reasons.
“The fact that we are doing two to three shows in the same place is a really nice feature about the tour with Stuart (McLean) in addition to the fact that he has such a devoted following,” MacEachern says.
“The fact that we will be playing for an audience which will be comprised of almost all fans is a huge perk,” MacIsaac continues. “These shows are going to be a great opportunity for us to be in front of a lot of people at once.
“We are hoping that it will prove to be a good way to augment our fan base.”
Once the duo’s Vinyl Café tour wraps up, they will be putting the finishing touches on a new record. MacEachern says that they are hoping for a late summer or early fall release.
Producer Les Cooper (Jill Barber, Meaghan Smith) manned the boards for the upcoming Madviolet record after having struck up a great working relationship with No Fool For Trying.
“We really like the sound of our next record and have really enjoyed working with Les,” MacIsaac says. “He tends to push us when we are in the studio; we really need that challenge.”
Article published in March 4, 2011 edition of the Times & Transcript
Filed in: MusicNerd Features
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Video Premiere: CLUTCH's 'Hot Bottom Feeder'
Maryland rockers CLUTCH have released the official music video for “Hot Bottom Feeder”, the third single from their upcoming album, “Book Of Bad Decisions”. The clip, which shows frontman Neil Fallon whipping up a batch of tasty crab cakes for his bandmates, can be seen below.
“Book Of Bad Decisions”, will be released on September 7 via the group’s own Weathermaker Music label. The disc was completed at Sputnik Sound studio in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Vance Powell. The album cover was designed by renowned photographer Dan Winters.
Fallon previously explained that the “Book Of Bad Decisions” title came “from a song on the album, which, to me, it’s a pretty dark song. I was trying to write lyrics that were kind of like a Cormac McCarthy novel in about three and a half minutes,” he said. “But anyone in their life does bad decisions, and you can look back and see the repercussions of that spread out like a pebble thrown into a pool. We’ve made bad decisions; we’ve also made really good ones. Thankfully, all of us are surrounded by good people that ride our wheelhouse when we get a little tipsy.”
The album cover was designed by renowned photographer Dan Winters and can be seen below.
Speaking to “The Liquid Conversations” host Shawn SixX, Fallon stated about working with Powell: “He comes from the live background; he’s a touring engineer, front-of-house… he’s one of us. And so he came out on the road with us for three or four days, and his philosophy was just to put microphones in front of the cabinets, record the band all together in one room. It’s a very simple thing that’s kind of gotten lost in translation. And the album, listening to it now, I know it’s gonna be a really honest and accurate portrayal of how [the songs] are gonna sound on stage.”
Asked how “Book Of Bad Decisions” compares to 2015’s “Psychic Warfare”, Fallon said: “I think it’s more stripped down in some regards. There’s more of a wider range of tempos. There’s more songs; there’s 15 of ’em on there. At this point, I was so close to it for so long, I kind of can’t see the forest for the trees; I have to take a step back to understand what this record is, if that makes any sense.”
CLUTCH has announced a fall 2018 “Book Of Bad Decisions Tour” with support from SEVENDUST and TYLER BRYANT & THE SHAKEDOWN.
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AEROSMITH's JOE PERRY Releases Music Video For 'Aye, Aye, Aye'
Joe Perry — legendary guitarist, co-founding member, principal songwriter and co-producer of AEROSMITH — has just released the new video for “Aye, Aye, Aye”, the first single from his “Sweetzerland Manifesto” album. The clip can be viewed below.
Filmed earlier this year at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, California, the video (and track) features guest vocalist Robin Zander (CHEAP TRICK) along with an all-star band including guitarist Dean DeLeo and bassist Robert DeLeo (STONE TEMPLE PILOTS), Buck Johnson (keyboards/vocals, AEROSMITH) and David Goodstein (drums) The night also featured guest appearances by Slash, Johnny Depp, Gary Cherone (EXTREME, VAN HALEN) who handled vocals for the bulk of the show, with other guest vocalists Terry Reid, David Johansen and Chris Robinson.
“I had just finished writing my autobiography ‘Rocks’ with David Ritz so we’d been based in L.A.,” Joe says about how “Sweetzerland Manifesto” came together. “My friend and future bandmate Johnny [Depp] offered the use of his studio to record my new solo record. Later that week, I went to his studio to talk about the record and the possibly about it being an instrumental CD. Ironically, that night we recorded ‘Eve Of Destruction’ with Johnny on drums. Even though it was big hit in the sixties, I felt with everything going on in the world today that this song was more than relevant than ever especially since the Atomic Clock had just been moved even closer to midnight.”
“‘Aye, Aye, Aye’ was the only song written from the ground up for this CD,” Joe continues. “All the other tracks I had written before the vocalists heard them. Robin had a chorus that he sang to me over the phone and he said, ‘This sounds like a riff that could be right up your alley.’ When Robin walked into the studio singing ‘Aye, Aye, Aye,’ I said, ‘What is a good key for you?’ He said, ‘The Aye, Aye, Aye key.’ [Laughs] By that night, we had a demo of the song finished. Later I found out it was inspired by my love for my custom Gibson Billie guitar which has my wife’s picture on it (painted by John Douglas).
“The only requirement or pressure behind this album was all the songs had to be fun to play live,” Perry says. “And after having the chance to perform ‘Aye, Aye, Aye’ with Robin live, I have to say it hits the mark. Little did I know it would be one of my favorite songs on the CD.”
Released earlier this year on Perry‘s own Roman Records imprint (distributed worldwide by AMPED Distribution), “Sweetzerland Manifesto” marks Joe‘s sixth solo album and is comprised of 10 new tracks. They were all written or co-written by Joe (many with the album’s guest vocalists), except for a cover of “Eve Of Destruction”, with Joe on lead vocals and Depp on drums. The album features guest appearances from a long list of Joe‘s friends, colleagues and rock and roll icons. Highlights include three collaborations with David Johansen, who sings “I Wanna Roll”, “Haberdasher Blues” and “I’m Going Crazy”, plus as many co-writes with Terry Reid, whose lead vocals light up “I’ll Do Happiness” (with Zak Starkey on drums), “Sick & Tired” and “Won’t Let Me Go”.
Photo credit: Steve Thrasher / MSO
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Washer Repair San Pedro, CA 90733
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90001, 90002, 90003, 90004, 90005, 90006, 90007, 90008, 90009, 90010, 90011, 90012, 90013, 90014, 90015, 90016, 90017, 90018, 90019, 90020, 90021, 90022, 90023, 90024, 90025, 90026, 90027, 90028, 90029, 90030, 90031, 90032, 90033, 90034, 90035, 90036, 90037, 90038, 90039, 90040, 90041, 90042, 90043, 90044, 90045, 90046, 90047, 90048, 90049, 90050, 90051, 90052, 90053, 90054, 90055, 90056, 90057, 90058, 90059, 90060, 90061, 90062, 90063, 90064, 90065, 90066, 90067, 90068, 90069, 90070, 90071, 90072, 90073, 90074, 90075, 90076, 90077, 90078, 90079, 90080, 90081, 90082, 90083, 90084, 90086, 90087, 90088, 90089, 90090, 90091, 90093, 90094, 90095, 90096, 90099, 90189, 90201, 90202, 90209, 90210, 90211, 90212, 90213, 90220, 90221, 90222, 90223, 90224, 90230, 90231, 90232, 90233, 90239, 90240, 90241, 90242, 90245, 90247, 90248, 90249, 90250, 90251, 90254, 90255, 90260, 90261, 90262, 90263, 90264, 90265, 90266, 90267, 90270, 90272, 90274, 90275, 90277, 90278, 90280, 90290, 90291, 90292, 90293, 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95468, 95469, 95470, 95471, 95472, 95473, 95476, 95480, 95481, 95482, 95485, 95486, 95487, 95488, 95490, 95492, 95493, 95494, 95497, 95501, 95502, 95503, 95511, 95514, 95518, 95519, 95521, 95524, 95525, 95526, 95527, 95528, 95531, 95532, 95534, 95536, 95537, 95538, 95540, 95542, 95543, 95545, 95546, 95547, 95548, 95549, 95550, 95551, 95552, 95553, 95554, 95555, 95556, 95558, 95559, 95560, 95562, 95563, 95564, 95565, 95567, 95568, 95569, 95570, 95571, 95573, 95585, 95587, 95589, 95595, 95601, 95602, 95603, 95604, 95605, 95606, 95607, 95608, 95609, 95610, 95611, 95612, 95613, 95614, 95615, 95616, 95617, 95618, 95619, 95620, 95621, 95623, 95624, 95625, 95626, 95627, 95628, 95629, 95630, 95631, 95632, 95633, 95634, 95635, 95636, 95637, 95638, 95639, 95640, 95641, 95642, 95644, 95645, 95646, 95648, 95650, 95651, 95652, 95653, 95654, 95655, 95656, 95658, 95659, 95660, 95661, 95662, 95663, 95664, 95665, 95666, 95667, 95668, 95669, 95670, 95671, 95672, 95673, 95674, 95675, 95676, 95677, 95678, 95679, 95680, 95681, 95682, 95683, 95684, 95685, 95686, 95687, 95688, 95689, 95690, 95691, 95692, 95693, 95694, 95695, 95696, 95697, 95698, 95699, 95701, 95703, 95709, 95712, 95713, 95714, 95715, 95717, 95720, 95721, 95722, 95724, 95726, 95728, 95735, 95736, 95741, 95742, 95746, 95747, 95757, 95758, 95759, 95762, 95763, 95765, 95776, 95798, 95799, 95811, 95812, 95813, 95814, 95815, 95816, 95817, 95818, 95819, 95820, 95821, 95822, 95823, 95824, 95825, 95826, 95827, 95828, 95829, 95830, 95831, 95832, 95833, 95834, 95835, 95836, 95837, 95838, 95840, 95841, 95842, 95843, 95851, 95852, 95853, 95860, 95864, 95865, 95866, 95867, 95894, 95899, 95901, 95903, 95910, 95912, 95913, 95914, 95915, 95916, 95917, 95918, 95919, 95920, 95922, 95923, 95924, 95925, 95926, 95927, 95928, 95929, 95930, 95932, 95934, 95935, 95936, 95937, 95938, 95939, 95940, 95941, 95942, 95943, 95944, 95945, 95946, 95947, 95948, 95949, 95950, 95951, 95953, 95954, 95955, 95956, 95957, 95958, 95959, 95960, 95961, 95962, 95963, 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Harriet Tubman will be face of the $20
by Kevin Liptak, Antoine Sanfuentes and Jackie Wattles @CNNMoney April 21, 2016: 12:38 AM ET
Alexander Hamilton will stay on the front of the $10 bill, and Harriet Tubman will boot Andrew Jackson from the face of the $20.
After months of debate and controversy over how to incorporate a woman's portrait onto the $10 bill, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans to redesign the $10, $20 and $5 bill. All three denominations will have a female presence.
The updated bills will also be the first in U.S. history to include a tactile feature to aid the blind.
The $10 bill
The redesigned $10 bill is expected to enter circulation by 2020, in time for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. It will also mark the first time a woman's portrait has appeared on U.S. paper currency in more than a century.
A montage of women involved in the American suffrage movement -- Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul -- will be on the back of the $10.
The ten was the bill that started it all. When Lew first announced his plan to put a woman on a U.S. banknote in June last year, the ten was the next bill that anti-counterfeit officials had slated for redesign so that its security features could be updated.
American suffrage movement leaders Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul will be on the back of the $10.
Lew also announced Wednesday that Andrew Jackson will move from the front of the $20 to the back, making way for Tubman. She'll become the first black woman ever to front a U.S. banknote.
Tubman, who died in 1913 at the age of 91, escaped slavery in the south and eventually led hundreds of escaped slaves to freedom as a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad. After the slaves were freed, Tubman was a staunch supporter of a woman's right to vote.
"What she did to free people on an individual basis and what she did afterward," Lew said. "That's a legacy of what an individual can do in a democracy."
The $5 bill
Lew said the $5 bill will keep Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, on the front. The back of the bill will depict the Lincoln Memorial along with portraits of individuals involved in historic events that took place there.
That includes Marian Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt. The African-American opera singer and former first lady held a concert at the memorial in 1939 in an effort to move the civil rights movement forward. Martin Luther King Jr. will be added the back of the bill. The Lincoln Memorial was the site of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.
It's not clear when the $20 or $5 will enter circulation, though they're likely to be years behind the $10. Lew said Wednesday that he's instructed the Bureau of Engraving to "accelerate the process," but updating currency can take more than a decade.
Nearly a year ago, when Lew first announced his plans for redesigning the $10 bill, he said it would feature a woman alongside Hamilton.
He promised to spend time collecting public opinion, and it turned out that Americans had plenty to say about the matter. The question of which woman should receive this honor was hardly the only point of contention.
Some argued that a woman shouldn't have to share her bill with a man.
Others argued Hamilton shouldn't have to share top billing with anyone else. He was the nation's first treasury secretary, a key figure in the history of the American banking system, and Lew himself even called Hamilton a personal hero.
There has also been a chorus of voices calling to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20. His legacy includes the "Trail of Tears," in which he forcibly relocated Native Americans, leading to the death of thousands.
-- Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this story
CNNMoney (New York) First published April 20, 2016: 12:45 PM ET
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Brazil opens new $100 mln Antarctic base, built by China's CEIEC
BRASILIA — Brazil’s Vice President Hamilton Mourao on Wednesday inaugurated a new $100 million Antarctic base, built by Chinese company CEIEC to replace the Brazilian research station destroyed by fire almost seven years ago.
“Brazil is back in the Antarctic with great force,” Science and Technology Minister Marcos Pontes, Brazil’s only astronaut, wrote in a Twitter message from the Comandante Ferraz base on King George Island off the Antarctic peninsula.
Pontes said the new 4,500-square-meter (48,375-sq-foot)facility was bigger and safer, with 17 laboratories, a heliport, and other advances. Scientists will use the base to study microbiology, glaciers, and climate, among other areas.
Brazil’s Antarctic program began in 1982 when the Brazilian Navy acquired a Danish icebreaker and made its first expedition, rushing to become a party to the Antarctic Treaty that would decide the continent’s future.
But Brazil’s program was set back in 2012 when an explosion in the generator room caused a fire that killed two naval officers and destroyed 70% of the building.
Beijing-based China National Import & Export Corp (CEIEC), a state-owned company with defense contracts, was selected in 2015 to build the new station, which will be able to house some 65 people. (Writing by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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"Associations and institutions"
"Howard University"
"Richmond"
Segregation 1
Algebra Project 1
Civil Rights History Project 1
Cline, David P. 1
Hill, Oliver White 1
Houston, Charles Hamilton 1
Moses, Robert Parris 1
Virginia State University 1
Oliver W. Hill, Jr. Oral History Interview
Dr. Hill, Oliver White Jr., American, born 1949
Cline, David P. Ph. D., American, born 1969
Hill, Oliver White Sr., American, 1907 - 2007
Howard University, American, founded 1867
Marshall, Thurgood, American, 1908 - 1993
Houston, Charles Hamilton, American, 1895 - 1951
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., American, founded 1940
Virginia State University, American, founded 1882
Moses, Robert Parris, American, born 1935
Algebra Project, American, founded 1982
Petersburg, Virginia, United States, North and Central America
Roanoke, Virginia, United States, North and Central America
Richmond, Virginia, United States, North and Central America
The oral history consists of five digital files: 2011.174.102.1a, 2011.174.102.1b, 2011.174.102.1c, 2011.174.102.1d, and 2011.174.102.1e.
Oliver W. Hill, Jr., Ph.D. discusses his father, civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill. He explains his father's childhood and education in Roanoke, Virginia, how he ended up at Howard University in the 1920s, where he was in the same class as Justice Thurgood Marshall and studied law under Charles Hamilton Houston. In the 1930s Oliver Hill, Sr. reunited with both of them to work for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which was focused on challenging segregation laws. Hill, Jr. describes his own experience as a black student integrating a white school in Richmond, Virginia, attending Howard University, becoming a psychology professor at Virginia State University, and working with Bob Moses on the Algebra Project. He also discusses the education of African American children, school reform, and student testing.
2011.174.102.1a-e
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"Dukes County"
"Brown, Otha N."
Sororities 1
Dade County 1
Fulton County 1
369th Veterans Association 1
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated 1
Austin, Patti 1
Brown, George Leslie 1
Bunche, Ralph 1
Claiborne, Wanda Calvin 1
Democratic Party 1
Dixon, Gladys W. 1
Hall, Amos T. 1
National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees 1
Prince Hall Freemasonry, founded 1784
Dr. Bunche, Ralph, American, 1903 - 1971
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, American, founded 1957
National Black Political Convention, 1971 - 1972
Westbrook, Logan H., American
Wilkins, Roy, American, 1901 - 1981
Tufts University, American, founded 1852
Democratic Party, American, founded 1828
National Insurance Association, American, founded 1921
National Council of Negro Women, founded 1935
Republican Party, American, founded 1854
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, American, founded 1920
The Drifters, Inc., American, founded 1957
Austin, Patti, American, born 1950
Brown, George Leslie, American, 1926 - 2006
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, founded 1908
Brown, Otha N. Jr., American, 1931 - 2009
Dixon, Gladys W., American, born 1901
National United Church Ushers Association of America, Inc., American, founded 1919
National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees, American, founded 1913
369th Veterans Association, American
Hall, Amos T., American, 1896 - 1971
H x W x D: 11 × 8 7/16 × 3/8 in. (28 × 21.5 × 0.9 cm)
Miami, Dade County, Florida, United States, North and Central America
Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, United States, North and Central America
California, United States, North and Central America
Colorado, United States, North and Central America
Connecticut, United States, North and Central America
Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, North and Central America
Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, United States, North and Central America
A 1972 issue of Delegate magazine published by MelPat Associates. The cover of the magazine shows a collage of black and white photographic portraits of men and women printed against a blue tinted band on the top third, a white band in the middle, and a red tinted band on the bottom third. There is an image of four (4) buttons in the top left that read [DELEGATE / 1972]. The buttons are black, green, and/or red with white text. White text in a black box at the bottom right reads [PLEASE TURN TO PAGES DEVOTED TO YOUR CONVENTION].
The magazine’s content opens with an article titled “365 Days of Black Politics or the Awakening of a Black Giant,” about the Black Convention held in Gary, Indiana and the organization of the Black Assembly. There is also a masthead reading [DELEGATE 1972 / The Anthology and Voice of the Black Convention] and a table of contents.
The content continues with articles and profiles of African American business organizations, business leaders, community organizations, sororities, fraternities, doctors, dentists, actors, journalists and politicians. This includes the New York Giants, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Prince Hall Masons, Dr. Ralph Bunche, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Newspaper Publishers Association, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., National Black Political Convention, Logan H. Westbrook, Roy Wilkins, NAACP, Lambda Kappa Mu Sorority, Tufts University, the Democratic Party and the Republic Party, National Insurance Association, National Urban League, National Council of Negro Women, American Bridge Association, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, The Drifters, Inc., The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Patti Austin, National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, National Dental Association, George Leslie Brown, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Otha N. Brown, Jr., the Shriners, Gladys W. Dixon, Daughters of Isis, National Medical Association, National United Church Ushers Association of America, Shirley Chisholm, National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees, 369th Veterans Association, IBPOEW, and Amos T. Hall. There are also short profiles on African American politicians in New York, Miami, Detroit, California, Colorado, Connecticut, St. Louis and Atlanta as well as a feature on Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.
There are approximately 220 pages with black and white photographs and advertisements thorughout, as well as a few advertisements in color. The back cover of the magazine features a full page advertisement for Johnny Walker Red Label scotch.
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"Labor unions"
"Massachusetts"
"Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity"
Dukes County 1
Ali, Muhammad 1
Carroll, Diahann 1
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority 1
Freemasonry 1
Hoving, Thomas 1
King, Martin Luther 1
Mays, Willie Howard 1
Metropolitan Museum of Art 1
Motley, Constance Baker 1
National Dental Association 1
National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, Inc. 1
Schoener, Allon, American
Metropolitan Museum of Art, American, founded 1870
Hoving, Thomas, American, 1931 - 2009
Van Ellison, Candice, American
Motley, Constance Baker, American, 1921 - 2005
Sutton, Percy Ellis, American, 1920 - 2009
Mays, Willie Howard Jr., American, born 1931
Ali, Muhammad, American, 1942 - 2016
Dr. King, Martin Luther Jr., American, 1929 - 1968
Olive, Milton Lee III, American, 1946 - 1965
St. Jacques, Raymond, American, 1930 - 1990
Freemasonry, American, founded 1730
Price, Leontyne, American, born 1927
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, American, founded 1913
Carroll, Diahann, American, 1935 - 2019
H x W x D: 12 × 8 7/8 × 3/16 in. (30.5 × 22.5 × 0.5 cm)
A 1969 issue of Delegate magazine published by MelPat Associates. The cover of the magazine features yellow, blue, and pink ruffled round ribbon badges against a plain white background. Each badge has a different colored center with [DELEGATE] across it. Surrounding the badges is [1969] printed in pink and repeated three times. On the first page is an editorial note with text that begins:
[DELEGATE is published by MELPAT ASSOCIATES as a good well venture on behalf of its advertisers for the benefit of the organizations highlighted and for the information of our readers.
DELEGATE is a semi-in depth presentation of biographical material and pictures of persons and organizations in the Negro community who by their actions and capabilities are contributing to the advancement of the Negro communities in cities throughout the United States and by these contributions are advancing the cultural, economic, educational, fraternal and civic as well as civil rights for Americans during these challenging sixties.]
The magazine opens with a long feature article by Allan Schoener, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, “Harlem On My Mind,” with photographs from the exhibition on the history and people of Harlem. Throughout are articles and profiles of African American business leaders and organizations including the National Newspaper Publishers Association, National Insurance Association, American Bridge Association, National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, Federation of Masons of the World, National Medical Association, National Dental Association, National Dental Assistant’s Association, National Dental Hygienists Association, and the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc. There are also profiles and articles about community leaders, organizations, and events such as the NAACP 1969 National Convention, Morehouse College, including alumni Julian Bond and Martin Luther King, Jr., Prince Hall Lodge, National Urban League, the National Pan-Hellenic Corporation, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Lambda Kappa Mu Sorority, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, 70th Elks Grand Lodge Convention, Daughters of Isis and the Imperial Council of the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Also included are mentions of performers and artists Raymond St. Jacques, Leontyne Price, Richard Hunt, Diahanne Carroll and Sammy Davis, Jr. as well as an article on the community of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.
There are approximately 150 pages with black and white photographs and advertisements thorughout, as well as a few advertisements in color. The back cover of the magazine features a full page advertisement for Johnny Walker Red scotch.
Transcription Center Status
Transcribed by Digital Volunteers
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Mortgage crisis has Washington putting aside free-market ideology
noorslist Banking, Careers, Consumerism, Debt, Elections, History, Politics bailout, Chrysler, communism, corporatations, corporate fraud, corporate welfare, economic stimulus, fannie mae, fed speak, federal deficit, federal reserve, federal reserve system, financial rescue, freddie mac, free market fraud, free market hoax, free markets, government bailouts, Interest, interest based economy, interest rates, market intervention, marx, mortgage crisis, new world order, one world government, paulson, risky lending practices, savings and loan collapse, welfare, World Financial Crisis, zionist occupied government Leave a comment
By Nelson D. Schwartz, Sunday, September 7, 2008
Despite decades of free-market rhetoric from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Washington has a long history of providing financial help to the private sector when the economic or political risk of a corporate collapse appeared too high.
The effort to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the latest in a series of financial maneuvers by the government that stretch back to the rescue of the military contractor Lockheed Aircraft and the Penn Central Railroad under President Richard Nixon, the shoring up of Chrysler in the waning days of the Carter administration and the salvage of the U.S. savings and loan system in the late 1980s.
More recently, after airplanes were grounded because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress approved $15 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees to the faltering airlines.
Now, with the U.S. government preparing to save Fannie and Freddie only six months after the Federal Reserve Board orchestrated the rescue of Bear Stearns, it appears that the mortgage crisis has forced the government to once again shove ideology aside and get into the bailout business.
“If anybody thought we had a pure free-market financial system, they should think again,” said Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
The closest historical analogy to the Fannie-Freddie crisis is the rescue of the Farm Credit and savings and loan systems in the late 1980s, said Bert Ely, a banking consultant who has been a longtime critic of the mortgage finance companies.
The savings and loan bailout followed years of high interest rates and risky lending practices and ultimately cost taxpayers roughly $124 billion, with the banking industry kicking in another $30 billion, Ely said.
Even if the rescue of Fannie and Freddie ends up costing tens of billions of dollars, the savings and loan collapse is still likely to remain the costliest government bailout to date, said Lawrence White, a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
“The S.& L. debacle cost upwards of $100 billion, and the economy is more than twice the size today than it was in the late 1980s,” he said. “I don’t think this will turn out to be as serious as that, when over 2,000 banks and thrifts failed between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s.”
Most of those losses were caused by the shortfall between what the government paid depositors and what it received by selling the troubled real estate portfolios it acquired after taking over the failed thrifts.
In the Chrysler case, Carter and lawmakers in states with auto plants helped push through a package of $1.5 billion in loan guarantees for the troubled carmaker, while also demanding concessions from labor unions and lenders.
While Chrysler is remembered as a major bailout, White says it was minor compared with the savings and loan crisis or the current effort to shore up Fannie and Freddie.
The government did not have to give money directly to Chrysler, and it actually earned a profit on the deal because of stock warrants it received when the loan guarantees were provided. At the time, Chrysler had a work force of more than 100,000 people.
Still, Ely makes a distinction between the rescue of Fannie and Freddie and the thrifts versus the aid packages for Chrysler and other industrial companies. “They didn’t have a federal nexus,” he said. “They weren’t creatures of the federal government.”
This effort is also different from the others because of the potential fallout for the broader economy and especially the beleaguered housing sector if it does not succeed.
Unlike a particular auto company or even a major bank like Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, which was bailed out in 1984, “we depend on Fannie and Freddie for funding almost half of our mortgage market,” said Thomas Stanton, an expert on the two companies who also teaches at Johns Hopkins University.
“The government,” he added, “has many less degrees of freedom in dealing with these companies than in the earlier bailouts.”
Where American Tax Dollars are Spent?
noorslist Consumerism, Elections, Iraq, Media, Politics Agriculture, Alex Jones, american history, american tax, anti-poverty, ashcroft, Banking, budget, Bush, cheney, cnbc, commerce, Community Development, congress, Education, Energy, Energy & Science, Environment, federal deficit, federal spending, government, Health, health care, health care spendingEnvironment, Housing, infowars, interest rates, internal revenue service, International Affairs, irs, Law Enforcement, lobby, military budget, military spending, mortgage crisis, mortgages, national geographic, national priorities project, poverty, revenue, Science, senate, social housing, sub-prime mortgage, subprime, tax, tax dollars, tax spending, taxation, taxes, Transportation, US Army, us military, us spending, usa taxes, Usury, Zionist, zionist occupied government 1 Comment
Do Americans know where their Tax Dollars are being spent? If 63% cannot find Iraq on the world map, probably safe to assume they cannot accurately answer this question.
How the Pie is Divided;
1. 42.2% = Military Spending
The biggest chunk of your money — 42.2 cents of every income-tax dollar — goes to fund the military. Over half of it, or 28.7 cents, goes to pay for the current war and military, 10 cents goes to interest payments on past and present military debt and 3.5 cents is allocated for Veterans’ benefits.
2. 22.1% = Health
The second largest amount is spent on health care initiatives, including Medicare
3. 10.2% Interest on non-Military Debt
About ten cents of every federal tax dollar is spent on interest for non-military related national debt.
4. 8.7% = Anti-Poverty Programs
These funds go to a variety of programs to help the underprivileged. They include food assistance, supplemental income for those with low incomes and assistance for foster care and adoption programs.
5. 4.4% = Education, Training & Social Services
These funds go towards paying for elementary, secondary and higher education. Other beneficiaries include employment training centers.
6. 3.9% = Government & Law Enforcement
This area covers a variety of programs, including the cost of running the justice system, the cost of running the Social Security program and federal employee retirement and disability.
7. 3.3% = Housing & Community Development
This money is spent on housing assistance and community development programs
8. 2.6% = Environment, Energy & Science
Spending in this area goes to environmental programs, energy exploration and any programs that deal with general science, technology and space.
9. 1.5% = Transportation, Commerce & Agriculture
One-and-a-half cents of every federal income tax dollar is going towards agriculture and transportation spending
10. 1.0% = International Affairs
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The median income family in the United States paid $2,628 in federal income taxes in 2007. Here is how that money was spent:
Military $1,109
Health $581
Interest on Non-military Debt $269
Anti-Poverty Programs $228
Education, Training & Social Services $115
Government & Law Enforcement $102
Housing & Community Development $88
Environment, Energy & Science $69
Transportation, Commerce & Agriculture $40
International Affairs $27
Read the Full Report from the The National Priorities Project
CNBC Slideshow
We Own the World, but We are Broke?
noorslist Elections, History, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Media, Muslims, Palestine, Politics america is broke, american hegemony, arab, arab history, bernard fall, Bush, bush presidency, bush regime, chinese army, chinese economy, chinese power, comign war with iran, Correlli Barnett, cost of war in iraq, desert storm, george bush, gulf war, Harvard, hussein, Iran, Iraq War, iraqi occupation, Israel, kuwait, limbaugh, loss of power, media control, media manipulation, middle east, middle east history, nato, noam chomsky, npr, obama, pentagon, Politics, robert mcnamara, Russian Army, russians, saddam, saddam hussein, social security, U.S. intelligence, United Nations, us history, us military, vietnam, vietnam war, War, war crimes, world war III, Zionism, zionist occupied government 1 Comment
Noam Chomsky, ZNet, January 1, 2008
You all know, of course, there was an election — what is called “an election” in the United States — last November. There was really one issue in the election, what to do about U.S. forces in Iraq and there was, by U.S. standards, an overwhelming vote calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces on a firm timetable.
As few people know, a couple of months earlier there were extensive polls in Iraq, U.S.-run polls, with interesting results. They were not secret here. If you really looked you could find references to them, so it’s not that they were concealed. This poll found that two-thirds of the people in Baghdad wanted the U.S. troops out immediately; the rest of the country — a large majority — wanted a firm timetable for withdrawal, most of them within a year or less.
The figures are higher for Arab Iraq in the areas where troops were actually deployed. A very large majority felt that the presence of U.S. forces increased the level of violence and a remarkable 60 percent for all of Iraq, meaning higher in the areas where the troops are deployed, felt that U.S. forces were legitimate targets of attack. So there was a considerable consensus between Iraqis and Americans on what should be done in Iraq, namely troops should be withdrawn either immediately or with a firm timetable.
Well, the reaction in the post-election U.S. government to that consensus was to violate public opinion and increase the troop presence by maybe 30,000 to 50,000. Predictably, there was a pretext announced. It was pretty obvious what it was going to be. “There is outside interference in Iraq, which we have to defend the Iraqis against. The Iranians are interfering in Iraq.” Then came the alleged evidence about finding IEDs, roadside bombs with Iranian markings, as well as Iranian forces in Iraq. “What can we do? We have to escalate to defend Iraq from the outside intervention.”
Then came the “debate.” We are a free and open society, after all, so we have “lively” debates. On the one side were the hawks who said, “The Iranians are interfering, we have to bomb them.” On the other side were the doves who said, “We cannot be sure the evidence is correct, maybe you misread the serial numbers or maybe it is just the revolutionary guards and not the government.”
So we had the usual kind of debate going on, which illustrates a very important and pervasive distinction between several types of propaganda systems. To take the ideal types, exaggerating a little: totalitarian states’ propaganda is that you better accept it, or else. And “or else” can be of various consequences, depending on the nature of the state. People can actually believe whatever they want as long as they obey. Democratic societies use a different method: they don’t articulate the party line. That’s a mistake. What they do is presuppose it, then encourage vigorous debate within the framework of the party line. This serves two purposes. For one thing it gives the impression of a free and open society because, after all, we have lively debate. It also instills a propaganda line that becomes something you presuppose, like the air you breathe.
That was the case here. This is a classic illustration. The whole debate about the Iranian “interference” in Iraq makes sense only on one assumption, namely, that “we own the world.” If we own the world, then the only question that can arise is that someone else is interfering in a country we have invaded and occupied.
So if you look over the debate that took place and is still taking place about Iranian interference, no one points out this is insane. How can Iran be interfering in a country that we invaded and occupied? It’s only appropriate on the presupposition that we own the world. Once you have that established in your head, the discussion is perfectly sensible.
You read a lot of comparisons now about Vietnam and Iraq. For the most part they are totally incomparable; the nature and purpose of the war, almost everything is totally different except in one respect: how they are perceived in the United States. In both cases there is what is now sometimes called the “Q” word, quagmire. Is it a quagmire? In Vietnam it is now recognized that it was a quagmire. There is a debate of whether Iraq, too, is a quagmire. In other words, is it costing us too much? That is the question you can debate.
So in the case of Vietnam, there was a debate. Not at the beginning — in fact, there was so little discussion in the beginning that nobody even remembers when the war began — 1962, if you’re interested. That’s when the U.S. attacked Vietnam. But there was no discussion, no debate, nothing.
By the mid-1960s, mainstream debate began. And it was the usual range of opinions between the hawks and the doves. The hawks said if we send more troops, we can win. The doves, well, Arthur Schlesinger, famous historian, Kennedy’s advisor, in his book in 1966 said that we all pray that the hawks will be right and that the current escalation of troops, which by then was approaching half a million, will work and bring us victory. If it does, we will all be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government for winning victory — in a land that we’re reducing to ruin and wreck.
You can translate that word by word to the doves today. We all pray that the surge will work. If it does, contrary to our expectations, we will be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the Bush administration in a country, which, if we’re honest, is a total ruin, one of the worst disasters in military history for the population.
If you get way to the left end of mainstream discussion, you get somebody like Anthony Lewis who, at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, wrote in retrospect that the war began with benign intensions to do good; that is true by definition, because it’s us, after all. So it began with benign intentions, but by 1969, he said, it was clear that the war was a mistake. For us to win a victory would be too costly — for us — so it was a mistake and we should withdraw. That was the most extreme criticism.
Very much like today. We could withdraw from Vietnam because the U.S. had already essentially obtained its objective by then. Iraq we can’t because we haven’t obtained our objectives.
And for those of you who are old enough to remember — or have read about it — you will note that the peace movement pretty much bought that line. Just like the mainstream discussion, the opposition of the war, including the peace movement, was mostly focused on the bombing of the North. When the U.S. started bombing the North regularly in February 1965, it also escalated the bombing of the South to triple the scale — and the South had already been attacked for three years by then. A couple of hundred thousand South Vietnamese were killed and thousands, if not tens of the thousands, had been driven into concentration camps. The U.S. had been carrying out chemical warfare to destroy food crops and ground cover. By 1965 South Vietnam was already a total wreck.
Bombing the South was costless for the United States because the South had no defense. Bombing the North was costly — you bomb the North, you bomb the harbor, you might hit Russian ships, which begins to become dangerous. You’re bombing an internal Chinese railroad — the Chinese railroads from southeast to southwest China happen to go through North Vietnam — who knows what they might do.
In fact, the Chinese were accused, correctly, of sending Chinese forces into Vietnam, namely to rebuild the railroad that we were bombing. So that was “interference” with our divine right to bomb North Vietnam. So most of the focus was on the bombing of the North. The peace movement slogan, “Stop the bombing” meant the bombing of the North.
In 1967 the leading specialist on Vietnam, Bernard Fall, a military historian and the only specialist on Vietnam respected by the U.S. government — who was a hawk, incidentally, but who cared about the Vietnamese — wrote that it’s a question of whether Vietnam will survive as a cultural and historical entity under the most severe bombing that has ever been applied to a country this size. He was talking about the South. He kept emphasizing it was the South that was being attacked. But that didn’t matter because it was costless, therefore it’s fine to continue. That is the range of debate, which only makes sense on the assumption that we own the world.
If you read, say, the Pentagon Papers, it turns out there was extensive planning about the bombing of the North — very detailed, meticulous planning on just how far it can go, what happens if we go a little too far, and so on. There is no discussion at all about the bombing of the South, virtually none. Just an occasional announcement, okay, we will triple the bombing, or something like that.
If you read Robert McNamara’s memoirs of the war — by that time he was considered a leading dove — he reviews the meticulous planning about the bombing of the North, but does not even mention his decision to sharply escalate the bombing of the South at the same time that the bombing of the North was begun.
I should say, incidentally, that with regard to Vietnam what I have been discussing is articulate opinion, including the leading part of the peace movement. There is also public opinion, which it turns out is radically different, and that is of some significance. By 1969 around 70 percent of the public felt that the war was not a mistake, but that it was fundamentally wrong and immoral. That was the wording of the polls and that figure remains fairly constant up until the most recent polls just a few years ago. The figures are pretty remarkable because people who say that in a poll almost certainly think, I must be the only person in the world that thinks this. They certainly did not read it anywhere, they did not hear it anywhere. But that was popular opinion.
The same is true with regard to many other issues. But for articulate opinion it’s pretty much the way I’ve described — largely vigorous debate between the hawks and the doves, all on the unexpressed assumption that we own the world. So the only thing that matters is how much is it costing us, or maybe for some more humane types, are we harming too many of them?
Getting back to the election, there was a lot of disappointment among anti-war people — the majority of the population — that Congress did not pass any withdrawal legislation. There was a Democratic resolution that was vetoed, but if you look at the resolution closely it was not a withdrawal resolution. There was a good analysis of it by General Kevin Ryan, who was a fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard. He went through it and he said it really should be called a re-missioning proposal. It leaves about the same number of American troops, but they have a slightly different mission.
He said, first of all it allows for a national security exception. If the president says there is a national security issue, he can do whatever he wants — end of resolution. The second gap is it allows for anti-terrorist activities. Okay, that is whatever you like. Third, it allows for training Iraqi forces. Again, anything you like.
Next it says troops have to remain for protection of U.S. forces and facilities. What are U.S. forces? Well, U.S. forces are those embedded in Iraqi armed units where 60 percent of their fellow soldiers think that they — U.S. troops, that is — are legitimate targets of attack. Incidentally, those figures keep going up, so they are probably higher by now. Well, okay, that is plenty of force protection. What facilities need protection was not explained in the Democratic resolution, but facilities include what is called “the embassy.” The U.S. embassy in Iraq is nothing like any embassy that has ever existed in history. It’s a city inside the green zone, the protected region of Iraq, that the U.S. runs. It’s got everything from missiles to McDonalds, anything you want. They didn’t build that huge facility because they intend to leave.
That is one facility, but there are others. There are “semi-permanent military bases,” which are being built around the country. “Semi-permanent” means permanent, as long as we want.
General Ryan omitted a lot of things. He omitted the fact that the U.S. is maintaining control of logistics and logistics is the core of a modern Army. Right now about 80 percent of the supply is coming in though the south, from Kuwait, and it’s going through guerilla territory, easily subject to attack, which means you have to have plenty of troops to maintain that supply line. Plus, of course, it keeps control over the Iraqi Army.
The Democratic resolution excludes the Air Force. The Air Force does whatever it wants. It is bombing pretty regularly and it can bomb more intensively. The resolution also excludes mercenaries, which is no small number — sources such as the Wall Street Journal estimate the number of mercenaries at about 130,000, approximately the same as the number of troops, which makes some sense. The traditional way to fight a colonial war is with mercenaries, not with your own soldiers — that is the French Foreign Legion, the British Ghurkas, or the Hessians in the Revolutionary War. That is part of the main reason the draft was dropped — so you get professional soldiers, not people you pick off the streets.
So, yes, it is re-missioning, but the resolution was vetoed because it was too strong, so we don’t even have that. And, yes, that did disappoint a lot of people. However, it would be too strong to say that no high official in Washington called for immediate withdrawal. There were some. The strongest one I know of — when asked what is the solution to the problem in Iraq — said it’s quite obvious, “Withdraw all foreign forces and withdraw all foreign arms.” That official was Condoleeza Rice and she was not referring to U.S. forces, she was referring to Iranian forces and Iranian arms. And that makes sense, too, on the assumption that we own the world because, since we own the world U.S. forces cannot be foreign forces anywhere. So if we invade Iraq or Canada, say, we are the indigenous forces. It’s the Iranians that are foreign forces.
I waited for a while to see if anyone, at least in the press or journals, would point out that there was something funny about this. I could not find a word. I think everyone regarded that as a perfectly sensible comment. But I could not see a word from anyone who said, wait a second, there are foreign forces there, 150,000 American troops, plenty of American arms.
So it is reasonable that when British sailors were captured in the Gulf by Iranian forces, there was debate, “Were they in Iranian borders or in Iraqi borders? Actually there is no answer to this because there is no territorial boundary, and that was pointed out. It was taken for granted that if the British sailors were in Iraqi waters, then Iran was guilty of a crime by intervening in foreign territory. But Britain is not guilty of a crime by being in Iraqi territory, because Britain is a U.S. client state, and we own the world, so they are there by right.
What about the possible next war, Iran? There have been very credible threats by the U.S. and Israel — essentially a U.S. client — to attack Iran. There happens to be something called the UN Charter which says that — in Article 2 — the threat or use of force in international affairs is a crime. “Threat or use of force.”
Does anybody care? No, because we’re an outlaw state by definition, or to be more precise, our threats and use of force are not foreign, they’re indigenous because we own the world. Therefore, it’s fine. So there are threats to bomb Iran — maybe we will and maybe we won’t. That is the debate that goes on. Is it legitimate if we decide to do it? People might argue it’s a mistake. But does anyone say it would be illegitimate? For example, the Democrats in Congress refuse to put in an amendment that would require the Executive to inform Congress if it intends to bomb Iran — to consult, inform. Even that was not accepted.
The whole world is aghast at this possibility. It would be monstrous. A leading British military historian, Correlli Barnett, wrote recently that if the U.S. does attack, or Israel does attack, it would be World War III. The attack on Iraq has been horrendous enough. Apart from devastating Iraq, the UN High Commission on Refugees reviewed the number of displaced people — they estimate 4.2 million, over 2 million fled the country, another 2 million fleeing within the country. That is in addition to the numbers killed, which if you extrapolate from the last studies, are probably approaching a million.
It was anticipated by U.S. intelligence and other intelligence agencies and independent experts that an attack on Iraq would probably increase the threat of terror and nuclear proliferation. But that went way beyond what anyone expected. Well known terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimated — using mostly government statistics — that what they call “the Iraq effect” increased terror by a factor of seven, and that is pretty serious. And that gives you an indication of the ranking of protection of the population in the priority list of leaders. It’s very low.
So what would the Iran effect be? Well, that is incalculable. It could be World War III. Very likely a massive increase in terror, who knows what else. Even in the states right around Iraq, which don’t like Iran — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — even there the large majority would prefer to see a nuclear armed Iran to any U.S. military action, and they are right, military action could be devastating. It doesn’t mean we won’t do it. There is very little discussion here of the illegitimacy of doing it, again on the assumption that anything we do is legitimate, it just might cost too much.
Is there a possible solution to the U.S./Iran crisis? Well, there are some plausible solutions. One possibility would be an agreement that allows Iran to have nuclear energy, like every signer of the non-proliferation treaty, but not to have nuclear weapons. In addition, it would call for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. That would include Iran, Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and any U.S. or British forces deployed in the region. A third element of a solution would be for the United States and other nuclear states to obey their legal obligation, by unanimous agreement of the World Court, to make good-faith moves to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.
Is this feasible? Well, it’s feasible on one assumption, that the United States and Iran become functioning democratic societies, because what I have just quoted happens to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the populations in Iran and the United States. On everything that I mentioned there is an overwhelming majority. So, yes, there would be a very feasible solution if these two countries were functioning democratic societies, meaning societies in which public opinion has some kind of effect on policy. The problem in the United States is the inability of organizers to do something in a population that overwhelmingly agrees with them and to make that current policy. Of course, it can be done. Peasants in Bolivia can do it, we can obviously do it here.
Can we do anything to make Iran a more democratic society? Not directly, but indirectly we can. We can pay attention to the dissidents and the reformists in Iran who are struggling courageously to turn Iran into a more democratic society. And we know exactly what they are saying, they are very outspoken about it. They are pleading with the United States to withdraw the threats against Iran. The more we threaten Iran, the more we give a gift to the reactionary, religious fanatics in the government. You make threats, you strengthen them. That is exactly what is happening. The threats have lead to repression, predictably.
Now the Americans claim they are outraged by the repression, which we should protest, but we should recognize that the repression is the direct and predictable consequence of the actions that the U.S. government is taking. So if you take actions, and then they have predictable consequences, condemning the consequences is total hypocrisy.
Incidentally, in the case of Cuba about two-thirds of Americans think we ought to end the embargo and all threats and enter into diplomatic relations. And that has been true ever since polls have been taken — for about 30 years. The figure varies, but it’s roughly there. Zero effect on policy, in Iran, Cuba, and elsewhere.
So there is a problem and that problem is that the United States is just not a functioning democracy. Public opinion does not matter and among articulate and elite opinion that is a principle — it shouldn’t matter. The only principle that matters is we own the world and the rest of you shut up, you know, whether you’re abroad or at home.
So, yes, there is a potential solution to the very dangerous problem, it’s essentially the same solution: do something to turn our own country into a functioning democracy. But that is in radical opposition to the fundamental presupposition of all elite discussions, mainly that we own the world and that these questions don’t arise and the public should have no opinion on foreign policy, or any policy.
Once, when I was driving to work, I was listening to NPR. NPR is supposed to be the kind of extreme radical end of the spectrum. I read a statement somewhere, I don’t know if it’s true, but it was a quote from Obama, who is the hope of the liberal doves, in which he allegedly said that the spectrum of discussion in the United States extends between two crazy extremes, Rush Limbaugh and NPR. The truth, he said, is in the middle and that is where he is going to be, in the middle, between the crazies.
NPR then had a discussion — it was like being at the Harvard faculty club — serious people, educated, no grammatical errors, who know what they’re talking about, usually polite. The discussion was about the so-called missile defense system that the U.S. is trying to place in Czechoslovakia and Poland — and the Russian reaction. The main issue was, “What is going on with the Russians? Why are they acting so hostile and irrational? Are they trying to start a new Cold War? There is something wrong with those guys. Can we calm them down and make them less paranoid?”
The main specialist they called in, I think from the Pentagon or somewhere, pointed out, accurately, that a missile defense system is essentially a first-strike weapon. That is well known by strategic analysts on all sides. If you think about it for a minute, it’s obvious why. A missile defense system is never going to stop a first strike, but it could, in principle, if it ever worked, stop a retaliatory strike. If you attack some country with a first strike, and practically wipe it out, if you have a missile defense system, and prevent them from retaliating, then you would be protected, or partially protected. If a country has a functioning missile defense system it will have more options for carrying out a first strike. Okay, obvious, and not a secret. It’s known to every strategic analyst. I can explain it to my grandchildren in two minutes and they understand it.
So on NPR it is agreed that a missile defense system is a first-strike weapon. But then comes the second part of the discussion. Well, say the pundits, the Russians should not be worried about this. For one thing because it’s not enough of a system to stop their retaliation, so therefore it’s not yet a first-strike weapon against them. Then they said it is kind of irrelevant anyway because it is directed against Iran, not against Russia.
Okay, that was the end of the discussion. So, point one, missile defense is a first-strike weapon; second, it’s directed against Iran. Now, you can carry out a small exercise in logic. Does anything follow from those two assumptions? Yes, what follows is it’s a first-strike weapon against Iran. Since the U.S. owns the world what could be wrong with having a first-strike weapon against Iran. So the conclusion is not mentioned. It is not necessary. It follows from the fact that we own the world.
Maybe a year ago or so, Germany sold advanced submarines to Israel, which were equipped to carry missiles with nuclear weapons. Why does Israel need submarines with nuclear armed missiles? Well, there is only one imaginable reason and everyone in Germany with a brain must have understood that — certainly their military system does — it’s a first-strike weapon against Iran. Israel can use German subs to illustrate to Iranians that if they respond to an Israeli attack they will be vaporized.
The fundamental premises of Western imperialism are extremely deep. The West owns the world and now the U.S. runs the West, so, of course, they go along. The fact that they are providing a first-strike weapon for attacking Iran probably, I’m guessing now, raised no comment because why should it?
You can forget about history, it does not matter, it’s kind of “old fashioned,” boring stuff we don’t need to know about. But most countries pay attention to history. So, for example, for the United States there is no discussion of the history of U.S./Iranian relations. Well, for the U.S. there is only one event in Iranian history — in 1979 Iranians overthrew the tyrant that the U.S. was backing and took some hostages for over a year. That happened and they had to be punished for that.
But for Iranians their history is that for over 50 years, literally without a break, the U.S. has been torturing Iranians. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew the parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant, the Shah, and kept supporting him while he compiled one of the worst human rights records in the world — torture, assassination, anything you like. In fact, President Carter, when he visited Iran in December 1978, praised the Shah because of the love shown to him by his people, and so on and so forth, which probably accelerated the overthrow. Of course, Iranians have this odd way of remembering what happened to them and who was behind it. When the Shah was overthrown, the Carter administration immediately tried to instigate a military coup by sending arms to Iran through Israel to try to support military force to overthrow the government. We immediately turned to supporting Iraq, that is Saddam Hussein, and his invasion of Iran. Saddam was executed for crimes he committed in 1982, by his standards not very serious crimes — complicity in killing 150 people. Well, there was something missing in that account — 1982 is a very important year in U.S./Iraqi relations. That is the year in which Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism so that the U.S. could start supplying Iraq with weapons for its invasion of Iran, including the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, chemical and nuclear weapons. That is 1982. A year later Donald Rumsfeld was sent to firm up the deal. Well, Iranians may very well remember that this led to a war in which hundreds of thousands of them were slaughtered with U.S. aid going to Iraq. They may well remember that the year after the war was over, in 1989, the U.S. government invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to come to the United States for advanced training in developing nuclear weapons.
What about the Russians? They have a history too. One part of the history is that in the last century Russia was invaded and practically destroyed three times through Eastern Europe. You can look back and ask, when was the last time that the U.S. was invaded and practically destroyed through Canada or Mexico? That doesn’t happen. We crush others and we are always safe. But the Russians don’t have that luxury. Now, in 1990 a remarkable event took place. I was kind of shocked, frankly. Gorbachev agreed to let Germany be unified, meaning join the West and be militarized within a hostile military alliance. This is Germany, which twice in that century practically destroyed Russia. That’s a pretty remarkable agreement.
There was a quid pro quo. Then-president George Bush I agreed that NATO would not expand to the East. The Russians also demanded, but did not receive, an agreement for a nuclear-free zone from the Artic to the Baltic, which would give them a little protection from nuclear attack. That was the agreement in 1990. Then Bill Clinton came into office, the so-called liberal. One of the first things he did was to rescind the agreement, unilaterally, and expand NATO to the East.
For the Russians that’s pretty serious, if you remember the history. They lost 25 million people in the last World War and over 3 million in World War I. But since the U.S. owns the world, if we want to threaten Russia, that is fine. It is all for freedom and justice, after all, and if they make unpleasant noises about it we wonder why they are so paranoid. Why is Putin screaming as if we’re somehow threatening them, since we can’t be threatening anyone, owning the world.
One of the other big issues on the front pages now is Chinese “aggressiveness.” There is a lot of concern about the fact that the Chinese are building up their missile forces. Is China planning to conquer the world? Big debates about it. Well, what is really going on? For years China has been in the lead in trying to prevent the militarization of space. If you look at the debates and the Disarmament Commission of the UN General Assembly, the votes are 160 to 1 or 2. The U.S. insists on the militarization of space. It will not permit the outer space treaty to explicitly bar military relations in space.
Clinton’s position was that the U.S. should control space for military purposes. The Bush administration is more extreme. Their position is the U.S. should own space, their words, We have to own space for military purposes. So that is the spectrum of discussion here. The Chinese have been trying to block it and that is well understood. You read the most respectable journal in the world, I suppose, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and you find leading strategic analysts, John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, a couple of years ago, warning that the Bush administration’s aggressive militarization is leading to what they call “ultimate doom.” Of course, there is going to be a reaction to it. You threaten people with destruction, they are going to react. These analysts call on peace-loving nations to counter Bush’s aggressive militarism. They hope that China will lead peace-loving nations to counter U.S. aggressiveness. It’s a pretty remarkable comment on the impossibility of achieving democracy in the United States. Again, the logic is pretty elementary. Steinbrunner and Gallagher are assuming that the United States cannot be a democratic society; it’s not one of the options, so therefore we hope that maybe China will do something.
Well, China finally did something. It signaled to the United States that they noticed that we were trying to use space for military purposes, so China shot down one of their satellites. Everyone understands why — the mili- tarization and weaponization of space depends on satellites. While missiles are very difficult or maybe impossible to stop, satellites are very easy to shoot down. You know where they are. So China is saying, “Okay, we understand you are militarizing space. We’re going to counter it not by militarizing space, we can’t compete with you that way, but by shooting down your satellites.” That is what was behind the satellite shooting. Every military analyst certainly understood it and every lay person can understand it. But take a look at the debate. The discussion was about, “Is China trying it conquer the world by shooting down one of its own satellites?”
About a year ago there was a new rash of articles and headlines on the front page about the “Chinese military build-up.” The Pentagon claimed that China had increased its offensive military capacity — with 400 missiles, which could be nuclear armed. Then we had a debate about whether that proves China is trying to conquer the world or the numbers are wrong, or something.
Just a little footnote. How many offensive nuclear armed missiles does the United States have? Well, it turns out to be 10,000. China may now have maybe 400, if you believe the hawks. That proves that they are trying to conquer the world.
It turns out, if you read the international press closely, that the reason China is building up its military capacity is not only because of U.S. aggressiveness all over the place, but the fact that the United States has improved its targeting capacities so it can now destroy missile sites in a much more sophisticated fashion wherever they are, even if they are mobile. So who is trying to conquer the world? Well, obviously the Chinese because since we own it, they are trying to conquer it.
It’s all too easy to continue with this indefinitely. Just pick your topic. It’s a good exercise to try. This simple principle, “we own the world,” is sufficient to explain a lot of the discussion about foreign affairs.
I will just finish with a word from George Orwell. In the introduction to Animal Farm he said, England is a free society, but it’s not very different from the totalitarian monster I have been describing. He says in England unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Then he goes on to give some dubious examples. At the end he turns to a very brief explanation, actually two sentences, but they are to the point. He says, one reason is the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. And the second reason — and I think a more important one — is a good education. If you have gone to the best schools and graduated from Oxford and Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled in you the understanding that there are certain things it would not do to say; actually, it would not do to think. That is the primary way to prevent unpopular ideas from being expressed.
The ideas of the overwhelming majority of the population, who don’t attend Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, enable them to react like human beings, as they often do. There is a lesson there for activists.
Another Israeli American Sponsorship Shoah of Force in Gaza
noorslist Documentary, History, Islam, Israel, Muslims, Palestine, Politics 1967, american foreign policy, ariel sharon, barak, Dehumanization, ehud olmert, fatah, Gaza, gazans, hamas, Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, Holocaust, idf, Iran, Israel, israeli, israeli arabs, jewish, jews, knesset, land grab, live trees, massacre, nuclear israel, occupied territories, occupied territory, olmert, ramallah, shoah, us foreign policy, war crimes, west bank, wwIII, wwIV, zion, Zionist, zionist occupied government Leave a comment
‘Someone planning new holocaust’
Thousands of Israeli Arabs protest Gaza operation; Monitoring Committee Chairman warns of ‘new holocaust’; Knesset Member Zahalka says Arab community infuriated, slams ‘madness’ displayed by Israel’s leaders
Thousands of people, including Arab-Israeli Knesset members, marched in the streets of the northern town of Umm al-Fahm Tuesday evening to protest “Israel’s crimes” and the “massacre,” as they characterized it, committed by the IDF against Gaza’s civilian population.
The protestors were carrying PLO and black flags, as well as signs such as “Say no to killing and no to starvation of the Palestinian people.”
“Take note: Someone is planning a new holocaust in Gaza,” said Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Shawki Khatib in his speech. “We will not stand idle in the face of the blood spilling in Gaza, the blood of our children and women; we’re one body. The massacre in Gaza shall end and the occupation shall run away from there.”
Khatib also slammed the Arab world for failing to express its support for Gaza residents.
“They’re not criticizing. They’re embarrassed to even talk,” he said. “Israeli leaders should learn from history – there are no forceful solutions.”
Arab-Israelis are infuriated over Israel’s operation in Gaza, Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka said during the protest rally.
“The Arab public is angry at the Israeli government, which is committing war crimes in Gaza and threatening to continue them,” he said. “Olmert’s and Barak’s madness must be stopped. If they continue refusing a ceasefire, it should be forced upon them in order to spare the blood of innocents.”
‘Catastrophic plans’
Meanwhile Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh the demonstration was held to protest the “prime minister’s and defense minister’s catastrophic plans.”
“The Arab population will not remain silent. This is just one protest in a series of demonstrations held across the country as of Friday,” he said. “We feel discontent among the Arab-Palestinian population in Israel.”
In an emergency session held Sunday by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, participants decided to formulate a proposal for a Palestinian national unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah. The meeting, which was attended by most Arab Knesset members, dealt with the importance of unity among different Palestinian factions in the face of IDF operations in the Gaza Strip.
9-11 Report Commissioner Zelikow Admits War was for “threat against Israel”
noorslist Banking, Consumerism, Debt, Documentary, Education, Elections, History, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Media, Politics, Prisons 9-11, 9-11 Report Commissioner, 9/11 Commission, 911, 911 coverup, 911 threat, aaron russo, Afghanistan, Alex Jones, all one, Allah, amero, brainwashing, Bush, central bank, centralized banks, cheney, civil liberties, cnn, condi rice, condolezza, condolezza rice, constitution, dajjal, dajjal system, deception, demon, devils, divide and conquer, earth, Education, electronic passports, evil, fear, fear or love, fed speak, federal reserve, federal reserve system, flight 93, fraud, freedom, gandhi, god, good, hegel, hegelian, human beings, idol worship, illegal taxation, implanted chip, interest based economy, internal revenue service, internal revenue system, Iran, Iraq, Iraq War, irs, Israel, israel lobby, israeli lobby, j.p. morgon, jewish, jews, jfk, karl rove, kennedy, lou dobbs, love, manhatten, manufactured consent, microchip, microchip id, molick, morgan, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the Unite, nato, nelson aldrich, nelson rockefeller, new world order, norad, north american union, nuclear war, nwo, occult, one world government, patriotism, paul warburg, Peace, pentagon, Philip D. Zelikow, population control, power, prescott bush, problem reaction solution, profit motive, reality, revolution, revolution is now, rfid, rice, rights, rockefeller, Ron Paul, rothschild, rove, Sept. 11 commission, september 11th, shanksville, Shanksville Pennsylvania, social manipulation, stanley morgan, tax, taxation system, taxes, the chip, twin towers, United Airlines Flight 93, Usury, Veterans, woodrow wilson, world trade center, world war III, World War IV, Zeitgeist, Zeitgeist the Movie, Zelikow, zietgeist, zietgiest, Zionist, zionist occupied government 1 Comment
The Israel Lobby (full text)
“Third. The unstated threat. And here I criticise the [Bush] administration a little, because the argument that they make over and over again is that this is about a threat to the United States. And then everybody says: ‘Show me an imminent threat from Iraq to America. Show me, why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?’ So I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is, and actually has been since 1990. It’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it’s not a popular sell.“
Links;
Former 9/11 Commission Chief Philip Zelikow on Allegations He Secretly Allowed Karl Rove & White House to Influence 9/11 Probe
Philip D. Zelikow
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the “9/11 Commission”
IRAQ: War Launched to Protect Israel – Bush Adviser
The truth about Zelikow and the Sept. 11 cover-up commission
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the organic way of planting out our wetlands
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: https://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/the-organic-way-of-planting-out-our-wetlands/trackback/
On May 24, 2007 at 10:25 am Akelamalu said:
They made poster about it???????
On May 24, 2007 at 11:01 am Andrew Goulding said:
I thought it was one of the weirdo teachers from boarding school snotting on me.
On May 24, 2007 at 11:20 am nursemyra said:
Akelamalu: “they” sure did
Andrew: eeek….’nuff said
On May 24, 2007 at 11:21 am Daddy Papersurfer said:
Or you’re already in a relationship!
On May 24, 2007 at 11:23 am Frontier Former Editor said:
And now . . . . . Australia’s 1923 championship Commonwealth ‘noc’ em’ dead ‘team!
they’re a good looking bunch aren’t they?
On May 24, 2007 at 2:20 pm Radioactive Jam said:
Seminal thoughts will never be the same.
On May 24, 2007 at 2:38 pm ian said:
.. i used to call it a sticky mess…
too bad they didn’t have a picture of an eight-man rowing crew, oars in hand so to speak.
RaJ: I’m not going to disseminate with you over that
Ian: well that would be just too much eye candy for me and Lizza
On May 24, 2007 at 10:42 pm Andrew Goulding said:
All of you:
On May 25, 2007 at 10:03 am Lizza said:
They sure don’t look happy about it, though.
yeah they’re surly coz it’s only happening once a month
On May 26, 2007 at 6:31 am Bill Blunt said:
I must confess I have led a sheltered life. I always thought nocturnal emissions were something to do with breaking wind.
And as for seminal moments, I like to think I’ve had one or two of those in my life. But never did I soil the sheets in the process.
On May 26, 2007 at 7:47 am nursemyra said:
BB: I like that you’ve led a sheltered life. It gives me more scope for broadening your horizons when we finally meet 🙂
On May 26, 2007 at 1:26 pm Doctor Mom™ said:
The 1940’s version of Sex Ed Class….
Hmmm… nowadays it’s “Here’s how to properly put on a condom” with bigger than life phallic models
well that’s a set up for disaster….
particularly relevant if you’ve ever seen the doco “My Penis and I”
PS I love it when I get a new female reader!! thanks for dropping by
On May 27, 2007 at 9:33 am Doctor Mom™ said:
I happened by through Fab–
I saw your icon and well, you know, we health care professionals should always stick together, even in blogland.
I’ve added you to my blogroll so we’ll be seeing more of each other…
who is Fab?
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Community, Society
Torn from Home: My Life as a Refugee
February 1, 2010 February 1, 2010 Nye
I can identify with the title, and after seeing the photo of Khue Khang stands in front of a photo taken of him when he was 14 at the Nong Khai Refugee Camp, this I can say that I had been there, and done that, in fact, I too lived in Nong Khai Refugee Camp as a child.
Photo by Ragan Robinson
But it seems so long ago, the title above is a traveling exhibit at the Hickory Museum of Art. The museum recreates a refugee’s life, and as for Khue Khang, it’s memories wrapped in barbed wire. Khue Khang currently lives in Hickory, North Carolina, he was born in Laos, lived in two refugee camps in Thailand. He said that the exhibit rings true, the faux barbed wire is familiar to him. When he was 14, he was separated from his mother, father and brother. He ended up at the camp where he and 20,000 other refugees called home.
He remembers passing through a gate like the one that greets exhibit visitors, its striped arm lowered to stop unauthorized people from coming in or leaving, this must be SorGorTor in Thai Language, a temporary holding place before sending them off to a refugee camp about 1-2 miles away. He remembers the registration station, where refugees signed up to get their limited food. He remembers the pots and pans sitting on rocks that encircled an open fire. (source and photo by Ragan Robinson)
TORN FROM HOME: My Life as a Refugee is presented by Howard & Pat Anderson and the Beaver Family Foundation. It’s a traveling exhibit on the world’s refugees takes school-age children and visitors of all ages on an inspiring, hands-on journey into the extraordinary lives of millions of children who were forced to flee their homes in conflict regions throughout the world. The exhibit, “Torn from Home: My Life as a Refugee,” gives young visitors and others an opportunity to gain a firsthand look into the often challenging realities faced by refugee children and their families, and yet experience the personal triumphs of rebuilding their lives in a new land. It showcases six exhibit areas: Home, Losing Home, Registration, Refugee Camp, Medical Clinic and Going Home, to read more.
And yes… going home and for some of us, home is where the heart is. If you’re in the area, this exhibit is opened through May 2, 2010. I hope to visit in the near future, and perhaps it’ll travel to your part of town.
Tagged Hickory Museum of Art, Lao, Refugee
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33 thoughts on “Torn from Home: My Life as a Refugee”
seeharhed says:
Nye – I think most of laotians refugee can relate to this story. I was at the same camp as you, perhaps we walked pass each other 30 years ago:-). Our family stayed in SorGorTor for couple weeks prior to being transfer to the camp and I still vividly remember the poor living conditions. Believe it or not, my parents still kept those refugee mug shot photos from the camp.
seeharhed, It’s a small world, but I think you might have missed me there, and here I feel like old people talking about their past. 🙂
I’ve always liked photos as long as I could remember and kept all the refugee camp photos in an album for my parents. It’s funny to see myself in those mug shot, I was a skinny little kid.
Seeharhed – what is SorGorTor?
Dallas, it’s ส.ก.ท., sort of like a holding place to register you to the refugee camp. The living condition was real bad, but a bit better than living in Thai prison in Nong Kai, and I recalled that they’d feed you cabbage soup with pork blood cube. We stayed there for a couple of weeks also, but some of my sisters and I sneaked out to stay with my uncle’s family in the refugee camp.
Nye or Seeharhed – were there any Vietnamese left when you were at the Nong Khai camp? I heard they transfer all the Vietnamese to some other camp by themselves.
Dallas, I don’t know. I was a kid and not very observant. What year did they transfer them?
Dallas – I don’t remember seeing any Vietnamese at Nong Khai Camp. Most of the people at Nong Khai Camp are Lao and Lao Hmong. Even in the same camp they separate Lao Lume and Lao Hmong.
After our three to four months stay in Nongkhai Refugee Camp, we were sent into Nakorn Ratchasima (Khorat) Refugee Camp in late 1976.
While they provided rice and vegetables for each family to cook in Nongkhai Camp, they actually made awful food (rice and mustard green soup) for everyone in Khorat Camp.
Khorat Camp was an old jail with barbed wire around five buildings. Four buildings with open space housed many families together. The fifth building had individual cells. A family of 6 to 8 was assigned to two cells.
During our 14 months stay, they allowed the refugees out of the camp once to walk to a nearby stream.
Hi Kim, thanks for sharing. Are you Vietnamese?
I’ve to agree that Nongkai Camp, we were able to live a normal life, our family had a living area by ourselves and my sisters were even allowed to open a small vendor stand selling dry foods to bring in extra money. I went to school to learn Thai (this I already knew since I almost completed the 4th grade in Thailand) and English provided by the camp (free), and my older sisters went to learn how to sew, my parents had to pay for this which I think it’s worth it since all are good seamstress. My parents made sure we spent our time wisely. As for us, the hardship was not at the Refugee camp, but in Thailand when we first moved there but I’m glad that we did because it shapes us of who we are today.
Nye & Dallas:
I neglected to say that there was enough room to roam around the five buildings. In addition, there was a kitchen, food distribution area, and a classroom. There was a large field to play soccer and volleyball.
Thai officials set up a class to teach Thai to elementary age students. The adult refugees taught English and French to anyone who wanted to learn.
I believe language barrier played a large role in the interaction between Vietnamese Refugees from Vietnam and camp officials/guards. Most Thai officials/guards spoke Thai only. There was one or two who spoke minimal English.
Vietnamese refugees from Laos like my family had no problem since we spoke Thai.
Kim, I didn’t realize that they had moved the Vietnamese refugees to another camp, when we came it was in the 80s and I recalled one boy with reddish hair, I think he’s mixed Vietnamese/white and other kids were making fun of him. I saw many Tai Dum and Hmong, but mostly Lao.
Thanks again for sharing your story, I learn a lot more about how some of us made it here.
Hi Kim – I head the Vietnamese were not treated kindly when they moved to the other camp. Judging my the treatment you mentioned, it sounded more like you are a prisoner than a refugee. I had Vietnamese friends in the camp but they were were from Laos. I believe they had a Laotian name too so they were able to stay. I also remember that our parents didn’t want us to speak Vietnamese around other people. I didn’t knew it why back then but I knew now.
lady0fdarkness says:
as for me.. I was in camp NahPo. What’s really interesting is that my fiance was there too when I was there. We were both little girls ans boys. I probably crossed paths with him.
I still got my refugee mug shot too. I was 3 years old then.
lady0fdarkness, it must be soul mate. 🙂
I think those photos are priceless, the youngest photos that I have of myself is when I was 6 years old.
Cambree says:
This looks like a nice exhibit. Not many people are aware of the struggles refugees had to endure. Losing their homeland, being separated from families. And some rather not talk about it. So this is a good thing for the community to share. I’m glad the folks in NC have an open minded and warm hearts.
They should make a documentary too – so more people can watch it. 🙂
Cambree, I think Hickory is becoming a small town melting pot, people are not as prejudiced as they used to be and it’s nice to see that Lao (Hmong) are being recognized, and I’m glad that some of us are not embarrassed about our heritage. I’m looking forward to visiting the exhibit and this would be good for Lee also.
To be honest, I don’t know too much about my mums’ families’ time at the refugee camp (just bits and pieces now and then that I get told). But I’m pretty sure they were at one in Nong Khai too for a brief while. I know even less about my dads’ time in Malaysia as a refugee after leaving Vietnam by boat.
Also was recently told that my great-grandmother was from Nong Khai, so I assume we had Thai relatives in that area (i’m not really too certain).
Will, I think it’s painful for some to talk about it, I recall that I didn’t like talking about it 10 years ago. Our family lived in Thailand for almost 4 years before entering the Refugee camp, so we were more settled than most that just fled from Laos, I heard stories that were so sad while I was there. But for us kids, I think we were more carefree and not much worries, our days passed by quickly. I do find that as they get older, they’re more open, my dad is telling me more about his life back in Laos now than he ever did while I was growing up.
I didn’t know much about my family in Laos, and my last visit made me realize that I still have many in Laos and Thailand, it’s kind of nice and I feel more connected to them.
Nye, I started hearing more recently too about my family’s past. That bit about my great-grandmother being Thai, I only found out last year.
I now remember my mum telling me she stayed in Bangkok for several years studying and living with her older sister. Which probably explains why she doesn’t have too many memories of it. And thinking back a bit more, I do remember my 5th Uncle telling me many years ago about the family traveling from Luang Prabang to Sayaboury on their way out of Laos.
I guess it’s a matter of piecing all the various pieces i’ve been told about in the past. I also learned more from my uncles/aunts during the time my grandma passed away last year. Some of it was overheard stories told to my uncle who did not experience any of the departure from Laos as he was in Taiwan studying several years before and stayed there for several years until family were settled in Australia and sponsored him over.
Everyone has different experiences of that time, so their stories vary. Eg: I was recently told that my eldest Aunt/Uncle (my mums’ eldest sister and her husband) left Laos later (they were living in Vientienne at the time) than the rest of the family. I think they arrived here either in the late 80’s or early 90’s, though her kids (aside from her youngest son) left earlier.
Will, your family must have been from Luang Prabang then, do they have Tai Muang Luang accent? I think that’s how we all learn about our ancestors, by talking about it and asking the right question. Maybe you’ll get to visit Laos someday.
I think in the late 70s, many countries accepted Refugees from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam but most were reluctant to come, I guess afraid of the unknown, but many took the chance. And by the 80s, the wait got a bit longer and the choices were limited, we almost ended up in Belgium, but then the US accepted us shortly after that, and we couldn’t choose which state, and ended up in NYC.
It’s funny how we wanted to go to CA but they told us that the wait would be too long, we stayed 1 year at the refugee camp and my dad didn’t want us to stay much longer, those that came first got the first pick as to where they want to go, and us that came later had limited to no choice. And now we are free to go to which ever state that we want, but CA was not in the choice of states when we last moved.
To be honest, I don’t know about Lao accents 😛
That said, I’m pretty sure their Lao accents are Muang Luang accent. Because my mum has mentioned a story about it in the past (or at least were at the time, maybe less so these days as they mix with other Laotians in Australia). All of my mums’ siblings spoke Chinese at home, and went to Chinese school. But they either learnt Lao through working in the family business (lower level of home was shop front) or just playing with the other kids etc.
They have a habit of mixing Lao and several Chinese dialects together when they are together. So you can have a conversation starting in Lao, continue in Teo Chiew (my mums’ Chinese dialect) and then into Mandarin (Chinese dialect they learnt at Chinese school).
It is a fairly large family (mum has 11 siblings, so 12 altogether including herself), with most of the family ending up in Australia. My 2nd Uncle and his family left first and ended up in Sydney. And my mum arrived in Melbourne with a younger brother and a younger sister in May ’78. I think not long after they arrived and settled in they received the message that my eldest Uncle (mums’ eldest brother) had passed away back in Laos (I’m not 100% sure on details but mum said he passed away alcohol related issues). That was their first shock, and then over a week later, they got a second message saying that their dad, my grandfather had passed away in Laos too. Which, i’m sure you can imagine was a total shocker to them being so far away just in their early stages of getting into their lives in a new country.
My dad on the other hand had arrived in Australia about 6 months earlier from Vietnam via Malaysia (late ’77).
You know what? My mums’ sister actually ended up in CA after she left Thailand with her family. And she was the only one in the family that went to the US. I think there are more family elsewhere overseas, but I don’t really know them (they are my mums’ cousins). Found out a few years ago that one of them is actually a Lao Buddhist monk!
I think the population of Laotians (particularly the Chinese-Laotians) isn’t very big in Australia. Most know each other, or if at first they don’t then it is pretty quick to find a common friend they have. Usually in my mums’ case they end up knowing/are friends with one of her siblings.
Imagine your life if you’d ended up in Belgium 🙂
Will, your mum’s family has mine beat, there’s 8 of us but all girls and I thought we’ve many. When we’ve a get together, it’s a full house.
The reason that my dad decided in the last minute not to go to Belgium was because he was told by people at the refugee camp that you could never become a citizen or owning any property in that country. But I think it was just rumors because after checking I found that “a person may be naturalized as a Belgian citizen after three years residence in Belgium, this period is reduced to two years for political refugees and stateless persons,” which we were political refugees and stateless at the time. As for property ownership, I’m sure it’s not true also, just rumors going around.
Living in Belgium? I’m sure it’d be interesting. This would sound kind of strange coming from a Lao person, but I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to live in Laos or Thailand.
William Luu says:
Wow, 8 girls. My mums’ family is 7 guys and 5 girls. Was told that there was another Chinese-Lao family nearby that had just as many kids too. It almost sounds like they were competing on which family had the most kids LOL.
It’s natural, I think to imagine how life may have been like if you’d stayed in Laos or even Thailand.
Will, my dad is part Chinese, my grandfather came from China and settle down in Thailand then moved to Laos. My mom didn’t want that many kids, but my dad wanted a boy to carry the family name and it ended up that he gave most of us a boy’s name, I’ve a boy’s name also. 🙂
Very powerful piece of writing; thanks so much for sharing.
Jeffrey, thanks. It’s very touching when you’d experienced it yourself.
I too was a refugee although I do not remember anything while we were in the camps. I was too young to remember much although my parents still have a few of our refugee photos! I woud love to visit this exhibit.
mozemoua, the museum is not that big, I’m curious to see what kind of display they have.
Nye when you do go, let us know how the museum is like!
mozemoua, I’ll blog about it, and hopefully I’ll get to go soon.
Pingback: The Exhibition, Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee « Nye Noona
Nye – I am so glad that I have visited your blog this morning, and read the many stories you and your readers have to share here. It is wonderful to open up and yet it can be quite painful for some.
There is a small Hmong community here in Hobart. Every Saturday they setup their most wonderful, fresh farmed vegetables and herbs (well, some brought in from Melbourne) stalls at the Salamanca Market. They are well accepted and form part of the vibrant and colourful community in Hobart. I don’t know much about them though. But, I am learning so much from this post of yours, and naturally other bloggers like See, Dallas and Salalao – into your Lao culture.
I wish the Hmong community here is more revealing and share their hardships and experiences living in the refugees camps. There are other ethnic minorities in Hobart, especially from Africa refugee camps. Unfortunately, not much is known about their lives in their own homeland before becoming a refugee. I think it is a good thing to have such an exhibition like “Torn from Home: My Life As a Refugee”, and to share with the local community. It is eye opener for a lot of people, who take things for granted.
Victor, thanks for your visit and comments. I think people start to open up more when you see them often, I first learned about the Hmong culture from reading, and there are many Hmong in my area. I have a co-worker that has a rice paddy and I visited her rice paddy often to take photos, I’m looking forward to this spring and summer.
Blogging is also a great way to learn about other people’s cultures, I learn a lot from reading your blog also, and looking forward to reading more. I’m glad that many readers don’t mind sharing their personal experiences, it’s that unspoken pain that we kept inside all these years, at least we’re not the only one, and by sharing we might understand our own people better.
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Cold War II: Interview with Nikolay Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council
Posted by Sandboxer October 22, 2014
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, October 15, 2014
by Ivan Yegorov
“The sobering up of the Ukrainians will be harsh and painful”
In an interview for Rossiyskaya Gazeta the secretary of the Russian Security Council explained how Russian analysts were predicting the development of the situation in Ukraine a year ago. And he also gave an assessment of the role of the United States and NATO in the events in eastern Ukraine, explained why these events are a continuation of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan for the disintegration of the USSR and Russia, and assessed prospects for the development of the multipolar world and the possibility of a future struggle for hydrocarbon resources.
[Yegorov] Nikolay Platonovich, the realities of recent months are a coup d’etat in Ukraine, military operations by the Ukrainian authorities against the inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and a frenzied anti-Russian course by Kiev. Would it have been possible to predict this turn of events only a year ago?
[Patrushev] Our specialists were warning of the high probability of an escalation of the situation in Ukraine in the context of political and economic instability, particularly under external influence. At the same time it should be acknowledged that the probability of an imminent instant seizure of power in Kiev with the support of militant groups of open Nazis was not considered at that time. Let me remind you that prior to the coup you mentioned, Moscow was implementing in full all its partnership commitments to Kiev.
We were constantly providing material and financial aid, without which Ukraine was in no condition to cope with economic difficulties that had become chronic in nature. To support our neighbours, material and financial resources amounting to tens of billions of dollars were mobilized. Unfortunately for many people in Ukraine this aid became, in time, so customary that its importance for the country’s survival was simply forgotten.
As for longer-term predictions, the Ukraine crisis was an entirely expected outcome of systematic activity by the United States and its closest allies.
For the past quarter of a century this activity has been directed towards completely separating Ukraine and the other republics of the former USSR from Russia and totally reformatting the post-Soviet space to suit American interests. The conditions and pretexts were created for colour revolutions, supported by generous state funding.
Thus, Victoria Nuland, US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has repeatedly stated that during the period 1991 through 2013 Washington spent 5bn dollars on “supporting the desire of the people of Ukraine for stronger, more democratic government”. According to figures from open sources alone, for instance US Congress documents, the total amount of state funding for various American programmes of “aid” to Ukraine in the period 2001 through 2012 came to at least 2.4bn dollars. That is comparable with the annual budget of some small countries. The US Agency for International Development spent about 1.5bn dollars, the State Department nearly half a billion, and the Pentagon more than 370m dollars.
According to congressional records, organizations such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Peace Corps, and the Open World Centre took part in Ukrainian aid programmes, in addition to the well-known USAID and other departments. It is not hard to guess for whom and why American volunteers and staffers of diplomatic missions have been “opening the world” throughout the 23 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
[Yegorov] Maybe this money went to a good cause and helped to build a real “democratic” society in Ukraine, as the Americans understand it?
[Patrushev] I do not know what kind of a good cause that could be, if as a result of this activity in Ukraine an entire generation was raised that is completely poisoned with hatred of Russia and with the mythology of “European values”. It has not yet realized that these values, even in the positive sense of the term, are not actually designed for Ukrainians. Nobody intends to set about boosting living standards in Ukraine or establishing these young people in Europe, which is itself having great difficulty coping with extremely serious challenges and threats.
I think the “sobering up” of the Ukrainians will be harsh and painful. It remains to be hoped that this will happen relatively quickly, and a whole string of objective factors could promote that. I would like to note another factor that is of fundamental significance. Irrespective of the subsequent development of events, the significance of the one for the other – Russia and Ukraine – will persist. Ukraine will simply not be able to develop successfully without Russia, whether anyone likes it or not.
Such is the objective interdependence of economic, logistical, and other links that has developed over the centuries. But whereas for Russia the total severance of these links would be a painful blow, for Ukraine it would be disastrous. It is no accident that current President Petro Poroshenko was obliged, in the wake of his ousted predecessor, to raise the question of postponing the implementation of economic section of the already signed association agreement between Ukraine and the EU. It is to be expected that the victory euphoria of other Kiev rulers will also give way to a more sober assessment of the real state of affairs.
[Yegorov] Some experts think the Ukraine crisis was only a pretext for a new deterioration in the West’s relations with Russia. Is that so?
[Patrushev] It is true that if the catastrophe in Ukraine had not happened some other grounds would have been found to step up the policy of “containment” of our country. This course has been pursued unswervingly for many decades; only the forms and tactics of its implementation change.
As you know, after World War II the confrontation between the USSR and the West headed by the United States took the form of a “cold war”. The military-political component of this standoff was entrusted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed on the initiative of the United States on 4 April 1949. An analysis of NATO’s practical activity indicates that in creating the alliance the United States was pursuing two main objectives.
First, a military bloc directed against the USSR was formed under American leadership.
Second, Washington forestalled the emergence in Western Europe of an autonomous grouping of states that could have competed with the United States. It should be recalled that the territory of the United States itself, which essentially established unilateral military control over the allies, is not included in NATO’s zone of responsibility.
After the breakup of the USSR and the termination of the Warsaw Pact, which united Europe’s socialist countries and which by definition represented the main danger to NATO, not only was the bloc not disbanded, it began to expand even more in quantitative and military terms.
[Yegorov] But surely NATO was not the only factor that influenced the breakup of the Soviet Union?
[Patrushev] In the cold war period a whole string of ideological doctrines emerged in the West that served as justification for an anti-Soviet political course. One of the authors of this kind of research was Zbigniew Brzezinski, an American political scientist and statesman of Polish extraction. He established the so-called strategy of “vulnerabilities” in relation to the USSR, and under President Reagan this became the basis of American policy towards our country. The implementation of the strategy was guided by the National Security Council headed by the president of the United States. The identification and definition of “vulnerabilities” and the task of organizing ways of converting them into substantial problems for the USSR were entrusted to the US Central Intelligence Agency.
It is noteworthy that the then CIA Director William Casey decided to enlist prominent scholars in this work, first and foremost economists but also experts from the business world who had real experience of business wars with competitors. As a result of large-scale analytical work, the USSR’s “vulnerabilities” in the political, economic, ideological, and other spheres were defined and systematically studied.
Our country’s main “vulnerability,” as defined by the CIA, was its economy. After detailed modelling, the American experts identified its “weakest link”, namely the USSR budget’s extremely high dependence on the export of energy resources. A strategy of provoking the financial and economic bankruptcy of the Soviet state was formulated, envisaging two interconnected objectives: the bringing about of a sharp reduction in revenue to the USSR’s budget from foreign trade, combined with a substantial increase in expenditure on resolving problems created from outside.
A reduction in world oil prices was envisaged as the main measure for reducing the income side of the budget. This was successfully achieved by the mid-1980s when, as a result of US collusion with the rulers of a number of oil extracting countries, an artificial surplus of crude was created on the market and oil prices fell almost by a factor of four.
A growth in the Soviet Union’s expenditure was provoked in several areas: the transition from the strategy of American opposition to the USSR in Afghanistan to the strategy of dragging it deeply into the Afghan war; the incitement of antigovernment demonstrations in Poland and other states in the socialist camp with a view to provoking Moscow into additional expenditures on stabilizing the situation in Eastern Europe; the whipping up of the arms race, among other things by introducing the SDI [Strategic Defence Initiative] bluff, and so forth.
It should be said that at that time the Americans succeeded in achieving their objectives. The outcome of their activity was a substantial excess in the USSR’s expenditure over income, which ultimately provoked a profound economic crisis that extended into the political and ideological spheres. Shortsighted attempts by the Soviet leadership to alleviate the situation through foreign financial aid gave Washington additional levers of influence over Moscow. The “recovery” measures proposed by the West and implemented through the IMF and the World Bank to liberalize foreign trade without a smooth transition from the previous monopoly system led to the final collapse of the economy.
In the assessment of American experts, it was the strategy of “vulnerabilities”, which demonstrated the colossal effectiveness of economic variety of cold war compared with “hot” war, that was decisive in promoting the elimination of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.
[Yegorov] After the breakup of the USSR, could Russia still somehow have opposed the new redivision of the world, or was the surrender of its positions and its former allies, such as Yugoslavia, already predetermined?
[Patrushev] By the end of the 20th century a kind of sociopolitical “fault line” had formed in this region, standing out most clearly in the disintegration of the multiethnic and multifaith Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The leaders of the United States and the leading NATO countries exploited a military-political situation that was developing favourably for them in order to realize their long-term aims in Southeast Europe.
In the 1990s the Russian Federation, for well-known reasons of an internal and external nature, lost the dominant influence in the Balkans that the Soviet Union had enjoyed and embarked on the path of conciliation with the West. It was in the Balkans that the unilateral and totally uncompensated surrender by Russia of its positions in the international arena was manifested most distinctly. In 1991-1996 the bodies that shaped our country’s foreign policy did not officially even have any such concept as “national interest”. They nurtured groundless expectations of gratitude for obedience from the Western partners and some kind of special benefit for our country from close and unconditional cooperation with the United States. In practice our American partners almost immediately stopped taking us seriously and only gave us a condescending “slap on the shoulder”, so to speak, from time to time.
The NATO bloc, under cover of peacekeeping and without encountering serious objections from our side, operated increasingly confidently outside its own zone of responsibility, sought the rights to lease strategic infrastructure facilities for lengthy periods, and effectively brought the organs of military command and control of a number of Balkan countries under its own control by various means. The Alliance’s subunits became firmly established in the region. Other states taking part in peacekeeping missions, including Russia, set themselves no such objectives, having reconciled themselves to the role of junior partners and preferring not to see the self-evident fact: The war in the Balkans could perfectly well be regarded as a rehearsal and a prologue to larger-scale steps to redivide the world.
[Yegorov] Is it likely that it was these steps that led to the clash of interests between Western countries and Russia in the entire post-Soviet space?
[Patrushev] The United States has been behaving particularly assertively and shamelessly over the past 20 years in and around this space. Encouraged by the weakening and subsequent elimination of the USSR, American ruling circles did everything possible to ensure dominance over the major sources of raw materials resources in our country and in Central Asia, as well as the transit routes for their export. Washington planned to extend its sphere of direct influence to the regions of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian.
All these territories were named a US zone of strategic national interests. The only remaining obstacle to the realization of the Americans’ plans to take complete control of the corresponding deposits and transport corridors was Russia, which preserved its military potential to inflict unacceptable damage on the United States.
American strategists saw the solution to this difficulty in the final collapse of the system of state power and the subsequent dismemberment of our country. The first region that was supposed to leave Russia was the North Caucasus.
Particular importance was attached to Chechnya, which declared its independence and was temporarily under the effective control of the West. Extremists and their supporters in Russia were offered support by the special services of Britain, the United States, and allies in Europe and the Islamic world.
In these conditions the Russian leadership adopted a firm, principled stance of defending the unity of the state. Ultimately, as a result of the firm political will displayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and at the cost of enormous efforts, it proved possible to stop attempts to detach Chechnya from Russia and then to consolidate the Republic’s place within the Federation.
After 11 September 2001 the world community recognized the terrorist threat as the main threat and a global threat, reaching the understanding that countering this threat requires common efforts. As a result there was, in particular, a slight weakening of the West’s attacks on Russia because of its campaign against international terrorists in the Caucasus, while we did not object to the operation by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. The announcement of the formation of a broad antiterrorist coalition followed.
At that time Washington displayed a certain readiness to collaborate, although in actual fact it did not intend to abandon the policy of “containment” with regard to Russia. More and more new NATO facilities moved up to our borders. International law was supplanted by the law of force (let us recall the aforementioned dismemberment of Yugoslavia, followed by Serbia, the occupation of Iraq, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the so-called coalition forces).
After 7-8 August 2008, when the Georgian leadership, with US support, attempted to annihilate South Ossetia, the world once again changed substantially. For the first time in many decades Washington provided direct support to a foreign state that had perpetrated an attack on Russian citizens and peacekeepers.
Everything was staked on surprise. The Georgian dictator believed that a military incursion on the opening day of the international Olympic Games would put Russia in a difficult position, and the Georgians, taking advantage of this, would carry out their “blitzkrieg”. However, the Russian leadership reacted promptly to the sharp deterioration in the situation and the necessary measures were adopted to halt the aggression.
[Yegorov] It was at that time that people started talking about the shaping of a new geopolitical reality – the multipolarity of the modern world. How did the United States react to this?
[Patrushev] After the August events in the Caucasus, Washington was clearly alarmed by Russia’s obvious intention to take its place among the world powers of the 21st century and uphold the principle of equal opportunities and full autonomy in global politics. And also to convert the state’s financial income from the exploitation of natural resources into real economic and defence potential and human capital.
The American leadership clearly also disliked the prospects of Russia’s collaboration with China and India, the introduction of the practice of summits in the BRICS format, the successful activity of other organizations in which Russia occupies leading positions (the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization], the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], and the EAEC [Eurasian Economic Community]), and the formation of the Customs Union.
In the context of the growing world financial and economic crisis, major new players in the international arena such as the PRC, India, Brazil, and Iran as well as the growing economies of Southeast Asia and South Korea became increasingly significant factors for the United States. Hence, incidentally, the emergence of new conceptual principles such as the American-Chinese special partnership, the strategic collaboration between the United States and India, the establishment of direct dialogue between Washington and Iran, and so forth.
Indications of the need to resume the beneficial dialogue with Russia on a whole range of issues began to emerge from the new administration of President Barack Obama. This positive inclination on the part of the American authorities could only be welcomed.
However, it soon became clear that Washington is not inclined towards real cooperation. It confined itself to mere statements of friendliness and the devising of certain negotiation tracks from which the benefit to Russia, in the end, proved almost zero. After a while even totally nonbinding positive dialogues of this kind came to an end and the US attitude towards our country began once again to be reminiscent of cold war times.
[Yegorov] And the logical culmination of this policy was the Ukraine crisis?
[Patrushev] The coup d’etat in Kiev, accomplished with clear US support, followed the classical pattern tried and tested in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. But never before has such a scheme affected Russian interests so profoundly.
Analysis shows that by provoking Russia into retaliatory steps the Americans are pursuing the very same objectives as in the 1980s with regard to the USSR. Just like back then, they are trying to identify our country’s “vulnerabilities”. At the same time, incidentally, they are pursuing the objective of neutralizing European economic competitors who have, in Washington’s opinion, grown excessively close to Moscow.
I would like to remind you that Washington has always sought to have levers of pressure on Russia. Thus, in 1974 the famous Jackson-Vanik Amendment was adopted, restricting trade relations with our country. It appeared to have completely lost its relevance immediately after the breakup of the USSR, but it was still in force right up to 2012, when the so-called “Magnitsky List” was promptly adopted in its place.
The current sanctions are in the same category. The US Administration’s activity in the Ukrainian sphere is taking place within the framework of an updated White House foreign policy course aimed at holding on to American leadership in the world by means of the strategic containment of the growing influence of the Russian Federation and other centres of power. In this context Washington is actively making use, on its own terms, of NATO’s potential, seeking to use political and economic pressure to prevent any vacillations on the part of its allies and partners.
[Yegorov] Why is the American elite clinging so stubbornly to the right to control other people’s natural resources at a time when the Western expert community is declaring the importance of the development of alternative energy sources that are supposedly capable of taking the place of oil and gas in the near future?
[Patrushev] In actual fact, specialists are certain that no real substitute for hydrocarbons as the basis of power generation will emerge in the next few decades. Furthermore the understanding prevails in the West that the total capacity of nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and other power stations will meet no more than one-fifth of world demand.
Nor should another important aspect be forgotten. In the modern world we can observe a steady growth in the shortage of food and drinking water for the growing population of the planet. The absence of the most elementary means of existence pushes desperate people into manifestations of extremism and involvement in terrorism, piracy, and crime. This is one reason for the acute conflicts between countries and regions and also for mass migration.
The shortage of water and irrigated land is not infrequently the cause of friction, for instance, between the Central Asian republics. The problem of water resources is acute in a number of other countries in Asia and particularly in Africa.
Many American experts, in particular former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, assert that there are vast territories “under Moscow’s power” that it is incapable of exploiting and which therefore “do not serve the interests of all humanity”. Assertions continue to be heard about the “unfair” distribution of natural resources and the need to ensure so-called “free access” to them for other states.
The Americans are convinced that people must be thinking in similar terms in many other states, particularly those neighbouring on Russia, and that in the future they will, as is nowadays the custom, form “coalitions” to support the corresponding claims on our country. As in the case of Ukraine, it is proposed to resolve problems at Russia’s expense but without taking its interests into account.
Even during periods of a relative thaw in relations between Russia (the USSR) and the United States, our American partners have always remained true to such notions.
Therefore irrespective of the nuances in the behaviour of the Americans and their allies the Russian leadership still faces this task as a constant: To guarantee the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Motherland, to defend and multiply its riches, and to manage them correctly in the interests of the multiethnic people of the Russian Federation.
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Posted in: US Foreign PolicyTagged: afghanistan, china, CIA, Cold War, Georgia, Iran, Kiev, nato, Nikolay Patrushev, russia, Ukraine, United States, USAID, USSR, Victoria Nuland, Zbigniew BrzezinskiPermalink7 Comments
7 thoughts on “Cold War II: Interview with Nikolay Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council”
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Cemal Guven Asti says:
Notice frequent use of “Our Partners” referring to US by Patrusev.
Mr Patrusev;
USA was never a partner of Russia and will never be for as long as Russia sits on natural reserves USA needs
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Jackson Heuer says:
I could hardly care how efficiently Russia exploits it’s resources for the U.S.’s sake, given that all the U.S. makes is televisions.
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1.1. Background to the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’)
The General Data Protection Regulation 2016 replaces the EU Data Protection Directive of 1995 and supersedes the laws of individual Member States that were developed in compliance with the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. Its purpose is to protect the “rights and freedoms” of natural persons (i.e. living individuals) and to ensure that personal data is not processed without their knowledge, and, wherever possible, that it is processed with their consent.
1.2. Definitions used by the organisation (drawn from the GDPR)
Material scope (Article 2) – the GDPR applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means (i.e. by computer) and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data (i.e. paper records) that form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system.
Territorial scope (Article 3) – the GDPR will apply to all controllers that are established in the EU (European Union) who process the personal data of data subjects, in the context of that establishment. It will also apply to controllers outside of the EU that process personal data in order to offer goods and services, or monitor the behaviour of data subjects who are resident in the EU.
1.3. Article 4 definitions
Establishment – the main establishment of the controller in the EU will be the place in which the controller makes the main decisions as to the purpose and means of its data processing activities. The main establishment of a processor in the EU will be its administrative centre. If a controller is based outside the EU, it will have to appoint a representative in the jurisdiction in which the controller operates to act on behalf of the controller and deal with supervisory authorities.
Personal data – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
Special categories of personal data – personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade-union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.
Data controller – the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law.
Data processor – the person who processes data on behalf of a data controller. A data controller decides the purpose and manner to be followed to process the data, while data processors hold and process data, but do not have any responsibility or control over that data.
Data subject – any living individual who is the subject of personal data held by an organisation.
Processing – any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.
Profiling – is any form of automated processing of personal data intended to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, or to analyse or predict that person’s performance at work, economic situation, location, health, personal preferences, reliability, or behaviour. This definition is linked to the right of the data subject to object to profiling and a right to be informed about the existence of profiling, of measures based on profiling and the envisaged effects of profiling on the individual.
Personal data breach – a breach of security leading to the accidental, or unlawful, destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed. There is an obligation on the controller to report personal data breaches to the supervisory authority and where the breach is likely to adversely affect the personal data or privacy of the data subject.
Data subject consent – means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data.
Child – the GDPR defines a child as anyone under the age of 16 years [A1] old, although this may be lowered to 13 by Member State law. The processing of personal data of a child is only lawful if parental or custodian consent has been obtained. The controller shall make reasonable efforts to verify in such cases that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child.
Third party – a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or body other than the data subject, controller, processor and persons who, under the direct authority of the controller or processor, are authorised to process personal data.
Filing system – any structured set of personal data, which are accessible according to specific criteria, whether centralised, decentralised or dispersed on a functional or geographical basis.
2.1. The management of Milk Student Planners Ltd, located at Unit 15, Diss Business Park, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 4GT are committed to compliance with all relevant EU and Member State laws in respect of personal data, and the protection of the “rights and freedoms” of individuals whose information Milk Student Planners Ltd collects and processes in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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2.3. The GDPR and this policy apply to all of Milk Student Planners Ltd’s personal data processing functions, including those performed on customers’, clients’, employees’, suppliers’ and partners’ personal data, and any other personal data the organisation processes from any source.
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2.5. Data Protection Officer (DPO) is responsible for reviewing the register of processing annually in the light of any changes to Milk Student Planners Ltd’s activities (as determined by changes to the data inventory register and the management review) and to any additional requirements identified by means of data protection impact assessments. This register[A4] needs to be available on the supervisory authority’s request.
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3.3.2. security and risk management in relation to compliance with the policy.
3.4. Data Protection Officer (DPO), who Management considers to be suitably qualified and experienced, has been appointed to take responsibility for Milk Student Planners Ltd’s compliance with this policy on a day-to-day basis and, in particular, has direct responsibility for ensuring that Milk Student Planners Ltd complies with the GDPR, as do Manager’s in respect of data processing that takes place within their area of responsibility.
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All processing of personal data must be conducted in accordance with the data protection principles as set out in Article 5 of the GDPR. Milk Student Planners Ltd’s policies and procedures are designed to ensure compliance with the principles.
4.1. Personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and transparently Lawful – identify a lawful basis before you can process personal data. These are often referred to as the “conditions for processing”, for example consent.
Fairly – in order for processing to be fair, the data controller has to make certain information available to the data subjects as practicable. This applies whether the personal data was obtained directly from the data subjects or from other sources.
The GDPR has increased requirements about what information should be available to data subjects, which is covered in the ‘Transparency’ requirement.
Transparently – the GDPR includes rules on giving privacy information to data subjects in Articles 12, 13 and 14. These are detailed and specific, placing an emphasis on making privacy notices understandable and accessible. Information must be communicated to the data subject in an intelligible form using clear and plain language.
The specific information that must be provided to the data subject must, as a minimum, include:
4.1.1. the identity and the contact details of the processor and, if any, of the processor’s representative;
4.1.2. the contact details of the Data Protection Officer (DPO);
4.1.3. the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended as well as the legal basis for the processing;
4.1.4. the period for which the personal data will be stored;
4.1.5. the existence of the rights to request access, rectification, erasure or to object to the processing, and the conditions (or lack of) relating to exercising these rights, such as whether the lawfulness of previous processing will be affected;
4.1.6. the categories of personal data concerned;
4.1.7. the recipients or categories of recipients of the personal data, where applicable;
4.1.8. where applicable, that the processor intends to transfer personal data to a recipient in a third country and the level of protection afforded to the data;
4.1.9. any further information necessary to guarantee fair processing
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Data obtained for specified purposes must not be used for a purpose that differs from those formally notified to the supervisory authority as part of Milk Student Planners Ltd’s GDPR register of processing.
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4.3.1. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is responsible for ensuring that Milk Student Planners Ltd does not collect information that is not strictly necessary for the purpose for which it is obtained.
4.3.2. All data collection forms (electronic or paper-based), including data collection requirements in new information systems, must be include a fair processing statement or link to privacy statement.
4.3.3. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) will ensure that, on an annual basis all data collection methods are reviewed by internal audit to ensure that collected data continues to be adequate, relevant and not excessive.
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4.4.1. Data that is stored by the data processor must be reviewed and updated as necessary. No data should be kept unless it is reasonable to assume that it is accurate.
4.4.2. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is responsible for ensuring that all staff are trained in the importance of collecting accurate data and maintaining it.
4.4.3. It is also the responsibility of the data subject to ensure that data held by Milk Student Planners Ltd is accurate and up to date. Completion of a registration or application form by a data subject will include a statement that the data contained therein is accurate at the date of submission.
4.4.4. Staff/customers should be required to notify Milk Student Planners Ltd of any changes in circumstance to enable personal records to be updated accordingly. It is the responsibility of Milk Student Planners Ltd to ensure that any notification regarding change of circumstances is recorded and acted upon.
4.4.5. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is responsible for ensuring that appropriate procedures and policies are in place to keep personal data accurate and up to date, taking into account the volume of data collected, the speed with which it might change and any other relevant factors.
4.4.6. On at least an annual basis, the Data Protection Officer (DPO) will review the retention dates of all the personal data processed by Milk Student Planners Ltd, by reference to the data inventory, and will identify any data that is no longer required in the context of the registered purpose. This data will be securely deleted/destroyed.
4.4.7. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is responsible for responding to requests for rectification from data subjects within one month. This can be extended to a further two months for complex requests. If Milk Student Planners Ltd decides not to comply with the request, the Data Protection Officer (DPO) must respond to the data subject to explain its reasoning and inform them of their right to complain to the supervisory authority and seek judicial remedy.
4.5. Personal data must be kept in a form such that the data subject can be identified only as long as is necessary for processing.
4.5.1. Where personal data is retained beyond the processing date, it will be minimised/encrypted/pseudonymised in order to protect the identity of the data subject in the event of a data breach.
4.5.2. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) must specifically approve any data retention that exceeds the retention periods, and must ensure that the justification is clearly identified and in line with the requirements of the data protection legislation. This approval must be written.
4.6. Personal data must be processed in a manner that ensures the appropriate security
The Data Protection Officer (DPO) will carry out a risk assessment taking into account all the circumstances of Milk Student Planners Ltd’s processing operations.
In determining appropriateness, the Data Protection Officer (DPO) should also consider the extent of possible damage or loss that might be caused to individuals (e.g. staff or customers) if a security breach occurs, the effect of any security breach on Milk Student Planners Ltd itself, and any likely reputational damage including the possible loss of customer trust.
When assessing appropriate technical measures, the Data Protection Officer (DPO) will consider the following:
Password protection;
Automatic locking of idle terminals;
Removal of access rights for USB and other memory media;
Virus checking software and firewalls;
Role-based access rights including those assigned to temporary staff;
Encryption of devices that leave the organisations premises such as laptops;
Security of local and wide area networks;
Privacy enhancing technologies such as pseudonymisation and anonymisation;
Identifying appropriate international security standards relevant to Milk Student Planners Ltd
When assessing appropriate organisational measures the Data Protection Officer (DPO) will consider the following:
The appropriate training levels throughout Milk Student Planners Ltd; Measures that consider the reliability of employees (such as references etc.);
The inclusion of data protection in employment contracts;
Identification of disciplinary action measures for data breaches;
Monitoring of staff for compliance with relevant security standards;
Physical access controls to electronic and paper based records; Adoption of a clear desk policy; storing of paper based data in lockable fireproof cabinets;
Restricting the use of portable electronic devices outside of the workplace;
Restricting the use of employee’s own personal devices [A18] being used in the workplace; Adopting clear rules about passwords;
Making regular backups of personal data and storing the media off-site;
The imposition of contractual obligations on the importing organisations to take appropriate security measures when transferring data outside the EEA.
These controls have been selected on the basis of identified risks to personal data, and the potential for damage or distress to individuals whose data is being processed.
4.7. The controller must be able to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR’s other principles (accountability)
The GDPR includes provisions that promote accountability and governance. These complement the GDPR’s transparency requirements. The accountability principle in Article 5(2) requires you to demonstrate that you comply with the principles and states explicitly that this is your responsibility.
The[A20] Milk Student Planners Ltd will demonstrate compliance with the data protection principles by implementing data protection policies, adhering to codes of conduct, implementing technical and organisational measures, as well as adopting techniques such as data protection by design, DPIAs, breach notification procedures and incident response plans.
5.1. Data subjects have the following rights regarding data processing, and the data that is recorded about them:
5.1.1. To make subject access requests regarding the nature of information held and to whom it has been disclosed.
5.1.2. To prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress.
5.1.3. To prevent processing for purposes of direct marketing.
5.1.4. To be informed about the mechanics of automated decision-taking process that will significantly affect them.
5.1.5. To not have significant decisions that will affect them taken solely by automated process.
5.1.6. To sue for compensation if they suffer damage by any contravention of the GDPR.
5.1.7. To take action to rectify, block, erased, including the right to be forgotten, or destroy inaccurate data.
5.1.8. To request the supervisory authority to assess whether any provision of the GDPR has been contravened.
5.1.9. To have personal data provided to them in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and the right to have that data transmitted to another controller.
5.1.10. To object to any automated profiling that is occurring without consent.
5.2. Milk Student Planners Ltd ensures that data subjects may exercise these rights:
5.2.1. Data subjects may make data access requests and Milk Student Planners Ltd will ensure that its response to the data access request complies with the requirements of the GDPR.
5.2.2. Data subjects have the right to complain to Milk Student Planners Ltd related to the processing of their personal data, the handling of a request from a data subject and appeals from a data subject on how complaints have been handled.
6.1. Milk Student Planners Ltd understands ‘consent’ to mean that it has been explicitly and freely given, and a specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes that, by statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. The data subject can withdraw their consent at any time.
6.2. Milk Student Planners Ltd understands ‘consent’ to mean that the data subject has been fully informed of the intended processing and has signified their agreement, while in a fit state of mind to do so and without pressure being exerted upon them. Consent obtained under duress or on the basis of misleading information will not be a valid basis for processing.
6.3. There must be some active communication between the parties to demonstrate active consent. Consent cannot be inferred from non-response to a communication. The Processor must be able to demonstrate that consent was obtained for the processing operation.
6.4. In most instances, consent to process personal and sensitive data is obtained routinely by Milk Student Planners Ltd using standard consent documents e.g. when a new client signs a contract, or during induction for participants on programmes.
6.5. Where Milk Student Planners Ltd provides online services to children, parental or custodial authorisation must be obtained or have been obtained by the school. This requirement applies to children under the age of 13.
7. Security of data
7.1. All Staff are responsible for ensuring that any personal data that Milk Student Planners Ltd holds and for which they are responsible, is kept securely and is not under any conditions disclosed to any third party unless that third party has been specifically authorised by Milk Student Planners Ltd to receive that information and has entered into an agreement.
7.2. All personal data should be accessible only to those who need to use it. All personal data should be treated with the highest security and must be kept:
in a lockable room with controlled access; and/or
in a locked drawer or filing cabinet; and/or
if computerised, password protected in line with corporate requirements); and/or
stored on (removable) computer media which are encrypted in line with Secure Disposal of Storage Media.
7.3. Care must be taken to ensure that computer screens and terminals are not visible except to authorised Staff of Milk Student Planners Ltd.
7.4. Manual records may not be left where they can be accessed by unauthorised personnel and may not be removed from business premises without explicit authorisation. As soon as manual records are no longer required for day-to-day client support, they must be removed from secure archiving.
7.5. Manual records that have reached their retention date are to be shredded and disposed. Hard drives of redundant PCs are to be removed and immediately destroyed before disposal.
7.6. Processing of personal data ‘off-site’ presents a potentially greater risk of loss, theft or damage to personal data. Staff must be specifically authorised to process data off-site.
8. Disclosure of data
8.1. Milk Student Planners Ltd must ensure that personal data is not disclosed to unauthorised third parties which includes family members, friends, government bodies, and in certain circumstances, the Police. All Staff should exercise caution when asked to disclose personal data held on another individual to a third party. It is important to bear in mind whether or not disclosure of the information is relevant to, and necessary for, the conduct of Milk Student Planners Ltd’s business.
8.2. All requests to provide data for one of these reasons must be supported by appropriate paperwork and all such disclosures must be specifically authorised by the Data Protection Officer (DPO).
9. Retention and disposal of data
9.1. Milk Student Planners Ltd shall not keep personal data in a form that permits identification of data subjects for longer a period than is necessary, in relation to the purpose(s) for which the data was originally collected.
9.2. Milk Student Planners Ltd may store data for longer periods if the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes, subject to the implementation of appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the data subject.
9.3. Personal data must be disposed of securely in accordance with the sixth principle of the GDPR – processed in an appropriate manner to maintain security, thereby protecting the “rights and freedoms” of data subjects.
10. Data transfers
10.1. All exports of data from within the European Economic Area (EEA) to non-European Economic Area countries (referred to in the GDPR as ‘third countries’) are unlawful unless there is an appropriate “level of protection for the fundamental rights of the data subjects”.The transfer of personal data outside of the EEA is prohibited unless one or more of the specified safeguards, or exceptions, apply:
10.1.1. An adequacy decision
The European Commission can and does assess third countries, a territory and/or specific sectors within third countries to assess whether there is an appropriate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of natural persons. In these instances no authorisation is required. Countries that are members of the European Economic Area (EEA) but not of the EU are accepted as having met the conditions for an adequacy decision. A list of countries that currently satisfy the adequacy requirements of the Commission are published in the Official Journal of the European Union. http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/international-transfers/adequacy/index_en.htm
10.1.2. Privacy Shield
Milk Student Planners Ltd wishes to transfer personal data from the EU to an organisation in the United States it should check that the organisation is signed up with the Privacy Shield framework at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The obligation applying to companies under the Privacy Shield are contained in the “Privacy Principles”. The US DOC is responsible for managing and administering the Privacy Shield and ensuring that companies live up to their commitments. In order to be able to certify, companies must have a privacy policy in line with the Privacy Principles e.g. use, store and further transfer the personal data according to a strong set of data protection rules and safeguards. The protection given to the personal data applies regardless of whether the personal data is related to an EU resident or not. Organisations must renew their “membership” to the Privacy Shield on an annual basis. If they do not, they can no longer receive and use personal data from the EU under that framework.
Assessment of adequacy by the data processor
In making an assessment of adequacy, the UK based exporting processor should take account of the following factors: the nature of the information being transferred; the country or territory of the origin, and final destination, of the information; how the information will be used and for how long; the laws and practices of the country of the transferee, including relevant codes of practice and international obligations; and the security measures that are to be taken as regards the data in the overseas location.
the nature of the information being transferred;
the country or territory of the origin, and final destination, of the information;
how the information will be used and for how long; the laws and practices of the country of the transferee, including relevant codes of practice and international obligations; and
the security measures that are to be taken as regards the data in the overseas location.
10.1.3. Binding corporate rules
Milk Student Planners Ltd may adopt approved binding corporate rules for the transfer of data outside the EU. This requires submission to the relevant supervisory authority for approval of the rules that Milk Student Planners Ltd is seeking to rely upon.
10.1.4. Model contract clauses
Milk Student Planners Ltd may adopt approved model contract clauses for the transfer of data outside of the EEA. If Milk Student Planners Ltd adopts the model contract clauses approved by the relevant supervisory authority there is an automatic recognition of adequacy.
10.1.5. Exceptions
In the absence of an adequacy decision, Privacy Shield membership, binding corporate rules and/or model contract clauses, a transfer of personal data to a third country or international organisation shall only take place on one of the following conditions:
the data subject has explicitly consented to the proposed transfer, after having been informed of the possible risks of such transfers for the data subject due to the absence of an adequacy decision and appropriate safeguards;
the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between the data subject and the controller or the implementation of pre-contractual measures taken at the data subject’s request;
the transfer is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract concluded in the interest of the data subject between the controller and another natural or legal person;
the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest; the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; and/or
the transfer is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of other persons, where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent.
11. Information asset register/data inventory
11.1. Milk Student Planners Ltd has established a data inventory and data flow process as part of its approach to address risks and opportunities throughout its GDPR compliance project. Milk Student Planners Ltd’s data inventory and data flow determines:
business processes that use personal data;
source of personal data;
volume of data subjects;
description of each item of personal data;
processing activity;
maintains the inventory of data categories of personal data processed;
documents the purpose(s) for which each category of personal data is used;
recipients, and potential recipients, of the personal data; the role of the Organisation Name throughout the data flow; key systems and repositories; any data transfers; and
all retention and disposal requirements.
11.2. Milk Student Planners Ltd is aware of any risks associated with the processing of particular types of personal data.
11.2.1. Milk Student Planners Ltd assesses the level of risk to individuals associated with the processing of their personal data. Data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) are carried out in relation to the processing of personal data by Milk Student Planners Ltd, and in relation to processing undertaken by other organisations on behalf of Milk Student Planners Ltd.
11.2.2. Milk Student Planners Ltd shall manage any risks identified by the risk assessment in order to reduce the likelihood of a non-conformance with this policy.
11.2.3. Where a type of processing, in particular using new technologies and taking into account the nature, scope, context and purposes of the processing is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons, Milk Student Planners Ltd shall, prior to the processing, carry out a DPIA of the impact of the envisaged processing operations on the protection of personal data. A single DPIA may address a set of similar processing operations that present similar high risks.
11.2.4. Where, as a result of a DPIA it is clear that Milk Student Planners Ltd is about to commence processing of personal data that could cause damage and/or distress to the data subjects, the decision as to whether or not Milk Student Planners Ltd may proceed must be escalated for review to the Data Protection Officer (DPO).
11.2.5. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) shall, if there are significant concerns, either as to the potential damage or distress, or the quantity of data concerned, escalate the matter to the supervisory authority.
Contact us for further details:
Email: compliance@milkstudentplanner.com
© 2019 Milk Student Planners Limited
support@milkstudentplanner.com
Helpline (school staff only): +44 (0)1379 407272
(Mon-Fri 8.30am til 4.30pm)
General enquiries: info@milkstudentplanner.com
Finance enquiries: finance@milkstudentplanner.com
Sales enquiries: sales@milkstudentplanner.com
Telephone (school staff only): +44 (0)1379 407272
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Milk Student Planners Ltd
DBH 15 Diss Business Park
Hopper Way
Diss IP22 4GT
© Milk 2020
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President Trump Issues Proclamations on Aluminum and Steel Tariffs
President Trump issued two Presidential Proclamations on March 8, 2018 increasing the import tariff on certain articles of steel and aluminum. The proclamations were issued in response to the Section 232 Reports that were submitted by the Commerce Department to the President in January 2018 in accordance with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1862). Specifically, the reports stated that—
The present quantities of steel article imports and the global excess capacity for producing steel are weakening the U.S. internal economy resulting in the persistent threat of closures of domestic steel production facilities and the shrinking of the United States’ ability to meet national security production requirements in a national emergency. The Secretary of Commerce recommended a global tariff of 24% on imports of steel articles to reduce imports to a level that would enable domestic steel producers to use approximately 80% of existing domestic production capacity and achieve long-term economic viability through increased production.
The present quantities of aluminum imports and the global excess capacity for producing aluminum are weakening the U.S. internal economy leaving the United States almost totally reliant on foreign producers of primary aluminum and at risk of becoming completely reliant on foreign producers of high-purity aluminum that is essential for key military and commercial systems. The Secretary of Commerce recommended a global tariff of 7.7% on imports of aluminum articles to reduce imports to a level that would enable domestic aluminum producers to use approximately 80% of existing domestic production capacity and achieve long-term economic viability through increased production.
On March 23, 2018, the tariff rates assessed on imports of the covered aluminum products will be increased to 10% ad valorem, and tariff rates on the covered steel products will be increased to 25% ad valorem. These rates will be applied to imports of the covered products from all countries except for Canada and Mexico.
The covered steel products are those that are classified in the following Harmonized System (HTSUS) classification provisions:
HTSUS Subheadings 7206.10 – 7216.50;
HTSUS Subheading 7302.10;
HTSUS Subheadings 7302.40 – 7302.90; and,
HTSUS Subheadings 7304.10 – 7306.90.
The covered aluminum products are those that are classified in the following HTSUS classification provisions:
Unwrought aluminum in HTSUS Heading 7601;
Aluminum bars, rods and profiles in HTSUS Heading 7604;
Aluminum wire in HTSUS 7605;
Aluminum plate, sheet, strip and foil (flat rolled products) in HTSUS 7606 and 7607;
Aluminum tubes and pipes and tube and pipe fittings in HTSUS 7608 and 7609; and,
Aluminum castings and forgings in HTSUS Subheadings 7616.99.5160 and 7616.99.5170.
Both proclamations state that the Administration will implement a formal process whereby parties may request relief and exclusion from the adjusted tariffs. To be granted such relief, they will be required to show either that: (a) their products are not produced in the United States in a sufficient and reasonably available amount or of a satisfactory quality; or (b) there is a specific national security-based reason warranting exclusion from the new rates. On March 18, 2018, the Secretary of Commerce will issue procedures for the submission of requests for relief and exclusion from the adjusted tariffs.
If you have any questions pertaining to the scope of the Presidential Proclamations, the new aluminum and steel tariffs, or require information on other international trade issues, please contact Melissa Proctor at Miller Proctor Law PLLC (melissa@millerproctorlaw.com).
aluminum, imports, Section 232, steel, tariffs
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On April 16th, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security…
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In Search of Black Assassins
DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID, STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WAVY GRAVY, JERRY GARCIA, GRATEFUL DEAD, THE BOHEMIAN GROVE & THE HART WITCHES
I’LL PLAY THE BLUES FOR YOU
I didn’t know much about my father when he died in 1977. My sisters told me that he liked Mississippi Blues man, Jimmy Reed (1925-1976).
I never really had a conversation with my father. I often sat alone beside him for hours in his small studio apartment as a kid. He would just drift in and out of consciousness trying to find his soul. Well, my entire immediate family were out of town over this 4th of July weekend. I finally got the chance to return to Ronnie Stewart’s Russell City Blues Festival of 2018 for two days of down home blues, relaxation and sunshine. I didn’t expect any drama.
During a period of my childhood, Ronnie’s big brother and I were best of friends. I spent day and evening at Ronnie’s house. They had a grand big house with a upstairs and downstairs, and a mother and father just like on TV. All of his brothers and sisters had bicycles just like on television. They all sat together around a big table in a dining room for supper just like on TV. As a child, I was trapped in a dilemma because I loved Ronnie’s family more than I had loved my own.
My dear mother, I and six brothers and sisters were crammed inside a 2 (two) room apartment with a small kitchen space. Early in life, I was forcibly separated from my father because of drugs- OSS/Nazi hallucinogenic experimental truth drugs. Before my 2nd birthday, he was violently separated from me. The experience was so painful and traumatic that I almost became permanently comatose. It was the first time that I died.
In order to live, I had no other choice then to let another child grow inside me that had no idea of who he was. I had to disown my beloved father in my most impressionate years of child development. All of his life, I thought that he had crumbled mentally from individual weaknesses, godlessness, and lack of virtues that finally overwhelmed him. I thought his schizophrenia was all his own fault. I loved my father, but I had always been reserved about him leaving us alone. Yet, all that I heard about my father was that he was just a normal man of his era. He was a young humble gentle soul born in Tylertown, MS. Things just wasn’t adding up.
My father had been a pre WW II civilian employee at the U.S. Army Supply Depot in Oakland, then transferred to the U.S. Naval Air Station in Alameda, CA. One day, he went to work then disappeared. My mother and family couldn’t find him. He had been taken. I am not sure when my mother and family finally found him at Napa State Hospital. They were all a respected very humble hard working Christian people out of Mississippi and Louisiana close to the soil of the earth. The people that took my father from his family was U.S. Naval MC Lt. Charles Savage at Bethesda, head of Naval Intelligence ultra secret mind control program, Project CHATTER. They told me in no uncertain terms that I would be dead before I get any documented evidence or help me in any way to put pieces together to the puzzle that Project CHATTER took him.
For as long as I can remember, I had the same scene played out over and over again in my dreams. God wanted me to never forget it. The scene opens- I was playing with toys on the floor when my mother in some state of apprehension went to the door. She opened it slightly then blocked a man from trying to force his way inside. I looked through the opening of the door. I saw a man dressed in a U.S. Navy black and white sailor uniform staring at me as if I was less than an animal, while the man at the door was wearing civilian clothes. The man at the door trying to get in had his head inside the door talking to mother. It was a thin face.
Prior to this post, I never saw this picture before of U.S. Naval Lt. Dr. Charles Savage. He looks like the man at the door. Within the last couple of years, I finally discovered a written record where the U.S. Navy secretly took my beloved father in October 1948. “During WWII, the Navy used the newly built Q Ward [Napa State Hospital] as a hospital facility called the Mare Island Naval Hospital.”[1] God is still UNFOLDING.
Early in my quest to find out what happened to my father, Napa State Hospital claimed that the U.S. Navy burned all my father’s 1948- 1949 medical files from his secret Mare Island Naval Hospital annex commitment and torture. Otherwise, my father’s naval kidnapping, confinement and torture are ultra top national security secrets.
“ … highly regarded historical research on the Third Reich and the ‘euthanasia’ murders as Henry Friedlander’s The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution claims that during the Nazi period, electroshock was no therapy, but rather a treatment used to ‘inflict torture’.[2]
From the medical records I read from my father’s 1949 Alameda County Superior Court of California civil commitment, he had been de-patterned (clean slated) by series of insulin electric shock torture. After the 1948- 1949 experimental depatterning and separation from the naval hospital, my mother had to legally support committing him to Napa State Hospital. Where. My beloved had been reduced to a vegetable state that had to be to taught how to eat and use the bathroom like an infant child.
At the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, Lt. Savage worked directly under Operation Paperclip (Underground Third Reich) Luftwaffe Colonel Dr. Theodor Benzinger, head scientific director of the Naval Medical Research Institute (NMRI) at Bethesda from 1947 to 1970. On paper, Lt. Savage was the director of NMRI. Immediately after the Fall of Nazi Germany, Himmler’s SS- Dachau drug-mind control and “truth serum” experiments were written up by the U.S. Naval Technical Mission. In 1947, the US Navy initiated Project CHATTER at NMRI to continue to expand secret Nazi/SS mind control and interrogation tools such as electroshock, mescaline and LSD experiments developed out of the joint SS/Luftwaffe Dachau Concentration Camp “aviation series” terminal human medical experiments.[3] Dr. Benzinger was straight out of the Nazi Doctors Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany. Dr. Benzinger’s NMRI at the Bethesda became a secret major front for the newly formed CIA. Dr. Benzinger and NMRI was first exposed in 1977 by the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research investigation into the CIA’s MK ULTRA program. The drugs that took my father away came straight out of the Dachau Concentration Camp. It was pure Luftwaffe/SS- Knights of the Black Sun experimental Mescaline or LSD.
Back to the Russell City Blues Festival for a moment. In the middle of the festival, Ronnie Stewart introduced the VIPs at the venue. I discovered that Huey P. Newton’s widow, Fredrika Savage Newton, was sitting just yards behind me. I had met her only once with Brother Huey at the Los Angeles International Airport in a rare chance encounter. At the airport, my wife and I ran across Huey without goon bodyguards. I got a chance to briefly speak with Huey for the first time since being released from prison before Fredrika suddenly rushed in. She wanted to know who I was, but I didn’t answer her. My ex wife also knew Huey in Oakland. She took over the conversation, while I backed up and walked away.
In 1989, Huey P. Newton was assassinated in West Oakland. What most people don’t understand is that Huey knew exactly who was running drugs in Oakland. Huey was killed in the 1400 (1456) block of 9th street between Chester and Center Streets around 5 am. I grew up in the neighborhood. It is not the type of neighborhood to find at least four (4) different armed men arrested around 5 am in the morning unless there was a large drug transfer or shipment going down. It appears not one of four (4) armed men including Huey and the assassin lived in the area.
The Alameda County DA allowed ex- convict Tyrone Robinson of the new Black Guerrilla Family drug network to take the rap alone for the murder and execution of Brother Huey.[4] Huey’s death took place across the street from the apartment house of a west coast NY Carlos Gambino Mob rep.[5]
“It’s a tragedy,’ said Joe DePalma, 27, a construction worker awakened by the shots. ‘But I don’t understand what he [Huey P. Newton] was doing out in West Oakland at that time of the morning.”[6]
The most infamous DePalma Gambino capo was Gregory Depalma. In the 1970s, DePalma became friends with numerous celebrities after he built the Westchester Premiere Theatre in Tarrytown, NY. These friends included major HollyWeird entertainers Frank Sinatra, Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Dean Martin, and the infamous Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants, with whom DePalma frequently played golf. Not soon thereafter Huey’s assassination, Joe DePalma of West Oakland dropped off the map or ever existed on the map in the first instance.[7]
August 2007- They Blew Chauncey’s Brains Out
At the blues festival, Fredrika and her entourage moved into a shaded area under a tree in front of me where I could observe the activity around her. A number of people showed up to take group pictures with her. A white guy that I hadn’t noticed before and a black lady suddenly appeared both wearing white and blue round badges to coordinate group photos with Fredrika. Then, I suddenly noticed a particular, Charles E. Aikens, a dangerous boot-licking Oakland black journalist informer close to the Chauncey Bailey assassination and also the Charles A. Gregory assassination pop up from behind me.
I had absolutely no idea until posting this blog that Aikens is a serious dangerous 1993 felonious registered sexual offender (Cal Penal Code, Section 220). The section covers violent pedophiles. My wife know him, his former wife and family. My oldest daughter had been a close family friend. I heard that he may even be my distant cousin. At one time, I remember welcoming him into my home. He used to respectfully speak to me. Then, he suddenly stopped. Now, he only stares from behind. I am always uneasy when he moves behind me. At the Blues Festival, my intuition was if he moves any closer from behind. I may have to put him down.
Aikens was directly associated with Fredrika’s entourage. I watched him dance with one of her female entourage companions several times. Just before Bailey’s assassination and leaving Oakland for good, I had been slapped with at least 2 (two) lawsuits, an injunction and a lying restraining order coordinated by a Oakland black journalist secret inner circle of FBI/CIA collaborators and informers connected with him.
While I was fighting off the slap lawsuits, I got word from the underground grapevine to be extremely careful with these people, because I was too close to putting together puzzle pieces to untangle old Oakland’s high level powerful ultra secret pedophile ring that ran deep inside the district attorney’s office. I didn’t know how deep the rabbit hole ran in Oakland. Soon thereafter, I was deliberately poisoned. I had to drop out of sight until I could recover enough strength to move around. I was at the municipal courthouse one day when I ran into my black angel female assassin that poisoned me leaving the DA’s office with a hand full of files. She works between the Alameda County DA and Sheriff’s office.
I was careful with them, but I let my guard down for a cup of sweet Lemon Kool- Aid from my neighbor to help her 6 or 7 year old daughter raise money for a project. I even knew the woman’s late elder mother out of New Orleans. She treated me like a son. She had been my beloved elder. As soon as I took and drank the Kool- Aid, she suddenly closed shop, threw everything in her car trunk and took off down the street. I was laid out collapsed on the floor. I did have reservations at first, but I drank the Kool- Aid as if it was a traditional act of old fashion southern hospitality. It almost turned out to be a fatal ILLUSION. That was the second time I died.
Feeling Aikens moving in and out behind me, I was extremely uncomfortable and I left the blues festival before its end. As I was about to get on a BART train car, I suddenly spotted Aikens get on a train car to the rear of me. It could have been a coincidence. What most people don’t understand is that when murder is involved, the candle burns at both ends twenty-four (24) hours a day- seven (7) days a week, twelve (12) months a year.
By the way, I have always cherished the dinners I shared at Ronnie’s house with his family back in the day. It’s funny that what I remember most is that big pitcher of Kool-Aid at meals. Ronnie’s mom made some of the best Kool-Aid that I ever tasted. My mother also made a wicked pitcher of Kool-Aid, but we didn’t have a dining room or table, and a father of the house to enjoy it together like the Stewart family.
WAVY GRAVY & THE MANAGEMENT
The other day, I was reminded of Wavy Gravy (Hugh Nanton Romney), and Mendocino County by a reader of In Search of Black Assassins. I had got some serious red flag warnings about Wavy Gravy from the grapevine years ago- stay away from him! Since the 1960s, we often got vital secret information from people inside government agencies, police departments and even courts that couldn’t come forward due to extreme threats of danger and death. I never wanted to know where the inside information came from. So, there would be no possibility to expose the sources.
During the 1960s and 70s, I remembered Wavy Gravy on the surface as a disarming and benevolent popular hippie clown and activist around Berkeley, and the MC (master of ceremonies) of the infamous 1969 Woodstock Music Festival. As a popular MC of the era, he opened the show for major music industry entertainers like John Coltrane, B.B. King, Thelonious Monk, and Peter (Yarrow), Paul & Mary.
Wavy Gravy was like the satanic ritual slaying of Arlis Perry at Stanford University 44 years ago, it had been deeply embedded in my subconscious. When I heard his name in the context of the Hart Witches and the racial mass murder of 6 (six) innocent black children- alarm bells went off in my mind. Instantly, my intuition was that Wavy Gravy is related to the Hart Witches and the ritual sacrifices of the children. Wavy Gravy was far from being disarming, benevolent and innocent clown character. Now, I fully understand why the warnings had been issued from the grapevine to stay away from him.
Romney was born in East Greenbush, NY. His family ancestors were associated with high ranking English Freemasons in Kingston, Jamaica. After the Korean Aggression and the start of MK ULTRA, Romney volunteered for the U.S. Army in 1954. After discharge, Romney entered Boston University Theater Department in 1957, then attended the Neighborhood Playhouse for the Theater in NYC. He worked at The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NY at night as the poetry and entertainment director that featured beat poet Allen Ginsberg. At one time, he lived with the Jewish Bob Dylan above the cafe. Romney’s entertainment/poetic career was managed by the infamous Jewish Lenny Bruce.[8]
“[Ken] Babbs was in great form, as I say, and he had also hooked up with a remarkable head named Hugh Romney [Wavy Gravy], a poet, actor, and comedian who had gone the whole route, starting back in the Beat Generation days and was now into the LSD thing and had ‘Discovered the Management,’ as he put it, “and when you discover the Management there’s nothing to do but but go to work for it.
So Romney and his friend Bonnie Jean were now on the Bus, and they all set out to–nothing more, nothing less–turn on Los Angeles to the Management.’”[9]
What is the Management? It is something like the “Agency.” Ken Babbs is an infamous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey wrote the book Last Go Round.
Babbs is best known for his participation in the Acid Tests and on the bus, Furthur.[10] In 1958, he attended the Stanford University graduate creative writing program on a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship from 1958- 1959.[11]
Stanford Professor Stegner, CASBS Fellow
Allegedly, Babbs met Kesey at a class cocktail party sponsored by the professor, Wallace Stegner. It wasn’t a chance meeting between Babbs and Kesey at all. Behind the veil, Stegner, Babbs and Kesey were all under strict CIA MK ULTRA control. Since 1956, Stegner had been a fellow of Stanford’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavior Sciences (CASBS).[12]
Before I get to CASBS let me set the stage for Stanford University, the handmaiden of the U.S Congressional, Military, Industrial/Intelligence System. Hidden behind the veil, Stanford Research Institute (SRI) at Stanford University is one of the most fascist, powerful, and dangerous clans of New World Order businessmen, and medical-military-industrialist and war profiteers on the planet.
STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE & THE SS SONDERKOMMANDO
By itself, SRI is a major CIA and pentagon contractor most similar to SS Obergruppenführer (General) Dr. Ing Hans Kammler’s Sonderkommando (Special UnitS) “think tank” of Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1938 and throughout World War II, the SS enacted a procedure where offices and units of the SS could form smaller sub-units, known as SS-Sonderkommandos, to carry out special tasks. The use of SS-Sonderkommandos was widespread.
According to SS Major Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Höttl, Head of Intelligence and Counter Espionage in Central and South-East Europe,not even the SS leadership knew how many SS … Sonderkommandos were constantly being formed, disbanded, and reformed for various tasks, especially on the Eastern Front. Hoettl was a major link and part of the SS underground after WW II. Kammler coordinated the development of Himmler’s wunderwaffen miracle weapons that included ultra top secret rocket and nuclear technology of the SS- Knights of the Black Sun.
SS Kammler’s researchers like Dr. Konrad Zuse (inventor of the modern computer) developed digital hardware computers and software to advance Nazi rocket and nuclear research and development. SS Kammler employed three (3) different counterintelligence units for the political, military and industrial secrecy. Not even Soviet intelligence was ever able to penetrate his organization.
In April 1945, U.S. Army General George S. Patton suddenly overtook SS Kammler’s headquarters; Kammler conveniently disappeared from sight, sound and history. Critical to the SS Sonderkommando development of the Nazi’s weapons of mass destruction was the development of the world’s first true computer called the “Eniac” (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). It was developed by Konard Zuse. Zuse was a close friend of SS Werher von Braun and worked on Kammler’s V-2 rocket team as a guidance system technician.
Z4 & Two Female Programmers
Zuse’s computer, the Z4, survived the Allied bombing blitz of Germany with the aid of SS Kammler by hiding the computer system in the Bavaria Mountains along with his rocket team and may have been part of Kammler’s super wunderwaffen scientific treasure trove secured by General Patton. It is generally believed that Zuse’s “Eniac” was used to compile the complicated data needed in developing the SS secret atomic bomb weapon that was supposed to turn the tide of war in the Nazi’s favor. However, it would turn out to be that the secret to SS Kammler, the wunderwaffe trove and Nazi loot was best to left in the hands of elite clandestine Bohemian Grove Wall Street banking medical-military-industrial interests of Allen Dulles, and Wild Bill Donovan than a dispensable loudmouth military grunt like General Patton.[13]
On December 21, 1945, General Patton was conveniently liquidated by an arranged accident in Germany. After the death of Patton, SS Kammler and the SS wunderwaffen war booty trove disappeared into the banking medical-military-industry of America, and was cemented and shrouded in mystery.[14 However, Konrad Zuse’s super secret Z4 “Eniac” computer just happened to show up at SRI in Menlo Park, CA.
According to SRI, “ENIAC, the world’s first digital computer. ENIAC was installed at SRI in 1946, and the institute’s researchers immediately began work scaling down the behemoth machine. SRI scientists came up with the first magnetic core computer memory, which allowed the computer to operate in a much smaller casing. SRI made many other firsts in computers, and in its early years it made key contributions to other industries as well.” [15] The rest is history. SRI’s ENIAC was used in the super secret Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to mass murder and slaughter hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens.
SS Kammler was secretly disappeared by the OSS out of Germany in May 1945 in a program far secret than Operation Paperclip. SRI was founded in 1946 following the fall of Nazi Germany, disappearance of SS Kammler and the end of WWII by a group of German descendant West Coast businessmen and war profiteers headed by Stephen D. Bechtel, Sr. and Henry J. Kaiser. SRI grew to be the second-largest corporate-government “think tank” in the U.S. Its business was supplying government and industry with the latest in razor edge revolutionary applied research, economic analysis and management techniques.
“There were many chores Steve Bechtel and his company would perform for presidents, many favors they would do –and had done– for the organs of government, including, though few knew it, the Central Intelligence Agency. The approval for CIA covers came directly from Steve Bechtel, who had his own ties to the agency… Steve Sr. and John Simpson were Bechtel’s liason with the intelligence community at the high levels, but in the field, Bechtel worked with Washington through.. key executives…”
SRI & THE BOHEMIAN GROVE
Behind the veil, the powerful satanic Bohemian Grove web of relationships unite Edgar Kaiser, Sr., Stephen D. Bechtel, brothers Foster and Allen Dulles, John A. McCone, Henry Kissinger and John L. Simpson in the Satanic Brotherhood.[16]
“John McCone and Steve Bechtel were among the exclusive members of Mandalay Camp at Bohemian Grove, going back the 1930s: “The most elite of the camps is Mandalay. A visitor once said of it, ‘You don’t just walk in there –you are summoned.’ Mr. [Gerald] Ford and Mr. [Henry] Kissinger this year [1977] were guests of Mandalay whose members include Stephen Bechtel Sr., Stephen Bechtel Jr., Leonard Case Firestone and Edgar F. Kaiser, among the industrialists; former CIA director John McCone and [Gen.] Lucius D. Clay, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [and senior partner in Lehman Brothers]. Following closely in Mandalay’s footsteps is Cave Man Camp. Its members have included Herbert Hoover, a dedicated Bohemian who was known to fellow campers as ‘the Chief’…”[17]
John McCone was a close personal friend and business partner of Stephen D. Bechtel (Bechtel- McCone Corporation), and brought the likes of Allen Dulles (CIA Director 53-61), who preceded McCone as CIA director (61- 65), and President General Dwight Eisenhower into their their secret inner circle. McCone and Bechtel were also directors of the SRI.
John L. Simpson was a close friend of an interesting group of people including Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson, and OSS Chief William Donovan. In 1942, Simpson was recruited into the OSS by Allen Dulles. His official title was chief financial adviser (big money bag man) for the U.S. Army in Europe. In 1944, Simpson returned to San Francisco and became a chief consultant to the Bechtel-McCone Corporation. His arrival brought Bechtel-McCone even more juicy contracts from the War Department.[18]
SRI & LUCIFER’S SERVANTS- THE UNDERGROUND KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK SUN
SRI William Talbot
William Fletcher “Bill” Talbot was a research chemist and the founding director of SRI from 1946- 1947. In 1944, he was the assistant director of research and development for the OSS.[19] In OSS, Talbot worked under Dr. William Langer of North Dakota.
Dr. William Langer
From 1945 to 1946, Langer directed the CIA’s Office of Intelligence, Research and Liaison with the Department of State, and in 1946 was the CIA’s Assistant to the Secretary of State. Allen Dulles was an adviser to Dean Acheson (Simpson’s inner circle), the acting Secretary of State.
In a secret directive circulated on September 3, 1946, President Harry Truman officially approved the Dulles-inspired Paperclip project, whose mission was to bring no less than 1,000 Nazi scientists to the United States. Among them were many of the vilest criminals of the war: there were doctors from Dachau concentration camp. There were the chemical weapons engineers such as Kurt Blome, who had tested Sarin nerve gas on prisoners at Auschwitz. There were doctors who instigated battlefield traumas by taking women prisoners at Ravensbrück and filling their wounds with gangrene cultures, sawdust, mustard gas, and glass, then sewing them up and treating some with doses of sulfa drugs while timing others to see how long it took for them to develop lethal cases of gangrene.[20] In other words, part of Dr. Langer and Dr. Talbot’s OSS/CIA mission was to smuggle elite Masonic high ranking war criminal SS and Nazi collaborations into the U.S and the Americas.
After WWII, Langer developed a certain compulsion to free SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Martin Sandberger. And, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the man above that was at Nuremberg Prison wasn’t the real Martin Sandberger. Sandberger was a commander the Sonderkommando (SS Special Unit) 1a of the Einsatzgruppe A Commander responsible for the mass slaughter of thousands of Jews and gypsies. In January 1944, Sandberger became head of the Department A in the RSHA Amt. VI (Ausland- SD, the foreign intelligence service); in this position he reported directly to Himmler and Hitler’s absolute international heavy weight play boy-spy master, Walter Schellenberg.
As SS Wilhelm Höttl suggested to the Nuremberg Tribunal that the only ones that most likely knew all the people leading the Sonderkommandos (SS Special Units) were limited to Hitler, Himmler, Hans Kammler, and most likely SS Walter Schellenberg.
About California’s resident SS officer, Baron von Bolschwing, SS Sonderkommando, handling California Governor and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the CIA and FBI (Gehlen Org); Höttl said that Baron Bolschwing was “Too Big for My Boots.”
SS Brigadefuhrer und Generalmajor der Polize Walter Schellenberg was wicked and evil like the DEVIL. After only serving 2 (two) years in Nuremberg prison, he walked away from WW II war crimes and crimes against humanity as clean as a baby’s bottom. Martin Sandberger kept the secret domestic and foreign accounts and financial records of that SS department. As the first assistant to Schellenberg, Sandberger acted as his liaison man with SS-1 Heinrich Himmler.
At Nuremberg, he was tried and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sandberger was sentenced to die by hanging. Due to the intervention of the likes of Dr. Langer, Sonderkommando (SS Special Unit) Sandberger was released from prison in 1958 and subsequently disappeared into the secret SS UNDERGROUND with most likely million in assets, jewels, art treasure and gold.[21] That’s the way they rolled.
As SRI first founding director, Dr. Talbot held a key position in the ultra secret OSS/CIA Paperclip Project dark inner circle to exploit the secret Nazi SS underground, Dr. Ing Hans Kammler, and SS/Nazi Satanic principles wonder weapons technology and agenda for a New World Order.
JERRY GARCIA, A FRIEND OF THE DEVIL IS A FRIEND OF MINE
Jerry Garcia & Friend of the Devil- Anton LeVay
That brings us to Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead to begin with. Robert Hunter called 1970’s “Friend of the Devil” the closest he and Garcia came to writing a classic song. For all practical purposes, Jerry Garcia is a minion of SRI. After being discharged from the U.S. Army, he headed straight to Stanford University and Palo Alto as if he was being led by a carrot on a string of CIA MK ULTRA.
In Palo Alto, he immediately hooked up with Scientologist Class IV auditor Robert Hunter that wrote most of the songs for the Grateful Dead.
Harold “Hal” Puthoff from the National Security Agency (NSA) and Ingo Swann from the UN enroll in Scientology, supposedly unknown to each other. Within five (5) years, they will be at the highest levels of Scientology and under secret contract with the CIA to explore and develop Nazi/SS paranormal remote viewing. Scientologist Harold “Hal Puthoff” worked for SRI. While he was there, he wrote a letter endorsing the e-meter to government officials.[22]
Hunter was closed associated with Victor Royal Lovell. He graduated Stanford in 1957, with an Associates degree in Philosophy. In 1959, he had obtained his Masters degree. During the next 5 years he studied and worked in the field of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, and obtained his PhD in these areas of Psychology in 1964. Reference: Stanford Alumni Directory 1954
Dr. Gregory Bateson & Dr. Leo Hollister
As a Stanford University psychiatric intern, Vic Lowell worked with Dr. Gregory Bateson and Dr. Leo Hollister at the Palo Alto VA Mental Hospital testing LSD and other drugs on psychiatric patients and “volunteers” to improve LSD modeling for secret CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH operational use. Lowell setup Robert Hunter as one of Bateson and Hollister’s LSD volunteers at the Palo Alto VA Mental Hospital. Under Doctors Bateson and Hollister at the VA Mental Hospital, Hunter received LSD, the first week, psilocybin the second, mescaline the third, and a mixture of all three on the fourth.
“Garcia’s reaction was simple: “God, I’ve GOT to have some of that.”[23]
In April 1965, Garcia took his acid (LSD) test at Hunter’s place in Palo Alto. In Palo Alto, Garcia was hooked up with Hunter and 15 year old Barbara Bridget Meier,
“They [Bridget’s mother and father] had moved to Menlo Park from Oregon in 1950 when her father was accepted into the prestigious Stanford Writing Program [CASBS Professor Wallace Stegner], ‘ and the whole time I was growing up my father was working on a novel,’ she says. That was never published, but another book he wrote was: Friend From Harlem, about a black jazz musician friend. Barbara’s mother was a high-powered executive who worked for the Stanford Research Institute [SRI] and translated Russian documents for the Rand Corporation, an ultra-right-wing think tank …”[24]
Grace Marie Haddy
In Palo Alto, Hunter and Garcia also moved in a secret circle of the Church of Scientology revolving around Grace Marie Haddy & SRI ultra secret CIA funded mind control and psychic experiments. Haddy was the head of dirty tricks in the Guardian’s Office.[25]
JERRY GARCIA, GRATEFUL DEAD, TAVISTOCK INSTITUTE & THE CASBS
“Alan,” according to Robert Hunter, “was a heavy prime mover in getting us together to recognize ourselves as a group.”[26]
One of Jerry’s oldest Palo Alto friends is Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead’s music publisher company Ice Nine publishing.[27]
Alan is the son of Eric Lansdown Trist. He was a British scientist, psychologist and leading figure in the field of organization development (OD). He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London.[28] Between 1958 and 1960, Eric Trist was a fellow of the Stanford’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavior Sciences (CASBS) when Alan became involved managing GarIca, Hunter and the Grateful Dead.[29]
In 1958, Frank Barron, Tim Leary’s CIA control agent, was also a fellow of CASBS.[30] By the way, the Stanford CASBS was initiated by a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1954, it was located at 202 Junipero Serra Boulevard, Stanford, California. Frank X. Barron was one of the founding Fellows. (Obit 2002)
Extreme deep cover CIA psychological warfare and counter psychological warfare expert from Columbia University, Bureau of Applied Social Research headed by Charles Y. Glock was also a fellow of CASBS in 1958.[31]
In 1958, Dr. Gregory Bateson was also a CASBS fellow running a clandestine mind control program out of the Palo Alto V.A. mental hospital. Dr. Bateson research assistant was noted to have been Dr. Don Jackson.[32]
Donald deAvila “Don” Jackson, M.D. was a psychiatrist best known for his pioneering work in family therapy. From 1947 to 1951, he studied under Harry Stack Sullivan. From 1953 to 1962, he worked with Bateson, John Weakland, Master Erickson Hypnotist Jay Haley and William Fry. They developed Bateson’s “double bind theory” of schizophrenia. In 1958, he founded the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, CA.[33]
Project CHATTER Dr. Charles Savage, Surrogate of Luftwaffe Colonel Dr. Theodor Benzinger, was the medical director of the International Federation for Advanced Study (IFAS) in Menlo Park, CA founded by a shady intelligence figure, Captain Alfred Matthew Hubbard, known as the Johnny Appleseed of LSD.[34] Dr. Savage was the also a pied piper of LSD. He was of the first to use LSD for research in the United States.[35] In 1957, Dr. Savage of the ultra top secret Naval Project CHATTER left Georgetown University for CASBS in Palo Alto, CA, with Dr. Andre Muller Weitzenhoffer, a Stanford University renown master hypnotist that did early work in particularly interest to the CIA’s Bluebird, and Artichoke assassination program, “The Production of Anti-Social Acts Under Hypnosis” (Weitzenhoffer, 1949), published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
Dr. Weitzenhoffer had been the author or co-author of 14 scientific publications and one book before receiving his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1956. In 1957, at the invitation of Ernest R. Hilgard, he moved to the Laboratory for Human Development and Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Weitzenhoffer and Milton Erickson were friends and at times collaborators. At Stanford, Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard developed the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales and the Stanford Profile Scales of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Forms I and II which are considered the most widely referenced research tools in the field of hypnosis.[36]
In 1962, Dr. Weitzenhoffer became an associate at the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma Veterans Administration with one of the military industrial-medical complexes most notorious mind controllers, the late Dr. Louis Jolyon West. Dr. West in himself is another story for another day, but his appearance or any associates of his in any case sounds alarms.[37] In 1959, Dr. Weitzenhoffer was also a consultant at the Mental Health Research Institute (MHRI) in Michigan.[38] The MHRI was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, and Josiah Macy Foundation, fronts for the CIA’s MK ULTRA/MONARCH mind control programs.[39]
The hidden networks around Stanford University, Stegner, Babbs, Kesey and CASBS represents the Who’s Who of Allen Dulles’ early extremely most dangerous dark inner circle of clandestine Gehlen SS Org, Dr. Josef Mengele– CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH mind controllers on the planet.
WAVY GRAVY & THE CIA MK ULTRA MERRY PRANKSTERS
Merry Prankster Ken Babbs
While at Stanford, Ken Babbs entered into yet another level of secrecy– the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC). Babbs was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marines following the end of his Stanford fellowship. He trained as a helicopter pilot and served in one of the first American advisory units in the Vietnam Aggression from 1962-63 prior to his discharge and reunion with Kesey in 1964.[40]
According to Wavy Gravy, Ken Babbs had been Ken Kesey’s lieutenant. Ken Kesey?
“At Stanford in 1959, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in a CIA-financed study named Project MKULTRA at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital where he worked as a night aide. The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT, and DMT on people. Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the Project MK ULTRA study and in the years of private experimentation that followed… Kesey’s role as a medical guinea pig, as well as his stint working at a state veterans’ hospital, inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962.”[41]
Dr. Gregory Bateson of the OSS and CIA was the controller and initiator of the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital from experiments 1950-1962, and numerous other clandestine ultra top secret CIA MK-ULTRA experiments. Brit Dr. Bateson was a Cambridge University-trained “Anthropologist, and friend of Aldous Huxley’s from the 1920s. Dr. Bateson worked directly with Vacaville CIA station chief, Dr. James Alexander Hamilton, and the notorious CIA criminal/madman, George Hunter White.[42]
Dr. Bateson was the personal psychiatrist of Alan Watts, Buddhist/Zen guru and founder, with Huxley, of the Esalen Institute. In the 1950s, Bateson became spiritual leader and CIA drug supplier for a group of young artists gathered through Stanford University, the Palo Alto VA Hospital, and California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This group became Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy’s original Merry Pranksters.[43]
Back to the Babbs and Wavy Gravy’s “The Management”.
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, hereinafter “The Brotherhood”, a legally registered nonprofit religious institution centered on Mystic Arts World, a head shop in downtown Laguna Beach, CA. The church’s figurehead and high priest was Timothy Leary, a world-famous former Harvard psychology professor turned proselytizer of psychedelic drugs. Leary and the Brotherhood preached spiritual awakening through Buddhist meditation and drug experimentation. Behind the veil, The Brotherhood was a major international drug smuggling and distribution network.[44]
The Brotherhood viewed marijuana and acid as sacraments. Many of its members were serious, spiritual people who hoped to end the war in Vietnam and inspire a generation to achieve worldwide peace and harmony. It funded vegan soup kitchens and promoted an array of local artists, but it also financed a complex conglomeration of underground pipelines that would eventually funnel untold quantities of hash and marijuana—and later cocaine—to Southern California from such exotic locales as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Costa Rica.
The Brotherhood also ran secret local laboratories for the production and distribution of Orange Sunshine, a powerful orange acid tablet that turned on thousands of young people in Laguna each year. A 1972 Rolling Stone article dubbed them the “Hippie Mafia.” [45]
“We were like soldiers. We brought Timothy Leary to us to approach famous people like Crosby, Stills N Nash, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane—all the San Francisco bands—so we’d have control of the music. We really had power.”[46]
Orange Sunshine was made by Mystic Arts. It was the purest form of LSD. Tim Leary was CIA from the beginning. That should give anyone a fair idea of what Babbs meant by “The Management.”’
Police Chief Neil Purcell
By the way, former Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil Purcell’s career was punctuated by his December 26, 1968 rookie arrest of drug guru Timothy Leary for possession of LSD, hardish and marijuana retired in 1996 to Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm called Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville, CA.[47] In 1944, Laguna Beach, CA was the secret home to the OSS Station WS assessment center to assess candidates recruited on the West Coast.[48] The Hog Farm is a commune that harbors and veil a clandestine security force and compound. Wavy Gravy was not only the MC of Woodstock in 1969. He was also Woodstock’s Chief of Security of the Hog Farm Security Force (Peace Force) hired by the creators of Woodstock identified by the five (5) star pentagram.
Pentagram Hop Farmer Security
The Hog Farm Security Force specializes in national and international mass group control.[49]
The Kemetic hieroglyph representing “star” had five points. Sopdet the Kemetic personification of the star Sirius , is always shown with the five-pointed star hieroglyph on her head.
The five-pointed star or pentagram is one of the most potent, powerful, and persistent symbols in human history. It has been important to almost every ancient culture, from the Mayans of Latin America, to India, China, Greece, and Egypt. It has been found scratched on the walls of Neolithic caves, and in Babylonian drawings, where it marks the pattern the planet Venus makes on its travels- a secret symbol of the Goddess Ishtar.
Woodstock’s financiers and creators were NY Jews. Jewish kids (Michael Lang, Eliot Tiber (born Eliyahu Teichberg) and Artie Kornfeld all grew up in Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Kornfeld, although not religious, was known to introduce himself on occasion as “Avraham ben Yisroel Kornfeld, a Kohain.” The Kohains were the high priests in ancient Israel before the destruction of the holy temples.[50]
In 1966, Wavy Gravy’s first Hog Farm Commune began in hills of Sunland, a town in the far north of the San Fernando Valley. Charles Manson’s followers came to him via Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, Process Church, and Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm. Manson picked up 14 year old follower Diane Lake directly from the Hog Farm WinnaRAINBOW Camp.
Dianne Lake was born in the December of 1953. Her parents were prominent members of Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm commune. From an early age, Dianne was a MK ULTRA/MONARCH child sex slave subject to both (pedophilia) group sex and hallucinogenic drugs. In 1967, just before her 14th birthday, Dianne met the Manson Family at The Spiral Staircase house in Topanga Canyon. With her Hog Farm parent’s permission, Diane Lake left to travel with the Mason Family.[51]
THE MERRY PRANKSTERS ALLIANCE WITH THE HELL’S ANGELS
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, and confusion. The Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead were indeed agents of deception appropriately named- U.S. Shadow Government Pranksters.
Poet Allen Ginsberg and Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass) among them—and counter-cultural icons such as Hunter S. Thompson and criminal Beat generation author and poet Neal Cassidy (Ginsberg’s lover) showed their true colors when they strung up a 15-foot-long, red white and blue sign strung up outside Ken Kesey’s ranch in La Honda, CA: THE MERRY PRANKSTERS WELCOME THE HELL’S ANGELS.
Kesey and Hells Angel
The ILLUSIONARY Satanic misfit/psycho mind controlled fake leftist SRI Merry Pranksters (shadow government MK ULTRA change agent provocateurs) invited Sonny Barber and the swastika-sporting racist-violent Neo- Nazi motorcycle gang to celebrate their formal ALLIANCE with a two (2) day party of drugs, rape and sheer debauchery. Hunter S Thompson puts it:
“Their [Pranksters] political views are limited to the same kind of retrograde patriotism that motivates the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. They are blind to the irony of their role … knight errants of a faith from which they have already been excommunicated. The Angels will be among the first to be locked up or croaked if the politicians they think they agree with ever come to power.”[52]
Thompson introduced Kesey to the Hell’s Angels in July 1965. He had lived with Angels for about a year and half. By August 1965, Kesey hosted the ALLIANCE in his first Acid Test with the Angels at his home in La Honda. La Honda is nestled in a Redwood forest that was used by the Bohemian Club as a camping ground in the late 19th century.
The Watts Rebellion took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to the 16th, 1965. On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for. A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight with police. False rumors spread that the police had hurt a pregnant woman, and six days of looting and arson followed. The Los Angeles PD needed the support of nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard to quell the rebellion, which resulted in 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage. The rebellion were blamed principally on police brutality and racism.[53]
In San Francisco, these mind controlled fake flower generation (satanic Neo Nazis, witches and warlocks)- counterculture agents of the CIA came up with a cover story mission to heal the wounds in Watts with music, and Free LSD. Behind the veil, it was shadow government act of deception, racial revenge and violence.[54]
Youth Opportunities (Masonic) Center in Watts/Compton
On February 2nd, the eve of Lincoln’s birthday 1966, the Pranksters rented a Masonic Prince Hall warehouse to covertly poison black residents of Watts with LSD.
Kesey, Babbs Jerry Garcia and Wavy Gravy filled two (2) galvanized garbage cans full of old fashion southern comfort Kool- Aid. Allegedly, they setup Kool-Aid on the left is for the kids, and Kool-Aid on the right was the Eee-lectric Kool-Aid filled with pure LSD. That’s what they say. However, I think that neo Nazi Merry Pranksters poisoned man, woman, elders and the children in the black community with LSD.
Lee Quarnstrom is a retired American journalist, former executive editor of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Magazine with alleged Charles Manson Family Neo- Nazi assassin Manson II– William “Bill” Mentzer. Quarnstrom was a core member of the Merry Band of Pranksters frequently associated with the Warlocks (Grateful Dead) and the Hells Angels at Kesey’s La Honda Ranch.[55],[56]
WATTS ACID TEST AND THE BLACK WOMAN THAT DON’T CARE
The Watts Clandestine Acid Test occurred when many people in the black community drank the Kool-Aid unaware that it had been clandestinely heavily poisoned with Nazi/CIA LSD.[57] During the Acid Test, a unwitting young black woman that drank the Kool- Aid completely freaked out. Her cries in the wilderness were heard and amplified all through the night. Her wails filled the center hall, the night and all the tortured wailing, tossing and turning souls under the influence of LSD.
Her persistent wails turned into a symphony and orchestra of schizoid musical hallucinations- “We Don’t Care!”
Wavy Gravy: “Listen, this girl’s brains are coming out! and who cares? This girl’s coming apart! and who cares? This girl’s breaking up into crispy chips! and who cares? This girl’s caked in the dust, nylon wall-to-wall on her eyeballs! and who cares?”[58]
As her soul was tortured and wailed in the wilderness, just outside the center, “The Kool-Aid had been served at ten or so. Almost from the first the doorway was crowded with people walking in and out, and policemen. There were, throughout the evening, at least six different groups of police … starting with the Compton City police, then the Highway Patrol, sheriff’s deputies, L.A.P.D. and the vice/narco squad, I seem to remember them in groups of five or six, standing just inside the doorway, watching, sometimes talking to passers-by, but making no hostile gestures or threatening statements.”[59]
They also didn’t care that innocent black people were poisoned. The infamous young woman that wailed “I Don’t Care”was written about in Tom Wolfe’s book,“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” [60]
Wavy Gravy: “Well, I certainly cared, at least to get her to shut the fuck up. If she was unglued, I might at least find some way to get her glued back together, I went looking for her — twenty minutes, twenty years, who knows how long it took to find her — and found her standing in the middle of a circle of pranksters and people I didn’t know still saying, “Who Cares?! Who Cares?! I got everybody to join hands which caused this woman to laugh and turn into jewels and light. That was when I passed my Acid Test. I realized that when you get to the very bottom of the human soul and your sinking, but you’ll still reach for someone who is sinking worse than you are, everybody’s going to get high. You don’t need acid to get there.” — On the Bus – Paul Perry – Page 165
Then, Wavy Gravy, Jerry Garcia and Merry Pranksters got on the bus and drove away.
Black people and the young woman in Watts that drank the Kool- Aid were left to wail to the moon with broken souls and families for all the Merry Pranksters, “The Management” and the CIA had to CARE.
1967, Tom Wolfe (New York Magazine) with CIA Agent Gloria Steinem
I got my own story about Gloria Steinem in the Oakland Black Community. Tom Wolfe as a journalist traveled on the bus with the Merry Pranksters across the country partying and observing acid tests. He wore stupid white suits with a perpetual smirk of the wicked sadistic privileged elite inflicting pain on the masses and enjoying every sick moment of their deception, inflicting death, pain, misery and suffering on the people.
Hunter S. Thompson once wrote about a woman being gang-raped by a bunch of Hells Angels in front of her boyfriend at Kesey’s La Honda ranch. Wolfe wrote about the same incident. But while Thompson appeared disturbed, Wolfe thought it was cute. He snickered about it.[61] He also had a snickering attitude about the Watts Merry Pranksters Acid Test as if it wasn’t a crime against humanity.
Owsley & Jerry Garcia
Lee Quarnstrom: “It was right after the Watts riot. I had the sense that we were the first white people to be there since the riot. We held the Acid Test in an old automotive repair garage that was empty. We got a couple of thirty-gallon garbage pails and mixed Kool-Aid. Owsley [Stanley III] had a couple of glass ampules with pure LSD in them and he poured it into the Kool-Aid. We did some quick mathematics and figured that one Dixie cup full of Kool-Aid equalled fifty micrograms of acid. The standard dose, if you wanted to get high, was 300 mics. So we told everyone that six cups would equal a standard trip. After a couple of cups, when I was as high as I had ever been, somebody recomputed and realized that each cup held 300 micrograms. I remember hearing that and realized that I had just gulped down 2000 micrograms. The rest of the evening was as weird as you might expect.”[62]
LSD triggers psychosis, depression, aggression, and schizophrenia. It is chemical schizophrenia. 150- 250 micro grams is a strong dose of LSD, while 300 and plus is known to be a heavy dose of experimental hallucinogens.[63]
Augustus Owsley Stanley III, “The Bear”
Key to the CIA’s MK-ULTRA Acid Test operation was the sound man for the Grateful Dead, known as Augustus Owsley Stanley III, or “Bear.” At only fifteen, he “voluntarily committed” himself to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC whereas 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. Masonic Scottish Rite Master- former OSS psychiatrist Dr. Winfred Overholser of St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington DC was at the central heart of the network and dark circle of clandestine top secret mind control projects- PAPERCLIP, CHATTER, and CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH.[64]
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 Satanic Jack Parsons. Parsons was a leader of the Agape lodge, the American chapter of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO).[65]
“At the Watts Test a few months later, Owsley saw the sound coming out of the speakers; and the experience joined two passions; a reverence for LSD as “a pathway to another place,” which “seemed to give you access to mental powers” known to ancient alchemists, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons, whose literature he read as science. And it focused a talent for manipulating sound on a worthy subject: the band. Following the Watts Test, … Owsley no longer saw himself as the electrical engineer, he had trained to be, nor as a chemist, but as an artist. After seeing sound, he would accept whatever psychedelics disclosed to him as real, “more real, perhaps, than my everyday life,” which was governed by a “restricted consciousness...” — Sweet Chaos – Carol Brightman – Page 101
Augustus Owsley Stanley III is no flower generation saint or hero to people of color. He was a vile satanic racist neo Nazi major international criminal drug manufacturer and dealer for the “The Management“- CIA and the Brotherhood.[66] DON’T GET IT TWISTED!
BOHEMIAN GROVE, WAVY GRAVY, BLACK OAK RANCH, HART WITCHES & THE SIX (6) SLAUGHTERED BLACK CHILDREN
I honor the energy of oak, the doorway to the mysteries. I will call upon the strength of the Horned One when I feel in need of protection. So mote it be.
“The oak tree was considered the sacred tree of Germany. Hitler loved oak trees and had them planted all over the Reich as “concordant with the spirit of the Führer.” Oak leaves and acorns were even the symbols of the SS, Hitler’s green Praetorian Guard.”
Welcome to Black Oak Ranch Grove
Wavy Gravy & Jahanara
In 1982, Wavy and his wife Jahanara, plus around 50 Hog Farmers began the purchase of a big chunk of land in Laytonville, California, called Black Oak Ranch. In 1983, Wavy and Jahanara moved Camp Winnarainbow to Laytonville.
The history at Black Oak Ranch dates back to 1987 when Wavy Gravy asked Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead to help settle an overdue mortgage by staging a concert at French’s camp in Piercy, CA. Garcia agreed if Bill Graham would co-produce, which he did, and “Electric on the Eel” was born. The event became a springboard for Garcia’s solo career and put the Black Oak Ranch on the map when Electric on the Eel was held there in 1992. Christened with the trans dimensional space jams of Garcia himself this place took on a life of its own as a cosmic vortex of healing and creativity. The interesting thing about the life of this energy is that it would never leave this place. It continued to resurface time and again like a geyser of imagination set to shower down dreams.[69]
“The Bohemian Club – Elite members of this secret order (that includes most US presidents) meet at a time when the sun (Aton) is at its highest point during the year – at the summer solstice – June 21st. The summer solstice was adopted by Hitler and his Nazis as their most important day of ritual and celebration. It was the most sacred day in the Nazi calendar.” Michael Tsarion / The Irish Origins of Civilization, Volume 2
Kay Briggs claimed that Bohemian Grove sex rituals were influenced by some 200,000 ex-Nazi officers and Nazi élite supporters who were secretly admitted to the United States after World War II. They along with – paradoxically – German, Austrian and other European Jews, took shelter inside the top level of the American establishment, military, and at Ivy League universities, especially Princeton. She implies that Nazi refugees became part of the highest echelons of the American power structure, infecting it with their theories, politics, existentialist ends-justify-the-means tactics, their cultish mysticism and their initiation practices, which determined what kind of people got promoted in post-war America, and how.
Black Oak Ranch is a place for “Enchanted Forest Gatherings” that creates close-knit community (GROVE) experiences within a fairy tale setting of majestic Oak trees. In folklore and fantasy, an enchanted forest is a forest containing enchantments. Such forests are described in the oldest folklore from regions where forests are common, and occur throughout the centuries to modern works of fantasy. They represent places unknown to the characters, and situations of liminatity and transformation. The forest as a place of magic and danger is found among folklore wherever the natural state of wild land is forest: a forest is a location beyond which people normally travel, where strange things might occur, and strange people might live, the home of monsters, witches and fairies. Witches often danced beneath the Oak Tree for ritual. The druids would not meet for ritual if there was not an Oak Tree present. Idols were made from Oak Wood.
UN Earth Dance 2010, Wavy Gravy & Fantuzzi
Every September for the past eight years, the Earthdance Global Peace Party Festival in Laytonville, CA, has drawn folks by the thousands to Black Oak Ranch for a weekend of celebration, music, dance, art and participation in an international prayer for peace and healing.
At the heart of the “Earthdance Global Peace Party” is Master Mason, Shriner/Knights Templar, Fantuzzi.
Welcome to Harmony Park Grove
Welcome festi-family at Harmony Park, MN. This is the most magical fairy forest in all the land !
Harmony Park Grove & Six (6) Black Adopted Sacrificial Children
The Harmony playground is on a lake with giant oak elders providing shade and shelter for the whole campground. This sacred site has been a place for the live music community to gather and befriend one another around campfires and under majestic stars.
Lil Hanna and Abigail, two of the six (6) slaughtered (?) black children held captive in Harmony Park Grove, MN.
Jennifer Hart, Fantuzzi & Children
Welcome to the Bohemian Grove
A global powerful group of druids and pagans have been meeting annually for seventeen days each July in a remote “sacred grove” of ancient redwood trees in the deep forest since 1878. Some 1,500 in number, their membership roll is kept secret, but includes the super-rich, blood dynasty member families of the ILLUMINATI; heavy-hitting corporate chieftains and high government officials. Mingling among them are a number of Hollywood movie stars, Broadway producers, famous entertainers, musicians, authors, painters and poets.
For decades, there have been vague rumors of weird goings on in Bohemian Grove in more remote parts of its 2700 acres. Reliable reports claim Druidic like rituals – druids in red hooded robes marching in procession and chanting to the Great Owl (Moloch) – a funeral pyre with ‘corpses’.
An article in a local community newspaper, The Santa Rosa Sun, reported on the Cult of Canaan and the legend of Moloch in place at Bohemian Grove. The Moloch Pagan Cult of Sacrifice is human sacrifice. About the mid 1980s, there were rumors of murders in remote parts of the property. Bohemian Grove criminal reported activities also include kidnapping, rape, pedophilia, illegal detention of children, sodomy and ritual murder. Investigations are blocked under the 1947 National Security Act.
A local police investigation went nowhere. State investigators on related criminal acts also went nowhere. An observer and near victim has described the Bohemian Grove inner hideaways, the closed sanctum, even the decor at secret locations, places where no outsider goes (or servants according to our sources). Apparently there is an UNDERGROUND lounge (sign spelled U.N.derground) a Dark Room, a Leather Room and a Necrophilia Room.
However, there is pictorial evidence that they have secretly killing and sacrificing black children at the Bohemian Grove since 1909.
The black child’s body is no dummy or mannequin. In 1909, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that they didn’t even manufacture or make mannequins of black children during that era.
For decades, the Bohemian Grove has been one of most highly secured areas in America. The Bohemian Grove’s restricted 2,700-acre campground belonging to Bohemian Club is located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, CA. It is approximately 113 miles from Laytonville via Highway 101 South. Wavy Gravy’s Black Oak Ranch and Enchanted Forest is just off highway 101- 5 (five) miles north of Laytonville. Laytonville, is located 20 miles north-northwest of Willits.
The Hart Witches allegedly traveled 101 South harboring the six (6) kidnapped adopted black children.
A female female impersonated Jennifer Hart and bought some grocery items with her Safeway rewards card in Fort Bragg off Highway 1 where both highway 20 and 101 South leads directly to Willits that leads to Wavy Gravy’s clandestine Security Compound- Black Oak Ranch and Camp WinnaRAINBOW.
Robert Hall Weir is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member along with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead in Palo Alto, CA. Weir is a member of the Bohemian Grove.[67] The Grateful Dead performs at the Bohemian Grove.[68] And, they don’t seem to care if you know it or not. The July 15, 2004 Wall Street Journal front page article on the Bohemian Grove lists Grateful Dead member Bob Weir as an annual attendee. “Bob Weir, the former Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist, has become a Bohemian member and has played at the grove events the past six years. Joining him onstage at times is Steve Miller, the rocker known for such 1970 hits as Jungle Love and The Joker.” The article later went on to say, “This month’s festivities begin with a giant bonfire called the Cremation of Care, now in its 125th year.” What the article fails to mention about the bonfire is that it is a mock sacrifice to a 40 foot stone owl, an ancient Babylonian fire deity named Molech to whom children were sacrificed.
Jerry Garcia included the song Teddy Bear’s Picnic on his 1998 children’s album, Not For Kids Only. The nursery rhyme of the same name is purportedly a Bohemian Grove favorite and even spawned Harry Shearer’s movie spoof of Bohemian grove, Teddy Bear’s Picnic. Wavy Gravy and Garcia’s Hog Farm (Black Oak Ranch) base in Laytonville is in located 20 miles north-northwest of Willits.[70]
Hunter Stockton Thompson was on the Merry Prankster’s bus with Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Jerry Garcia and Wavy Gravy. Thompson is accused of involvement in CIA, pedophilia, child slavery rings, and Bohemian Grove snuff films. He is linked to the “The Franklin Cover-up“. He is linked to a snuff film that Thompson allegedly made with Paul Bonacci is believed, based on Bonacci’s description of the surroundings, to have been filmed at Bohemian Grove, where human sacrifices are made before a large Owl statue referred to as “Moloch.” While conducting this ritual, which they call “The Cremation of Care,” participants are dressed in druid robes and chant and sing before Moloch.
After the Merry Pranksters Watts Clandestine Acid Test in October 1966, Thompson moved to the Owl House in Woody Creek, Colorado. The Owl House had frequently been referred to as his “fortified compound” in his writing. The 42-acre property includes the modest two-bedroom home where Thompson lived, wrote and raised peacocks from the mid-1960s until his death- suicided in 2005 in an adjacent cabin.
Wavy Gravy & Black Oak Ranch Owl Stage
There certainly appears to me that there are ultra top secret underground satellite “Cults of Moloch” and Druid Groves like Harmony Park and Black Oak Ranch across the country that feed directly into the mother, Bohemian Grove, and Hunter S. Thompson was directly involved in trafficking children into the Bohemian Grove.
Mendocino County Sheriff/Coroner Tom Allman heading the Hart Witches Racial Mass Murder investigation lives in Willitis just outside Black Oak Ranch. He is the “past Grandmaster of the Willits Masonic Temple”.[71] In fact, Tom Allman was the resident Deputy of Laytonville when Wavy Gravy bought Black Oak Ranch. The ranch has been under his direct jurisdiction for decades. He signs off on the Black Oak Ranch permits for the Enchanted Gatherings, Gaia, Kate Wolfe, and Earthdance Global Peace Party festivals.
The Sheriff’s deputy coroner, and chief investigator for Willitis (Hog Farm and Black Oak Ranch) and the coordinator in charge of the county’s search and rescue is the Tribal Love Guru, Lt. Shannon Barney.[72]
My dear Lord, if any of these precious children are alive. They will be found at the mother lode Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, CA held captive until the Druids‘ Summer Solstice Pagan Rituals that take place within the last two weeks of July. They have not done anything or harmed anyone. Mendocino County Sheriff/Coroner Tom Allman still will not release the DNA results of child’s skeletal foot found in the ocean believed to the remains of the courageous Lil Hannah. No autopsies, no pictures of the children allegedly found dead at the bottom of the cliff have been released to the public. No autopsies or pictures, clothing descriptions of the two white females allegedly found dead off the cliff have been released to the public. Please, if they are alive- Don’t touch them. Please, let them go.
And not the 21st century technology Mendocino County Sheriff, California Highway Patrol or FBI will either affirm or deny that the woman in Safeway in Fort Bragg on March 25, 2018 alleged to look like JENNIFER HART was in fact racial mass murderer, JENNIFER HART.
I wish that I could tell the children as our elders passed down through the generations, put a candle in window, we’ll be there to liberate you.
[1] Prestinary, Patricia, Images of America NAPA STATE HOSPITAL, Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina (2014), pg. 80
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5206950/
[3] http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/The_Sequoia_Seminars_History.html
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/26/us/arrest-in-murder-of-huey-newton.html
[5] http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-15/news/mn-404_1_alleged-drug-ring
[6] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/08/22/Black-Panther-Newton-found-dead/4262619761600/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_DePalma
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavy_Gravy
[9] http://www.postertrip.com/public/5579.cfm
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Babbs
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stegner
[13] http://spikethenews.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-got-them-killed-general-george-s.html
[15] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/sri-international-inc-history/
[16] https://isgp-studies.com/Bohemian_Grove
[17] https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/tag/stephen-d-bechtel-sr/
[18] http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmccone.htm
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Talbot
[20] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/08/98078/
[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sandberger
[22]https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/letter-from-hal-puthoff-endorsing-the-e-meter-while-working-for-the-cia-at-stanford-research-institute/
[23]https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/evil-twins-2-mkultra-classes-at-lsd-university-and-stanford-scientology-and-the-unifications-church/
[24]https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/the-grateful-dead-hunter-garcia-and-grace-marie-haddy-1961-the-brotherhood-part-5a-welcome-to-the-real-scientology/
[26] http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15428
[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grateful_Dead
[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Trist
[29] https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/the-grateful-dead-hunter-garcia-and-grace-marie-haddy-1961-the-brotherhood-part-5a-welcome-to-the-real-scientology/
[30]https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/the-reading-library/mind-control/the-use-of-u-s-universities-to-conduct-eugenics-research-and-intelligence-operations/
[31] http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19800417-01.2.2
[32]http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/systems-sciences-and-the-1957-58-fellows-of-the-center-for-advanced-study-in-the-behavioral-sciences/
[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_deAvila_Jackson
[34] http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hubbard_al/hubbard_al.shtml
[35] LSD and Psychotherapy, http://www.alb2c3.com/drugs/lsd02.htm
[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Muller_Weitzenhoffer
[37] Freedom, A Clockwork Orange Career, The maestro of “mind-control” continues to haunt America, http://www.freedommag.org/english/LA/issue02/page12.htm
[38] Abramson, H.A., The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy, Transactions of a Conference of LSD-25, Princeton University, April 22, 23 & 24, 1959
[39] http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27a/247.html
[41] http://www.mansonblog.com/2016/03/coincidences-and-conspiracies.html
[42] Valentine, Douglas, The Strength of the Wolf, The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs, Verso, London (2004)
[43] http://www.mansonblog.com/2016_03_14_archive.html
[44] https://www.ocweekly.com/lords-of-acid-6402333/
[48]https://www.ddiworld.com/DDI/media/monographs/HowAssessmentCentersWereStarted_mg_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
[49] https://wavygravy.net/about/
[50] https://viewfromamysworld.blogspot.com/2015/08/woodstock-jewish-party.html
[51] http://www.cielodrive.com/dianne-lake.php
[52]https://electrickoolaidblogtest.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/hells-angels-merry-pranksters-party-at-ken-keseys-1965/
[53] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots
[54] http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2010/06/la_observed_on_kcrw_what.php
[55] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Quarnstrom
[57] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/08/specials/wolfe-pump.html
[58] http://www.postertrip.com/public/5580.cfm
[60] http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-1966-mystery-reels-guest-post.html
[61] http://www.nypress.com/tom-wolfes-a-drag-and-sos-roger-kimball-who-likes-the-homeless/
[63] https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/LSD
[64] http://www.all.net/journal/deception/MKULTRA/www.hotweird.com/heliophobe/mkultra.htm
[65] http://www.conspiracyschool.com/blog/laurel-canyon-sex-drugs-and-aliens
[66]http://9-11truthbds.org/tavistock_building_absolute_mind_control_new_world_israel_zionists_neocons_cultural_marxism.html
[67] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Weir
[68] http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=2191
[69] http://enchantedforestmendo.com/the-transformative-history-of-black-oak-ranch/
[70] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laytonville,_California
[71] http://www.topix.com/forum/city/ukiah-ca/TORP5CN41MM1DAOHM/p6
[72]http://www.topix.com/forum/city/ukiah-ca/TK77FJTPHCBDBUCC0/ex-covelo-sheriff-sergeants-connection-to-twin-dep
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OMAROSA, CIA MK ULTRA, GUTTER’S CREW, PIZZAGATE & THE BLACK WOMAN’S WAR
O OMAROSA, DON’T YOU WEEP!
Omarosé Onée Manigault-Newman is a far more complicated problem. She is far more dangerous and a menace to society than I ever suspected. Something has come to my attention about her that is extremely disturbing and very troublesome.
Growing up in and around the black church, I recall the choir and the elders singing with overwhelming compassion the old black spiritual that originated from the Great Civil War, “O Mary Don’t You Weep” – tell Martha not to moan. It is one of the most important of Black spirituals that contained coded messages of hope and resistance against the EVIL of African Human Bondage.[1] I didn’t understand what they sang about or what it meant to anyone, but it was so powerful and moving that the spirit of compassion always moved, deeply affected, and shaped me. It always left me close to tears. I didn’t understand why.
“O Omarosa, Don’t You Weep”
“O Mary Don’t You Weep” tells the biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming Pharaoh’s army got drown-ded. But, it meant much more.
In the account of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus meets with the sisters in turn: Martha followed by Mary. Martha goes immediately to meet Jesus, while Mary waits until she is called. As one commentator notes, “Martha, the more aggressive sister, went to meet Jesus, while quiet and contemplative Mary stayed home. This portrayal of the sisters agrees with that found in Luke 10:38–42.” When Mary meets Jesus, she falls at his feet. In speaking with Jesus, both sisters lament that he did not arrive in time to prevent their brother’s death: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”[Jn 11:21, 32] But where Jesus’ response to Martha is one of teaching calling her to hope and faith, his response to Mary is more emotional: When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.[Jn 11:33] Mary added no more, as Martha did; but it appears that what she fell short in words she made up in tears; she said less than Martha, but wept more and deeply.[2] So much so, it moved the spirit and troubled Christ.
Lazarus of Bethany, also known as Saint Lazarus or Lazarus of the Four Days, is the subject of a prominent miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death.[3]
Moaning and weeping is an ancient cultural phenomenon that scholars call inherently human. It was most relevantly developed in Africa, the Land of Kemet (Egypt), and even among the ancient Aztecs.
However, it is undoubtedly linked to some untold and mysterious qualities of life and resurrection.[4] Spiritually, weeping and moaning raise the dead.
“Tell Martha Not to Moan”
Omarosa’s father was slain in 1981 when she was 7 (seven) years old. Her brother, 40 year old Jack Manigault, was slain in October 2011.[5] She was left, allegedly, devastated after the sudden illness and subsequent death of her alleged beloved fiance, Michael Clarke Duncan, in September 2012.[6] Her sister, 43 year old Gladys Louise Manigault, suddenly died among her Weller church parishioners in Los Angeles of an unknown cause in February 2016.[7]
I said that to say this. It seems that Omarosa can, unnaturally and inhumanly, weep and moan the death of her loved ones without tears. She is not a Martha or a Mary. And, Michael Clarke Duncan certainly wasn’t a Lazarus to her.
MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN, GUTTER & BIGGIE SMALLS
Biggie Smalls, Ancient European Clawed Hand Symbol
Gnostic Marsilio Ficino (1433- 1499) Medieval Coven Clawed Hand
Biggie Smalls didn’t get the Claw Hand from our community. You haven’t heard about Gutter? Well, you need to know about Gutter. He is a sadistic nigga that abduct children, ritually sodomize them, and throw their bodies over bridges. Former bodyguard Michael Clarke Duncan revealed that he had been assigned to protect Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) on the night of his assassination. He was a security-man-for-hire before his acting career took off. He confessed that he was assigned to guard Wallace at the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles in March, 1997, but he swapped the job with a friend to cover R&B singer Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds instead. It’s called a “security strip”. Wallace was gunned down in a drive-by shooting just hours later after the security switch. It sounds to me that Duncan sold him out for a few pieces of silver, and a HollyWeird acting career.[8]
A security strip happened just hours before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN in 1968. His local security detail from a group of brothers called the “Invaders” was stripped from the Loraine Motel just minutes before he was shot in the head.[9]
Wallace’s murder was the nexus of a vast and complex never ending conspiracy.[10] However, I think it begins with Michael Clarke Duncan and his security strip. I don’t believe that he ever exposed his so-called friend and pal that took over his detail with B.I.G., and his friend’s fragrant violation of what could be described as security protocols that could have prevented the assassination.
Duncan said, “In hindsight, everybody says I would have done this (differently) but my thing was never let the client sit on the passenger side door in the front. If you were my client, I’d have you… sitting in the middle (seat).”
By the way, Duncan’s security protocols could also be applied to kidnappings and abductions. Furthermore, who and what employed, and trained Duncan in security protocols- the CIA?
Just before his death, Duncan co-starred in a new television series, The Finder. They could find anything and anyone. I suppose. The TV series was cancelled in 2012 because of his sudden illness and death. It might be interesting to review “The Finder” if it is still available.
We have known about the CIA’s “Finders” clandestinely abducting children for quite sometime.
Two (2) years after Wallace’s assassination in 1999, Michael Clarke Duncan co-starred in Stephen King’s Green Mile. The film, The Green Mile, was a box office success, received positive reviews from critics. Michael Clarke Duncan (John Coffey) was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.[11] However, I couldn’t watch just five (5) minutes of the S.H.I.T. And, that was before I found out that the movie featured besides a big black brute- sadism, murder, child rape, pedophilia, sexual perversion, interracial sex, and adultery.[12]
John Coffey & Raped and Murdered 9 year old Twins
John Coffey was a “psychopathic personality”- a sadistic pedophile rapist and murderer. Coffey was on death row in 1930s Louisiana for raping and killing two red-headed nine (9- Occult Number) year old twin girls, Kathe and Cora Detterick.[13] There is no here, now or ever to justify the themes of this film. It is demonic and absolute EVIL. The Green Mile is a wicked sadistic HollyWeird Satanic Dark Circle mass population psychological warfare project, and the Uncle Tom cake walking coon, Michael Clarke Duncan, helped to deliver it to the global masses for another few pieces of silver.
Headless Torso of African Child Tossed into River Thames Maybe Identified
The Notorious B.I.G.[14]
No, I didn’t know that Christopher Wallace was involved in a secret Satanic PIZZAGATE ring that kidnapped and murdered children. Gutter (a Sadistic Satanic Pedophile Cult) is also ritually butchering African children and throwing their bodies off bridges into the River Thames in London. Wallace’s defenders say that it was an example of the raving of undoubtedly a sadistic “psychopathic personality” with a license of wicked dark storytelling about Wayne Williams and the infamous Atlanta Child Murders of the late 1970s, and early 1980s. Over a two-year period in Atlanta (1979-81), at least 28 African-American children, adolescents and adults were ritually murdered.[15]
The only problem with that theory is that according to court papers uncovered as early as 1985, while a task force investigated the Atlanta child murders, another high-level and secret investigation discovered and covered up the fact that a Ku Klux Klan family may have been responsible for the murder of a young black boy and was possibly linked to the murders of 14 others. The child murders were linked to a secret Masonic White Brotherhood of the South.[16]
In addition, Wayne Williams inferred that he worked (PATSY) for CIA- MK ULTRA/MONARCH. Since at least 2002, the numbers of black children, particularly female children, who have been kidnapped, raped and ritually murdered and dismembered, have been increasing dramatically. So, while Wallace’s sadistic mass murder pedophile nigga Gutter, allegedly Wayne Williams, has been in jail, who has been kidnapping and killing black children in record numbers globally in the 21st century?
Wallace’s EVIL child ritual rape and murder (Green Mile) lyrics are part of a rap called “Beef” on the album Life After Death. It was Wallace’s second and final studio album released posthumously on March 25, 1997, on Bad Boy Records and Arista Records, Inc.[17]
Arista was founded in 1974 by the sodomite DEVIL of the music industry, Clive Davis, of the secret Masonic Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order of NY.[18],[19] It seems to me that Wallace may have violated his oath of the covenant of secrecy by gushing about Gutter, ritual homosexual rites, torture and Satanic Child Sacrifices needlessly raising the collective consciousness of the masses.
(feat. Mobb Deep)
[Biggie]
“ … All I got is heat and tough talk for you
Tie you up, cut your balls off just for you
Man this is straight torture, look what that slick shit bought ya (c’mon)
A first class ticket to Lucifer, real name Cristopher (yea, chris)…”[20]
This could very well be another example of Biggie’s psychopathic personality, and Hip Hop license of dark storytelling, but Lucifer’s Workshop don’t pay millions of dollars to these sadistic Satanic Hip Hop artists to play games with them.
MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN & THE DARK CIRCLE GAY VIRGIN
What people don’t understand about Michael Clarke Duncan is that he was part of a secret dark satanic circle. Duncan was also a secret 6 foot 5, 325 pound gay virgin “on his period” saving himself for the right man.
Gay Virgin & Lover, ANT
In 1999’s The Underground Comedy Movie, he played a character credited as Gay Virgin, who repeatedly protests to a persistent would-be sex partner that he is saving himself for the right man.
By the way, the scene reminds me of another gender confused HollyWierd big black hulking African Mandingo, Terry Crews, that suddenly lost all his lightning, thunder and rain when ritually sexually molested by a raving homosexual half the man’s size.
Duncan appeared in the lesbian love story 2004 film D.E.B.S., by lesbian director Angela Robinson, as Mr. Phipps, the supervisor of a team of young female secret agents — the Charlie to their Angels, essentially. [21]
Duncan’s buddy, Anthony Steven Kalloniatis aka ANT on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show with him, is an openly gay Greek-American QUEEN– stand-up comedian.[22]
ANT was raised strict Greek Orthodox. As he entered adulthood, he ventured away from strict Orthodoxy and studied many other religions including Taoism, Hinduism and even Scientology. ANT believes that he is just a spiritual being looking for answers even with the Illuminated One, Lucifer.[23]
Michael Clarke Duncan’s co-stars remembered the late actor as “lovely,” “sweet” and a “legend” at the Hollywood premiere of his final film, A Resurrection. Duncan plays the school principal in the Jamie Kennedy horror/wiccan film about a murdered student who rises from the dead to seek revenge against his killers.[24]
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes
“ … The best I can tell you is what my mother told me as I was coming up- She used to say, “Son, chances go ’round. She said, The same people that you meet going up They meet the same old faces coming down … tell the truth …”[25]
Omarosa and Duncan allegedly met in early 2010 at a Whole Foods grocery store in Los Angeles. Within about two (2) years, he would be dead at 54 years old. She says that they were engaged to be married. It was a secret engagement. If it’s secret, of course, nobody knew anything about it. Dead Men Tell No Tales.[26]
In July 2012, Duncan suddenly dropped into full cardiac arrest on a Friday the 13th morning about 2 am. He had been alone with Omarosa. She gave him CPR. His publicist said on the 13th, “He is now stable and we look forward to his full recovery.”[27] However, he didn’t and could not recover. In September 2012, he died from respiratory failure, which was the official Michael Clarke Duncan cause of death.[28] In a will, Omarosa took the majority of his estate as the main beneficiary. In July 2013, she put his 6,861-square-foot Woodland Hills, CA luxury home up for sale for $1,299,000.
RadarOnline.com had exclusively learned that she was looking to buy into one of Donald J. Drumpf’s properties.[29]
Omarosa says that she was/is trying to help the “Black Community”. However, she doesn’t have the Love of God, independent will power or mind set to help black people, people of color, or the poor, period. Omarosa is a magician of the dark occult filled with lies, trickery, and the seething energies of Lucifer.
“It is known that the Unconscious, whether personal or collective works by means of pictures or images, speech being a comparatively recent development. […] Magic […] speaks to the subconscious mind of man through the archaic images of its symbols and rituals, and thereby produces those ‘changes in subconscious’ which the magician seeks.”– W. E. Butler, Magic; It’s Ritual, Power and Purpose
Vesica Piscis is beyond Christianity, beyond Rome, Greece and Mesopotamia. It looks like the shape of an eye, the Eye of Horus, When the Vesica Piscis is viewed horizontally, and the mandorla becomes a different sort of passage, the birth passage. The pointed oval is a universal symbol of the Divine Feminine, and in this context the Vesica Piscis is the vulva of the Goddess, surrounded by the crescents of the waxing and waning moon.
The mandorla as birth passage can easily be seen on the sheila-na-gig figures found on Irish churches, and in the squatting figures of the Hindu goddess Kali. Almonds are a primeval fertility symbol, and as such are associated with the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her trans gendered consort, Attis, and the Greek nymph Phyllis, who was metamorphosed into an almond tree. Fish, too, play a significant part in the lives of goddesses from many cultures. “Delphos” translates from Greek as both “womb” and “dolphin.” The Chinese Great Mother Kwan -Yin often appears as a fish goddess, as does Aphrodite. Kali, as the swallower of Shiva’s penis, becomes Minaksi, the fish-eyed one; Aset (Isis) becomes Abtu, the Great Fish of the Abyss, when she swallows the penis of Ashur (Osiris).
Omarosa is also “seething with the charisma” of Donald J. Drumpf. Omarosa is an extremely intelligent woman, and the community always needs the wisdom of our intelligentsia. But, she is “intelligence” for whom and for what? Certainly, not black people or people of color. As I said, she’s far more troubling and dangerous than I ever expected.
Seethe– Old English sēothan ‘make or keep boiling’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zieden. (of a person) be filled with intense but unexpressed anger. ‘inwardly he was seething at the slight to his authority’[30]
Omarosa first came to public attention as a celebrity in 2004 after becoming a participant on NBC’s reality television series, The Apprentice. She was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the daughter of Theresa Marie (née Walker) and Jack Thomas Manigault, Sr., of Nigeria. However, her father was not Nigerian. The Manigaults are an American family descended from the French Huguenot plantations of South Carolina.[31]
Jack Thomas Manigault, Sr. was murdered in August 1981 when she was 7 (seven) years old.[32] It is also important to keep in mind that traumatized children are particularly subject to multiple personality syndrome and disorders due to traumas associated with parental separation through death or illness. Dr. Ralph B. Allison made the following important observation; “Child development specialists have long considered that it takes an average of seven years for any child to develop the personality that will be theirs for life. The personality of a child less than seven is too fragile to absorb life-threatening trauma without reacting in some fashion. Obviously not all children react to early trauma by dissociating, but those who do develop psychological entities which are different than those created at an older age.”[33]
Dr. Ralph B. Allison is a Stanford University psychiatrist. He showed up in Santa Cruz during the 1970s with Huey P. Newton, and British CIA Anthropologist Dr. Gregory Bateson (Stanford Research Institute) to meet/treat and cover some of the first MK ULTRA/MONARCH multiple personality disordered patient(s). He wrote “Minds In Many Pieces” about his experiences in Santa Cruz, where he met his first Inner Self Helper (ISH). He was also involved in numerous criminal cases, including The Hillside Stranglers in Los Angeles, and spent his last 12 years working in a state prison, California Men’s Penal Colony, San Luis Obispo where Huey P. Newton was subjected to comprehensive MK ULTRA mind control/behavior modification experiments. His articles are on his own website.[34]
What is important is that for the Apprentice, Omarosa’s mind was intensively explored, studied and evaluated by two (2) psychiatrists/psychologists in 2004. Omarosa credits Dr. Richard Levak with lobbying the producers to get her on the show. “From what I understand, he said to them that I had one of the most unique psychological profiles he’d ever seen.” According to what Omarosa says Levak told her privately, this profile was an unusual combination of high intelligence and high social skills and a balanced mix of feminine and masculine qualities, elegance and poise countered by a ruthless, competitive drive.[35]
Dr. Richard Levak is a British psychologist. He attended University of Keele, England, and University of California, San Diego- psychology.[36] Keele was established by royal charter in 1949. A royal charter is a formal document issued by a crowned monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. Keele University was established by the Satanic/Masonic British Monarchy, Queen Elizabeth II.[37]
The university occupies a 6.25-acre rural campus estate was originally given by King Henry II of England to the Knights Templars in 1180. When the Templars were condemned and dissolved by the Council of Vienne in 1311, their possessions were annexed by the Knights Hospitallers until their dissolution by Henry VIII. The estate was purchased from the Crown by the Sneyd family and remained their property until acquisition by the Stoke-on-Trent Corporation (town) in 1948.[38]
The other psychiatrist is former U.S. Air Force officer hypnotist, Dr. Liza Siegel of the Milton H. Erickson Institute.[39]
Dr. Milton Hyland Erickson is the “father of hypnotherapy.” He was a CIA hypnotist that worked with Dr. Gregory Bateson (Santa Cruz), George H. Estabrooks, and British Aldous Huxley to create real CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH Manchurian Candidates, and Assassins.[40] Richard Bandler and John Grinder of UC Santa Cruz, pioneers in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), used the techniques of Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Jay Haley of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and Dr. Milton Erickson to develop the foundation of NLP.[41], [42],[43]
In 2006, after her subconscious mind had been opened up and probed by Doctors Levak and Siegel, Omarosa was featured as a Nubian Witch– MK ULTRA/MONARCH Mind Controlled Slave “seething” in the energies of Lucifer in the short cult film, Soul Sistahs. It was no coincidence.
“The Ranger who trained me at the time was [American] Major Buck Kernan, who became Supreme Allied Commander.” James Mark Burnett [44]
James Mark Burnett, producer of Apprentice, is also a British born subject, born in London, England. Aged 17, he enlisted in the British Army, Section Commander in the Parachute Regiment. From 1978–82, he served with the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, and saw action during the Falklands War.[45] As Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II is Head of the Armed Forces, and is also the wife, mother and grandmother of individuals having served in the Forces.[46]
THE APPRENTICE, NATO’S SODOMITE PEDOPHILE ARMY & FREEMASONRY
Major Buck Kernan is Irish Catholic William Frank Kernan. He was born of a deep military family at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, son of a highly decorated WWII European theatre officer, Lt. Col. William Freese Kernan, leader of the Second, Third Battalion, 9th Army Infantry, 38th Infantry (Korean Aggression), and U.S. Army Nurse, Lt. Florence Mary White of Philadelphia.[47],[48]
In July 1993, Major William Frank Kernan was assigned as the commander-in-chief Director of Plans, Policy, and Strategic Assessments, J5, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. The Joint Staff J5 proposes strategies, plans, and policy recommendations to the Commanding Joint Chiefs of Staff to support his provision of “best military advice” across the full spectrum of national security concerns to the President and other national leaders.[49] He was NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT), both based in Norfolk, Virginia.[50] Kernan, a four-star general, was supreme allied commander of Allied Command Atlantic, one of NATO’s two major military commands. He was a key ultra-secret U.S. military intelligence NATO commander during 9-11 Inside Job and Cover-Up.[51]
Major Kernan developed the Millennium Challenge global defense system that brought Scottish diplomat and former UK Secretary Defense, Lord (Baron) Robertson (Secretary General of NATO), and all the military representatives and the ambassadors from the NATO nations through Millennium global military planning and exercises. Lord Robertson, a self-confessed Masonic member of Edinburgh’s sinister “Speculative Society” lodge, enjoyed a peculiarly close personal relationship with Thomas Hamilton, the mass murderer of abused children in Dunblane in Stirlingshire or the County of Stirling, Scotland.[52]
On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a former Boy Scout leader walked into Dunblane Primary School armed with two 9 mm pistols and two .357 Magnum revolvers. He killed sixteen small children and a teacher. The subsequent police investigation revealed that Hamilton had loaded the magazines for his Browning with an alternating combination of fully metal-jacketed and hollow point ammunition. This horrific event led to the banning of handguns in the UK.
Hamilton & Lord Cullen
The Judge who conducted the inquiry into the atrocity, during which two teachers claimed to have seen another mysterious man “guiding” Hamilton onto the premises, was Lord Cullen. Cullen, also a member of the Masonic Speculative Society and an associate of Labour “Scottish Mafia” figures such as Lord Robertson, Tony Blair, John Reid and Gordon Brown, was accused by leading journalists and emergency service personnel of having achieved a cover-up.
British Dark Lord- Lord Mandelson
According to the testimony of the British journalist, Gordon Brown is member of a ring of senior British pedophiles, consisting of general prosecutor Goldsmitdt, a former chieftain of the NATO Lord Robertson and Lord (Peter) Mandelson. All of them are major members of masonic lodges. The British journalist said that a group of senior pedophiles organized a massacre of children at the Dunblane Primary School. The children were killed because they knew too much about the crimes committed by British pedophile politicians. The murder was committed by Freemason, Thomas Hamilton. But the gun with explosive bullets, as the investigation established, had been given to him by Lord Cullen (Cullen on the photo with Hamilton), a member of the Labor “Scottish Mafia”, which includes Gordon Brown, Lord Robertson, Tony Blair and John Reid. The Dark Lord Mandelson is constantly accused in Europe in the kidnapping young girls and boys for European Union’s elite pedophile commissioners in Brussels.[53]
Lord Mandelson of the Bilderberg Group was a member of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), a little-known but highly influential transatlantic network of “chosen” politicians, journalists and academics. The fingerprints of British and American intelligence are everywhere to be found amongst the network of BAP members; regular attenders at BAP meetings are defense and security specialists, NATO advisers, Defense Ministry think-tank people and counter-insurgency experts.[54]
In 1976, Lord Mandelson was Chair of the British Youth Council, which began as the British section of the World Assembly of Youth, which as we have seen, was set up and financed by the CIA. By Mandelson’s time in the mid-1970s, the British Youth Council was said to be financed by the Foreign Office, though this was thought to be a euphemism for MI6.[55]
Recall the secret BROTHERHOOD– Sodomite (homosexual/pedophile) Army that was exposed by Kay Griggs. She was the wife of U.S. Marine Corps Colonel George Griggs, Chief of Staff, Marine Atlantic / Head of Psychological Operations- NATO.[56] Bypassing congressional and public oversight, Major Kernan established NATO’s Millennium nations with permanent liaisons with U.S. Joint Forces Command. In other words, Major Kernan developed the infamous Nazi Secret Army Organization into a New World Order global defense and offensive mechanism.[57]
Major Kernan co-found L-3 MPRI. It primarily recruits and employ a network of retired U.S. military personnel. It is a global provider of private military contractor services. It offers a wide range of professional services to both public and private customers, most notably the U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Justice, and Homeland Security, Law Enforcement organizations, foreign governments, government agencies and commercial businesses.[58] In 1995-96 before Operation Storm, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that MPRI prepared and trained the Croatian Army for its offensive to retake the Krajina region. 120 African leaders and more than 5,500 African troops have been trained by MPRI on security issues.[59]
A group of Serbs who lived in Krajina until Operation Storm sued MPRI accusing them for “participation in genocide“, militarily equipping the Croatian Armed Forces, training the Croatian officers and developing a plan of Operation Storm. The claim was presented to the Federal Court in Chicago, and prosecutors were asking for $10.4 billion compensation. On September 26, 2014 the lawsuit was rejected by Judge John Lee because the war in former Yugoslavia is not under jurisdiction of this court.[60]
The Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia had similar insignia to those of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany. Ustasha imagery and references to pro-Nazi leader Ustasha Poglavnik Ante Pavelic were sprayed on vandalized Krajina Serb homes.
Some of the most sensational depraved and utterly ghoulish murderers of the THIRD REICH had been Roman Catholics, Ante Pavelic- Ustashi of Croatia.
“These were not isolated instances. The Ustashi more often than not massacred all the inhabitants of Serb villages, callously torturing and killing even children, and then setting the villages on fire. In the village of Susnjari, for instance, the Ustashi, after having killed most of the inhabitants, led away about twenty surviving children, whom they tied to the threshold of a big barn, which was then set on fire. Most of the children, of an average age of about ten, were burned alive. The few, who survived, horribly scorched, were eventually killed. Eye-witnesses testified to similar occurrences:
In the village of Gorevac, on September 13, 194i, children of about 3 years of age were impaled. In some places mothers threw themselves down with children in their arms, and one stake perforated mother and child. Some young girls had their breasts tied or cut, others had their hands made to pass through them. Men had their ears and noses sawn away, and eyes had been uprooted from their sockets.”[61]
In Major Kernan’s Operation Storm, Serbian refugees were forced to evacuate to evacuate their ancestral lands and flee to Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Their homes and property were taken over by Croats.
“This was the largest refugee crisis since the Holocaust, since World War II. The roads and streets were flooded to overflowing with Serbian refugees as an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Krajian Serb refugees were expelled from Krajina. This act of ethnic cleansing constituted genocide, the total elimination and destruction of an entire people and culture.”[62]
Major Kernan’s L-3 MPRI sits at the apex of NATO’s global Millennium Challenge. It’s the 21st century’s Secret Army Organization wrapped up like a Christmas present. It is Hitler, Himmler, and Otto Skorzeny’s post WWII wet dream of un-mitigating global power and New World Order. It is a global Aryan terrorist organization!
The Apprentice & Freemasonry
People like Major Kernan and James Mark Burnett of “The Apprentice” do not develop relationships and bonds to be broken. “The Apprentice” is hidden– very significant Masonic symbolism.
“According to the legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design. The master mason traveled to see the original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column anyway. In a fit of jealous anger the mason took up his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him. The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason’s face was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice’s pillar,”[63]
It represents the symbolic murder of Hiram Abiff, the master mason, at the time of the building of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, which even today, has immense spiritual and emotional connotations for worldwide fraternal order of Knight Templars, Freemasonry, and the Holy Grail.[64]
The Apprentice & BIG BROTHER
“The Apprentice” has been a tremendous success both in the United States and abroad. There are as many as 26 countries with their own local version of the show. Each of these local versions is hosted by a native, highly-accomplished and wealthy entrepreneur.” [65]
“The Apprentice’ Show, these values are promoted day and night. The ‘Big Brother’ winner is the one who can survive and outdo the competition in terms of the duplicity and backstabbing involved along the way. The winner of ‘The Apprentice’ must be more aggressive, more duplicitous, more devious and cunning and more willing to trample over everyone else. And the winner is judged as such by a multi-millionaire who himself was cunning and ruthless enough to have made it to the top of the pile and has amassed millions for his own personal benefit. These are the role models to be admired and emulated!”[66]
The Apprentice & the Psychopathic Personality
They secretly develop civilian “psychopathic personality” leaders to blindly perpetuate the global Satanic New World Order.
“A person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behaviour, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.” – definition of a psychopath from Dictionary.com”[67]
Donald J. Drumpf- “psychopathic personality” Pedophile
Omarosa, Donald J. Drumpf, and James Mark Burnett are not properly functioning social beings that contribute to a sense of communality, altruism, love or morality. They are the classic dualistic Satanic Principled Opposites.
Heinrich Himmler’s Satanic Principle of Dualism is the two-faced JANUS FACE of master deception. Himmler conditioned the SS (Knights of the Black Sun) to be multi-personalities and two-faced, one kind a decent gentleman, while the opposite kind- dissociated, sadist, evil and homicidal.
The Satanic Principle and its values are promoted day and night. The “Big Brother” winner is the one who can survive and outdo the competition in terms of the duplicity and backstabbing involved along the way. The winner of “The Apprentice” must be more aggressive, more duplicitous, more devious and cunning and more willing to trample over everyone else. And the winner is judged as such by a multi-millionaire who himself was cunning and ruthless enough to have made it to the top of the pile and has amassed millions for his own personal benefit. These are the role models to be admired and emulated![68]
Apprentice competitors such as Omarosa are highly driven, and now we know also CIA MK ULTRA/Mind Control individuals: not driven by a need to help humanity, but by egocentricity, greed and EVIL. And, ultimately, these are the values that many mainstream opinion leaders, senior politicians and their corporate masters hold dear.
“These values of egocentricity, aggression, competitiveness, duplicity and greed are not confined to some TV show. There are part of a much more sinister process. They are inextricably linked to and underpin the actions that resulted in the killing of half a million children in Iraq for geo-political gain (5) and the sending in of military forces into the jungles of India to beat, rape and dispose of a nation’s poorest people because they stand in the way of profit and greed (6). From Congo and Libya to Syria and beyond, we witness the outcome of a terrifying mindset that is nurtured and encouraged throughout society.”[69]
“Too many people have become “well-adjusted to the values of a profoundly sick society,” whether residing in middle England, middle America or the gated communities of south Delhi or Mumbai. Humanity is being beaten down to be neurotic, vicious and to regard these traits as constituting normal, acceptable behaviour. Thanks to the media, this becomes ingrained from an early age as comprising ‘common sense’, and those who question it are merely sneered at or ridiculed by a system that promotes a mass mindset immune to its own lies.”[70]
Mark Burnett was indoctrinated and trained by British and U.S. intelligence (Sodomite/Pedophile Secret Army Organization) as a sadist “psychopathic personality” military “Ranger” – a model global soldier and assassin for the New World Order. What countries have this madman invaded mass murdering masses under the shroud of NATO’s Secret Army Organization?
THE APPRENTICE & LUCIFER
Mark & Roma Downey-Burnett
Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey, are further “believers” – disciples of the occult. They are “believers” of Catholic new age psychology and spiritualism. Roma is a “Lightworker” – another “psychopathic personality” on an evolutionary step toward a state of “LightBeing.”
She has a belief in the divine SELF, the SELF as God. Theosophical ideas expressed by Satanists Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley along with many other gurus, worship Lucifer and Apollo as the ultimate “Light Beings.”
Lucifer was not content to be in submission to his Creator. He planted the idea in Eve’s heart, “You will be like God.” In other words, he is suggesting that “you can be your own God.” You don’t need God ruling over you; you don’t need to get your knowledge from God; you can be independent of God.
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Roma Downey graduated from the University of Santa Monica, a private graduate school founded by New Age spiritual and self-help guru John-Roger. Roger founded the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA). Roma Downey graduated with a master’s degree in spiritual psychology in June 2010.[71]
ILLUMINATI-Masonic Fangs Hand Symbol. Masonic Secret Finger Sign of Preservation
John Roger Hinkins was heavily influenced by the Mormons (Freemasonry), Radhasoami tradition, Agasha Temple of Wisdom, AMORC, the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (Rosicrucism). Hinkin’s MSIA has been designated as a religious cult.[72]
The Radhasoami tradition is an “illlusion filled Luciferic mystical world.”[73]
“Lucifer means the Angel of Light. Radhasoamis go for the Light. Luciferian philosophy means the person believes they can become a God themself. That’s what the Radhasoami believes. The inner sound is in fact the kundalini, which is symbolized by the snake (Lucifer). Radhasoami is in fact a Luciferian love fest. Radha Soami is in fact Maha Kal. LUCIFER.”[74]
Mark & Roma Burnett & A Pair of White Doves
A pair of doves symbolizes wedded bliss. Venus is their planet. They can be called upon for sex magic, love spells, peace, fertility, and prosperity. Irish legend has it that the souls of the blessed become doves and swans. Doves are sacred to Aphrodite, Atargatis, the Great Goddess, the Holy Spirit, love goddesses, Lupa. The Wiccan Handbook, pg. 224
The bottom line is gift wrap and put a big fat red bow on his head, it is still Set-Satan, Lucifer and the dualistic Apollo that they worship and serve.
THE APPRENTICE, PIZZAGATE AND THE QUEEN
Thirteen to fourteen years ago, Mark Burnett created “The [Global Masonic] Apprentice”. He created and shaped the mass media illusionary and satanic principled figure, Donald J. Drumpf, for mass population consumption.
If the clandestine global British and U.S. intelligence sodomite/pedophilia dark satanic circle (Secret Army Organization) forces created James Mark Burnett, they also had a hand in molding and shaping Donald J. Drumpf.
Epstein and Drumpf’s Gender (Girl Lover) Preference are Underage Girls
Jeffrey Epstein ran an elite (CIA- Mossad linked) espionage and intelligence sex slave trafficking ring that provided CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH ritually sexual abused underage girls for him and his pedophile clients, many of whom were global VIP figures in business, politics, and the British Monarchy. Epstein “bought” a girl from Eastern Europe, and was gifted three (3) 12 year olds for his birthday by a wealthy European pedophile pal.
Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Most Noble Order of the Garter, Royal Victorian Order (Knighthood), Canadian Forces Decoration, personal aide-de-camp (senior military officer) is the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and England’s Masonic Grand Master, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is a member of Epstein’s pedophile ring.
Epstein was using official Royal Air Force military bases to land and take-off. Epstein’s elite pedophile ring is also linked to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild (Rothschild- ILLUMINATI) and his daughter, Hanna; Lord Mandelson (Elite British Pedophile Ring) and his boyfriend, Reinaldo.
Naturally, Epstein’s pedophile ring took place under the watchtower of MI5, and MI6, PRINCE CHARLES AND THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND!
OMAROSA, PIZZAGATE & GUTTER
This is what’s extremely troubling about the JANUS FACE of Omarosa. The pink “girllove” symbol is linked to PIZZAGATE, and global elite Dark Circles and Satanic Pedophile Rings linked to Jeffrey Epstein, Donald J. Drumpf and the British Royal Crown that ritually sexual abuse, blood sacrifice, and cannibalize children to conjurer up, and seal covenants with demons and the DEVIL. She has been a mind controlled DEVIL’s surrogate and slave of Donald J. Drumpf since at least 2006 with the filming of the MK ULTRA/MONARCH cult film, Soul Sistahs.
According to a 2007 FBI document exposed by WikiLeaks in April 2016, to specifically indicate the pedophile’s gender preference, members of pedophilic organizations encourage the use of descriptions such as “boylove“, “girllove“, and “childlove.”[75]
I found Omarosa wearing the pedophile ring Girl Love aka Girl Lover Logo Pendant as early as May 2011 when Drumpf decided to run for president. She appears to have been part of Donald Drumpf’s personal staff at the time. She has a Riviera Country Club blouse, and a White House sports cap.
There is the Childlove Online Media Activism logo, which pedophiles use as a symbol to promote their “cause”: that sexual relationship between adults and minors should be decriminalized.
The Girl Love symbol – a triangle, a love heart and a circle merged into one – has been circulating social media, blogs and webcasts for years. It has even appeared on some children’s toys. Investigators with the FBI’s Cyber Division Innocent Images National Initiative first discovered the code in 2007.[76]
No, Omarosa’s Girl Love symbol wasn’t just a passing fancy and occasional fashion statement.
It actually appears that the pedophile ring Girl Love symbol had been part of her apprentice attire. They, BIG BROTHER– Burnett and the two psychiatrists/psychologists carefully monitored everything Omarosa did in and out the studio and what she wore. They either gave it to her, or approved it knowing full well of its EVIL web.
Omarosa wants to get in the Black Community or they are sending her on a mission to invade the community with her legions of demons to conduct a clandestine Black Woman War. She says that she has a story to tell. Begin with the truth, now! She needs to tell us right now about her father, and the Satanic/Masonic Blood Sacrifices of her brother and sister, and particularly Michael Clarke Duncan. She need to tell us about Africa and what she was doing in orphanages of dying Black Children. She is far beyond DANGEROUS. She’s part of PIZZAGATE, and GUTTER’S CREW that Satanic Blood Ritual Pedophile Ring that Abduct Children, Ritually Sodomize Them, Cannibalize Them, and Throw Their Bodies Over Bridges All Across the Planet. She doesn’t belong in the Black Community. She has a place in HELL reserved for her.
I HAVE SAID ENOUGH!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Don%27t_You_Weep
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Bethany
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_of_Bethany
[4] https://hairanddeathinancientegypt.com/tag/mourning-in-ancient-egypt/
[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omarosas-brother-murdered-in-lovers-quarrel/
[6] http://madamenoire.com/271247/michael-clarke-duncans-family-believes-omarosa-may-have-coerced-him-into-adjusting-his-will-just-before-his-death/
[7] http://www.vindy.com/news/tributes/2016/feb/25/gladys-l-manigaul/guestbook/
[8] http://www.newshub.co.nz/entertainment/michael-clarke-duncan-was-meant-to-protect-notorious-big-2012012611
[9] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-plot-to-kill-martin-luther-king-survived-shooting-was-murdered-in-hospital-an-interview-with-william-pepper/5544005
[10] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-unsolved-mystery-of-the-notorious-b-i-g-20110107
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_(film)
[12] http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Hellivision/evil_agenda.htm
[13] http://ew.com/article/1996/04/26/book-review-green-mile-part-2-mouse-mile/
[14] http://www.complex.com/music/2013/03/the-50-grossest-rap-lyrics/the-notorious-big-whats-beef
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%9381
[16] https://www.spin.com/featured/atlanta-child-murders-wayne-williams-1986-feature/
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_Death
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arista_Records
[19] http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TKH2IUVOBNCQM0DMV/clive-davis-the-devil-in-the-music-industry
[20] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/notoriousbig/beef.html
[21] https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2012/09/04/watch-michael-clarke-duncan-and-his-gay-connections
[22] https://www.datalounge.com/thread/6409862-ant-is-now-a-scientologist!
[23] http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0030714/bio?ref_=m_mn_ov_bio
[24] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-resurrection-michael-clarke-duncan-430130
[25] https://genius.com/Harold-melvin-and-the-blue-notes-be-for-real-lyrics
[26] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/omarosa-michael-clarke-duncan-engaged-wedding-wed_n_1854058.html
[27] http://www.eonline.com/news/329961/michael-clarke-duncan-hospitalized-after-suffering-cardiac-arrest
[28] http://www.eurweb.com/2012/09/michael-clarke-duncans-official-cause-of-death-respiratory-failure/#
[29] https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/07/omarosa-michael-clarke-duncan-house-sale-real-estate/
[30] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/seethe
[31] https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/the-american-genealogical-roots-of-omarosa-manigault.1364083/
[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omarosa_Manigault
[33] Ralph Allison, M.D., Abstract, MPD and DID are Two Different Post-Traumatic Disorders, 1995
[34] https://www.amazon.com/Ralph-B.-Allison/e/B000APFYOC
[35] https://themorningnews.org/article/the-omarosa-experiment
[36] https://www.facebook.com/richard.levak.9
[37] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keele_University
[39] http://lizasiegel.com.s37152.gridserver.com/bio/
[40] http://www.ellipsisbehavior.com/blog/the-colgate-discovery
[41] https://mri.org/jay-haley/
[42] http://nlp-mentor.com/milton-erickson/
[43] http://www.nlpu.com/grindbio.htm
[44] http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a20166/mark-burnett-interview-0313/
[45] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Burnett
[46] https://www.royal.uk/queen-and-armed-forces-0
[47] http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanantonio/obituary.aspx?pid=160618297
[48] http://www.koreanwar2.org/kwp2/usa/2id/go/USA_2ID_GO_1952_156-162.pdf
[49] http://www.jcs.mil/Directorates/J5-Strategic-Plans-and-Policy/
[50] https://www.nato.int/docu/review/2002/Capabilities/Gen-William-F-Kernan/EN/index.htm
[51] http://newsok.com/article/2770173
[52] http://genreith.de/MMcC/doku.php?id=the_sinister_clue
[54] https://www.bilderberg.org/bap.htm
[56] http://www.whale.to/b/griggs_h.html
[57] http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3653
[58]https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Military_Professional_Resources_Inc..html
[59]Id.
[61] http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/NaziLeadership.html
[62] https://fbreporter.org/2015/08/04/the-last-genocide-of-krajina-serbs-operation-storm-joint-croatian-and-usa-criminal-enterprise/
[63] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel#Apprentice_pillar
[65] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/071515/7-apprentice-hosts-around-world.asp
[66] https://www.globalresearch.ca/psychopathy-politics-and-the-new-world-order/5334458
[71] https://thepropheticnews.com/2014/02/07/beware-of-roma-downey-and-mark-burnetts-other-jesus/
[72] http://www.cesnur.org/testi/msia.htm
[73] http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2011/05/amazing-changes-in-radha-soami-satsang-beas-teachings.html
[75] https://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI_pedophile_symbols
[76] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3560069/The-symbols-pedophiles-use-signal-sordid-sexual-preferences-social-media.html
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VESTER LEE FLANAGAN III, BLACK MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES & RISE OF THE DEVIL’S SECRET MILITARY SODOMITE BROTHERHOOD IN AMERICA
False flags often describe covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by individuals, entities, groups, or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.[2]
The Strategy of Tension is basically a concept for control and manipulation of public opinion through the use of fear, propaganda, agents provocateurs, terrorism, etc. The aim is to instill fear into the populace while framing political and targeted opponents, groups for terrorist activities and atrocities.[3]
In America, all the signs and symbols of false flags and strategy of tension are there to see if your EYES AREN’T WIDE SHUT. Well, just as we were beginning to learn more about the signs and symbols of the August 26, 2015 made for mass consumption strategy of tension assassination of WDBJ’s reporter Alison Parker and camera man Adam Ward by alleged shooter 41 year old Vester Lee Flanagan III, another Black Manchurian Candidate was suddenly unleashed for yet another sensationalized wicked blood thirsty false flag operation. I will call it Operation GOFORTH- Black Lives Will Never Matter.
In fact, since the July 13, 2015 Sandra Bland Strategy of Tension Operation broke out on the global scene, there has been about four (4) CIA MK ULTRA Manchurian Candidates, three (3) people of color candidates unleashed in special operations to distract and divert public attention, influence and manufacture public consensus.
And lo and behold, when citizen investigative journalists widely began to expose the problematic deceptive signs and symbols of all videos coming of Waller County of Sandra Bland to prove that she was alive when her mug shots were taken had been edited, manufactured, and rendered unauthenticated by the deliberate deletion of video evidence time/date stamps, a Manchurian Candidate was suddenly unleashed.
Muhammad Abdulazee, left, has almost virtually the same silly “MK ULTRA SMILE” as the Mad Batman Colorado Theater Shooter Pasty, James Egan Holmes. On July 16, 2015, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazee of Kuwait was triggered in a rushed poorly planned special operation. He allegedly attacked two separate military facilities which resulted in the death of four (4) American servicemen in Tennessee.
Well, one of the signs and symbols of a false flag appear when it was discovered that one of his marine victims, Lance Corporal Larry L. Wells, was reported to have been killed in Iraq in 2004.[4]
Another of Abdulazee’s victims was Marine Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan. Well, Sgt. Sullivan also appears to have died before July 16, 2015. In 2009, he died from widespread organ and cardiovascular degeneration.[5] When the false flag signs and symbols of the Abdulazee Manchurian Candidacy began to be exposed by citizen investigative journalists, suddenly yet another False Flag MK ULTRA/MONARCH Manchurian Candidate was unchained and unleashed.
John Russell Houser, the MK ULTRA Empty Stare
On July 24, 2015, a “lone wolf drifter” gunman, 59 year old John Russell Houser, without a motive, shot and killed two and himself in a Lafayette, Louisiana theatre. The counter-intelligence signs and symbols of Houser’s candidacy was exposed when it was widely reportedly that he had been so mentally ill and violent that his wife hid his guns and his family had him hospitalized in most likely a MK ULTRA/MONARCH institution.[6]
Operation GOFORTH- Black Lives Will Never Matter
Slain Texas Deputy & Shannon Miles, Miles has an interest in revolutionary Black Nationalism/Black Lives Matter no more than the MAN IN THE MOON. Again, when citizen investigative journalists began to pick the Vester Flanagan false flag operation apart, another Black Manchurian Candidate was released. On August 31, 2015, 30 year old Shannon J. Miles allegedly gunned down Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth in cold blood at a Houston-area gas station. The suspect in the gas station video of the Goforth shooting was a black male.[7]
The man that allegedly gunned down Deputy Goforth was dressed in a tie shirt and shorts. They are implicating that Miles had the presence of mind and aforethought to change clothes, hide the murder weapon, shorts and tie shirt, then go shopping with his mother like nothing happened to establish an alibi for something they can’t show he ever had any interest in or could even develop, while most likely under the influence of psychotic drugs and SCHIZOPHRENIA.
In immediate response to the shooting, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, said, “Our system of justice absolutely requires a law enforcement presence to protect our communities, so at any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen(s). This rhetoric has gotten out of control,” Hickman said. He added, “We’ve heard black lives matter; all lives matter. Well cops’ lives matter too; so why don’t we just drop the qualifier and just say lives matter and take that to the bank,” Hickman’s remarks and outrage were directed at the Black Lives Matter Movement.[8]
Shannon Miles is being held in solidary confinement so nobody can come in contact with him. He may not even be not aware of where he is. In 2013, he had been adjudicated to be mentally incompetent. He didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. On the morning of September 1, 2015, news began to surface that Miles has absolutely nothing to do with Black Lives Matter.
He is in fact one hapless former unstable schizoid mental health patient of the Texas Department of State Health Services most likely under a regiment of mind control drugs- thorazine (chemical lobotomy), or other MK ULTRA Jonestown drugs like Quaaludes, Valium, Morphine, Demerol, chloral hydrate (a hypnotic chemical agent), and Thallium that confuses thinking.[9] All you have to do with a Black Manchurian Candidate zombie like Shannon J. Miles, programmed by the State of Texas, is put a gun into his hand and point him toward the action.
Local Cop or U.S. Soldier? Military Fanatic- GI Joe Gliniewicz
When news of his wretched psychotic mental state was exposed nationally on the morning on September 1, around 7:50 a.m., a Chicago area Lake County Police Officer, GI JOE Lieutenant Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, was allegedly killed in Fox Lake, ILL by a BLACK MALE and two white male suspects that, yes of course, are completely unknown and got away. Corporate mass media conveniently suddenly broke away from the Miles and Goforth Cop Killer story to chase some other demon and more convenient- truly Phantom Cop Killers.[10] Yes, it appears from most of the signs and symbols to be yet another clandestine false flag and strategy of tension operation. GI Joe served in the U.S. Army from 1981-2007. From 1985, he was both a Lake County Police Officer and took orders from the U.S. Army– Posse Comitatus. The Posse Comitatus Act is an act that prohibits the federal government from using the armed forces as a posse comitatus for law enforcement. If anyone actually killed this man, it wasn’t mere criminals, but deep cover U.S. military intelligence operatives and assassins of the BROTHERHOOD.
I AM So Fancy- Satan, White Privilege and Supremacy
As a the direct result of American government war criminal aggression of absolutely demonic proportions, and wicked (ILLUMINATI Puppets Hilary Clinton, Barrack Obama) campaigns of mass human rights violations, genocide- mass murder and destabilization in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, LIBYA, and Africa , Europe, Middle East and Africa is going to hell in a hand basket while America continue to bask in the sunlight of I AM SO FANCY – guilt free and held HARMLESS of International War Crimes and Crimes against Democracy and Humanity by the Global Satanic Cabals.
The other day, as many as 71 bodies believed to be those of Syrian migrants were found in an abandoned truck near the Austrian-Hungary border highlights the global crisis Europe faces in dealing with the greatest deluge of displaced people since World War II. So far, there are no solutions in sight from the I AM SO FANCY American political system to the growing world calamity, and the American Global Political Satanic Oasis sits by and watch the world catastrophe like an innocent peanut gallery spectator.[11] The deep state’s hidden agenda is to destabilize and depopulate Africa and Middle East that may as a result permanently change the face of Europe. Peace in the Middle East certainty isn’t one of the ILLUMINATI’S objectives unless the people demand it.
A big black perverted BRUTE allows the American political system to become the “I am so Fancy” Iggy Azaleas of the world. Donald Drumpf (Trump)- Primo Don, the leading republican presidential candidate can make national headlines and fill up stadiums across the country talking about his natural blond hair, and Mexican migrants.[12] It allows the democratic presidential candidate Libyan War Criminal/Mass Murderer former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to sit back casually and be so fancy highlighting the crimes of Vester Flanagan for national gun control.[13] Instead of facing a 2016 U.S. presidential election, Hilary Clinton should be facing a prison sentence and firing squad from an international war crimes tribunal.
“Iggy Azalea is popular because of white corporate ownership of the hip hop brand. She is popular because she is being marketed as the “blond white Australian woman who is running ‘Hip Hop.’ She is popular because women of color are habitually denied a stage to talk about the invisibilization of their life experiences. She is popular not because of her lyrical ability, but because she is an embodiment of Western beauty ideals and a perfect vehicle for proving the prevalence, the naivety, and the power of WHITE SUPREMACY.”[14]
That’s only part of the story. In the video,” I am So Fancy”, Iggy is immersed, but dominate the Black Rap and Hip Hop Culture as an iconic symbolic white figure. With her blond hair, dark eyes and whiteness, she says that I AM, not Hip Hop or anything else, So Fancy. It (White Privilege and Supremacy) is a fantasy that we (people of color) can not touch.
Iggy & the Great BEAST 666 Mocking the Crucifixion
So as she appears so innocently immersed in the Black Rap and Hip Hop Culture, there’s a flip side to her more dangerous, demonic and insidious than you can ever imagine. Fancy is defined as imagination or fantasy, especially as exercised in a capricious manner.[15]
On the other side of that sweet innocent image, Iggy Azealea is a classic CIA MK ULTRA/MONARCH multiple personality disorder (MPD) candidate. In one of her alter personalities, she is a classic Sex Kitten.
In another one of her alters, she is a Masonic Demon/ess and Sorceress.
However in her most important role, she is a classic MK ULTRA counterintelligence cultural change agent. Iggy Azalea raps, “First things first, I’m the REALIST. Drop this, and LET THE WHOLE WORLD FEEL IT.”[16] A lot of people are still in the dark about what she really meant dropping that rhyme. In reality, it is quite a propound statement that is much more than an innocent young white girl out of racist and wicked Australia just trying to bust a few rhymes. There is a much border picture to be realized, and discussion that has to take place involving White Supremacy and the Iggy Azaleas of the world subliminally implanting notions and fantasies of white privilege and supremacy among masses of color.
Well, the REALIST was a newsletter project “Telling Truth to Power” for the people made infamous by the Late Great Mae Brussell. In issue 98, February 1974 Realist newsletter, Mae opened, “You only need to have a tape recorder to set up a revolutionary movement today.” –FBI Director, Charles Bates[17]
The military intelligence complex has known for decades that you only need a microphone, tape recorder, the complicity, control and coordination of mass corporate (Operation MOCKINGBIRD)[18] media and the entertainment industry to sublimely influence and manipulate the hearts and minds of the people.
CIA MK ULTRA Godfather Aldous Huxley & Iggy Azalea- The Eye of HORUS
Aldous Huxley, the British Grandfather of MK ULTRA, taught the New World Order and ILLUMINATI how best to sustain Anglo superiority and dominance without mass popular resistance– they are the REALIST that create realities to control the minds and aspirations of the masses through scientifically implanting subliminal fantasies, fears and ILLUSIONS. What does Iggy Azalea have to do with Black Manchurian Candidate Vester Lee Flanagan III?
VESTER FLANAGAN- MK ULTRA Priest/Monk of Satan’s Army
This is all about the counter-intelligence Satanic Signs and Symbols of Vester Lee Flanagan III and SEX MAGICK. Above, somebody or entity had been messing with Vester’s head. Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) is often called the “father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb,” but while in Gorki, Russia somebody and entity had been messing with his head, too- deliberate high tension electromagnetic radiation bombardment. “Communicating Via the Microwave Auditory Effect”- such technology has obvious applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with “voices” or deliver undetectable instructions to a MK ULTRA/MONARCH programmed assassin.
RA HOOR KHUIT & KANYE WEST
“This is a manifesto for every man and every woman who recognizes their own right to Divine Kingship, those who recognize themselves to be Stars. The aim is the complete establishment of the Kingdom of RA-HOOR-KHUIT upon earth. That is, the permeating and infiltration of all facets of life with the sublime Word of Thelema.” Manifesto of RA HOOR KHUIT [19] When I first took notice of Kanye West with the sign and symbol of the Kemetic Horus, I thought he was manipulating a form of Horus in Kemetic mythology for the ILLUMINATI. It’s a totally different ball game. I didn’t know anything about RA HOOR KHUIT and its Satanic/Setian function to absolutely and deliberately BASTARDIZE Kemetic Cosmology for White Supremacy and the New World Order. I’ll connect up RA HOOR KHUIT with Flanagan below.
Vester Flanagan III & the U.S. Clandestine Military Sodomite BROTHERHOOD
Television News Reporter Bryce Williams AKA Vester Lee Flanagan III
Especially on CNN News 24-7 for a week or more, confused and abused MK ULTRA/MONARCH victim, Vester Flanagan III, had become America’s mass media’s international political distraction and diversion. In this country, he was a “big black BRUTE” and a perverted homosexual that had suddenly become the global poster child of wickedness, and new international whipping boy for National Gun Control.
March 2012 – Bryce Williams, an alter personality of Vester Flanagan, was hired by WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia. In February 2013, Williams was fired by WDBJ- over two (2) years ago.[20] Flanagan was a big black man. He stood about 6 feet 3, and may have weighted over 250 pounds, but he had no history or background of violence. Even in that so called road rage incident used to denigrate him in the public eyes, he made absolutely no aggressive moves toward the man recording the video, Brandon Foster.[21]
It appears that it was Foster that was raging, and it was him that became intimidated and paranoid by Flanagan’s size and blackness. Flanagan remained clam and was even respectful to Foster even though he was being provoked. The so-called road rage incident demonstrated that Flanagan was by nature mild mannered, respectable and humble even under a state of the stress of provocation.
However what you should note unusual about Flanagan is not only is he driving a late model Ford Mustang, but he is wearing military camouflaged pants and boots. He appears that he had some immediate connection with a military exercise, and that can be very troublesome in the State of Virginia. Washington DC (District of Goddess Columbia) sits at the heart of the State of Virginia while the state is the heart of the nation’s ultra clandestine military-intelligence complex and security state.
The BROTHERHOOD: Secret Satanic Military Sodomite Underground in Virginia
Kay & Marine U.S. Marine Col. George Griggs
Katherine Griggs of Virginia Beach, VA was the wife of 11 years to alcoholic Colonel George Raymond Griggs USMC, Intelligence Operations, head of special (psychological) operations under Admiral Celso at NATO. Roanoke is approximately 500 miles outside of Virginia Beach. Kay Griggs was a member of the board in NATO’s wives club, and assistant director of the Virginia Center for World Trade in Norfolk, VA. Marine Col. Griggs’ background includes NATO’s college at Rome, and then Princeton. His intelligence spy career began in Vietnam.[22] She maintains her former husband, Marine Col. Griggs, runs a military intelligence Murder, Inc. of trained assassins that he calls the “firm” or “The BROTHERHOOD” that were “sexually perverted “. Kay Griggs said that The BROTHERHOOD had its origins in the secret Germany Illness, the Pink Triangle– Sodomite SS– Knights of the Black Sun/Nazis out of Operation PAPERCLIP. [23]
At the scene of the Flanagan shooting at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, there appears to be unidentified military personnel on the scene dressed like Flanagan in camouflaged pants and military boots. WDBJ’s camera man Adam Ward body allegedly still lies in place at the plaza. It doesn’t appear to be much or any blood at the scene where three people were supposedly shot multiple times.
In a series of interviews around 1998 through 1999, she blew the whistle on the Satanic/Homosexual/Pedophilic links between the military and members of the Virginia elite. At the beginning of the interview, she appeared somewhat reluctant to discuss Operation PAPERCLIP Nazis and Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler’s SS secretly brought into the U.S. after WWII. However, she loosened her tongue and told us that from New York Wall Street to Washington DC- the men in secret current hierarchical power in the U.S. are the children and descendants of the Nazi/SS Knights. It’s a very important clue, and keep in mind as you read further that the SS are European KNIGHTS. Himmler organized and created NOTHING without a thread to German/Aryan pagan magick, mythology, cosmology and antiquity.
The SS Knights of the Black Sun were/is a 20th Century branch of the medieval German Teutonic Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem. The German Teutonic Order was a branch of Knight Templars (Temple Knights) of the 12th Century crusades. It’s important to keep in mind as you read further that according to medieval Christian theologians, angels are organized into several orders, or “Angelic Choirs.” Seraphim (singular “Seraph“) literally translated “burning ones“, the word seraph is normally a synonym for serpents when used in the Bible. Mentioned in Isaiah 6:1-7, SERAPHIM are the highest angelic class and they serve as the caretakers of God’s Throne and continuously shout praises: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
According to Isaiah 6:1-8, the Seraphim are described as fiery six-winged beings; with two wings he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
One early source for information and study on Angelology and Demonology is the prophet Zoroaster. A “Fallen Angel” is an angel that has been exiled or banished from Heaven [fallen being a a metaphor for “cast out” or ostracized. Of course, the best known fallen angel is LUCIFER. Among the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, that fell from heaven in that category were Lucifer, Belial, LEVIATHAN and Satan, and those who believed and joined their cause became the first DEMONS.
LEVIATHAN is related to the BAPHOMET, the guiding spiritual light and god of the Knight Templars that include the Teutonic Order. Also among the fallen angels is an entity Samael. Samael is a major demon in Jewish demon lore and Christian demonology. He also plays important roles within occultism. He is credited as being in the heavenly hierarchies as well as being among the fallen angels. In the Chronicles of Jerahmeel Samael is described as being “Chief of the SATANS.” Even though this work depicted him as being one of the most wickedest angels, he is nevertheless said to be an angel in the service of the Lord. A. E. Waite in his work The Holy Kabbalah defines Samael as the “severity of God” and also equates him with SATAN and the Serpent, LILITH being his bride. In Moncure Daniel Conway’s Demonology and Devil-Lore, Samael, functioning as the left hand of God, is consort of both the voluptuous maiden Naamah and the arch-SHE DEVIL LILITH.
The BAPHOMET is a rebirth of Samael and Lilith through the Seraph Dragon LEVIATHAN. (see Michael Ford, Luciferian Witchcraft- Book of the Serpent, Succubus Productions, Houston, TX (2009), pg. 335) The SS-Knights of the Black Sun are followers of the Secret Knowledge of the SERAPH, LEVIATHAN, a Fallen Angel. I will connect up the Secret Knowledge of the SERAPH with Vester Flanagan, below.
Kay Griggs said that there is a substantial and powerful military/elite underground in Virginia. She said that the U.S. Military is run by sexual deviants, especially on the homosexual side. Individual’s like Jeffery Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, Lee Harvey Oswald and a host of others who have a SEXUAL DEVIANT background are sought by people in the army for advancement in to intelligence type work because they are so easy to control, become mind slaves and in a sense the whole military is a MIND CONTROL operation.[24]
“THE term “ORION GROUP” refers to an utterly clandestine group of hard-core Satanists within the USAF whose names and purposes will never be officially published nor acknowledged as such by the USAF and for obvious reasons… There are many different operations in the USAF and US military, going by names that may indeed include ORION GROUP, OMEGA GROUP, etc. But their hard-core black-ops like the hidden SATANIC NWO “ORION GROUP” you will never read about openly.”[25]
Recently, citizen journalists exposed that Flanagan’s victim Alison Bailey Parker’s true boyfriend was actually the dark haired U.S. Marine Daniel Wulz– Part of The BROTHERHOOD or the Firm. Her corporate mass media blond boyfriend on the right, Chris Hurst, is a military/police intelligence “Crisis Actor”. It’s also extremely odd that mild mannered and humble Vester had lived in Roanoke for over 3 (three) years and yet nobody has appeared publicly as his friends and associates, and nobody touches what he did (riding around in popular late model rental cars) in Virginia (Queen Elizabeth I- Virgin(ia) Queen) since he was fired from WDBJ in February 2013- over 2 (two) years ago.
Recently, a mysterious Robert Lee Avent of Vallejo, CA suddenly popped up claiming to have been a friend. One thing is clear. He didn’t display any grief, tears or mourning at the death of his so-called friend. It is the Sign of the BEAST. I call him, Frenchy. He shared a four bedroom house with Flanagan in Vallejo from 2006 to 2012. In Vallejo, Flanagan was doing his thing. Frenchy claims that he wasn’t a same-sex prostitute, but Flanagan made it pretty clear that he wasn’t comfortable and was somewhat paranoid of straight black males, and they weren’t comfortable with him. It doesn’t seem possible that a straight black male would have lived with an obvious same-sex prostitute running an illicit racket out of your home for six (6) years without being mixed up in the trick and trade.[26] Frenchy favors Flanagan in that both were big bluff light skinned (bi-racial?) homosexual Negro– Mandingoes.
Frenchy also has some residential connection to Kay Griggs’ hometown, Virginia Beach, VA, and the area of Col. Griggs’ massive U.S. Marine Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base on the Virginia coast, near Norfolk and Virginia Beach– an area which Kay says is an area that constitutes a massive underground military/homosexual nexus of power. It’s also fairly close to the Fort Bragg nexus of power. Frenchy claimed that what really bothered Flanagan was growing fear about getting older and becoming less attractive to his sex magick clientele. He also said that Flanagan told him on day of the operation that he had “NO OTHER CHOICE” being involved.[27] All that Avent was allowed to reveal publicly only destroyed Flanagan’s false flag ILLUMINATI “race war” assassination motive. For whatever reasons, Flanagan had absolutely NO CHOICE (Black Manchurian Candidate) in being complicit in the operation.
Flanagan & Virginia State Trooper Pamela Neff- SIGN and SYMBOL of BROTHERHOOD Hand over Hand (X-Symbol) CROSSED BONES
Officer Neff was the first to spot Flanagan’s car on the highway. Contrary to mass corporate media notions, there was no car chase. At all time, Flanagan was driving normally and casually along the road.
Trooper Neff allegedly first spotted Flanagan’s car and started the so-called car (false) chase. On the day of the operation, Franz Strasser, a video journalist with BBC, and his colleague Tara McKelvey were en route to Roanoke to report on the shooting when they happened upon Flanagan’s car crash site near the tiny town of Linden, Virginia. They pulled over into the median of the highway and Strasser began rolling.[28]
For a suicide shooting most likely a head shot, there doesn’t seem to be any blood trail, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence trail at the scene at Flanagan’s crash scene that any emergency attempt had been made to save his life especially when he was shot sometime in the morning and died after 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Strasser kept rolling as he approached the crash site surrounded by a dozen Virginia State Police (VSP) vehicles. When VSP officers spotted Strasser, about six of them rushed toward him.
They followed him back to his car, and told Strasser and McKelvey that they had to get away from the scene. Strasser says the cop then told him his car was going to be towed for being illegally parked and his camera seized because it “might contain evidence.” The VSP officer took the camera out of the reporter’s hands.[29] When Strasser said he was willing to go but that he needed his car and camera to do his job, the cop forced him to delete the footage he had just recorded first. “He was very close to me, looking at the screen and looking at every step I took, making sure that I did hit ‘delete’ and did hit ‘submit,'” Strasser says. “Towing the car wasn’t brought up again.”[30] Strasser Tweeted right after it happened, “Reason for confiscating camera was that it was EVIDENCE. … But why they are then okay with DELETING ‘EVIDENCE’ makes one question their reasoning.”[31]
BROTHERHOOD Inverted Triangle (Pyramid) Secret SIGN and SYMBOL, Waller County, TX D.A. Elton Mathis of the Sandra Bland Matter and Virginia State Police Sgt. Rick C. Garletts reporting the initial Flanagan August 26, 2015 shootings at Bridgewater Plaza. Flanagan was pronounced dead shortly before 1:30 p.m. at the Inova Fairfax Hospital. At approximately 9:40 a.m, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said that police are chasing the suspect.[32] So, it is quite possible that Flanagan was alive at the time of his alleged capture on the side of the freeway, or somewhere else. It was reported that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a police car chase.[33]
Frenchy claimed that Flanagan allegedly told him by phone during the police chase that he was going to shoot/kill himself backing up the police version. However, his phone records show that the police chase had taken place between 8:15 and 8:33 a.m., an hour earlier than the governor said the chase was in process.[34]
Yet, like the crime scene in the case of the Chattanooga shooting, there is no blood evidence that any shooting ever took place.
Frenchy also claimed that in Flanagan’s last letter to him, he claimed that Flanagan revealed that he wrote to his father a month before the shooting, saying he didn’t want a funeral and wanted to be cremated, NO FUNERAL when he died.[35] Frenchy is pushing for the further DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE. It isn’t too difficult to realize who benefits from the cremation of Flanagan’s body, if there is a body to cremate in the first instance.
Vester Flanagan, RACE WAR & THE MAN ON THE MOON
Vester Flanagan III was no more interested in sparking a potential “race war” over Dylann Storm and the South Carolina Mother Emanuel Slaughter than the “MAN ON THE MOON.” Don’t get it twisted, Flanagan wasn’t a male escort. The man had been a compulsive and psychotic- one tract mind “MALE PROSTITUTE.” For decades, his brain pleasure centers had been focused primarily on sexual gratification and perversion. Black nationalism, justice and righteousness for mankind just wasn’t on this man’s agenda to the extent that he would be willing to kill and commit revolutionary suicide. IT’S A SICK SORRY JOKE.
Mostly all of the dead MK ULTRA Manchurian Candidates leave behind so called CIA authored “Manifestos.” Flanagan was no exception to the rule. In Flanagan’s so called “Manifesto“, it states, “ … I was influenced by Seung–Hui Cho. That’s my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin.”[36] Approximately forty-two (42) miles outside of Roanoke at Blacksburg, Virginia, Seung-Hui Choi, the South Korean Intelligence agent, and mass murderer who allegedly and most unlikely killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech also left behind a so-called “Manifesto.”[37]
Seung-Hui Choi had been a local story. He was a satanic ritually abused CIA- MK ULTRA victim and Manchurian Candidate.[38],[39],[40],[41] Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold (Dylann Storm) of the Columbine (Columbian) Colorado Massacre were also satanic ritually abused victims and MK ULTRA/MONARCH Manchurian Candidates.[42],[43],[44],[45]
It is interesting to note that Vester (alter Bryce Williams) joined Twitter only on August 12, 2015 to setup an electronic paper trail of an alleged motive for the August 26 false flag operation.[46] On Aug. 19, 2015, a week before the operation, Flanagan, under the username of @bryce_williams7, Tweeted to his 16 followers, “Hell yeah I’ve been a high paid ‘companion.’ You wish u could too!! Lol.” The word “companion” in itself certainly suggests that he had maintained an established select clientele that he served. The Tweet was accompanied by four photos of Flanagan from his younger days, posing and flexing for the camera.[47] Just days before the operation, Vester was too busy boosting about his FREAK than developing any farfetched and distant notions of “Revolutionary Suicide.” Sex Magick and his FREAK not revenge had been his fancy and the opium to Vester’s brain.[48]
Until he was triggered or keyed to be a Black Manchurian Candidate, Vester was too occupied and busy with porn, sexual perversion and boosting about his ability to sexually satisfy an older and more affluent perverted white military intelligence complex clientele inside/outside the Roanoke, Virginia area to be concerned about MK ULTRA/MONARCH mass murderers. When law enforcement agencies entered and seized his apartment, they found nothing but porn, sex toys and numerous reflective images of Flanagan in the place. The hard drive of Vester’s computer was taken, and I am absolutely certain that there was nothing about Dylann Storm, Emanuel AME, Choi or the Columbine Massacre Programmed Assassins on that computer. Law enforcement and intelligence authorities were more interested in seizing and concealing Vester’s sexual client electronic data base on the computer than establishing any killer motives. In fact, the hard disk is not even listed on the police warrant inventory return list.
As you can see, somebody had ripped Vester’s hard drive out of the computer inside the home.[49]
Vester, From Sex Toy Male Prostitute to Black Manchurian Candidate
In July 2015, Vester purchased not 1 (one), but 2 (two) state of art 9 mm Gen 3 Glock model 19 handguns.[50] However, 2 (two) new Glocks with ammunition and clips had to add up to over a $1,000.[51] Vester was unemployed. Where did the money come from to pay month to month rent on an Roanoke apartment, rent multiple cars, buy guns and ammunition? Tricks and the CIA?
Vester Flanagan, Jehovah Witnesses & Mind Control, Ritually Sexual Abuse of Children
On his Twitter account, Vester left clear clues and unquestionable coded references to his upbringing and influences during his most formative childhood years among the Central Oakland Congregation of the Jehovah Witnesses during the 1970-1990s. On August 19, 2015, he Tweeted, “Ooooooh as a Jehovah’s Witness I wasn’t supposed 2b celebrating b-days [birthdays] but “mommy” was cool (most of the time) lol.”
The pictures suggest that as early as 12 months old (1974), he had been under the power and influence of a Satanic CULT. Jehovah’s Witnesses were/are deeply shrouded in secrecy, freemasonry and trauma based mind control.[52]
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Watchtower Society, is another ILLUMINATI religion used for mind control and a front for Satanism. It systematically disconnects its members from non-members in the way of all mind-control cults. From the start, the Watchtower Society, based at Bethel, Brooklyn, New York, has been a front for Enochian Magic– Satanism. They placed the flying Sun disk on the front of their books, an ancient Illuminati symbol going back to Kemet and Babylon. The Watchtower magazine has always been a mass of subliminal and less subliminal occult symbolism and the very name, Watchtower, is part of Illuminati and Freemasonic legend and code.[53]
Notice the Teutonic Order Black Cross on the Jehovah’s Witnesses Watch Tower. “The Jehovah’s Witness organization is named over and over by survivors of trauma-based mind control for being involved, like the Mormon Church, in unspeakable mind control projects. The Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the same organization at the top level where the El-ders of the Mormons and the Watchtower Society operate a very different agenda to the one revealed to their followers.”[54]
Jehovah Witnesses were founded and basically established by Irish/Scottish descendent Charles Taze Russell (February 16, 1852 – October 31, 1916), and Judge Joseph Franklin Rutherford (November 8, 1869 – January 8, 1942) during the 19th Century. Some sources insist that Russell was a Master Mason.[55]
Question: What does Masonry’s emblem/sign/symbol of the ‘Cross and Crown’ actually symbolize? The Cross of Freemasonry is a philosophical cross, according to Albert Pike, ‘Morals and Dogma,‘ p. 771. It is philosophical in the sense that it represents the generating fecundating principle by the perpendicular shaft, 350 MASONIC AND OCCULT SYMBOLS ILLUSTRATED and the matrix or womb of nature, the female producing principle by the horizontal shaft. The philosophy of the Masonic cross is totally phallic. “The ‘Crown’ of this Masonic emblems is also phallic, it being the first emanation of the Cabalistic Sephiroth….”[56] The Sephiroth is another name for the SERAPHIM, Fallen Angels.
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Cross and Crown is in honor of the Knights Templar, but its Knight Helmet, Armor and Crossed Sword and Ax (X Symbol) also honor the Knights. Its Shepherd’s Crook is associated with the king and was used to write the word “ruler” and “rule” in hieroglyphics.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses Knight’s Ax is similar to the Teutonic Knight Battle Ax.
A former Mason also explains: “The other York Rite jewelry you may see is the Templar symbol….It is a large Maltese cross with a circle in the center. Inside the circle is a red Latin cross within a crown. Around the arms of the cross is the Commandery Motto, ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces.’ (In this sign, YOU WILL CONQUER!)”[57] The Commandery Motto is originally attributed to the Emperor Constantine, who used it in conjunction with a supposedly heavenly vision to begin the subversion and politicization of Biblical Christianity into the false, apostate Alexandrian Cult.[58]
Charles Taze Russell was an occultist and a practitioner of Elizabethan Sorcerer Dr. John Dee’s Enochian Magick. The Enochian system of magick as practiced today is primarily the product of research and workings by four men: Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley of Queen Elizabeth I’s Court, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (British Founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn); and the Great BEAST 666, ALEISTER CROWLEY.[59]
Enochian is described as “Angelical”, the “Celestial Speech”, the “Language of Angels”, the “First Language of God-Christ”, the “Holy Language” or “Adamical Language” because, according to Dee’s Angels, it was used by Adam in Paradise to name all things. The term “Enochian” comes from Dee’s assertion that the Biblical Patriarch Enoch had been the last human to know the language below the Great Fall of MAN.[60]
Jehovah Witnesses teach that “the servant class on earth are directed by the Lord through his duly constituted deputies or angels. “ (Light. Volume II.1930 p. 20). “Visible human creatures had to do with that message, yet in fact, it was a message of the Lord sent through his invisible angels, because without a doubt these are clothed with authority to direct the course of earthly members of God’s organization.” (Light Vol.1 l930, p.106).[61]
The big problem with Dr. Dee’s Secret Rites of Enochian Magick is that the angels that he was conjuring up were actually demonic spirits. Edward Kelley warned Dr. Dee the “angels” they were talking to were really DEMONS, and that angles had told him their goal was to destroy humanity.[62]
Charles Taze Russell membership in secret cults such as the Freemasons, Odd Fellows, and Knights of Pythias, etc., is still deeply veiled. If he was a secret Master Mason of the York Rite, and I believe that he was, it would be consistent with Freemasonry’ mission of clandestinely setting up Masonic blue lodge fronts among the masses, and infiltrating groups and institutions to take over.
However, Russell’s successor, Judge Joseph (Joe) Franklin Rutherford, that coined the organizational name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” was confirmed to have been a member of the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order founded in 1864. He was so prominent in the Knights of Pythias that he was the toastmaster at the dedication of their castle in Boonville, Missouri in January 1899. He was also a member of the Woodman of the World (WoodmenLife).[63]
Joseph Cullen Root, above, founded the Modern Woodmen of America. He sought light in Masonry in Lyons Lodge No. 93. He was initiated as an Entered Apprentice on July 20, 1877, passed to the Degree of Fellowcraft on December 28, 1877, and was raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason on March 30, 1880. He received the 32nd Degree on March 14, 1884. After relocating to Omaha, Nebraska, he became a member of Mount Moriah Lodge of Perfection, Semper Fidelis Chapter of Rose Croix, Saint Andrew’s Council of Kadosh, and Nebraska Consistory (Scottish Rite). On October 19, 1897, he was elected a Knight Commander of the Court of Honour. On December 4, 1899, he received the 33°. He also held membership in the Knights Templar, the Knights of Pythias, and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Brotherhood of Death).[64]
The Woodmen are similar if not another front for a secret white male Masonic/Satanic Blue Lodge and Brotherhood. They have three degrees-morning, noon, and night–but most members only undergo the first, consisting of a welcoming ritual in which new members are passed beneath a tunnel formed by the crossed axes of the existing members.
In 1868, the Ancient Order of United Workingmen merged with the Woodmen of the World and the Masonic Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. The founding mythology of the Woodmen of the World posits an ancient code of brotherhood among woodmen. who are sworn to help one another in time of need. The myth additionally holds that woodmen worldwide have developed a body of wisdom inspired by Woodcraft. much as the Masons are inspired by operative masonry. In 1896 grassroots pressure from the lodges led to the creation of a “Uniform Rank” for the purpose of organizing military-type drill instruction, including distinctive Woodmen Axe Drills.[65] Very scary stuff!
As for the Knights of Pythias, under the veil and shroud, the Greek mythology and legacy of Warriors Damon and Pythias (Cult of the Knights of Pythia) were of a same sex couple whom death could never sever.[66]
This is a sign and symbol for Robert Avent@Buttflyzzz. I cannot prove that this symbol belongs to Frenchy, but it is his name and it does reference the Butt (Sodomy). It suggests Butt-flys (homosexual or bi-sexual male clients), and ZZZ (MK ULTRA sleepers). If it isn’t Frenchy’s symbol, it is a most strange and remarkable twist of fate. Regarding the Latin phrase above the symbol and sign, it is also relevant to this case. Among the Scottish Rite Freemasonry brotherhood, it is the Fourteenth Degree Motto: Virtus Junxit, Mors Non Separabit (Virtue has united and death shall not separate).[67]
Fallen Angels, Jehovah Witnesses & Enochian Sex Magick
Jehovah’s Witnesses have practiced Enochian Magick for over a hundred years. You must understand that communion with spirits, angels, demons and the DEVIL by Enochian Magick always command the calling forth by secret symbols, signs, rites and rituals. The practice of Enochian Magick involve Fallen Angel Sex Magick.
The Great BEAST 666 Aleister Crowley’s Satanic Ritual Sex Magick is a Secret Enochian “Angelic” Ritual Ceremony.[68] Enochian Sex Magick involves invoking erotic-occulted paranormal experiences per instructions from Fallen Angels. “Sex Magick can be done with a Demon/ess.” “Sexual fluids, both semen and vaginal secretions and also menstrual blood have the power of Life Forces.” –Joy of Satan Ministries, U.S. Library of Congress.[69]
“Crowley’s sex rituals involving the consumption of blood, semen, or feces were allegedly intended to achieve a higher consciousness to empower a talisman, or to simply empower ones self. Intense focuses on the intended result during the ritual, especially during orgasm, were paramount to achieving the desired goal in Sex Magick. Crowley saw in orgasm (as in drug experience) a means to create ‘breakage of consciousness’ by pushing the mind to a point of extreme exhaustion and so opening it the “supersensual.’ The technique… was that of excess; through pain or pleasure, sex or intoxication, it was necessary to attain a condition of exhaustion taken to the extreme limit.”[70]
Most practitioners of Enochian Sex Magick agree with the Great BEAST 666 that every means of arousal may be used, such as physical stimulation, genital stimulation, psychological stimulation, devices (such as SEX TOYS) to reach Eroto-comatose lucidity. Eroto-comatose lucidity places the individual in a state between full sleep and full wakefulness as well as exhaustion, allowing the practitioner to commune with their god- the DEVIL.[71]
In HollyWeird, Enochian Sex Magick is also known as “Dark Sex.” A popular Satanic Negro actor alleged to be a practitioner of Enochian Sex Magick is Terrence Howard.[72] He calls himself “SATAN” and the “ANTICHRIST‘.[73] Above, he has Triangles (pyramids), the Moloch Owl and a form of the Ourboros snake. The Serpent biting its own tail is first seen as early as 1600 years BC in Kemet as a symbol of the sun, and represented the travels of the sun disk. From there it moved to their cousins, Canaanites (Phoenicians) and then to the Greeks, who gave it its name, Ouroboros, which means devouring its tail.
The possession of SEX TOYS in the trade of male prostitution certainly isn’t any conclusive proof of the practice of Crowleian/Enochian Sex Magic, but if you factor in Jehovah’s Witnesses– their secret and clandestine practice of Enochian Magick, and Flanagan’s clandestine residence in the belly of the nation’s underground Satanic Sodomite military/intelligence community then SEX TOYS would be undoubtedly be considered the Signs and Symbols of the practice of Enochian Sex Magick.
Jehovah Witnesses, Pedophiles & Secret Ritual Sexual Abuse of Children
“ ‘You come to us first. Don’t tell anybody. … You don’t warn parents in the congregation. We’ll decide what happens here.’ That’s their policy.” — Irwin Zalkin, attorney for Jose Lopez, describing the system he believes the Witnesses have created [74]
For Jose Lopez, it took almost three decades to find some semblance of justice after he’d been ritually sexually molested during the 1990s– when he was 7 years old by a church elder pedophile who’d operated within a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in San Diego with impunity.[75] In Sidney, Australia alone, from 1950 to 2014, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah Witnesses) amassed 5,000 files detailing sexual abuse of Australian children by 1,006 of its members.[76]
For 25 years, the leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, NY has instructed its elders to keep cases of child sexual abuse secret from law enforcement and members of their own congregations, according to an examination of thousands of pages of documents in recent cases.[77] In the last few years, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been hit with an increasing barrage of lawsuits claiming the organization has covered up child sexual abuse. A pair of sisters in Vermont filed a suit in September claiming that a member of their congregation molested them when they were as young as MK ULTRA prime 4 years old, the idea age range to begin the process to create multiple personality disorder (MPS). [78]
When they reported the abuse to the elders in the congregation, they said, they were called liars. The next month in Dallas, five women and one man filed a joint lawsuit alleging that an elder in their congregation sexually abused them while they were all younger than 13 years old.[79]
The order of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a CULT that is controlled and governed by a secret ILLUMINATI/Satanic Cabal Circle (roundtable) that the CIA MK ULTRA Occult Bureau is believed to have infiltrated and control.[80]
According to Vester, he had been exposed to the Jehovah Witnesses since early infancy. It had been alleged and charged that some type of experimental Satanic Trauma Based Mind Control was/is being used to create Multiple Personality Disorders (MPD) and control children born into the ILLUMINATI within the Watchtower and Jehovah’s Witnesses Society.[81]
From the pictures that he had posted on Twitter, Vester suggests that he may have been ritually traumatically sexually abused, and his original self had been fractured (Multiple Personality Disorder) since infancy. One thing is certain, he had been turned out as some type of MK ULTRA Male Sex Toy for a secret affluent white (military intelligence) cabal, and intelligence operations.
Vester Lee Flanagan III AKA Bryce Williams had been a closet homosexual most of his life. Most likely in his teens, he had turned his CIA MK ULTRA Sex Toy alter personality into a secret profitable/professional male prostitution racket and enterprise. It was a wicked enterprise that he continued to engage in secret in Roanoke, Virginia that nobody will discuss.
However, MK ULTRA/MONARCH also always program a victim with one or several assassin alters along with termination alters. In the raid on Vester’s apartment after the shooting incident, police reportedly found “many” SEX TOYS that still had “human material” on them.[82] The trade of his profession included the Great BEAST 666’S SEX TOYS. Flanagan was a sexual deviant and clandestine practitioner of Enochian Sex Magick who had been recruited by the Secret Sodomite BROTHERHOOD inside the U.S. Military and Government.
Again, what does Iggy Azalea have to do with Vester Flanagan III?
Bryce Williams, Resurrection & Afterlife
Vester was not allowed to leave behind any clear references to the occult. However, he did slip us a clue to an extremely important sign and symbol of the occult just days before he was triggered as a Black Manchurian Candidate.
On August 19, he posted this blurred photo of a New Orleans Saints football player on Twitter. It is completely out of place. It is one of the few photos that he was allowed to post just days before the false flag operation that wasn’t obviously a reflection of himself. The clue can be found on the player’s uniform. It is the sign and symbol “Fleur de lis.”
The “Fleur de lis” is ultimately derived from the “Crown of Aset [Osiris]” which is derived from the Kemetic symbol of the scared Lotus flower or the tree of life.
The “Fleur de lis” glyph also denotes sacred knowledge associated with the Kemetic God Hu (Divine and Authoritative Utterance) that is revealed to few.[83] The sacred Lotus flower was used RITUALLY in Ancient Kemet to represent the concept RESURRECTION.[84] The sacred knowledge associated with God Hu denotes the three stems of the three sacred lotus lilies.[85]
Hu was particularly important because he was the epitome of the power and command of the ruler. Even after death, Hu was of the utmost importance to the Kings of Ancient Kemet. Hu acted as the Kings companion as the King entered the Afterlife. Through Hu, the King maintained his royal authority in the Afterlife. Hu was the personification of Divine Utterance. However, some legends maintain that he was not just a part of creation, but that he was the creator. With each breath Hu expelled, creation took place. The first breath created the Soul of Aset (Osiris). His last creation was the Sun. So it is said that Hu is the Word of God, the first and the last breaths, HU- HU.[86]
The glyph on the right (Babe in the Lotus) denotes the sacred knowledge associated with Hu is formed by the three stems of the three sacred lotus lilies. This sacred knowledge was known only to the privileged few … for example the Priests. The druid glyph on the left denotes the Sacred Knowledge of Hu.[87] Somebody or entity programmed and promised one of Vester’s operational alter personalities RESURRECTION and an AFTERLIFE thru the divine knowledge and utterances and spells of Hu.
Heru-Behutet & Winged Sun Disk
And Ra Heru-khuti [Ra (who is) Horus on the Horizon] said to Thoth, “Thou shalt make this Winged Disk to be in every place wherein I seat myself (or, dwell), and in [all] the seats of the gods in the South, and in [all] the seats of the gods in the Land of the North …… in the Country of Horus, 2 that it may drive away the evil ones from their domains.” Then Thoth made the image of the Winged Disk to be in every sanctuary and in every temple, where they now are, wherein are all the gods and all the goddesses from this day onwards. Now through the Winged Disk which is on the temple-buildings of all the gods and all the goddesses of the Land of the Lily, and the Land of the Papyrus, [these buildings] become shrines of Heru-Behutet [Horus of Edfu].[88]
As a principle, Heru-Behutet represents “Divine Justice and Law” that in the form of a winged sun disk being that defeated God Set and his followers (EVIL).[89] Heru-Behutet– the winged sun disc as a symbol of protection have been found on Kemetic stelas and above temple gates since the Middle Kingdom.[90]
Heru-Behutet, Satanists & the Great BEAST 666
Crowley’s Drawing of the Mysterious Lam Entity
Aleister Crowley believed Aiwass and Lam to be the same entity. Lam incorporates the Babylonian Moloch- Owl God. The Great BEAST’s The Book of the Law, Liber Al vel Legis, is the sacred knowledge of Hu as revealed to him by an ANGEL, Aiwass.[91] Aiwass was the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat. Hoor-paar-kraat is more commonly referred to by the Greek transliteration Harpocrates, meaning “Horus the Child“, whom Crowley considered to be the central deity within Thelemic cosmology.[92] Crowley refers to Aiwass as SATAN. He also refers to Satan as ADONAI.[93]
Recall in the Sandra Brand Matter, her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, own and run ADONAI Realty Investment Group in Chicago.[94] She sold her soul to the DEVIL some years ago. Who is Sandra Bland’s father? Who is/was Geneva married to?
Also known as “The Babe in the Lotus“, Hoor-paar-kraat is sometimes thought of as the baby RA-HOOR-KHUIT.[95]
Crowley’s The Book of the Law, and Jehovah’s Witnesses– The Divine Plan of the Ages– Sacred Knowledge of Hu and Horus. There are three (3) speakers of The Book of the Law: Nuit, Hadit and RA-HOOR-KHUIT. The three (3) speakers predicted that the 20th century would mark the ending of the Christian God and Christian theism and the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, an age of apostasy into pantheist monism, creative destruction, force and fire wrought by demonized god-men and their masses of disciples- a self-absorbed, destructive generation, the followers of a new ethical code, an anti-morality summed up as, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”[96]
Among 21st Century Satanist and the ILLUMINATI, Heru-Behutet [the winged sun disk] presents a Secret Ancient Worship revealed only to special ILLUMINATED initiates. This Secret Worship has to do with the originals for Nuit and Hadit. Nuit is the ancient Kemetic Goddess Nut, and Hadit is Behutet, Goddess Nut and Heru Behutet [Horus].[97] The Great BEAST’s The Book of the Law, Liber Al vel Legis, is an absolutely bastardarized, counterfeit, demonic turned upside-down version of the ancient Kemetic/Maatic Cosmology.
How are Iggy Azalea and Vester Lee Flanagan III related? Iggy and Vester’s primary core MK ULTRA/MONARCH programming were anchored in Satanism. Both were programmed as Crowley-iates- Monks/Priests and Warriors of the RA HOOR KHUIT (Satan) ARMY. They are among the DEMONIZED. These Crowley-iates- the demonized god-men and their masses of disciples- a self-absorbed, destructive generation are among many nationalities of “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” They are becoming bolder and more daring daily. They are all around us among the police, military, politicians, corporate business leaders, journalists, teachers and popular entertainment industry with our EYES WIDE SHUT.
HollyWeird’s Elite White Crowley-iates- Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney
In 2012, The Daily Currant (an American satirical news blog [98]) revealed that HollyWeird celebrities celebrated President Barrack Obama’s reelection with a 300 person ancient Roman centurion SEX ORGY at actor’s George Clooney’s house.[99] Elite Satanic HollyWeird entertainers such as Sean Penn, Eva Longoria, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Warren Beatty were among those joyously ringing in four more years of Cyborg Barrack Obama’s ILLUMINATI puppet administration with a ritual of demonic debauchery- a sexual (Crowleian: Do What Thou Wilt) free-for-all that lasted all night and went into the afternoon of the next day.[100]
Brad Pitt, Vester Lee Flanagan III’s Satanic Clue, the SIGN & SYMBOL, “Fleur de lis.” Freemason Brad Pitt says, “What can I say. WE [The BROTHERHOOD] HAVE NO MORAL VALUES.”
Master Mason Brad Pitt says, “So we wanted a president who didn’t have any either. And we got him. WE’RE PRETTY HAPPY ABOUT THAT.”[101]
The Satanic/ILLUMINATI also have the top law enforcement and prosecuting officer under the President of the United States, Greek Divine Nine (9) Soro Delta Sigma Theta Loretta Lynch.
The Delta Sigma Theta’s Patron Wisdom Lord and their Sacred Secret Knowledge, Signs and Symbols come from the Greek Goddess Athena/Roman Goddess Minerva and the Owl. The BROTHERHOOD and the FIRM is pretty happy about that, too.
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4109942-signs-and-symbols-rule-the-world-not-words-nor-laws
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
[3] http://www.truthmove.org/content/operation-gladio/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a63Xbu_4wT8
[5] http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2015/07/21/this-may-be-a-wild-coincidence-but-if-not-looks-like-we-may-have-another-false-flag/
[6] http://www.letsrollforums.com/forum/forum/the-last-american-forum/government-media-corporate-hoaxes/439220-lafayette-u-s-false-flag-5-0-this-decade
[7] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prosecutor-gunman-shot-texas-deputy-15-times/
[8] http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/sheriff-blames-black-lives/2015/08/29/id/672608/
[9] http://nstarzone.com/JONESTOWN.html
[10] http://www.cnn.com/videos/justice/2015/09/01/police-officer-shot-illinois-three-suspects-search.cnn
[11] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34083337
[12] http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/politics/donald-trump-hair-toupee/
[13] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3212029/Hillary-blames-Virginia-news-crew-shooting-guns-readily-available-touring-machine-shop-students-learn-gunsmithing.html
[14] http://www.newblackmaninexile.net/2014/08/why-iggy-azalea-is-not-changing-game.html
[15] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fancy
[16] http://www.npr.org/2015/06/14/414374888/how-iggy-azalea-fell-from-fancy-to-cancelled
[17] http://www.ep.tc/realist/98/
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
[19] http://thelemicstudies.com/Manifesto.pdf
[20] http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/71491179/virginia-television-shooting-a-timeline-of-events
[21] http://wtvr.com/2015/08/28/vester-flanagan-road-rage-incident-in-july-caught-on-camera/
[22] https://gabrielbenshalom.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/the-beirut-diary-an-interview-with-kay-griggs/
[23] http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2005/07jul/kgriggs.html
[24] Id. at footnote 22
[25] http://americanholocaustcoming.blogspot.com/2009/02/exposing-satanism-in-us-military-usafs.html
[26] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/exclusive-virginia-killer-wrote-notes-sex-life-article-1.2342431
[28] http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/28/virginia-state-cop-forced-bbc-reporter-t
[32] http://www.wbbjtv.com/news/local/The-Latest-on-TV-shooting-Station-manager-speaks-of-suspect-322980411.html
[33] http://liveblogwp.wtop.com/Event/Va_reporter_cameraman_shot_killed_during_live_shot?Page=0
[35] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3216957/When-heads-stop-turning-s-AWFUL-TV-gunman-complained-lack-sex-lamented-glory-days-2-000-night-prostitute-suicide-letter.html
[36] http://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-alleged-gunman-details-grievances-suicide-notes/story?id=33336339
[37] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho
[38] http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread302030/pg1
[39] http://www.sott.net/article/130645-Project-Paperclip-MKULTRA-Dr-Greenbaum-and-Seung-Hui-Cho-Was-the-VA-Tech-Gunman-Mind-Programmed
[40] http://fightingforliberty.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cia-mind-control-ops-paperclip
[41] https://votesmart.org/public-statement/285337/seung-hui-cho-investigation-manipulated-from-with-in#.VeEdwfZVhBc
[43] http://www.whale.to/b/desborough2.html
[44] http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php/353851-MK-Ultra-Mind-Controlled-Killers-The-Columbine-Shooters-Patsy-Ramsey-Ted-Bundy-and-more
[45] https://mindcontrolblackassassins.com/category/col-michael-aquino/
[46] http://heavy.com/news/2015/08/lester-lee-flanagan-flanighan-flanigan-wdbj-tv-disgruntled-employee-virginia-shooting-suspect-cameraman-photos-video-chase-gun-gunman-arrested/
[47]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:szilVWy8EiMJ:https://twitter.com/bryce_williams7+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
[48] http://www.people.com/article/shooter-vester-lee-flanigan-once-paid-escort
[49] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11827315/Virginia-shooting-Gunman-Bryce-Williams-told-by-TV-station-to-seek-medical-help-after-colleagues-complaints-live.html
[50] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/28/new-gun-laws-wouldnt-have-stopped-va-gunman-wh/
[51] http://www.gunsamerica.com/Search.htm?C=305
[52] http://www.cultwatch.com/jw.html
[53] http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biggestsecret/matrix/matrix16.htm
[55] http://spaceforswashbuckling.blogspot.com/2014/09/exposed-jehovahs-witnesses-watchtower.html
[56] http://watch.pair.com/lahaye.html
[59] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magick
[61] http://www.letusreason.org/JW39.htm
[62] http://usminc.org/enochian.html
[63] http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/jehovahs-witness/TMKD6NCLPTF6KEHE7/p2
[64] http://srjarchives.tripod.com/1998-09/UZZEL.HTM
[65] http://www.world-news-research.com/cbooks8.html
[66] http://www.gaychristian101.com/are-there-any-same-sex-couples-in-ancient-history.html
[67] http://scottishrite.org/about/questions/
[69] http://www.angelfire.com/empire/serpentis666/Sex_Magick.html
[70] http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/06/modern-porn-mimics-aleister-crowleys-sex-magick-philosophies/
[71] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroto-comatose_lucidity
[72] http://diaryofahollywoodstreetking.com/former-terrence-howard-girlfriend-speaks-out-against-actor/
[73] http://www.inquisitr.com/935995/terrence-howard-calls-himself-satan-and-antichrist-threatens-suicide-in-fight-with-ex-wife/
[74]https://www.revealnews.org/article/jehovahs-witnesses-use-1st-amendment-to-hide-child-sex-abuse-claims/
[76] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/jehovahs-witnesses-face-child-sex-abuse-investigation-in-australia/2015/08/14/d8a58eda-406e-11e5-9561-4b3dc93e3b9a_story.html
[77] https://www.revealnews.org/article/jehovahs-witnesses-use-1st-amendment-to-hide-child-sex-abuse-claims/
[80] http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/mind_control_cults.htm
[81] http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/russell.htm
[82] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11827256/Vester-Lee-Flanagan-Inside-the-home-of-gunman-Bryce-Williams-where-he-prepared-for-murder.html
[83] http://ancientegypt.hypermart.net/treeoflife/
[84] http://www.lotusflowermeaning.net/
[86] http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/hu.htm
[87] http://www.washingtonlass.com/Runes_SecretMeaning.html
[88] http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/horus_of_behutet.htm
[89] http://tribes.tribe.net/kmt/thread/317b8d21-8639-465e-8b60-8c61b5c13829
[90] http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/symbols/winged_sun_disc.htm
[91] St. John, Oliver, The Ending of the Words – Magical Philosophy of Aleister Crowley, Ordo Astri Imprimator (www.ordoastri.org), pg. 13
[92] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwass
[93] http://www.arcane-archive.org/religion/satanism/order-of-kaos/thelema-is-satanic-satanism-is-thelemic-1.php
[94] https://www.linkedin.com/pub/geneva-reed-veal/17/15/617
[95] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heru-ra-ha
[96] http://patriotsandliberty.com/lindas-latest/2015/4/10/the-20th-century-beginning-of-the-age-of-demonized-god-men
[97] http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienciareal/cienciareal21a.htm
[98] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Currant
[99] http://dailycurrant.com/2012/11/07/celebrities-celebrate-obama-victory-epic-roman-orgy/
[100] http://dailycurrant.com/2012/11/07/celebrities-celebrate-obama-victory-epic-roman-orgy/
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The proposed trails will connect communities and neighborhoods, including parks, schools, community centers, places of worship, and retail to three bayous: Brays, Keegan’s and Willow Waterhole Bayou by creating off-street walking, hiking, and biking trails. These trails will be for recreation and alternate transportation routes throughout the specific region of southwest Houston
Connectivity: Neighborhoods To Trails
The majority of the identified trails for this project run north and south and will connect with the existing east-west Brays and Keegan’s Bayou trails system. The construction of the identified trails in this project will connect numerous residents to Brays and Keegan’s Bayou trail system. This will provide recreation and off-street transportation to numerous destinations in Houston area. The immediate recreational connection to what is considered a highlight of southwest Houston is Willow Waterhole Greenspace.
The Brays Bayou Trail is a continuous trail from southwest Houston to the Houston Ship Channel. It begins on Keegan’s Bayou at South Kirkwood Road near West Bellfort in far southwest Houston and Harris County and ends where Brays Bayou enters the Houston Ship Channel just inside the east 610 Loop. This east-west trail connects residents of southwest Houston to many areas along Brays Bayou, including the Medical Center, Hermann Park, Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theater, Rice University, Macgregor Park, Texas Southern University, University of Houston and Mason Park, to name a few. Residents of southwest Houston will be able to access this trail system from our neighborhoods due to the connectivity we are trying to accomplish.
The Keegan’s Bayou Trail provides 5 miles of bayou trails along a linear park. The trail runs from So. Gessner to Kirkwood along Keegan’s Bayou. The 10-foot wide multi-use path connects to the Brays Bayou Trail. City Council approved a $1.5 million joint project with TxDOT for the five-mile long hike and bike trail along Keegan’s Bayou. When completed, the 10-foot wide reinforced concrete trail will have two bridges, four under crossings, four on street crossings, accessibility ramps, striping, lighting and landscaping. The Keegan’s Bayou Trail runs from S. Kirkwood at W. Bellfort (near Cummins Elementary) east/northeast along Keegan’s Bayou to S. Gessner at S. Braeswood (near Brae-Burn Country club) and connect to Brays Bayou Trail and on to the city’s 316 miles of trails and on-street bike ways.
We anticipate developing almost nine (9) miles of trails along six segments of bayous, tributaries, easements, or boulevards. This will enable neighborhoods in the region to connect to the larger bayou trail systems and the passive recreational / conservation area of Willow Waterhole Greenspace.
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You are at:Home»Producers»How rich is Ted Cruz?
How rich is Ted Cruz?
December 5, 2019 Producers
How rich is Rafael Edward Cruz?
Rafael Edward Cruz Net Worth:
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970 in Calgary, Canada) is the junior United States Senator from Texas. Elected in 2012, he is the first Cuban American, Latino, or Canadian to hold the office of US Senator from Texas. Cruz is a member of the Republican Party. He served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, after being appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Between 1999 and 2003, Cruz served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Cruz was also an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation, from 2004 to 2009.Cruz was the Republican nominee for the Senate seat vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. On July 31, 2012, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff, 57–43. Cruz defeated the Democrat, former state Representative Paul Sadler, in the general election held on November 6, 2012; he prevailed with 56–41 over Sadler. Cruz openly identifies with the Tea Party movement, and has been endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus. On November 14, 2012, Cruz was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the committee that seeks to elect more Republicans to the Senate.He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and the longest-serving Solicitor General in Texas' history. Cruz is one of three Latinos in the Senate; the others — also Americans of Cuban ancestry — are fellow Republican Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
Birth place: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Height: 5' 8" (1.73 m)
Education: Harvard Law School (1995), Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1992)
Spouse: Heidi Suzanne Nelson (m. 2001)
Children: Caroline Camille Cruz, Catherine Christiane Cruz
Parents: Rafael Cruz, Eleanor Darragh
TV shows: The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth
Facebook: facebook.com/tedcruzpage
Twitter: twitter.com/tedcruz
Instagram: instagram.com/cruzforpresident
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cruzted
How rich is Zhang Yimou?
How rich is Zak Bagans?
How rich is Zaha Hadid?
$3.5 Million 1970 1970-12-22 5' 8" (1.73 m) Alberta Calgary Canada [But thinks he is a natural U.S. born citizen] Capricorn December 22 Heidi Suzanne Nelson How rich is Ted Cruz? Princeton University Producer Ted Cruz
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A Morality Lesson from Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh has said many outrageous and offensive things over the years. But he may have hit a new low over the last two days.
I'm talking about a series of statements Limbaugh has made about Sandra Fluke. Fluke is the third-year Georgetown Law Student who testified before a congressional panel about the Obama Administration's controversial new health insurance regulation, the one requiring that nearly all plans cover contraception. During that session, Fluke told the story of a classmate who needed birth control medication to control ovarian cysts. According to Fluke, the classmate had difficulty convincing pharmacists that the medication was for her medical problem (which Georgetown’s policy is supposed to cover) rather than to prevent pregnancy (which it’s not supposed to cover). Facing $100 out-of-pocket expenses she could not afford, the classmate stopped taking the pills and developed a large, painful, and dangerous cyst. Doctors had to remove one of her ovaries, Fluke said, and now the twenty-something law student is showing signs of early menopause.
Fluke gave her testimony last week. On Wednesday, with the Senate preparing to vote on a measure that would allow employers to opt out of the new contraception requirement, Limbaugh said the following:
What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
On Thursday, following protests from liberals, Limbaugh kept at it:
So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.
[Links via ThinkProgress.org.]
I’m not quite sure what to say to this.
Do I point out that, for many women, access to contraception has nothing to do with trying to prevent pregnancy, as was the apparent case with Fluke’s classmate? That many people wishing to use contraception are married people who simply want some control over whether, and when, to have children? That the most effective forms of contraception are expensive, because they require either a medical procedure or the constant use of medication—regardless of whether you have sex once a month, once a week, or once a day? That, as a forthcoming paper from Harold Pollack and Adam Sonfield points out, studies show women will choose these forms of contraception if they are affordable? That contraception has all kinds of economic and health benefits, which is why a nonpartisan commission of experts from the Institute of Medicine first recommended birth control be part of basic health insurance?
I could say any of those things. But to do so might seem to concede an argument that doesn’t deserve conceding: the suggestion that women who have premarital sex are “sluts.”
So let’s be clear about this. Women sometimes have sex out of wedlock. That does not make them sluts. That makes them human—just like men, who also have been known to have sex out of wedlock. But when contraception is not available, women are the ones who end up bearing children and, all too often, raising them on their own. That’s one reason why birth control ought to be widely available. It gives women, unmarried and married, the freedom to control their bodies and their lives—freedoms that most men take for granted.
More and more people seem to grasp this, at least intuitively. In the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 61 percent of Americans support making contraception coverage mandatory, even for plans that religious employers sponsor. Most Americans also seem comfortable with the idea that unmarried people are having sex. In 2003, the last year for which I found data in my hasty web search, 58 percent of Americans believed that premarital sex is morally acceptable, according to a survey from Gallup. The number will likely get higher with time, since young people approve of premarital sex by even wider margins.
Maybe Limbaugh is among those who disapprove. That’s his prerogative. And if he ever wants to have a serious conversation about reducing teen promiscuity or pregnancy, I’d be among the many liberals happy to have it. But in what kind of twisted moral universe is it ok to denigrate sexually active women as sluts or prostitutes and then, in the same breath, suggest they earn the right to their birth control by performing in sex videos?
Only a moral universe that treats women as second-class citizens—which, I guess, is the moral universe Limbaugh inhabits.
follow me on twitter @CitizenCohn
Jonathan Cohn, Politics, Darrell Issa, Adam Sonfield, Georgetown Law Student, Nancy Pelosi, Sandra Fluke, California, Susan Fluke, Congress, Senate
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Danomyte/Shutterstock
The New Luddites: Why Former Digital Prophets Are Turning Against Tech
By Bryan Appleyard
Very few of us can be sure that our jobs will not, in the near future, be done by machines. We know about cars built by robots, cashpoints replacing bank tellers, ticket dispensers replacing train staff, self-service checkouts replacing supermarket staff, telephone operators replaced by “call trees," and so on. But this is small stuff compared with what might happen next.
Nursing may be done by robots, delivery men replaced by drones, GPs replaced by artificially “intelligent” diagnosers and health-sensing skin patches, back-room grunt work in law offices done by clerical automatons, and remote teaching conducted by computers. In fact, it is quite hard to think of a job that cannot be partly or fully automated. And technology is a classless wrecking ball—the old blue-collar jobs have been disappearing for years; now they are being followed by white-collar ones.
Ah, you may say, but human beings will always be better. This misses the point. It does not matter whether the new machines never achieve full human-like consciousness, or even real intelligence, they can almost certainly achieve just enough to do your job—not as well as you, perhaps, but much, much more cheaply. To modernise John Ruskin, “There is hardly anything in the world that some robot cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this robot’s lawful prey.”
Inevitably, there will be social and political friction. The onset has been signalled by skirmishes such as the London Underground strikes over ticket-office staff redundancies caused by machine-readable Oyster cards, and by the rage of licensed taxi drivers at the arrival of online unlicensed car booking services such as Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar.
This resentment is intensified by rising social inequality. Everybody now knows that neoliberalism did not deliver the promised “trickle-down” effect; rather, it delivered trickle-up, because, even since the recession began, almost all the fruits of growth have gone to the rich. Working and middle-class incomes have flatlined or fallen. Now, it seems, the wealthy cyber-elites are creating machines to put the rest of us out of work entirely.
The effect of this is to undermine the central argument of those who hype the benefits of job replacement by machines. They say that new and better jobs will be created. They say this was always true in the past, so it will be true now. (This is the precise correlative of the neoliberals’ “rising tide floats all boats” argument). But people now doubt the “new and better jobs” line trotted out—or barked—by the prophets of robotization. The new jobs, if there are any, will more probably be serf-like attenders to the needs of the machine, burger-flippers to the robot classes.
Nevertheless, this future, too, is being sold in neoliberal terms. “I am sure,” wrote Mitch Free (sic) in a commentary for Forbes on June 11, “it is really hard [to] see when your pay check is being directly impacted but the reality to any market disruption is that the market wants the new technology or business model more than they want what you offer, otherwise it would not get off the ground. The market always wins, you cannot stop it.”
Free was writing in response to what probably seemed to him a completely absurd development, a nightmarish impossibility—the return of Luddism. “Luddite” has, in the past few decades, been such a routine term of abuse for anybody questioning the march of the machines (I get it all the time) that most people assume that, like “fool," “idiot” or “prat," it can only ever be abusive. But, in truth, Luddism has always been proudly embraced by the few and, thanks to the present climate of machine mania and stagnating incomes, it is beginning to make a new kind of sense. From the angry Parisian taxi drivers who vandalised a car belonging to an Uber driver to a Luddite-sympathetic column by the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in the New York Times, Luddism in practice and in theory is back on the streets.
Luddism derives its name from Ned Ludd, who is said to have smashed two “stocking frames”—knitting machines—in a fit of rage in 1779, but who may have been a fictional character. It became a movement, with Ludd as its Robin Hood, between 1811 and 1817 when English textile workers were threatened with unemployment by new technology, which the Luddites defined as “machinery hurtful to Commonality." Mills were burned, machinery was smashed, and the army was mobilized. At one time, according to Eric Hobsbawm, there were more soldiers fighting the Luddites than were fighting Napoleon in Spain. Parliament passed a bill making machine-smashing a capital offence, a move opposed by Byron, who wrote a song so seditious that it was not published until after his death: “... we/Will die fighting, or live free,/And down with all kings but King Ludd!”
Once the Luddites had been suppressed, the Industrial Revolution resumed its course and, over the ensuing two centuries, proved the most effective wealth-creating force ever devised by man. So it is easy to say the authorities were on the right side of history and the Luddites on the wrong one. But note that this is based on the assumption that individual sacrifice in the present—in the form of lost jobs and crafts—is necessary for the mechanized future. Even if this were true, there is a dangerous whiff of totalitarianism in the assumption.
Neo-Luddism began to emerge in the postwar period. First, the power of nuclear weapons made it clear to everybody that our machines could now put everybody out of work for ever by the simple expedient of killing them and, second, in the 1980s and 1990s it became apparent that new computer technologies had the power to change our lives completely.
Thomas Pynchon, in a brilliant essay for The New York Times in 1984—he noted the resonance of the year—responded to the first new threat and, through literature, revitalized the idea of the machine as enemy. “So, in the science fiction of the Atomic Age and the cold war, we see the Luddite impulse to deny the machine taking a different direction. The hardware angle got de-emphasized in favour of more humanistic concerns—exotic cultural evolutions and social scenarios, paradoxes and games with space/time, wild philosophical questions—most of it sharing, as the critical literature has amply discussed, a definition of ‘human’ as particularly distinguished from ‘machine’.”
In 1992, Neil Postman, in his book Technopoly, rehabilitated the Luddites in response to the threat from computers: “The term ‘Luddite’ has come to mean an almost childish and certainly naive opposition to technology. But the historical Luddites were neither childish nor naive. They were people trying desperately to preserve whatever rights, privileges, laws, and customs had given them justice in the older world-view.”
Underpinning such thoughts was the fear that there was a malign convergence—perhaps even a conspiracy—at work. In 1961, even President Eisenhower warned of the anti-democratic power of the “military-industrial complex.” In 1967 Lewis Mumford spoke presciently of the possibility of a “mega-machine” that would result from “the convergence of science, technics, and political power.” Pynchon picked up the theme: “If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come—you heard it here first—when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology, and robotics all converge. Oboy.”
The possibility is with us still in Silicon Valley’s earnest faith in the Singularity—the moment, possibly to come in 2045, when we build our last machine, a super-intelligent computer that will solve all our problems and enslave or kill or save us. Such things are true only to the extent to which they are believed—and, in the Valley, this is believed, widely.
Environmentalists were obvious allies of neo-Luddism—adding global warming as a third threat to the list—and globalism, with its tendency to destroy distinctively local and cherished ways of life, was an obvious enemy. In recent decades, writers such as Chellis Glendinning, Langdon Winner, and Jerry Mander have elevated the entire package into a comprehensive rhetoric of dissent from the direction in which the world is going. Winner wrote of Luddism as an “epistemological technology." He added: “The method of carefully and deliberately dismantling technologies, epistemological Luddism, if you will, is one way of recovering the buried substance upon which our civilisation rests. Once unearthed, that substance could again be scrutinised, criticised, and judged.”
It was all very exciting, but then another academic rained on all their parades. His name was Ted Kaczynski, although he is more widely known as the Unabomber. In the name of his own brand of neo-Luddism, Kaczynski’s bombs killed three people and injured many more in a campaign that ran from 1978-95. His 1995 manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future," said: “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race,” and called for a global revolution against the conformity imposed by technology.
The lesson of the Unabomber was that radical dissent can become a form of psychosis and, in doing so, undermine the dissenters’ legitimate arguments. It is an old lesson and it is seldom learned. The British Dark Mountain Project (dark-mountain.net), for instance, is “a network of writers, artists, and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.” They advocate “uncivilisation” in writing and art—an attempt “to stand outside the human bubble and see us as we are: highly evolved apes with an array of talents and abilities which we are unleashing without sufficient thought, control, compassion or intelligence.” This may be true, but uncivilising ourselves to express this truth threatens to create many more corpses than ever dreamed of by even the Unabomber.
Obviously, if neo-Luddism is conceived of in psychotic or apocalyptic terms, it is of no use to anybody and could prove very dangerous. But if it is conceived of as a critical engagement with technology, it could be useful and essential. So far, this critical engagement has been limited for two reasons. First, there is the belief—it is actually a superstition—in progress as an inevitable and benign outcome of free-market economics. Second, there is the extraordinary power of the technology companies to hypnotise us with their gadgets. Since 1997 the first belief has found justification in a management theory that bizarrely, upon closer examination, turns out to be the mirror image of Luddism. That was the year in which Clayton Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma, judged by The Economist to be one of the most important business books ever written. Christensen launched the craze for “disruption." Many other books followed and many management courses were infected. Jill Lepore reported in the New Yorker in June that “this fall, the University of Southern California is opening a new program: ‘The degree is in disruption,’ the university announced.” And back at Forbes it is announced with glee that we have gone beyond disruptive innovation into a new phase of “devastating innovation."
It is all, as Lepore shows in her article, nonsense. Christensen’s idea was simply that innovation by established companies to satisfy customers would be undermined by the disruptive innovation of market newcomers. It was a new version of Henry Ford and Steve Jobs’s view that it was pointless asking customers what they want; the point was to show them what they wanted. It was nonsense because, Lepore says, it was only true for a few, carefully chosen case histories over very short time frames. The point was made even better by Christensen himself when, in 2007, he made the confident prediction that Apple’s new iPhone would fail.
Nevertheless, disruption still grips the business imagination, perhaps because it sounds so exciting. In Luddism you smash the employer’s machines; in disruption theory you smash the competitor’s. The extremity of disruptive theory provides an accidental justification for extreme Luddism. Yet still, technocratic propaganda routinely uses the vocabulary of disruption theory.
Meanwhile in the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote a very neo-Luddite column that questioned the consoling belief that education would somehow solve the probem of the destruction of jobs by technology. “Today, however, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on labour is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as it solves.”
In other words—against all the education boosters from Tony Blair onwards—you can’t learn yourself into the future, because it is already owned by others, primarily the technocracy. But it is expert dissidents from within the technocracy who are more useful for moderate neo-Luddites. In 2000, Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a huge figure in computing history, broke ranks with an article for Wired entitled “Why the future doesn’t need us.” He saw that many of the dreams of Silicon Valley would either lead to, or deliberately include, termination of the human species. They still do—believers in the Singularity look forward to it as a moment when we will transcend our biological condition.
“Given the incredible power of these new technologies,” Joy wrote, “shouldn’t we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?”
Finally, there is Jaron Lanier, one of the creators of virtual reality, who lost faith in the direction technology was taking when his beloved music industry was eviscerated by the destruction of jobs that followed the arrival of downloading. Why, he repeatedly asks in books such as You Are Not a Gadget, should we design machines that lower the quality of things? This wasn’t what the internet was supposed to do.
Moderate neo-Luddism involves critical scepticism about the claims by the makers of the new machines and even more critical scepticism about the societies—primarily Silicon Valley—from which these anti-human ideas spring. At least now there is a TV satirical comedy about the place—HBO’s Silicon Valley—which will spread the news that the technocracy consists of very strange people who are, indeed, capable of building “machinery hurtful to Commonality." The running joke in the first episode was about the way the technocrats always claim to be working to make a better world. As if.
Luddite laughter is a start. But there’s a long way to go before the technology beast is tamed. For the moment, you still may lose your job to a machine; but at least you can go down feeling and thinking—computers can’t do either.
This article originally appeared in the New Statesman.
Technology, Silicon Valley, Computers, Luddite, Jobs, Industrial Revolution, Machine, Culture
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Art Industry News: Agnes Gund Funds Criminal Justice Reform + More Must-Read Stories
Plus, Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, and Olafur Eliasson premiere new VR artworks and a sculpture by Camille Claudel sets a world record.
Artnet News, June 12, 2017
Roy Lichtenstein's Masterpiece, (1962) on view at the Tate Modern in 2013. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.
Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know this Monday, June 12.
NEED-TO-READ
Agnes Gund Uses $150 Million Lichtenstein Sale to Support Criminal Justice Reform – The MoMA president emerita used $100 million from the sale of the 1962 painting Masterpiece to start the Art for Justice Fund, “a movement to end mass incarceration.” She has called on her art-collecting peers to join her in using proceeds from art sales to champion social justice causes. (New York Times)
(Read our interview with Gund about using art to effect social change.)
Virtual Reality Art Platform Launches – Acute Art is a London-based production and distribution company that bills itself as the world’s first VR arts platform, launching this fall with immersive artworks by Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, and Olafur Eliasson. (Dazed)
Kuala Lumpur Will Host Its First Biennale in November – The inaugural Kuala Lumpur Biennale International Arts Exhibition will be organized by the National Visual Arts Gallery of Malaysia around the theme of love and societal values. It will run from November 1 to March 31, 2018, featuring work by artists from across southeast Asia. (ArtAsiaPacific)
Why Tristram Hunt Ditched Politics for the V&A Museum – In February, Hunt resigned his position as a Labour Party MP to take on the directorship of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Now he reveals it was his involvement in a failed search for the perfect porcelain tiles that lured him into the art world. (The Times)
Thaddeus Ropac to Rep James Rosenquist’s Estate – Ropac and Rosenquist were friends before the Pop artist’s death on March 31, and now Ropac will take on worldwide representation of his estate. (Press release)
19th-Century European Art Is Falling Out of Favor – As top buyers gravitate toward contemporary, more traditional styles of painting are failing to reach top prices (or sell at all), leading one art adviser to conclude that 19th-century art is “just not sexy any more.” (New York Times)
Camille Claudel Breaks Record With $1.3 Million Sale – La Valse, an 18-inch sculpture, sold for €1.18 million at an auction in Montbazon, France yesterday, setting a world record for an artwork of its size. The buyer was the artist’s grand-niece, and the work will be housed in the new Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine. (Le Monde)
Karen Bradley Remains UK Secretary of Culture, Media, and Sport – The Conservative Party politician has withstood the parliament shakeup following the UK’s general election last week. She will continue to be responsible for policy-making in, among other sectors, the country’s arts, culture, museum, and gallery sectors. (The Guardian)
Eugene Richards’s First Museum Retrospective Opens – Richards, the photographer who captured decades of harsh realities of racism, poverty, drug addiction, sickness, and the decline of rural life in America, gets his first museum retrospective. “The Run-On of Time,” opens at the Rochester, NY museum. (George Eastman Museum)
Billy Connolly “Overjoyed” by Murals Painted in His Honor – In Glasgow, three large murals have been painted to celebrate the comedian’s 75th birthday. The gesture had an unexpectedly emotional effect on the honoree, who said, “I thought I’d be all light-hearted on seeing them and jokey—but they’re so big—the effect on me is so profound.” (BBC)
Lawrence Weiner Thinks Art Should Fuck Up Our Whole Lives – In a video interview with Vice’s Creators conducted back in April, the conceptual artist said of making art, “you don’t want to fuck up someone’s day but the purpose of what you are doing is to fuck up their whole life.” Now, the interview is available to read in its entirety. (Creators)
Lucio Fontana’s Fine di Dio
Tornabuoni Art
Art Basel Booth 526
Continuing its tradition of showcasing historically important postwar Italian art at Art Basel, Tornabuoni Art will this year dedicate its entire booth at the fair to the presentation of Lucio Fontana’s Fine di Dio (“End of God”) works from between 1963 and 1964, together with never-before-seen photographs, preparatory studies, and letters relating to their creation.
Lucio Fontana with his painting at Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, 1964.
The Lichtenstein Foundation Is Closing—and It Just Donated 400 Works to the Whitney
Art Industry News: Sotheby’s Will Auction Andy Warhol’s First Selfie + More Must-Read Stories
By Artnet News , Jun 14, 2017
Art Industry News: Getty Buys $31 Million Parmigianino Painting + More Must-Read Stories
Avocado Art Is Here, and Instagram Is Officially Obsessed
By , Jun 12, 2017
From Beyoncé’s Art-Savvy Mom to Tom Sachs’s New Nikes: The Best and Worst of the Art World This Week
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Clinton's Image at Lowest Point in Two Decades
by Frank Newport
38% view Hillary Clinton favorably, 57% unfavorably
Her favorable percentage was 55% as recently as two years ago
PRINCETON, N.J. -- As the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton's image is at its lowest point in the 24 years of her national career, with 38% of Americans viewing her favorably and 57% unfavorably. Americans' most positive view of Clinton, 67% favorable, came in December 1998. Before last year, her lowest favorable ratings since she became well-known had been 43% in January 1996 and 44% in March 2001.
Clinton was at 41% favorable in mid-June but drifted down to 37% by mid-July. Her favorable ratings have since held near that level, including through last week's Republican National Convention. Republican nominee Donald Trump's image for the past seven days was 36% favorable and 59% unfavorable, only slightly less positive than Clinton's.
Gallup first measured Hillary Clinton's image in 1992 as her husband campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. Her image, like Bill Clinton's, was mixed in the spring of that year but then grew more positive. Her favorable ratings were above 60% at several points in 1993, and more than six in 10 Americans viewed her favorably at other points as well: when her husband was impeached by the House and tried by the Senate in 1998 and 1999, from 2009 through 2013 while she served as secretary of state, and in April 2013 after she returned to being a private citizen.
After launching her campaign last year and as her handling of emails while secretary of state became an increasingly public and controversial issue, Americans' views of Clinton began their downslide.
Americans' history of changing their views of Clinton from positive to negative and back to positive since 1992 suggests it's possible -- although not highly likely, given recent trends -- that her image could improve as the Democratic convention unfolds this week. Overall, 55% of Americans viewed her favorably and 39% unfavorably from 1992 through 2014. That long-term average is almost an exact flip of her current 38% favorable, 57% unfavorable rating. This shows how much more negatively the public views her now in the midst of her campaign and email controversy than they have historically.
Both Clinton's and Trump's unfavorable ratings are among the highest of any contemporary presidential candidates. The only comparable situation was in the 1992 presidential race. That year, Americans at times held similarly negative views of independent candidate Ross Perot (after he dropped out and then re-entered the campaign) and incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush as he sought re-election.
Democrats' Favorable View of Clinton at 71%
Seventy-one percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents view Clinton favorably, compared with fewer than one in 10 Republicans. Democrats were slightly more positive about Clinton last summer and through the winter, and were slightly less positive in April and May as she battled Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. Republicans' favorable views have drifted down somewhat over the past 12 months from their already low starting point.
Over the past seven days, spanning the Republican convention at which he accepted his party's nomination, Trump's favorable rating among Republicans improved slightly, to 72%. He and Clinton now have nearly identical favorable ratings among their respective partisans.
Two highly unpopular candidates are waging the 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton enters her convention with almost six in 10 Americans holding a negative opinion of her, similar to Americans' negative views of her opponent, Trump.
Clinton is one of the best-known politicians in the U.S., with almost a quarter-century of national public exposure as a first lady, a U.S. senator, a secretary of state and now a candidate for president. While Americans' positive views of Clinton have moved up and down over the years, she now is on the verge of accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination with an image that is as negative as it has ever been.
A positive image is obviously not all it takes to win the presidency; two of the previous three Democratic nominees had majority-favorable images but ultimately lost. Plus, the parallel unpopularity of Clinton's opponent this year makes it a unique situation in which many voters will choose the least objectionable of two candidates they don't admire. Still, Clinton would clearly rather have a positive than negative image going into the last three months of the campaign, and now faces the significant challenge of attempting to rehabilitate her image to at least some degree during the convention week in Philadelphia.
Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Results for the latest seven-day averages are based on telephone interviews conducted July 16-23, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 3,545 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works.
USA All Gallup Headlines Government Political Parties Politics
Foreign Trade: Opportunity or Threat to the U.S. Economy?
Seventy-four percent of U.S. adults say trade represents "an opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports."
Trump's Image Over Last Year Stable -- and Negative
Americans' views of Donald Trump have been generally stable and continually negative over the past year. Trump's current 34% favorable and 61% unfavorable ratings are within a few points of where they were in July 2015.
Americans' Reactions to Trump, Clinton Explain Poor Images
The first words that come to Americans' minds about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are mostly negative. Many associate dishonesty or criminality with Clinton, and bad character traits or temperament with Trump.
Trump Leads Clinton in Historically Bad Image Ratings
Donald Trump's 42% highly unfavorable rating on Gallup's 10-point rating scale is higher than Gallup has measured for presidential candidates back to 1956, with Hillary Clinton's 33% also exceeding the previous high of 26% for Barry Goldwater.
Gallup Decade in Review: 2010-2019
by Justin McCarthy
Gallup findings over the past decade reveal that the years from 2010 to 2019 encompassed some revolutionary changes in public opinion.
Gallup https://news.gallup.com/poll/193913/clinton-image-lowest-point-two-decades.aspx
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Sony and Microsoft to explore strategic partnership
May 16, 2019 | Microsoft News Center
Companies to collaborate on new cloud-based solutions for gaming experiences and AI solutions
Kenichiro Yoshida, President and CEO, Sony Corporation (left), and Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
TOKYO and REDMOND, Wash. — May 16, 2019 — Sony Corporation (Sony) and Microsoft Corp. (Microsoft) announced on Thursday that the two companies will partner on new innovations to enhance customer experiences in their direct-to-consumer entertainment platforms and AI solutions.
Under the memorandum of understanding signed by the parties, the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services. In addition, the two companies will explore the use of current Microsoft Azure datacenter-based solutions for Sony’s game and content-streaming services. By working together, the companies aim to deliver more enhanced entertainment experiences for their worldwide customers. These efforts will also include building better development platforms for the content creator community.
As part of the memorandum of understanding, Sony and Microsoft will also explore collaboration in the areas of semiconductors and AI. For semiconductors, this includes potential joint development of new intelligent image sensor solutions. By integrating Sony’s cutting-edge image sensors with Microsoft’s Azure AI technology in a hybrid manner across cloud and edge, as well as solutions that leverage Sony’s semiconductors and Microsoft cloud technology, the companies aim to provide enhanced capabilities for enterprise customers. In terms of AI, the parties will explore incorporation of Microsoft’s advanced AI platform and tools in Sony consumer products, to provide highly intuitive and user-friendly AI experiences.
“Sony is a creative entertainment company with a solid foundation of technology. We collaborate closely with a multitude of content creators that capture the imagination of people around the world, and through our cutting-edge technology, we provide the tools to bring their dreams and vision to reality,” said Kenichiro Yoshida, president and CEO of Sony. “PlayStation® itself came about through the integration of creativity and technology. Our mission is to seamlessly evolve this platform as one that continues to deliver the best and most immersive entertainment experiences, together with a cloud environment that ensures the best possible experience, anytime, anywhere. For many years, Microsoft has been a key business partner for us, though of course the two companies have also been competing in some areas. I believe that our joint development of future cloud solutions will contribute greatly to the advancement of interactive content. Additionally, I hope that in the areas of semiconductors and AI, leveraging each company’s cutting-edge technology in a mutually complementary way will lead to the creation of new value for society.”
“Sony has always been a leader in both entertainment and technology, and the collaboration we announced today builds on this history of innovation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Our partnership brings the power of Azure and Azure AI to Sony to deliver new gaming and entertainment experiences for customers.”
Going forward, the two companies will share additional information when available.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation is a creative entertainment company with a solid foundation of technology. From game and network services to music, pictures, electronics, semiconductors and financial services — Sony’s purpose is to fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology. For more information, visit: http://www.sony.net/.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com
Sony Corporation, Corporate Communications & CSR Department, Sony.Pressroom@sony.co.jp
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
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Jana Kramer opens up about 'One Tree Hill' animosity
WENN - World Entertainment News Network
Jana Kramer has opened up about her time on the set of One Tree Hill.
The 35-year-old country singer starred as Alex Dupre in the TV drama series from 2009-2012, before leaving the show to focus on promoting her debut album. And while she had mostly positive things to say about the experience, she revealed during a chat with her former co-star Bethany Joy Lenz on her Whine Down With Jana Kramer podcast that, when she joined the series, the cast was already “divided.”
“It was hard for us because I felt like when we came on the show, just being so honest, it was a very divided set,” she shared. “I feel like everyone already kinda had their places and it was either, ‘You’re going to be on the A-team or the B-team?’ It was just tricky.”
Bethany, who starred in the show from its inception in 2003, agreed with Jana’s comments, and the pair mused that the show’s creator Mark Schwahn, who faced sexual harassment claims from the cast including Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton, probably contributed to the animosity.
Sophia Bush: I hit Mark Schwahn hard for ‘grabbing my a–‘
“I think our creator kinda created that environment, as well. I don’t know what he’s doing now. But that was probably the hardest part about (being on the show),” Jana concluded.
Melody Thomas Scott, Amelia Heinle reflect on Y&R legacy There She Goes shows challenges, humour in raising disabled girl
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DePaul University Research Services > About > News & Updates
NASA Announcements
The science community is invited to participate in an upcoming colloquium on the topic of “Writing Successful Mission Proposals: Observations from NASA”. Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, will be speaking Wednesday, June 5, 2019 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM EDT (2:00 to 4:00 PM MDT) from the University of Colorado Boulder campus and his talk will be live‐streamed. If you would like to attend in person, please RSVP at: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050D4FA9AE2FA1F85‐colloquium. The live‐stream is available: https://cires.colorado.edu/zurbuchen2019 and registration for viewing the live‐stream is not required. The colloquium will be recorded and made available on https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/new‐pi‐resources for those not able to participate.
NIH Announcements
FY 2019 NIH Salary Cap
The Office of Personnel Management has released new salary levels for the Executive Pay Scale. Effective January 6, 2019, the salary limitation for Executive Level II is $192,300. See https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-099.html for additional information.
Upcoming Change in Federal-wide Unique Entity Identifier Requirements
Currently when applying for Federal grants or cooperative agreements, all applicant organizations must have a DUNS number as the Universal Identifier. The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced that DUNS will be replaced by a new Government-owned unique entity identifier in all systems, including Grants.gov and eRA Commons. The new government unique identifier will be incorporated into the SAM registration process, eliminating the need for applicants to seek external identifiers in order to register. See https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-098.html for additional information.
Sample Grant Applications, Summary Statements, and More
If you are new to writing grant applications, sometimes seeing how someone else has presented their idea can help as you are developing your own application. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) makes available examples of funded R01, R03, R15, R21, SBIR/STTR, K, and F applications, summary statements, sharing plans, leadership plans, and more. Check out NIAID’s resources at: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/sample-applications. Remember these sample resources followed the NIH guidelines in effect at time they were submitted, your planned application may contain more recently updated guidelines.
Redesigned eRA Website Provides New Resources
A newly revamped eRA website that serves as an informational gateway to applicants, grantees and reviewers was launched April 30. The site provides new and updated ‘how-to’ information on navigating eRA systems like eRA Commons, ASSIST, IAR, xTrain and xTRACT; intuitive navigation; and improved accessibility. The below linked video provides additional information. Video Link: https://era.nih.gov/files/New-eRA-Website/index.html
The National Institutes of Health has established stipend levels for fiscal year (FY) 2019 Kirschstein‐NRSA awards for undergraduate, predoctoral, and postdoctoral trainees and fellows. Information is available at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-036.html.
The National Institutes of Health has announced upcoming changes to the NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) program. NIH is making these changes to focus AREA support on grants to undergraduate‐focused institutions that do not receive substantial funding from NIH, rather than all institutions with less than $6 million of NIH support. The current AREA Parent Announcement, PA‐18‐504, will expire after the January 7, 2019, AIDS due date and will not be reissued. Future funding opportunity announcements (FOA) for the AREA program will focus on supporting grants to undergraduate‐focused institutions. NIH will continue to provide R15 research enhancement opportunities for health professional and graduate schools under separate announcements. A complete copy of the NIH announcement on the AREA program is more fully detailed at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-015.html
NIH Policy for Review and Resubmission of New Investigator R01 Applications has been updated for R01 applications submitted for due dates on or after January 25, 2019; additional information is available at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-053.html .
NIH Invites Comments on the NIDA Strategic Plan for Research at the Intersection of HIV/AIDS and Substance Use, Misuse and Addiction; responses must be received by January 25, 2019. Additional information is available at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-DA-19-015.html.
NSF Announcements
The National Science Foundation has updated the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). The revised document, effective February 25, 2019, applies to proposals submitted or due, and awards made, on or after February 25, 2019. Additional Information, including significant changes to the PAPPG are available at: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappg19_1/sigchanges.jsp .
2017 Academic Award Winners
Each year, Academic Affairs recognizes faculty achievements in research, teaching, and service through the Spirit of Inquiry, Excellence in Teaching, Excellence in Public Service, and Gerald Academic Advising awards. View a list of this year's award winners.
Spring 2017 Internal Grants Awards
Twice each year, the University Research Council (URC), Quality of Instruction Council (QIC), and Public Service Council (PSC) award grants to DePaul faculty. View the list of awardees for Spring 2017.
Academic Initiative Program Awards
Created in 2016, the Academic Initiative Program is designed to support faculty scholarship and new program development, In the 2016-17 academic year, funding went to 97 projects involving 133 faculty from across the university.
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Africa (NONE of 54)
Algeria Angola Benin Botswana British Indian Ocean Territory Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Congo Congo, DRC Cote d'Ivoire Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda Sao Tome & Principe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa St. Helena Sudan Swaziland Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe
Afghanistan Armenia X Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia China Christmas I. Cocos Is. Gaza Strip Georgia India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Jordan X Kazakhstan Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Malaysia Maldives Mongolia Myanmar Nepal North Korea Oman Pakistan Philippines Qatar Saudi Arabia Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Syria Tajikistan Thailand Turkey Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen
Albania Andorra Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia & Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Faroe Is. Finland France Germany Gibraltar Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Jan Mayen Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta X Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Reunion Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom
Anguilla Antigua & Barbuda Aruba Barbados Belize Bermuda X British Virgin Is. Canada Cayman Is. Costa Rica X Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic X El Salvador Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica Martinique Mexico Montserrat Netherlands Antilles Nicaragua Puerto Rico St. Kitts & Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre & Miquelon St. Vincent & the Grenadines The Bahamas Trinidad & Tobago Turks & Caicos Is. United States Virgin Is.
American Samoa Australia Cook Is. Fiji French Polynesia Guam Jarvis I. Kiribati Marshall Is. Micronesia Nauru New Caledonia New Zealand Niue Norfolk I. Northern Mariana Is. Palau Papua New Guinea Pitcairn Is. Samoa X Solomon Is. Timor-Leste Tokelau Tonga Vanuatu Wallis & Futuna
South America (NONE of 14)
Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Falkland Is. French Guiana Guyana Paraguay Peru South Georgia & the South Sandwich Is. Uruguay Venezuela
Armenia US Consular Information Sheet
Armenia is a constitutional republic with a developing economy. Tourist facilities, especially outside Yerevan, the capital, are not highly developed, and many of Read More Show Less
he goods and services taken for granted in other countries may be difficult to obtain. Read the Department of State’s Background Notes on Armenia for additional information.
ENTRY/EXIT REQUIREMENTS: A passport and visa are required. U.S. citizens may purchase visas in advance for a stay of up to 120 days online at http://www.armeniaforeignministry.am/ for the fee of USD 60; however, this visa is valid only for entry at Zvartnots airport in Yerevan. At this time a visa valid for 120 days may also be obtained upon arrival at the port of entry for the fee of 15,000 Armenian Drams (approx. USD 50). Visas for up to 120 days may be purchased at the Armenian Embassy in Washington, D.C. or the Consulate General in Los Angeles for the fee of USD 69. For further information on entry requirements, contact the Armenian Embassy at 2225 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20008, tel. (202) 319-1976 and (202) 319-2983; the Armenian Consulate General in Los Angeles at 50 N. La Cienega Blvd., Suite 210, Beverly Hills, CA 90211, tel. (310) 657-7320, or visit the Armenian Embassy’s web site at http://www.armeniaemb.org for the most current visa information.
A cease-fire has been in effect since 1994 around the self-proclaimed “Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh,” an unrecognized ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. However, intermittent gunfire along the cease-fire line and along the border with Azerbaijan continues. Because of the existing state of hostilities, consular services are not available to Americans in Nagorno-Karabakh. Travelers should exercise caution near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and consult the Country Specific Information for Azerbaijan if considering travel to Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian territory. Armenia's land borders with Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan remain closed and continue to be patrolled by armed troops who stop all people attempting to cross. There are still land mines in numerous areas in and near the conflict zones.
Political rallies in the aftermath of the February 2008 presidential elections turned violent. Clashes between government security forces and opposition demonstrators resulted in dozens of casualties, including 10 fatalities, in early March 2008. While the opposition continued to hold periodic protests over the summer and early fall, there have been no violent confrontations since the March events.
Americans should be mindful that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful could turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. American citizens are urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations.
Armenia is an earthquake- and landslide-prone country. In addition to these natural disasters, there exists the possibility of chlorine gas spills and radiation poisoning due to industrial accidents.
The Soviet-era Armenia Nuclear Power plant is located in Metsamor, approximately 30 kilometers southwest of Yerevan.
Armenia is currently under international pressure to close the plant permanently, due to safety concerns.
For the latest security information, Americans traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Department of State‘s Bureau of Consular Affairs web site at http://travel.state.gov, where the current Travel Warnings and Travel Alerts, including the Worldwide Caution, can be found.
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the U.S. and Canada or for callers outside the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll-line at 1-202-501-4444. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
The Department of State urges American citizens to take responsibility for their own personal security while traveling overseas. For general information about appropriate measures travelers can take to protect themselves in an overseas environment, see the Department of State’s A Safe Trip Abroad.
CRIME: Crime against foreigners is relatively rare in Armenia. Break-ins, particularly of vehicles, and theft are the most common crimes, but there have been instances of violent crime as well.
While the incidence of violent crime remains lower than in most U.S. cities, American citizens are urged to exercise caution and to avoid traveling alone after dark in Yerevan. Several American investors have also reported being involved in disputes over property ownership, and have had to seek legal recourse through a long, and in the majority of cases, unsuccessful court proceeding.
INFORMATION FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME: The loss or theft abroad of a U.S. passport should be reported immediately to the local police and the U.S. Embassy. If you are the victim of a crime while overseas, in addition to reporting to local police, please contact the nearest U.S. Embassy for assistance. The Embassy staff can, for example, assist you to find appropriate medical care, contact family members or friends and explain how funds could be transferred. Although the investigation and prosecution of the crime is solely the responsibility of local authorities, consular officers can help you to understand the local criminal justice process and to find an attorney if needed. For information on assistance in the U.S. including possible compensation, see our Victims of Crime.
The local equivalents to the “911” emergency line in Armenia are: 101 - fire emergency; 102 - police emergency; 103 - medical emergency; and 104 - gas leak.
MEDICAL FACILITIES AND HEALTH INFORMATION: Though there are many competent physicians in Armenia, medical care facilities are limited, especially outside the major cities. The U.S. Embassy maintains a list of English-speaking physicians in the area. Most prescription medications are available, but the quality varies. Elderly travelers and those with existing health problems may be at risk due to inadequate medical facilities.
The U.S. Department of State is unaware of any HIV/AIDS entry restrictions for visitors to or foreign residents of Armenia.
Information on vaccinations and other health precautions, such as safe food and water precautions and insect bite protection, may be obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) hotline for international travelers at 1-877-FYI-TRIP (1-877-394-8747) or via the CDC’s web site at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/default.aspx. For information about outbreaks of infectious diseases abroad consult the World Health Organization’s (WHO) web site at http://www.who.int/en. Further health information for travelers is available at http://www.who.int/ith/en
TRAFFIC SAFETY AND ROAD CONDITIONS: While in a foreign country, U.S. citizens may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States. The information below concerning Armenia is provided for general reference only and may not be totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Travel in Armenia requires caution. Public transportation, while very inexpensive, may be unreliable and uncomfortable. Travel at night is not recommended, and winter travel can be extremely hazardous in mountain areas and higher elevations.
Travelers should avoid the old highway between the towns of Ljevan and Noyemberyan in the Tavush region, as well as the main highway between the towns of Kirants and Baghanis/Voskevan. The U.S. Embassy has designated this portion of the road off-limits to all U.S. Government personnel because of its proximity to the cease-fire line between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, a line which has seen numerous cease-fire violations over the years.
On weekends, there are an increased number of intoxicated drivers on Armenian roads. American citizens are urged to exercise particular vigilance while traveling on the main highway from Yerevan to the resort areas of Tsaghkadzor and Sevan. Traffic police will attempt to stop individuals driving erratically and dangerously, but police presence outside of Yerevan is limited.
Armenia does have emergency police and medical services, but they may take time to reach remote regions.
With the exception of a few major arteries, primary roads are frequently in poor repair, with sporadic stretches of missing pavement and large potholes. Some roads shown as primary roads on maps are unpaved and can narrow to one lane in width, while some newer road connections have not yet been marked on recently produced maps.
Secondary roads are normally in poor condition and are often unpaved and washed out in certain areas. Street and road signs are poor to nonexistent. Truck traffic is not heavy except on the main roads linking Yerevan to Iran and Georgia, i.e. the roads virtually all travelers need to use when traveling overland to those countries. Minibuses are considered more dangerous than other forms of public transportation. Travelers who choose to ride minibuses should exercise caution because these vehicles are often overcrowded and poorly maintained, commonly lack safety measures including seatbelts, and are frequently involved in accidents.
People driving in Armenia should be aware that “road rage” is becoming a serious and dangerous problem on Armenian streets and highways.
For safety reasons drivers are encouraged to yield to aggressive drivers.
Incidents of physical aggression against drivers and pedestrians have occurred
Though crime along roadways is rare, the police sometimes seek bribes during traffic stops. Drivers in Armenia frequently ignore traffic laws, making roadways unsafe for unsuspecting travelers.
Pedestrians often fail to take safety precautions and those driving in towns at night should be especially cautious. In cities, a pedestrian dressed in black crossing an unlit street in the middle of the block is a common occurrence.
The quality of gasoline in Armenia ranges from good at some of the more reliable stations in cities to very poor. The gasoline and other fuels sold out of jars, barrels, and trucks by independent roadside merchants should be considered very unreliable.
As there is no direct commercial air service to the United States by carriers registered in Armenia, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not assessed Armenia’s Civil Aviation Authority for compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards. For more information, travelers may visit the FAA’s web site at http://www.faa.gov/safety/programs_initiatives/oversight/iasa.
Travelers on Armavia International Airways may experience prolonged delays and sudden cancellations of flights. Air travel to Armenia via European carriers is typically more reliable. Ticketed passengers on flights leaving Yerevan should reconfirm their reservations 24 hours prior to departure.
Armenia remains largely a cash-only economy. Credit cards are accepted at some businesses, including major hotels and restaurants in Yerevan, but rarely outside of the capital. Limited facilities exist for cashing traveler's checks and wiring money into the country. There are a number of ATMs in the center of Yerevan. Dollars are readily exchanged at market rates. Travelers may experience problems with local officials seeking bribes to perform basic duties.
Armenian customs authorities may enforce strict regulations concerning temporary importation into or export from Armenia of items such as firearms, pornographic materials, medication, and communications equipment. For export of antiquities and other items that could have historical value, such as paintings, carpets, old books, or other artisan goods, a special authorization is required in advance from the Armenian Ministry of Culture. It is advisable to contact the Embassy of Armenia in Washington, DC or Consulate General in Los Angeles for specific information regarding customs requirements.
Dual Nationals: Changes to Armenian legislation now permit Armenian citizens to hold dual citizenship. This means that U.S. citizens who emigrated from Armenia to the U.S. and subsequently acquired U.S. citizenship without explicitly giving up their Armenian citizenship may be able to (re)acquire Armenian citizenship along with all the associated rights and duties, e.g. the right to vote in Armenian elections and/or the duty for certain males to perform military service. The new law also means that dual citizens need to enter and leave Armenia on their Armenian passport, i.e. they would no longer need an Armenian visa. U.S. citizens interested in obtaining Armenian citizenship must register their dual citizenship with Passport and Visa Department of the Police of the Republic of Armenia (formerly OVIR) by simply presenting proof of their other citizenship (e.g. passport). For more information, please consult with Passport and Visa Department of the Police (tel.: +37410-501439) and/or http://www.armeniaforeignministry.am.
Compulsory Military Service: In addition to being subject to all Armenian laws affecting U.S. citizens, dual nationals are also subject to other laws that impose special obligations on Armenian citizens. Male U.S. citizens over the age of 18 who are also considered to be Armenian citizens may be subject to conscription and compulsory military service upon arrival, and to other aspects of Armenian law while in Armenia.
Armenian authorities have regularly detained U.S. citizens on these grounds upon their arrival in or departure from Armenia. In most cases, ethnic Armenian travelers who are accused of evading Armenian military service obligations are immediately detained and later found guilty of draft evasion. Penalties for those convicted are stiff and include jail time or a substantial fine. Those who may be affected are strongly advised to consult with Armenian officials and inquire at an Armenian embassy or consulate to their status before traveling. For additional information on dual nationality, see our dual nationality flyer.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES: While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country's laws and regulations, which sometimes differ significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law. Penalties for breaking the law can be more severe than in the United States for similar offences. Persons violating Armenian laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned. Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Armenia are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines. Engaging in sexual conduct with children or using or disseminating child pornography in a foreign country is a crime, prosecutable in the United States. Please see our information on Criminal Penalties.
Americans living or traveling in Armenia are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration web site, and to obtain updated information on travel and security within Armenia. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. The American Citizen Services section of the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan maintains a computer terminal in the consular waiting room available to U.S. citizens for registration. The U.S. Embassy provides Internet access to the general public through the American Corners program and through the U.S. Embassy's Information Resource Center. American Corners are located in Yerevan (2 Amiryan Street, tel. +374-10-56-13-83), Gyumri (68 Shirakatsi Street, tel. +374-312-22153), Vanadzor (25, Vardanants Street, tel. +374-322-21672), and Kapan (6, Shahumyan Street, tel. +374-285-22151). By registering, American citizens make it easier for the Embassy or Consulate to contact them in case of emergency. The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan is located at 1 American Avenue, tel. +374-10-46-47-00 and fax: +374-10-46-47-42. The Consular Section is open from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., with time reserved for American citizen services from 1:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except for official U.S. Embassy holidays. For more information, see the Embassy's web site at http://yerevan.usembassy.gov/
This replaces the Country Specific Information dated June 9, 2008 to update sections on Entry and Exit Requirements, Safety and Security, Traffic Safety and Road Conditions, and Special Circumstances.
Update on Anthrax in Armenia's Gegharkunik province
Disease Anthrax Armenia - 5 months ago
Date: Tue 20 Aug 2019, 4:29 PM
Source: Arka News Agency [edited]
<http://arka.am/en/news/society/anthrax_cases_reported_in_geghovit_community_of_armenia_s_gegharkunik_province/>
Anthrax cases have been reported in Geghhovit community of Armenia's Gegharkunik province, the press office of Armenia's health ministry reported on [Tue 20 Aug 2019]. According to the ministry's press release, 2 residents of the community came to a medical centre in Martuni with sores on their fingers. The patients told doctors that they had taken part in butchering a cow of a fellow villager.
The health ministry has dispatched its experts to the community. As a result of joint efforts with local medical centres' workers, 6 other infected people have been found. All the patients are being treated now, and the community is under medical control now. The Armenian Food Safety Agency has been informed.
[Gegharkunik province is on the eastern border of Armenia and pokes into Azerbaijan; see:
<http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/armenia_pol_2002.jpg>
Geghhovit is south of Sevana Lich (lake); see:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geghhovit>.
When the dust settled there were 2 initial cutaneous cases subsequent to them butchering a neighbour's cow, which would have been sick or dead. The first report suggests that they might have butchered a number of "cattle" carcasses, though the 2nd report has a single cow. And in due course another 6 villagers came down with cutaneous anthrax as they were sent to the local hospital merely for diagnostic confirmation.
Anthrax is sporadic in Armenia and thus the risks of butchering sick and dead animals are only realised after the onset of human anthrax lesions. And the number of human cases can exceed the indirectly reported livestock cases. - ProMED Mod.MHJ]
Armenia: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/133>]
Further case of Measles reported in Armenia
Disease Measles Armenia - 10 months ago
Date: Fri 8 Mar 2019
Source: Nouvelles Armeni Magazine [in French, trans. ProMED Corr SB, abridged, edited]
<https://protect2.fireeye.com/url?k=adf509f1-f1d331cf-adf7f0c4-000babda0031-1974ed73c21d18d7&u=http://www.armenews.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=9688>
A 2nd case of measles infection was reported in Armenia on Wednesday [6 Mar 2019], the country's Ministry of Health press office reported. A person infected with this disease arrived on 20 Feb [2019] in Armenia through the territory of Georgia. Clinical symptoms became visible on 25 and 26 Feb [2019], which was initially explained as drug intolerance, but later, on 6 Mar [2019], a laboratory test diagnosed measles disease.
According to the Ministry of Health, the 1st measles infection was reportedly found in Armenia by a Ukrainian citizen who arrived in Yerevan by plane from Kiev on 24 Feb [2019].
The 2 infected people had contact with many people, particularly those in the airport lobby and at the hospital.
57 cases of Dengue reported in Armenia so far in 2019
Disease Dengue Fever Armenia - 11 months ago
- National. 14 Feb 2019. 57 cases of dengue in Armenia [have been] recorded to date; the figure increased in 2019 compared to the year 2018. The increase in records so far in 2019 is 25.
<http://www.cronicadelquindio.com/noticia-completa-titulo-57-casos-de-dengue-en-armenia-registrados-a-la-fecha-la-cifra-se-incremento-en-2019-cronica-del-quindio-nota-127372>
'Heaven-guided' underground maze proves Armenian tourist draw
Tourism Armenia - 1 year ago
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2018 12:23:52 +0200
By Mariam HARUTYUNYAN
Arinj, Armenia, July 29, 2018 (AFP) - When Tosya Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement under their house to store potatoes, she had little idea the underground labyrinth he would eventually produce would prove to be one of Armenia's major tourist draws. Their one-storey house in the village of Arinj outside the capital Yerevan may not look like much but today it brings in visitors from all over the globe after a 23-year labour of love by Tosya's late husband, Levon Arakelyan. They come to see a twisting network of subterranean caves and tunnels known as "Levon's divine underground."
In the cold and quiet, Tosya leads tourists through corridors that connect seven chambers adorned with Romanesque columns and ornaments like those on the facades of mediaeval Armenian churches. "Once he started digging, it was impossible to stop him," she said of the project that began in 1995. "I wrangled with him a lot, but he became obsessed with his plan." A builder by training, Levon would toil for 18 hours a day -- only pausing to take a quick nap and then rush back to the cave, confident that he was being guided "by heaven". "He never drew up plans and used to tell us that he sees in his dreams what to do next," his widow told AFP.
Over more than two decades he hammered out the 280-square-metre (3,000 square-foot) space, 21 metres deep into strata of volcanic rocks -- only using hand tools. "My primary childhood recollection is the loud knock of my father's hammer heard at night from the cave," said his 44-year-old daughter Araksya. At the start he had to break through a surface layer of black basalt, but at the depth of a few metres Levon reached much softer tufa stone and the work progressed. He pulled out 600 truckloads of rocks and earth, using only hand-held buckets. Levon died in 2008 at the age of 67 from a heart attack after destroying the last wall that separated two tunnels.
- 'Amazing place' -
A decade on from the project's completion, Tosya also runs a small museum commemorating her husband's work in the village of some 6,000 people. The underground complex has several analogues in the world. An eccentric man named William Henry "Burro" Schmidt spent more than three decades digging a half-a-mile tunnel to transport gold through a granite mountain in California, beginning his work in the early 1900s during the state's gold rush.
In Ethiopia a man named Aba Defar began carving churches on a mountainside after claiming divine inspiration from years of dreams. Today the Armenian cave features prominently in travel brochures, regularly drawing busloads of visitors. Milad, a 29-year-old Iranian tourist, called the maze an "amazing place". He said it made him realise just "how boundless the spiritual and physical capabilities of a person can be".
Food poisoning in Armenia's Armavir province linked to Salmonella
Disease Salmonella Armenia - 2 years ago
Date: Fri 18 May 2018
Source: Armenpress [edited]
<https://armenpress.am/eng/news/934042/>
The investigation into a foodborne incident in Armenia's Armavir province continues. The suspected cause -- food poisoning -- has been confirmed through lab tests. Salmonellosis has been discovered in all victims.
63 from the overall 88 victims of the food poisoning have already been treated and discharged. The healthcare ministry says they confirm that the cause was food poisoning. Earlier, the state service for food safety has dispatched agents to Armavir province to probe the suspected food poisoning incident in the plant of Tierras de Armenia, a viticulture and winemaker known for its Karas wines. Earlier, doctors said they suspected the cause of the poisoning to be a lunchtime snack, which all of the employees consumed in the cafeteria of the plant.
Agents have taken samples from the facility and sent them for laboratory analysis. Food safety agents also ceased the operation of a businesswoman's food supply business in relation to the incident as a precaution. The businesswoman, Alvina Melkonyan, supplied Tierras de Armenia with lunch-time food on the day when the incident happened. A company, who in turn is supplying Melkonyan, is also under investigation. All patients are in satisfactory states, doctors say.
The likely cause of the mass poisoning in Armavir province is thought to be lunch-time snacks containing chicken, cheese and potatoes, which the victims have consumed in the cafeteria of the plant, a doctor of the Armavir medical center told Armenpress. Earlier, it was unclear whether the poisoning was food-related.
[The specific food is not yet stated, but chicken is a common vehicle, either undercooked or cross-contaminated after cooking. - ProMED Mod.LL]
Armavir Province, Armenia: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/46276>]
Bermuda US Consular Information Sheet
Bermuda is a highly developed British overseas territory with a stable democracy and modern economy. Tourist facilities are widely available. Read the Department of Read More Show Less
tate Background Notes on Bermuda for additional information.
Travelers may contact the British Consulate in New York, telephone (212) 745-0273/3206/0281, or the British Consulate in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, or San Francisco or the Bermuda Department of Immigration.
All Americans traveling by air outside of the United States are required to present a passport or other valid travel document to enter or re-enter the United States.
This requirement will be extended to sea travel (except closed-loop cruises), including ferry service, by the summer of 2009.
Until then, U.S. citizens traveling by sea must have government-issued photo identification and a document showing their U.S. citizenship (for example, a birth certificate or certificate of nationalization), or other WHTI compliant document such as a passport card for entry or re-entry to the U.S.
Sea travelers should also check with their cruise line and countries of destination for any foreign entry requirements.
Applications for the new U.S. Passport Card are now being accepted and have been in full production since July 2008.
The card may not be used to travel by air and is available only to U.S. citizens. Further information on the passport card and upcoming changes to U.S. passport policy can be found on the Bureau of Consular Affairs web site.
We strongly encourage all American citizen travelers to apply for a U.S. passport well in advance of anticipated travel.
American citizens can visit our web site or call 1-877-4USA-PPT (1-877-487-2778) for information on how to apply for their passports.
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the U.S. and Canada or, for callers outside the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.
Bermuda has a moderate but growing crime rate. Recent crime statistics can be viewed at the official web site of the Bermuda Police Service.
Examples of common crimes include theft of unattended baggage and items from rental motorbikes, purse snatching (often perpetrated against pedestrians by thieves riding motorbikes), mugging, and theft from hotel rooms. Valuables left in hotel rooms (occupied and unoccupied) or left unattended in public areas are vulnerable to theft. The Consulate regularly receives reports of thefts of money, valuables, and passports and advises that travelers keep their hotel windows and doors locked at all times. Criminals often target transportation systems and popular tourist attractions.
Travelers should exercise caution when walking after dark or visiting out-of-the-way places on the island, as they can be vulnerable to theft and sexual assault, and because narrow and dark roadways can contribute to accidents.
In the past, there have been incidents of sexual assault and acquaintance rape; the use of “date rape” drugs such as Rohypnol has been reported in the media and confirmed by local authorities. Travelers should also note an increase in gang presence in Bermuda and should take regular precautions to avoid confrontation. The back streets of Hamilton are often the setting for nighttime assaults, particularly after the bars close.
Persons violating Bermuda laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned.
Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Bermuda are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines.
The Department of State warns U.S. citizens against taking any type of firearm or ammunition into Bermuda.
Entering Bermuda with a firearm, some kinds of knives or even a single round of ammunition is illegal, even if the weapon or ammunition is taken into the country unintentionally.
The Bermudian government strictly enforces its laws restricting the entry of firearms and ammunition.
Permission to import or own a gun in Bermuda must be sought in advance from the Bermuda Police Service. Any privately owned firearms must be secured at Bermuda Police Headquarters. Violations may result in arrests, convictions, and long prison sentences.
ATMs are widely available in Bermuda. Local banks may not accept checks drawn on U.S. accounts, but some Front Street stores catering to the tourist trade will accept U.S. checks as payment. The local American Express office will cash U.S. checks up to $500.00 for a three-percent fee. Credit cards are widely accepted at all establishments.
U.S. citizens who are taking prescription medication must inform Bermuda customs officials at the point of entry. Medicines must be in labeled containers. Travelers should carry a copy of the written prescription and a letter from the physician or pharmacist confirming the reason the medicine is prescribed.
Bermuda customs authorities may enforce strict regulations concerning temporary importation into or export from Bermuda of items such as animals, arms, ammunition and explosives, building sand, crushed rock, gravel, peat and synthetic potting media, foodstuffs (animal origin), fumigating substances, gaming machines, historic articles (relating to Bermuda), lottery advertisements and material, motorcycles, motor vehicles, obscene publications, organotin anti-fouling paint, plants, plant material, fruits and vegetables (living or dead, including seeds), pesticides, prescription drugs, prohibited publications, seditious publications, soil, VHF radios, radar and citizens band (CB) radios. For additional information on temporary admission, export and customs regulations and tariffs, please contact Bermuda Customs at telephone 1-441-295-4816, by email, or visit the Bermuda Customs web site.
The emergency number in Bermuda for police, fire, and medical assistance is 911.
MEDICAL FACILITIES AND HEALTH INFORMATION:. Good medical care is available, though extremely expensive. The hospital performs general surgery and has an intensive care unit. Serious or complex medical problems will likely require medical evacuation to the United States. Most Bermudian health care providers (including the local hospitals) do not accept overseas insurance and will expect payment at the time of service.
The U.S. Department of State is unaware of any HIV/AIDS entry restrictions for visitors to or foreign residents of Bermuda.
However, visitors with visible indicators of any communicable disease can be refused entry into Bermuda.
Foreign residents who test positive for TB are required to submit x-rays before approval is granted for them to reside in Bermuda.
The information below concerning Bermuda is provided for general reference only, and may not be totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Traffic in Bermuda moves on the left side of the road and the roads are very narrow, often with no defined shoulder. The maximum speed limit in the city of Hamilton is 25 kph (15 mph) and 35 kph (21 mph) on the rest of the island. Under Bermudian law, non-residents are not allowed to own, rent, or drive four-wheeled vehicles. Non-residents must rely on taxis, the excellent local bus system, or motor scooters. Traffic is moderate, but road accidents - particularly involving motorbikes - are common and often result in serious injuries or death.
Rental motor scooters are readily available, and the required helmet is provided. However, visitors should carefully consider whether or not it is worth the risk to ride a scooter. Motor scooters provide the greatest road peril in Bermuda; local operators tend to abuse the speed limit more than other drivers, and they will often pass on the left or right with no warning. Those unfamiliar with driving on the left are likely to find the roundabouts and regulations for yielding at junctions confusing and dangerous. In addition, vehicles often stop on the side of the road, blocking one lane of traffic. Main roads, while generally in good condition, are extremely narrow and tend to be bordered by heavy vegetation or low stone walls. Travelers who rent scooters should be aware that scooter accidents involving visitors are relatively common, and they can be fatal or involve serious injuries.
Taxis are readily available. The local bus system, which is excellent and relatively inexpensive, services the length of the island and stops close to most beaches, hotels, the downtown shopping area, and other points of interest. In addition, water ferry service to a variety of stops around the island is available seven days a week, and is a very safe and enjoyable mode of transportation.
For specific information concerning Bermuda driver's permits, vehicle inspection, road tax and mandatory insurance, please contact the Bermuda Department of Tourism offices at 310 Madison Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY, telephone (212) 818-9800.
You may also visit Bermuda’s Ministry of Tourism and Transportation online.
Emergency services may be called at 911, and response time is generally good.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of Bermuda’s Civil Aviation Authority as being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for oversight of Bermuda’s air carrier operations.
Americans living or traveling in Bermuda are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration web site so that they can obtain updated information on travel and security within Bermuda.
The U.S. Consulate General is located at Crown Hill, 16 Middle Road, Devonshire DV03, and telephone 1-441-295-1342. Office hours for American Citizens Services are 1:30-3:30 Monday-Wednesday and 8:30-10:30 on Thursdays, except Bermudian and U.S. holidays. American citizens in need of after-hours emergency assistance may call the duty officer at telephone 1-441-335-3828. The Consulate General’s American Citizen Services office provides routine information online.
This replaces the Country Specific Information for Bermuda dated 23 June 2008, to update sections on entry/exit requirements, crime, information for victims of crime, special circumstances and medical facilities & health information.
Hurricane Humberto strengthens to Category 3 storm heading close to Bermuda
Natural Disaster Bermuda - 4 months ago
Washington, Sept 18, 2019 (AFP) - Hurricane Humberto strengthened to a major Category 3 storm on Tuesday and was expected to pass near Bermuda, threatening it with dangerous waves and heavy rain, the US National Hurricane Center said. "Hurricane conditions are expected to reach Bermuda by Wednesday night and continue into early Thursday morning," the Miami-based NHC said. "Some fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next day or so, but Humberto should remain a powerful hurricane through Thursday," it said. As of 8:00 pm (0000 GMT), the storm had maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour (185 kilometers per hour) and was moving east-northeast at 12 miles per hour.
Bermuda braces for Gonzalo
Climate Changes Bermuda - 5 years ago
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:04:20 +0200 (METDST)
WASHINGTON, Oct 16, 2014 (AFP) - Hurricane Gonzalo gained strength overnight into Thursday as it barrelled in the Atlantic toward Bermuda, which was bracing for a hit from the powerful Category Four storm. Gonzalo's winds were whirling at 140 miles (220 kilometres) per hour, taking it back up a notch on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, The US National Hurricane Center said. It was expected to pass Friday near Bermuda, which could see flooding along the coast. A hurricane warning was in effect for the British overseas territory.
At 1200 GMT, it was located about 525 miles (225 kilometres) south-southwest of the Bermudian archipelago. It was moving north at nine miles per hour, according to the Miami-based NHC. "This general motion is expected to continue today," the NHC said. "A turn toward the north-northeast and an increase in forward speed are expected tonight and Friday." But the forecasters stressed that major hurricanes like Gonzalo tend to fluctuate in strength. The storm could weaken later Thursday and on Friday, but Gonzalo is on track to be a "dangerous hurricane" when it moves near Bermuda, the NHC said.
The NHC noted that elevated and hilly terrain could face especially strong winds, since wind speeds atop and on the windward sides can often be up to 30 percent stronger than at the surface. "A dangerous storm surge is expected to produce significant coastal flooding in Bermuda," the NHC said. "Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves." Up to six inches (15 centimetres) of rain were expected over Bermuda. Large swells triggered by Gonzalo were already affecting parts of the Virgin Islands, the northern coast of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, as well as portions of the Bahamas.
Swells were expected to reach much of the US East Coast and Bermuda later Thursday. "These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," the NHC said. Three people were reported missing in the islands of St Martin and St Barthelemy after the storm passed, and French authorities expressed concern about four other people they were trying to contact. The storm caused property damage on both islands, which were battered by strong winds and heavy rains.
- Seventh storm of the season -
Gonzalo is the seventh storm of the Atlantic season -- which stretches from June to November -- and the third hurricane to slam the Caribbean this year. Hurricane Cristobal left at least four people dead in late August when it trashed the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands and Dominican Republic with heavy rains causing serious flooding. The NHC predicted that storm activity will be lower than average this year.
Hurricane Cristobal kills four in Caribbean and now churns towards Bermuda
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 01:09:20 +0200 (METDST)
MIAMI, Aug 26, 2014 (AFP) - Strengthening Hurricane Cristobal killed at least four people in the Caribbean and then trained its deadly sights Tuesday on the holiday paradise of Bermuda, officials and meteorologists said. The storm dumped torrential rain on the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands and Dominican Republic, triggering flooding and killing four people, authorities there said.
Cristobal was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometres) per hour, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest forecast, at 2100 GMT. It was moving north towards Bermuda at 10 miles per hour, the NHC said, warning its impact was also being felt in the United States. "The centre of Cristobal is expected to pass northwest of Bermuda on Wednesday and Wednesday night," the NHC said. It added: "Swells generated by Cristobal are affecting portions of the United States coast from central Florida northward to North Carolina and will spread northwards later this week."
A tropical storm watch was already in effect for Bermuda, forecasters said, meaning inclement conditions were possible in the next 24 hours. Cristobal, a category one hurricane, is the third hurricane of the Atlantic storm season. It comes hot on the heels of Hurricane Marie, which briefly reached the highest possible category five destructive power but was weakening in the Pacific off Mexico. Marie's crashing waves over the weekend caused a fishing vessel to capsize, with three of its occupants still missing and presumed dead.
Hurricane Cristobal heads for Bermuda
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 10:34:53 +0200 (METDST)
WASHINGTON, Aug 26, 2014 (AFP) - Hurricane Cristobal churned slowly toward Bermuda on Tuesday after dumping rain on the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, US forecasters said. The storm was due to pass west and north of Bermuda on Wednesday, the US National Hurricane Center said. Cristobal was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometre) per hour as it whirled some 655 miles southwest of Bermuda.
A turn to the northeast with a gradual increase in forward speed is forecast to occur over the next 48 hours, an NHC bulletin said. A tropical storm watch was in effect for Bermuda. Meanwhile, Hurricane Marie was pounding heavy waves into Mexico's Pacific coast, where three fishermen went missing after their boat capsized. An estimated 10,000 families were affected by the storm as it flooded homes, damaged roads and caused rivers to overflow their banks. The storm weakened to a category three hurricane on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale late Monday. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect.
Tropical Storm Gabrielle heading for Bermuda
MIAMI, Florida, Sept 10, 2013 (AFP) - Bermuda braced Tuesday for Tropical Storm Gabrielle, as US forecasters warned it was strengthening and on track to hit or closely pass by the popular vacation spot. Meanwhile, fellow Tropical Storm Humberto, churning far off land in the Atlantic, appeared on the cusp of becoming a hurricane.
Packing maximum sustained winds near 70 miles per hour (110 kilometers per hour), Humberto was about 245 miles (400 kilometers) west of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands, the National Hurricane Center said. "Humberto (is) almost a hurricane," it said in a 2100 GMT advisory, adding the storm could surge to hurricane force either later Tuesday or Wednesday. However, no coastal watches or warnings were in effect.
Gabrielle, with maximum sustained winds near 60 miles per hour (96 km/h), was some 55 miles (88.5 km) south of Bermuda, according to a separate 2100 GMT advisory from the Miami-based center. "Gabrielle is expected to pass over or near Bermuda in the next few hours," the forecasters said. Winds have already picked up on Bermuda as Gabrielle -- which could strengthen further over the next 48 hours -- approaches, they added. A tropical storm warning was in effect for the tourist haven, which could see up to six inches (15 centimeters) of rainfall and storm surges of two to three feet (0.6 to 0.9 meters) above normal.
Costa Rica - US Consular Information Sheet
Costa Rica is a middle-income, developing country with a strong democratic tradition.
Tourist facilities are extensive and generally adequate.
The capi Read More Show Less
al is San Jose.
English is a second language for many Costa Ricans.
Read the Department of State Background Notes on Costa Rica for additional information.
For entry into Costa Rica, U.S. citizens must present valid passports that will not expire for at least thirty days after arrival, and a roundtrip/outbound ticket.
Some U.S. airlines may not permit passengers to board flights to Costa Rica without such a ticket.
Passports should be in good condition; Costa Rican immigration will deny entry if the passport is damaged in any way.
Costa Rican authorities generally permit U.S. citizens to stay up to ninety days; to stay beyond the period granted, travelers must submit an application for an extension to the Office of Temporary Permits in the Costa Rican Department of Immigration.
Tourist visas are usually not extended except under special circumstances, and extension requests are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
There is a departure tax for short-term visitors.
Tourists who stay over ninety days may experience a delay at the airport when departing.
Persons who overstayed previously may be denied entry to Costa Rica.
Persons traveling to Costa Rica from some countries in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa must provide evidence of a valid yellow fever vaccination prior to entry.
The South American countries include Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
See “SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES” for information on requirements to carry documentation within Costa Rica and on travel by dual national minors.
The most authoritative and up-to-date information on Costa Rican entry and exit requirements may be obtained from the Consular Section of the Embassy of Costa Rica at 2114 “S” Street NW, Washington, DC 20008, telephone (202) 234-2945/46 , fax (202) 265-4795 , e-mail consulate@costarica-embassy.org, web site http://www.costarica-embassy.org, or from the Costa Rican consulates in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, San Juan (Puerto Rico), San Francisco, and Tampa.
The Costa Rican immigration agency web site is http://www.migracion.go.cr.
It is advisable to contact the Embassy of Costa Rica in Washington or one of Costa Rica's consulates in the United States for specific information regarding customs requirements before shipping any items.
Visit the Embassy of Costa Rica web site at http://www.costarica-embassy.org for the most current visa information.
There have been no recent acts of terrorism in Costa Rica.
Visitors to Costa Rica may experience the effects of civil disturbances such as work stoppages and strikes.
Although infrequent, these acts can create inconveniences for visitors.
On both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, currents are swift and dangerous, and there are few lifeguards or signs warning of dangerous beaches.
Every year eight to twelve American citizens drown in Costa Rica due to riptides or sudden drop-offs while in shallow water.
Extreme caution is advised.
Adventure tourism is popular in Costa Rica, and many companies offer white-water rafting, bungee jumping, jungle canopy tours, deep sea diving, and other outdoor attractions.
Americans are urged to use caution in selecting adventure tourism companies.
The government of Costa Rica regulates and monitors the safety of adventure tourism companies; enforcement of safety laws is overseen by the Ministry of Health.
Registered tourism companies with operating permits must meet safety standards and have insurance coverage.
The safety regulations enforced in Costa Rica are not the same as safety regulations enforced in the United States.
For the latest security information, Americans traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs’ web site at http://travel.state.gov, where the current Travel Warnings and Travel Alerts, as well as the Worldwide Caution, can be found.
Over one and a half million foreign tourists, the majority American, visit Costa Rica annually.
All are potential targets for criminals, primarily thieves looking for cash, jewelry, credit cards, electronic items and passports.
U.S. citizens are encouraged to exercise the same level of caution they would in major cities or tourist areas throughout the world.
Local law enforcement agencies have limited capabilities and do not act according to U.S. standards.
Travelers should minimize driving at night, especially outside urban areas.
Americans should avoid areas with high concentrations of bars and nightclubs, especially at night, and steer clear of deserted properties or undeveloped land.
For safety reasons, the Embassy does not place its official visitors in hotels in the San Jose city center, but instead puts them at the larger hotels in the outlying suburbs.
Americans should walk or exercise with a companion, bearing in mind that crowded tourist attractions and resort areas popular with foreign tourists are common venues for criminal activities.
Travelers should ignore any verbal harassment, and avoid carrying passports, large amounts of cash, jewelry or expensive photographic equipment.
Tourists are encouraged to carry photocopies of the passport data page and Costa Rican entry stamp on their persons, and leave the original passport in a hotel safe or other secure place.
Costa Rican immigration authorities conduct routine immigration checks at locations, such as bars in downtown San Jose and beach communities, frequented by illegal immigrants.
American citizens detained during one of these checks who have only a copy of the passport will be required to provide the original passport with appropriate stamps.
Travelers should purchase an adequate level of locally valid theft insurance when renting vehicles, park in secured lots whenever possible, and never leave valuables in the vehicle.
The U.S. Embassy receives several reports daily of valuables, identity documents, and other items stolen from locked vehicles, primarily rental cars.
Thefts from parked cars occur in downtown San Jose, at beaches, in the airport and bus station parking lots, and at national parks and other tourist attractions.
Travelers should use licensed taxis, which are red with medallions (yellow triangles containing numbers) painted on the side.
Licensed taxis at the airport are painted orange.
All licensed taxis should have working door handles, locks, seatbelts and meters (called "marias"); passengers are required to use seatbelts.
When traveling by bus, avoid putting bags or other personal belongings in the storage bins.
At all times have your belongings in your line of sight or in your possession.
Thieves usually work in groups of two to four.
A common scam has one person drop change in a crowded area, such as on a bus, and when the victim tries to assist, a wallet or other item is taken.
The most prevalent
scam involves the surreptitious puncturing of tires of rental cars, often near restaurants, tourist attractions, airports, or close to the car rental agencies themselves.
When the travelers pull over, "good Samaritans" quickly appear to change the tire - and just as quickly remove valuables from the car, sometimes brandishing weapons.
Drivers with flat tires are advised to drive, if at all possible, to the nearest service station or other public area, and change the tire themselves, watching valuables at all times.
In late 2006, the government of Costa Rica established a Tourist Police force, and units were established in popular tourist areas throughout the country.
The Tourist Police can assist with the reporting of a crime, which can be difficult for victims due to language barriers and the requirement that only investigative police can accept crime reports.
Medical care in San Jose is adequate, but is limited in areas outside of San Jose.
Most prescription and over-the-counter medications are available throughout Costa Rica.
Doctors and hospitals often expect immediate cash payment for health services, and U.S. medical insurance is not always valid outside the United States.
A list of local doctors and medical facilities can be found at the website of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, at http://sanjose.usembassy.gov.
An ambulance may be summoned by calling 911.
Most ambulances provide transportation but little or no medical assistance.
The best-equipped ambulances are called “unidad avanzada.”
The information below concerning Costa Rica is provided for general reference only, and may not be totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Costa Rica has one of the highest vehicle accident rates in the world.
The fatality rate for pedestrians and those riding bicycles and motorcycles is disproportionately high.
Traffic laws and speed limits are often ignored, turns across one or two lanes of traffic are common, turn signals are rarely used, passing on dangerous stretches of highway is common, and pedestrians are not given the right of way.
Roads are often in poor condition, and large potholes with the potential to cause significant damage to vehicles are common.
Pedestrians, cyclists, and farm animals may use the main roads.
Traffic signs, even on major highways, are inadequate and few roads are lined.
Shoulders are narrow or consist of drainage ditches.
All of the above, in addition to poor visibility due to heavy fog or rain, makes driving at night especially treacherous.
Landslides are common in the rainy season.
All types of motor vehicles are appropriate for the main highways and principal roads in the major cities.
However, some roads to beaches and other rural locations are not paved, and many destinations are accessible only with high clearance, rugged suspension four-wheel drive vehicles.
Travelers are advised to call ahead to their hotels to ask about the current status of access roads.
Costa Rica has a 911 system for reporting emergencies.
In the event of a traffic accident, vehicles must/must be left where they are.
Both the Transito (Traffic Police) and the Insurance Investigator must make accident reports before the vehicles are moved.
Visit the website of Costa Rica’s national tourist office and national authority responsible for road safety at http://www.mopt.go.cr and www.visitecostarica.com.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of Costa Rica’s Civil Aviation Authority as being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for oversight of Costa Rica’s air carrier operations.
For more information, travelers may visit the FAA’s web site at http://www.faa.gov/safety/programs_initiatives/oversight/iasa.
Land Ownership and Shoreline Property: U.S. citizens are urged to use caution when making real estate purchases, and consult reputable legal counsel and investigate thoroughly all aspects before entering into a contract.
Coastal land within fifty meters of the high tide line is open to the public and therefore closed to development, and construction on the next one hundred fifty meters inland is possible only with the approval of the local municipality.
Squatters: Organized squatter groups have invaded properties in various parts of the country.
These squatter groups, often supported by politically active persons and non-governmental organizations, take advantage of legal provisions that allow people without land to gain title to unused agricultural property.
Local courts may show considerable sympathy for the squatters.
Victims of squatters have reported threats, harassment, and violence.
Documentation Requirements: Visitors are required to carry appropriate documentation at all times.
However, due to the high incidence of passport theft, tourists are permitted and encouraged to carry photocopies of the datapage and entry stamp from the passport, leaving the passport in a hotel safe or other secure place.
However, as noted under CRIME, Costa Rican immigration authorities conduct routine checks for illegal immigrants, especially in bars located in downtown San Jose and in beach communities.
An American citizen detained during one of these checks and carrying only the copy of the passport will be required to produce the original passport.
Tourists should consider carrying their passports when traveling overnight or a considerable distance from their hotel.
Tourists who carry passports are urged to place them securely in an inside pocket.
Exit Procedures for Costa Rican Citizens: Costa Rican children may only depart the country upon presentation of an exit permit issued by immigration authorities.
This policy, designed to prevent international child abduction, applies to dual national U.S./Costa Rican citizens.
Parents of minors who obtained Costa Rican citizenship through a parent or through birth in Costa Rica are advised to consult with appropriate Costa Rican authorities prior to travel to Costa Rica, especially if one (or both) parent(s) is not accompanying the child.
Disaster Preparedness: Costa Rica is located in an earthquake and volcanic zone.
Serious flooding occurs annually on the Caribbean side near the port city of Limon, but flooding occurs in other parts of Costa Rica as well, depending on the time of year and rainfall.
General information about natural disaster preparedness is available via the Internet from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at http://www.fema.gov/.
Persons violating Costa Rica’s laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned.
Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Costa Rica are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines.
Americans living or traveling in Costa Rica are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration web site so that they can obtain updated information on travel and security within Costa Rica.
The U.S. Embassy is located in Pavas, San Jose, and may be reached at (506) 2519-2000; the extension for the Consular Section is 2453.
The Embassy is open Monday through Friday, and is closed on Costa Rican and U.S. holidays.
Those seeking information are strongly encouraged to utilize the embassy web site http://sanjose.usembassy.gov/, and can email consularsanjose@state.gov with any questions/concerns.
For emergencies arising outside normal business hours, U.S. citizens may call (506) 2220-3127 and ask for the duty officer.
This replaces the Country Specific Information for Costa Rica dated August 15, 2007, to update sections on Registration/Embassy Location and Special Circumstances.
Authorities in Costa Rica protest US travel advisory alert
Tourism Costa Rica - 11 days ago
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2020 02:28:38 +0100 (MET)
San José, Jan 8, 2020 (AFP) - Costa Rica on Tuesday vehemently objected to the US government's decision to raise the alert level for tourists visiting the Central American country due to the risk of crime. "We express energetic protest on the part of the Costa Rican government for the decision to change the recommendation level for American tourists," said foreign minister Manuel Ventura.
Ventura's statement came shortly after the US government issued a new travel advisory for visitors to Costa Rica. According to the alert, "petty crime is the predominant threat for tourists in Costa Rica." But the advisory warns that "armed robbery, homicide and sexual assault" could also occur. Costa Rica also rose from Level 1, the lowest level, to Level 2 on he US State Department's travel alert scale. The highest is Level 4, which recommends no visiting.
The Central American country, known for its natural resources and beaches, attracts 1.2 million US tourists each year, according to official figures. In 2019, a total of more than 3 million foreign tourists visited. "The change is surprising, because it puts Costa Rica -- which ended 2019 with a rate of 11 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants -- on par with countries on the continent that are among the most violent in the world," the Costa Rican foreign ministry said in a statement.
Data from the Ministry of Public Service indicates that there were 688 cases of theft of mobile phones, passports and money from tourists in 2019 -- only 0.02 percent of visitors to Costa Rica. Tourism in Costa Rica has been shaken in recent years by several murders of female tourists, as well as sexual violence, including a Venezuelan-American woman who was killed near her hotel outside of the capital San Jose.
15yo with Naegleria fowleri infection in Costa Rica causes concern
Disease Amoebic Meningoencephalitis Costa Rica - 11 days ago
Date: Thu 8 Jan 2020
<https://outbreaknewstoday.com/costa-rica-reports-naegleria-fowleri-case-2nd-case-in-history-89130/>
The Costa Rica Ministry of Health reported [Tue 7 Jan 2019] (computer translated) on the 2nd ever _Naegleria fowleri_, or "brain-eating amoeba" infection in their history.
The case is a 15-year-old who is presenting with a clinical picture of primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) remains in a serious state at the Liberia Hospital. The investigation into the case shows the young man acquired the amoeba by inhaling water in the thermal springs of Guayabo de Bagaces.
The 1st case of primary amebic meningoencephalitis in the history of Costa Rica was recorded in 2014 in an American child who later died.
_Naegleria fowleri_ is a microscopic amoeba which is a single-celled living organism. It can cause a rare and devastating infection of the brain called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). The amoeba is commonly found in warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers, ponds and canals.
Infections can happen when contaminated water enters the body through the nose. Once the amoeba enters the nose, it travels to the brain where it causes PAM (which destroys brain tissue) and is usually fatal. Infections usually occur when it is hot for prolonged periods of time, which results in higher water temperatures and lower water levels. _Naegleria fowleri_ infections are rare. Most infections occur from exposure to contaminated recreational water. Cases due to the use of neti pots and the practice of ablution have been documented.
[Byline: Robert Herriman]
[Amoebic meningoencephalitis is rare but is found worldwide and the reservoir is fresh water sources like lakes and rivers. It has been discussed if it is found in household water supplies, but so far cases have not been linked to tap water although it is possible in theory. - ProMED Mod.EP]
Costa Rica: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/17>]
37 cases of Malaria reported in Costa Rica so far in 2019
Disease Malaria Costa Rica - 3 months ago
Date: Fri 25 Oct 2019
From: Donald J. Brightsmith <dbrightsmith@cvm.tamu.edu> [edited]
There have been 37 cases of autochthonous transmission of malaria in 2019 as reported by the Costa Rican Ministry of Health (<https://www.ministeriodesalud.go.cr/index.php/vigilancia-de-la-salud/analisis-de-situacion-de-salud>). The ministry also reports 39 cases of malaria in country that were likely contracted in foreign countries, mostly in Nicaragua.
The autochthonous cases came mostly from the northern part of the country in the district of Crucitas, but cases were also reported from other areas of the country.
Donald J. Brightsmith
University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
dbrightsmith@cvm.tamu.edu
[ProMed thanks Dr. Donald J. Brightsmith for communicating this to us.
This is a comment from the WHO website, "Costa Rica: 'Ripe' for malaria elimination?"
(<https://www.who.int/malaria/ripe-for-malaria-elimination>):
"Costa Rica is one of 21 countries identified by WHO as having the potential to eliminate malaria by 2020. Its success in bringing down cases of indigenous malaria -- that is, transmission of the malaria parasite within a country's own borders -- has been commendable, so much so that it has received an award from the Pan American Health Organization in recognition of the strides made. Notably, no one has died from malaria since 2009.
"However, after recording 3 consecutive years of zero indigenous cases between 2013 and 2015, local transmission of the disease has slowly been creeping upwards: 4 cases in 2016 and 12 in 2017. Of equal concern is imported malaria: To date, 21 such cases have been detected in 2018, up from 5 for all of 2017.
"In June 2018, the Costa Rican Ministry of Health issued a public health alert following the reporting of 10 imported malaria cases in just one week in the country's northern region bordering malaria-endemic Nicaragua. The Ministry is working to quickly identify and treat imported cases to prevent onward transmission to local communities in high-risk zones of the country. The areas of concern are mainly agricultural sites, like banana plantations.
"One such area is the canton of Matina, home to some of Costa Rica's largest plantations that grow the yellow fruit. Situated next to a major port on the Caribbean Sea, the canton's agricultural produce is shipped to markets worldwide, making Matina an important economic hub.
"Although Matina is far from the area of the recent alert, and no cases of malaria have been reported this year, all 4 indigenous cases reported in 2016 originated from the canton, as well as 2 of the 12 indigenous cases in 2017. Health authorities are not taking any chances and are working with the canton's fincas bananeras (banana plantations) to step up malaria surveillance activities, particularly among plantation workers and nearby communities." - ProMED Mod.EP]
Alert in Costa Rica after 19 die from tainted alcohol
Poisoning Costa Rica - 6 months ago
San José, July 20, 2019 (AFP) - Alcohol tainted with potentially toxic levels of methanol has killed 19 people in Costa Rica, where authorities issued an alert against drinking some half-dozen brands. The Ministry of Health issued the national warning Friday while also updating the death toll. Of 34 people who have been poisoned, 14 men and five women, age 32 to 72, have died since the first week of June, the ministry said. Authorities warned that it was not known how much alcohol had been adulterated, but have confiscated some 30,000 bottles and are carrying out a countrywide investigation.
The doctored alcohol contained between 30 to 50 percent methanol, according to Donald Corella, head of emergency services at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose, who was quoted in the daily La Nacion. He said six people who were treated at his hospital had died, while four others survived but suffered "very serious after-effects" ranging from irreversible total blindness to brain lesions that cause tremors similar to Parkinson's disease. If ingested in large quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage and death. According to authorities, the majority of the 19 deaths occurred among homeless and alcoholic individuals.
Strong quake hits Costa Rica-Panama border
Natural Disaster Costa Rica - 7 months ago
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2019 10:01:43 +0200
San José, June 26, 2019 (AFP) - A 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit the Panama-Costa Rica border around midnight on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, revising earlier warnings of "significant damage", as the tremor cut power supplies near the epicentre. The quake struck at a depth of 26 kilometres (16 miles), about two kilometres from the nearest town of Progreso in Panama, USGS said, updating a previous alert that estimated the depth at 10 kilometres.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, and USGS said "the impact should be relatively localized", reversing an earlier advisory that "past events with this alert level have required a regional or national level response." "Estimated economic losses are less than 1 percent of GDP of Panama," the website said. According to the National Seismological Network (RSN) in Costa Rica, the quake struck at 0523 GMT Wednesday (11.23 pm Tuesday) with its epicentre located 11 kilometres east of the Panamanian border town of Puerto Armuelles.
The tremor was felt in Costa Rica's capital San Jose and in many parts of the Central American country, according to initial reports, but the national tsunami warning system said there was no risk of a tsunami. Villagers in the south of Costa Rica fled their homes, fearing aftershocks. Two houses in the region were damaged by the quake, said Alexander Solis, president of the country's National Emergency Commission.
Costa Rica's President Carlos Alvarado said there were power cuts in several communities in the southwest of the country, near the epicentre. In November 2017 a 6.5-magnitude quake on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica caused buildings to sway in San Jose and contributed to the deaths of two people who had heart attacks. Further north, two months earlier a 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed more than 300 people in Mexico.
Dominican Republic US Consular Information Sheet
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The Dominican Republic covers the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The capital city is Santo Domingo, located on the south coast of th Read More Show Less
island. Tourist facilities vary according to price and location. Spanish is the official language. Though English is widely spoken in major cities and tourist areas, it is much less common outside these areas. Read the Department of State Background Notes on the Dominican Republic for additional information.
ENTRY/EXIT REQUIREMENTS: All Americans traveling by air outside of the United States are required to present a passport or other valid travel document to enter or re-enter the United States. This requirement will be extended to sea travel (except closed loop cruises), including ferry service, by the summer of 2009. Until then, U.S. citizens traveling by sea must have government-issued photo identification and a document showing their U.S. citizenship (for example, a birth certificate or certificate of nationalization), or other WHTI compliant document such as a passport card for entry or re-entry to the U.S. Sea travelers should also check with their cruise line and countries of destination for any foreign entry requirements.
Applications for the new U.S. Passport Card are now being accepted. We expect cards will be available and mailed to applicants in spring 2008. The card may not be used to travel by air and is available only to U.S. citizens. Further information is available on our U.S. Passport Card page at http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3926.html and upcoming changes to U.S. passport policy can be found on the Bureau of Consular Affairs web site at http://travel.state.gov/travel/cbpmc/cbpmc_2223.html. We strongly encourage all American citizen travelers to apply for a U.S. passport well in advance of anticipated travel. American citizens can visit travel.state.gov or call 1-877-4USA-PPT (1-877-487-2778) for information on how to apply for their passports.
For information concerning entry and exit requirements, travelers may contact the Embassy of the Dominican Republic at 1715 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC 20008, tel. (202) 332-6280. There are also Dominican consulates in Boston, Chicago (Northfield, IL), Mayaguez, Miami, New Orleans, New York, and San Juan. Visit the Embassy of the Dominican Republic web site at http://www.domrep.org for the most current visa information.
Visas: Visitors who do not obtain a Dominican visa prior to entry must purchase a tourist card upon arrival to enter the country. Tourist cards cost ten U.S. dollars, which must be paid in U.S. currency. Tourist cards may be purchased at the Dominican Embassy in Washington or Dominican Consulates prior to arrival, as well as at Dominican airports at the time of entry. Tourist cards normally permit a legal stay of up to 60 days. Visitors who would like to extend their time in the Dominican Republic should visit the Migration Department in Santo Domingo and request an extension. Failure to request an extension will subject the visitor to a surcharge at the airport upon departure.
Travel of children and EXIT requirements: Strict exit requirements apply to minors under 18 years of age (of any nationality) who are residents in the Dominican Republic. Such children traveling alone, without one parent, or with anyone other than the parent(s), must present written authorization from a parent or legal guardian. This authorization must be in Spanish, and it must be notarized at a Dominican consulate in the United States or notarized and then certified at the Dominican Attorney General’s office (Procuraduria de la Republica) if done in the Dominican Republic. Though not a requirement for non-resident minors (in the Dominican Republic), the U.S. Embassy recommends that any minor traveling to the Dominican Republic without one or both parents have a notarized document from the parent(s). In addition to clarifying the reason for travel, this will facilitate departure from the Dominican Republic.
The specific guidelines on the Dominican regulations governing the travel of children in the Dominican Republic can be found (in Spanish) at http://www.migracion.gov.do.
Visit the Embassy of the Dominican Republic web site at http://www.domrep.org for the most current visa information.
American citizens should be aware that foreign tourists are often considered attractive targets for criminal activity, and should maintain a low profile to avoid becoming victims of violence or crime. In dealing with local police, U.S. citizens should be aware that the standard of professionalism might vary. Police attempts to solicit bribes have been reported, as have incidents of police using excessive force.
Protests, demonstrations, and general strikes occur periodically. Previous political demonstrations have sometimes turned violent, with participants rioting and erecting roadblocks, and police sometimes using deadly force in response. Political demonstrations do not generally occur in areas frequented by tourists and are generally not targeted at foreigners. However, it is advisable to exercise caution when traveling throughout the country. Street crowds should be avoided. In urban areas, travel should be conducted on main routes whenever possible. Power outages occur frequently throughout the Dominican Republic, and travelers should remain alert during blackout periods, as crime rates often increase during these outages.
U.S. citizens considering overland travel between the Dominican Republic and Haiti should first consult the Country Specific Information Sheet for Haiti as well as the Internet site of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince for information about travel conditions in Haiti. Santo Domingo and the majority of tourist destinations within the Dominican Republic are located several hours from the Haitian border, and recent events in Haiti have generally not directly affected these areas.
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the U.S. and Canada, or for callers outside the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll-line at 1-202-501-4444. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
CRIME: Crime continues to be a problem throughout the Dominican Republic. Street crime and petty theft involving U.S. tourists does occur, and precautions should be taken to avoid becoming a target. While pick pocketing and mugging are the most common crimes against tourists, reports of violence against both foreigners and locals are growing. Criminals can be dangerous and visitors walking the streets should always be aware of their surroundings. Valuables left unattended in parked automobiles, on beaches and in other public places are vulnerable to theft, and reports of car theft have increased. Cellular telephones should be carried in a pocket rather than on a belt or in a purse. One common method of street robbery is for at least one person on a moped (often coasting with the engine turned off so as not to draw attention) to approach a pedestrian, grab his or her cell phone, purse or backpack, and then speed away. This type of robbery is particularly dangerous because the motorcyclist reaches the intended victim at 15–20 miles per hour and often knocks the victim to the ground.
Many criminals have weapons and are likely to use them if they meet resistance. Be wary of strangers, especially those who seek you out at celebrations or nightspots. Traveling and moving about in a group is advisable. The dangers present in the Dominican Republic, even in resort areas, are similar to those of many major U.S. cities. Expensive jewelry attracts attention and could prompt a robbery attempt. Limiting the cash and credit cards carried on your person and storing valuables, wallet items, and passports in a safe place is recommended.
Burglaries of private residences continue to be reported as well as crimes of violence. Criminals may also misrepresent themselves in an effort to gain access to your residence or hotel room. In one 2005 homicide, a U.S. citizen was murdered by two men who posed as repairmen to gain access to the apartment. In another, the Dominican police arrested the building’s actual maintenance man and an accomplice for the crime.
The U.S. Embassy continues to receive reports from Americans who have been stopped while driving and asked for “donations” by someone who may appear to be a police officer before they would be allowed to continue on their way. Usually, the person(s) stopping the American drivers had approached from behind on a motorcycle; several of these motorcyclists pulled up alongside the driver's window and indicated that they were carrying a firearm. In some cases, the perpetrators were dressed in the light green uniform of “AMET,” the Dominican traffic police; however, they often seemed too young to be police officers or wore ill-fitting uniforms that might have been stolen. In another incident, individuals dressed in military fatigues told the victim they were police and requested the victim to follow them to the police station prior to robbing him. Such incidents should be reported to the police and the Consular Section. If Dominican police stop an American driver for a traffic violation, the driver should request a traffic ticket rather than paying an on-the-spot fine. The driver also has the right to ask police for identification. New regulations require police to wear a nametag with their last name. While everyone driving in the Dominican Republic should abide by traffic laws and the instructions of legitimate authorities, Americans finding themselves in the aforementioned scenarios should exercise caution. In general, drivers should keep their doors locked and windows closed at all times and leave themselves an escape route when stopping in traffic in the event of an accident or other threat. Incidents involving police may be reported to the Internal Affairs Department of the National Police at 809 688-1777 or 809 688-0777.
In 2006, the U.S. Embassy received reports of Americans and others who were victims of vehicular-armed robberies in the northern provinces of the Dominican Republic. At least three of the reports indicate the victims were intercepted during the morning hours, when there was little other traffic, while driving on rural highways connecting Santiago and Puerto Plata. Drivers should exercise extreme caution when driving at night and use major highways when possible.
Although kidnappings are not common in the Dominican Republic, in 2007, two American citizens were kidnapped and held for ransom, in separate instances.
Many public transportation vehicles are unsafe, especially the route taxis or “carros publicos” in urban areas. These are privately owned vehicles that run along certain routes, can take up to six or more passengers, and are inexpensive. Passengers in “carros publicos” are frequently the victims of pick pocketing, and passengers have on occasion been robbed by “carro publico” drivers. Urban buses (“guaguas”) are only marginally better. The U.S. Embassy is also aware of at least one incident in which the driver of a “motoconcho” (motorcycle taxi) robbed an American passenger. The U.S. Embassy cautions its staff not to use these modes of transportation. As an alternative, some scheduled interurban bus services use modern buses and run on reliable timetables. These are generally the safest means of intercity travel. With respect to taxis, visitors to the Dominican Republic are strongly advised to take only hotel taxis or taxis operated by services whose cabs are arranged in advance by phone and can subsequently be identified and tracked.
Credit card fraud is common and recent reports indicate that its incidence has increased significantly. The U.S. Embassy strongly advises Americans to restrict severely the use of credit/debit cards in the Dominican Republic. The increase in credit card fraud is particularly pronounced in the eastern resort areas of the Dominican Republic. According to reports, store workers, restaurant service staff and hotel employees may conceal devices that can instantly record the credit card information. Often, this device appears to be a normal card reader used by businesses. Credit or debit cards should be carefully protected and never allowed out of the owner’s sight. Stolen cards are often used to the maximum amount before the victims are able to contact the bank. Victims of credit card fraud should contact the bank that issued the credit card immediately. It is advisable to pay close attention to credit card bills following time spent in the Dominican Republic. There have been reports of fraudulent charges appearing months after card usage in the Dominican Republic.
Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) are present throughout Santo Domingo and other major cities. However, as with credit cards, the use of ATMs should be minimized as a means of avoiding theft or misuse. One local ATM fraud scheme involves sticking photographic film or pieces of paper in the card feeder of the ATM so that an inserted card becomes jammed. Once the card owner has concluded the card is irretrievable, the thieves extract both the jamming material and the card, which they then use. There are other ATM scams as well. Exercise caution and be aware of your surroundings when using an ATM card.
The overall level of crime tends to rise during the Christmas season, and visitors to the Dominican Republic should take extra precautions when visiting the country between November and January.
In many countries around the world, counterfeit and pirated goods are widely available. Transactions involving such products may be illegal under local law. In addition, bringing them back to the United States may result in forfeitures and/or fines. More information on this serious problem is available at http://www.cybercrime.gov/18usc2320.htm.
Beaches and Resorts: The Embassy occasionally receives reports of individuals who have become victims of crime, and particularly sexual assault, while at the beach. Vigilance is recommended. The numerous “all-inclusive” resorts serve abundant quantities of alcohol, a practice that encourages inattention and may be a factor in crime or sexual assault.
Tourist Police: The Dominican Republic does have police that are specially trained to assist tourists who require assistance. This public institution is called Politur and represents a cooperative effort between the National Police, Secretary of the Armed Forces, and the Secretary of Tourism. Politur typically has personnel in tourist areas to provide first responder type assistance to tourists. If you are the victim of a crime, Politur can help you get to a police station so that you may file a police report and seek further assistance. For more information on Politur and contact information, use the following link: http://www.politur.gov.do/. Politur is located at the corner of 30 de Marzo and Mexico, Bloque D, Governmental Building, Santo Domingo. The general phone number is 809-686-8639.
INFORMATION FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME: The loss or theft abroad of a U.S. passport should be reported immediately to the local police and the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. If you are the victim of a crime while overseas, in addition to reporting to local police, please contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate for assistance. The Embassy/Consulate staff can, for example, assist you to find appropriate medical care, contact family members or friends, and explain how funds could be transferred. Although the investigation and prosecution of the crime is solely the responsibility of local authorities, consular officers can help you to understand the local criminal justice system and to find an attorney if needed.
MEDICAL FACILITIES AND HEALTH INFORMATION: Medical care is limited, especially outside Santo Domingo, and the quality of care varies widely among facilities. There is an emergency 911 service within Santo Domingo, but its reliability is questionable. Outside the capital, emergency services range from extremely limited to nonexistent. Blood supplies at both public and private hospitals are often limited, and not all facilities have blood on hand even for emergencies. Many medical facilities throughout the country do not have staff members who speak or understand English. A private nationwide ambulance service, ProMed, operates in Santo Domingo, Santiago, Puerto Plata and La Romana; Telephone number is 809-548-7200. ProMed expects full payment at the time of transport. The U.S. Embassy maintains a non-comprehensive list of providers of medical care in the Dominican Republic, which can be found at the following link: http://www.usemb.gov.do/Consular/ACS/medical_assistance-e.htm.
Tap water is unsafe to drink and should be avoided. Bottled water and beverages are safe.
Dengue: Dengue is endemic to the Dominican Republic. To reduce the risk of contracting dengue, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends wearing clothing that exposes as little skin as possible and applying a repellent containing the insecticide DEET (concentration 30 to 35 percent) or Picaridin (concentration 20 percent or greater for tropical travelers). Because of the increased risk of dengue fever and the ongoing risk of malaria in the Dominican Republic (see below), practicing preventative measures is recommended by the CDC. For further information on dengue fever, please visit the CDC web site at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/dengue.
Malaria: There are occasional reports of cases of malaria in areas frequented by U.S. and European tourists including La Altagracia Province, the easternmost province in which many beach resorts are located. Malaria risk is significantly higher for travelers who go on some of the excursions to the countryside offered by many resorts. Prior to coming to the Dominican Republic, travelers should consult the CDC web site at http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/index.htm for more information and recommendations on malarial prophylaxis.
Information on vaccinations and other health precautions, such as safe food and water precautions and insect bite protection, may be obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s hotline for international travelers at 1-877-FYI-TRIP (1-877-394-8747) or via the CDC’s web site at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/default.aspx. For information about outbreaks of infectious diseases abroad consult the World Health Organization’s (WHO) web site at http://www.who.int/en. Further health information for travelers is available at http://www.who.int/ith.
The U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo and the CDC are aware of several cases in which U.S. citizens experienced serious complications or died following elective (cosmetic) surgery in the Dominican Republic. The CDC’s web site at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5323a4.htm contains a report on patients who suffered postoperative infections following cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic. Patients considering travel to the Dominican Republic for cosmetic surgery may also wish to contact the Dominican Society of Plastic Surgeons (tel. 809-688-8451) to verify the training, qualifications, and reputation of specific doctors.
MEDICAL INSURANCE: The Department of State strongly urges Americans to consult with their medical insurance company prior to traveling abroad to confirm whether their policy applies overseas and whether it will cover emergency expenses such as a medical evacuation. Americans traveling in the Dominican Republic should be aware that Dominican hospitals often require payment at the time of service and may take legal measures to prevent patients from departing the country prior to payment. Please see our information on medical insurance overseas.
TRAFFIC SAFETY AND ROAD CONDITIONS: While in a foreign country, U.S. citizens may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States. The information below concerning the Dominican Republic is provided for general reference only, and may not be totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Traffic in the Dominican Republic moves on the right side of the road. Speed limits vary from 25 mph in the city to 50 mph on rural roads, but they are generally not enforced. Drivers are required to carry liability insurance.
If you do drive in the Dominican Republic, you should be aware that the utmost caution and defensive driving are necessary. Traffic laws are similar to those in the United States, but undisciplined driving is common, due to a lack of adequate traffic controls. Many drivers will not use turn indicators. Rather, it is common for a vehicle operator to stick his hand out the window to signal a turn. Drivers can also be aggressive and erratic, often failing to yield the right-of-way even when road signs or signals indicate that they should. Travel at night on intercity highways and in rural areas should be avoided, due to animals on the road, poor road conditions, and other vehicles being driven at excessive speeds, often with malfunctioning headlights or taillights. Blackouts also increase the danger of night travel. Turning right on red lights is permitted, but should be done with caution.
Traffic accidents often result in serious injury or death. This is often the case when heavy vehicles, such as buses or trucks, are involved. Traditionally, vehicles involved in accidents in the Dominican Republic are not moved (even to clear traffic), until authorized by a police officer. Drivers who violate this norm may be held legally liable for the accident.
Dominican law requires that a driver be taken into custody for driving under the influence or being involved in an accident that causes serious injury or death, even if the driver is insured and appears not to have been at fault. The minimum detention period is 48 hours; however, detentions frequently last until a judicial decision is reached (often weeks or months), or until a waiver is signed by the injured party (usually as the result of a cash settlement).
Visitors to the Dominican Republic might want to consider hiring a professional driver during their stay in lieu of driving themselves. Licensed drivers who are familiar with local roads can be hired through local car rental agencies. In case of accidents, only the driver will be taken into custody.
Pedestrians tend to step out into traffic without regard to corners, crosswalks, or traffic signals. Many pedestrians die every year crossing the street (including major, multi-lane highways) at seemingly random locations. Pedestrians do not have the right-of-way, and walking along or crossing busy streets – even at intersections with traffic lights or traffic police present – can be very dangerous.
Seat belts are required by law, and those caught not wearing them will be fined. There are no child car seat laws. The law also requires the use of hands-free cellular devices while driving. Police stop drivers using cell phones without the benefit of these devices. Penalties for those driving under the influence and those involved in accidents resulting in injury or death can be severe.
Motorcycles and motor scooters are common in the Dominican Republic, and they are often driven erratically. Dominican law requires that motorcyclists wear helmets, but local authorities rarely enforce this law. As noted previously in this report, public transportation vehicles such as the route taxis (“carros publicos”) and urban buses (“guaguas”) are unsafe.
Please see the Crime section of this information sheet for more information regarding crimes involving road safety.
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of the Dominican Republic’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for oversight of the Dominican Republic’s air carrier operations. For more information, travelers may visit the FAA’s web site at http://www.faa.gov/safety/programs_initiatives/oversight/iasa.
Currency Regulations: It is legal to exchange currency at commercial banks, exchange booths in hotels and exchange houses. The exchange rate is set by the Central Bank, based on prevailing market conditions. The market determines the exchange rate. No more than USD $10,000 or its equivalent in another currency, including Dominican pesos, may be taken out of the Dominican Republic at the time of departure.
Real Estate: Real estate investments require a high level of caution, as property rights are irregularly enforced. Investors often encounter problems in receiving clear title to land, and title insurance is not available. Real estate investments by U.S. citizens have been the subject of both legal and physical takeover attempts. Absentee landlords and absentee owners of undeveloped land are particularly vulnerable. Investors should seek solid property title and not just a “carta de constancia,” which is often confused by foreigners with a title. An official land registry measurement (also known as 'deslinde' or 'mensura catastral') is also desirable for the cautious overseas investor. Squatters, sometimes supported by governmental or non-governmental organizations, have invaded properties belonging to U.S. citizens, threatening violence and blocking the owners from entering their property. In at least one instance, the U.S. citizen landowner was physically assaulted. Several U.S. citizens with long-standing expropriation disputes with the Dominican Government have not received compensation.
Gambling: Many Americans have reported losing large amounts of money at Dominican casinos by playing a game (or variations thereof) known as “Super Keno,” “Caribbean Keno,” “Progressive Keno,” or “Progressive Roulette.” Players have complained that the game’s rules are unclear and/or misleading. Any complaints arising from a casino should be directed to the Office of Casinos at the Secretary of Finance. To register a complaint with this office, call 809-687-5131, ext. 2120.
Divorce: In recent years, there have been a number of businesses, primarily on the Internet, which advertise “Quickie Dominican Divorces.” The services of these businesses should be used with caution, as they may misrepresent the process of obtaining a divorce in the Dominican Republic. While it is relatively simple for foreigners to obtain a divorce in the Dominican Republic, such divorces are only valid if specific steps are taken. Those seeking information regarding divorce should first consult with an attorney in their home state. Additional information is available via the U.S. Embassy's flyer on Divorce in the Dominican Republic at http://www.usemb.gov.do/Consular/ACS/divorce_DR-e.htm.
Alien Smuggling: Dominican authorities may prosecute anyone arrested for organizing the smuggling of aliens into or out of the Dominican Republic. This is in addition to any charges individuals may face in the other country involved, including the United States.
Hurricanes: The Dominican Republic is situated in an area of the Caribbean prone to hurricanes. In the event of a hurricane alert, a notice will be posted on the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo's web page at http://www.usemb.gov.do/index.htm. Further information can be obtained by visiting the National Weather Service's web site at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov. General information about natural disaster preparedness is available via the Internet from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency at http://www.fema.gov.
Water Sports: Visitors to the Dominican Republic, including to local resort areas, should carefully assess the potential risk of recreational activities. Some of the swimming areas at popular beaches around the Dominican Republic are subject to dangerous undertows. Many beaches lack life guards and/or warnings of unsafe conditions. Resort managers usually offer current information on local swimming & surf conditions. Americans are cautioned not to swim alone, particularly at isolated beaches.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES: While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country's laws and regulations, which sometimes differ significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law. Penalties for breaking the law can be more severe than in the United States for similar offenses. Persons violating Dominican laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested, or imprisoned. Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in the Dominican Republic are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines. For more information on the Dominican judicial system, procedures, and penalties, please visit the Consular Section’s web page at http://www.usemb.gov.do. Engaging in sexual conduct with children or using or disseminating child pornography in a foreign country is a crime, prosecutable in the United States. Please see our information on Criminal Penalties.
CHILDREN'S ISSUES: For information on international adoption of children and international parental child abduction, see the Office of Children’s Issues web pages. The Dominican Republic is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The United States formally accepted the accession of the Dominican Republic on June 1, 2007.
Americans living or traveling in the Dominican Republic are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration web site, and to obtain updated information on travel and security within the Dominican Republic. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. By registering, American citizens make it easier for the Embassy or Consulate to contact them in case of emergency. The Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy is located at the corner of Calle César Nicolás Penson and Avenida Máximo Gómez. The American Citizens Services (ACS) Unit can be reached by telephone at 809-731-4294, or via email at acssantodom@state.gov. ACS Unit office hours are 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, Friday 7:30-12:15, except on U.S. and Dominican holidays. The Chancery of the U.S. Embassy is located a half-mile away from the Consular Section, at the corner of Calle César Nicolás Penson and Calle Leopoldo Navarro. The telephone number is 809-221-2171.
There is a Consular Agency in the north coast city of Puerto Plata at Calle Villanueva esq. Avenida John F. Kennedy, Edificio Abraxa Libraria, 2nd floor, telephone 809-586-4204, 809-586-8017, 809-586-8023; office hours are 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays.
This replaces the Country Specific Information dated May 09, 2007 to update Safety and Security, Crime, and Special Circumstances.
Report on increasing cases of Malaria across Central and South America
Disease Malaria Dominican Republic - 2 months ago
Date: Mon 18 Nov 2019
Source: Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) [abridged, edited]
<https://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_docman&view=download&category_slug=2019-2&alias=51009-18-november-2019-malaria-epidemiological-update&Itemid=270>
Between 2005 and 2014, there was an overall decreasing trend in the number of cases of malaria in the Region of the Americas; however, since 2015, there has been an increase in the number of malaria cases reported in the Region.
This overall increase is due to the increase in cases over the last 3 years in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela along with increased transmission in endemic areas of countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Nicaragua, and Panama, as well as outbreaks in countries that were moving towards elimination (Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador) (Figure 1 [available at the source URL above]).
Despite this, in 2018, Guatemala and Honduras reported a significant decrease in malaria cases compared to the prior year, which has continued as of November 2019. El Salvador has not reported an autochthonous case in almost 3 years, while Paraguay and Argentina were certified by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) as malaria-free countries in July 2018 and May 2019, respectively.
In Venezuela, between 1 Jan and week 41 [ending 11 Oct] of 2019, a total of 323,392 malaria cases were reported, representing a slight decrease (1.5%) compared to the same period in 2018 (328,373 cases). In contrast, in 2017, there were 321,358 cases reported during the same period.
In Brazil, the Amazon region is characterized by high endemicity of malaria, accounting for nearly 99% of the cases reported nationally. In this region, there was a 24% overall decrease in the number of cases reported during the 1st semester of 2019 (71,549 cases) compared to the 1st semester of 2018 (93,995 cases).
In Colombia, between 1 Jan and week 42 [ending 18 Oct] of 2019, an outbreak has been occurring with 66,581 malaria cases reported, representing a 28.2% increase compared to the same period in 2018 (51,935 cases).
In Nicaragua, in 2019 as of week 41 [ending 11 Oct] of 2019, there were 9358 cases reported, representing a 15% decrease compared to the same period in 2018 (10,988 cases). This is mainly due to the decrease in cases reported in Puerto Cabezas since mid-2019.
[The complete PAHO summary can be accessed at the source URL above. The surge of malaria in Venezuela is well known and is due to an almost entire lack of any vector control activities over the past 10 years. - ProMED Mod.EP]
Venezuela: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/29>
Brazil: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/6>
Colombia: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/16>
Nicaragua: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/23>]
Tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic raises concerns as cause remains a mystery
Tourism Dominican Republic - 7 months ago
Source: VOX [edited]
<https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/26/18759843/dominican-republic-tourist-deaths>
Tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic are sparking concern among travellers. It's not yet clear whether the deaths of 10 Americans over the past year are connected. [Some sources report as many as 13 deaths. - ProMED Mod.TG] Ten known US tourists have died at Dominican Republic resorts, or at the hospital immediately following resort stays -- including 3 within 7 days, and 2 within 3 days -- in just over a year.
Now over a dozen more visitors who fell dangerously ill on vacation in the Dominican Republic are coming forward. Sicknesses reportedly set in quickly, marked by frequently cited symptoms of abdominal pain, nausea, and sweating; guests' descriptions of a "chemical smell" in hotel rooms; and a pattern of minibar liquor consumption before indicators of illness set in.
The Dominican Republic's Ministry of Tourism attributes these deaths to natural causes; local and US federal authorities, however, are investigating the incidents, having left some American travellers uneasy, and the future of the Dominican Republic's robust tourism industry uncertain. The incidents occurred at a collection of resorts on the island: the Terra Linda Resort in Sousa, the Excellence Resorts in Punta Cana, the Grand Bahia Principe in Punta Cana, the Grand Bahia Principe in La Romana, and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Punta Cana.
At least 3 of the people who died reportedly began experiencing symptoms after having a drink from the minibar in their rooms. The US Embassy in Santo Domingo confirmed earlier this month [June 2019] that the FBI were dispatched to the island to conduct toxicology reports, and the Dominican Republic's Ministry of Health announced samples from the minibar in the guest room of CD and NH of Maryland, who were both found dead on 30 May 2019 in their room at the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana, were undergoing testing. On Monday [24 Jun 2019], the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino announced it'd be removing liquor from minibars in its guest rooms.
As forensic scientist Lawrence Kobilinsky told the "Cut," many of the victims' symptoms might suggest methanol poisoning. Methanol is a toxic, synthetic chemical normally used in antifreeze, also used, illegally, to create counterfeit alcohol. Consuming even a small amount of pure methanol can lead to pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs, and respiratory distress, 2 of the official causes of death listed for CD and NH. They're also 2 of the official causes of death listed for SW of Pennsylvania, who also died at Grand Bahia Principe La Romana, after reportedly having a drink from her hotel room minibar, just 5 days before CD and NH's deaths.
The toxicology reports for CD, NH, and SW have not yet been released; the FBI said in mid-June 2019 that answers could be another 30 days coming.
Some recent travellers, however, suspect they were exposed to fumes emitted from the air conditioners in their rooms. CNN reports one Denver couple, KK and TS sued the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana -- the same resort where CD and NH stayed -- earlier this year [2019] for illnesses occurring during a trip last July 2018. KK and TS described a "chemical smell" overtaking their room, an odor similar to paint or industrial cleaner. [Earlier, reports indicated KK and SW described the smell as chemical or pesticide smell. Some of their clinical signs sound like organophosphates. This couple reported earlier a grounds worker was spraying the trees, which reportedly was over the air conditioner. - ProMED Mod.TG] Soon after, they said they experienced excruciating stomach cramps, diarrhoea, bloody stool, incessant sweats and drool, watery eyes, and dizziness. Back home in Denver, their doctors wondered whether they'd been exposed to organophosphates, chemicals most often used in pesticides.
KK said she thought back on what she had seen days earlier: A maintenance person spraying palm plants covering the air conditioning units just outside their room. "I wondered if someone sprayed our unit. They are always constantly out there taking care of the plants. We saw them out there with bug sprayers."
Other tourists told CNN they too became sick after they inhaled what they described as a chemical, or paint-like smell, at the Majestic Elegance Resort in Punta Cana in 2017, and at the Grand Bahia Principe Punta Cana going back to 2016.
As the New York Times reports, poisoning or pesticide exposure is even more likely when more than one person experiences the same outcome on the same timeline, as was the case with CD and NH. Chemicals like organophosphates, adds the Times, can "seep into a vent not adequately sealed, or be sucked inside by a hotel air conditioner." Current scientific literature indicates organophosphate poisoning can lead to respiratory failure in some cases.
Tourism drives much of the Dominican Republic's economy, employing more than 300 000 people and drawing a reported 6.6 million international travellers in 2018. A report on the Dominican Republic's economy from the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service says the Dominican government aims to draw 10 million tourists -- roughly the size of its current population -- by 2020, "generating estimated revenues of US $7.2 billion."
Preliminary autopsies conducted by Dominican authorities have been released by the resorts for several of the 10 Americans known to have died in the past year. In addition to pulmonary edema and respiratory failure, the causes of death for the tourists have included pneumonia, multiple organ failure, and an exceptionally common one: heart attack. According to Tourism Minister Javier Garcia, 5 of the deaths can be categorized as "natural causes." [While the Tourism Minister may report it as "natural causes," an investigation is necessary, including toxicology reports, to be fully certain of the cause of those individuals' deaths. - ProMED Mod.TG]
The Excellence Resorts in Punta Cana told the family of LC of New York City she died in her room on 10 Jun 2019 of a heart attack. Her son BC remains skeptical, telling WCBS, "I do not believe it was of natural causes."
It's not yet clear what caused this spate of heart attacks, respiratory failures, and food poisoning-like illnesses. And it's also not clear whether these catastrophic events, similar as they are in geographic location, presenting symptoms, and outcome, are connected. Neither the US Embassy nor the Dominican Ministry of Public Health has acknowledged the possibility of a connection; in fact, Garcia has said: "These cases are very regrettable, but isolated" [The deaths are indeed tragic and regrettable, but evidence revealed so far does not seem isolated. - ProMED Mod.TG].
The Dominican Republic's Ministry of Tourism asks the public to look at these recent deaths in context: Many millions of people travel to the Dominican Republic each year and don't fall seriously ill or die. A statement released by the ministry earlier this month [June 2019] references statistics and polls conducted by the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic. The "rate of tourist incidents" in 2018, the ministry says, fell to 1.4 per 100 000 tourists from 1.6 the previous year. It also highlights that 99 percent of American tourists told their survey they'd return to the Dominican Republic for future vacations.
Nevertheless, US travellers are concerned by recent news, to say the least. CNBC cites a survey from the American Society of Travel Advisors revealing that 2/3rds of its members have cancelled trips to the Dominican Republic for clients within one week. CBS News adds flights to the Dominican Republic from the US are down 74.3 percent from this time last year [2018], with cancelled flights up by 51.2 percent in recent weeks, according to data from flight analysis agency. The [US] State Department's most recent Travel Advisory on the Dominican Republic -- from April 2019 -- places the country as a Level 2, with the directive, "Exercise Increased Caution." The rationale: crime. "Here we are talking about 9 people, but there are countries in the area where 10 times the number of Americans have died there," the Dominican Republic's tourism board reportedly said at a press conference on 21 Jun 2109, as covered by NBC News. (Details on the 10th death, of New York native VC on 17 Jun 2019, hadn't yet been released.) "But all eyes are on us." [Byline: Stephie Grob Plante]
[There are several reports of individuals complaining of shortness of breath and an ill feeling after consuming products from the mini bar. There were television reports indicating some drink containers were filled by the hotel, or the pool bar and put back into the mini bar.
This is the 1st article reporting methanol. However, methanol is a common product substituted in alcoholic drinks because it is cheap and easy to make. Frequently, this type of alcohol is associated with blindness. An individual, possibly dehydrated, coming in from the sun who consumes the beverage somewhat quickly may react differently. But pulmonary oedema is certainly associated with methanol consumption.
From <https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002680.htm>:
Airway and lungs:
- Breathing difficulty
- No breathing
- Blindness, complete or partial, sometimes described as "snow
blindness"
- Blurred vision
- Dilation (widening) of the pupils [Organophosphates produce pin
point pupils - Mod.TG]
Heart and blood:
- Low blood pressure
Nervous system:
- Agitated behaviour
- Coma (unresponsiveness)
- Confusion
- Difficulty walking
- Dizziness
- Headache
- Seizures
Skin and nails:
- Bluish-colored lips and fingernails
Stomach and intestines:
- Abdominal pain (severe)
- Diarrhea
- Liver problems, including jaundice (yellow skin) and bleeding
- Nausea
- Pancreatitis (nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain)
- Vomiting, sometimes bloody
- Leg cramps
- Weakness
Compare the clinical signs, as listed by the same source
<https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002832.htm> for organophosphate poisoning:
Symptoms of organophosphate or carbamate poisoning:
Heart and Blood
- Slow heart rate
- Wheezing
- Anxiety
- Coma (decreased level of consciousness and lack of responsiveness)
- Convulsions
Bladder and Kidneys
- Increased urination
Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat
- Drooling from increased saliva
- Increased tears in the eyes
- Small pupils
Stomach and Intestines
- Abdominal cramps
- Loss of appetite
- Nausea and vomiting
- Blue-colored lips and fingernails
Note: Serious poisoning can occur if an organophosphate gets on your bare skin or if you don't wash your skin soon after it gets on you. Large amounts of the chemical soak through the skin unless you are protected. Life-threatening paralysis and death can occur very quickly.
While the clinical signs have some differences, it could have been a combination of organophosphates and methanol intoxication. - ProMED Mod.TG]
Dominican Republic: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/24>]
Update on deaths of tourists in Dominican Republic
Disease Idiopathic Disease Dominican Republic - 7 months ago
Date: Thu 27 Jun 2019
Source: USA TODAY on Yahoo News [edited]
<https://news.yahoo.com/denver-man-dies-dominican-republic-170618207.html>
A Denver man is the latest American tourist to die in the Dominican Republic this year [2019]. [KA] died on Tuesday [25 Jun 2019], the State Department confirmed to USA TODAY.
Denver's 9 News and Fox 31 report [KA] was on vacation with his daughter [MA] when he fell ill in the Caribbean vacation destination. [MA] told 9 News her father started to complain about a painful bump on his leg just before her flight home on Sunday [23 Jun 2019]. She said they stopped by their hotel's medical clinic, but decided against treatment unless the pain became worse.
[MA] had already returned to Denver when her father's pain worsened the following day [24 Jun 2019]. He booked an earlier return flight but was forced to disembark due to his symptoms.
His sister-in-law [MS] told Fox 31 he was dripping with sweat and vomited in the plane's lavatory. "They transferred him to Santo Domingo and (said) his breathing is really bad and his kidneys were failing," she said. [MS] noted while her brother-in-law had undergone a kidney transplant several years earlier, he was in perfect health when he left Colorado.
[KA]'s relatives said they were not even told he had died; they found out only after [MA] called the hospital repeatedly Wednesday [26 Jun 2019] morning. "It's been hard," she told 9News. "Not being able to get a hold of them, or them miscommunicating, or simply not knowing information."
Authorities are conducting an autopsy and investigation to determine the official cause of death, according to 9 News. (The family said they did not receive any diagnosis.)
Questions about safety have dogged the Dominican Republic since late May [2019], when the 1st of several Americans died in their hotel rooms and a Delaware woman claimed she was attacked there in January [2019].
Last week, tourism minister Francisco Javier Garcia held a press conference to dispel those concerns, stating, "The Dominican Republic is a safe country." Garcia also said the confirmed deaths -- 9 including [KA] -- are not out of the ordinary and the number is actually lower than in some previous years. Garcia said by this point in 2011 and 2015, 15 tourists had died in the Dominican Republic. [Byline: Sara M. Moniuszko]
[The Dominican Republic is a small place compared with the USA, Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, Brazil and others. While this article says there were 9 deaths, including this victim, other sources and listed names add up to 13, with other victims being severely ill and reporting their illness and having survived to tell about it. This is a lot for a small place and even more so given that most of them are reporting the same clinical signs.
An autopsy alone is insufficient for determining a cause of death in these cases. We have been waiting weeks for the release of the toxicology report from the first 10 or more victims, which allegedly the US officials and CDC toxicologist are involved with.
If the man had no prior illness and suddenly started having these pains, sweating and vomiting, it seems quite out of the ordinary. His kidneys may well have failed from the toxins (allegedly) in his system, but it does not mean the kidney failure was the primary reason for death.
The excessive sweating, complained about by every victim prior to death, and by a few who managed to survive, as well as reports of vomiting roll together to make me think this is not a plain and simple death or a death from kidney failure.
I am still suspicious of organophosphates. I am also suspicious of the pain from a bump on his leg. This article does not address anything about the bump. I wonder if there was a bite or sting there? Or was he injected with something?
While the minister of tourism is saying it is safe, there is no indication of security being increased around the resorts to prevent others with nefarious motives from entering the area. There is no indication of an investigation from the resorts or the minister of tourism to assess what is really happening. - ProMED Mod.TG]
[It is also possible that the "bump" on his leg was an abscess either insect bit related or small entry wound related and the disease process described could also be consistent with sepsis, remembering that the individual had a history of a kidney transplant and was most likely on immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the transplanted kidney. - ProMED Mod.MPP]
Update on sickness among tourists visiting Dominican Republic
Date: Sat 15 Jun 2019, 1:03 PM
Source: New York Post [edited]
<https://nypost.com/2019/06/15/oklahoma-jimmy-buffett-fans-mysteriously-fall-ill-while-vacationing-in-dominican-republic/>
A group of Jimmy Buffett-diehards from Oklahoma were incredibly sick in paradise -- the latest in an ever-growing list of tourists to be sickened during a jaunt to the Dominican Republic, a report said.
DF, a travel agent who vacationed to Punta Cana with the Buffett-loving Central Oklahoma Parrothead Association, said 4 days into their April [2019] trip, he and other members came down with a mysterious illness. "I can't even explain how sick I was," DF told Oklahoma's News 4. "I lost 14 pounds during that time and was really sick."
By the end of the vacation, 47 of the 114 Oklahomans reported becoming ill, DF said, with many of them too sick to leave their rooms at the Hotel Riu Palace Macao.
DF said it's unclear what caused the illnesses -- Punta Cana doctors suggested a parasite might be to blame. Everyone who got sick swam in the resort pool equipped with a swim-up bar, DF recalled.
Some of the sick Parrotheads, the nickname for fans of the "Why Don't We Get Drunk" singer [Jimmy Buffet], tested positive for _Salmonella_ spp, according to DF, who said he did not.
The latest report of illness comes amid a spate of unexplained deaths on the island nation since January [2019]. The death count ticked to 8 on [Fri 14 Jun 2019], when the family of a 78-year-old Ohio man revealed he died suddenly after dinner and drinks at the Dreams Punta Cana Resort & Spa. Authorities are eyeing bootleg liquor from hotel minibars as the potential killer, sources have told The Post. "I will not be going back to the Dominican any time soon," DF said. [Byline: Sara Dorn]
[These people may be lucky they were only sick and not dead. However, _Salmonella_ sp most often causes diarrhoea and cramps along with severe dehydration and weakness. While an individual may develop a fever and be sweating, the sweating reported in the fatal cases is extreme sweating.
There is no report of the deceased individuals testing positive for salmonellosis.
Regardless of the cause, salmonellosis, or poisoning by something other than bacteria, the resorts involved in these reports appear to have a problem. The problem may be lack of awareness of chemicals from spraying trees above air conditioning units, to someone tampering with alcohol bottles, or perhaps uncleanliness at some eating/drinking establishment. This many illness and deaths seems quite out of the ordinary for these resorts. - ProMED Mod.TG]
Report on deaths of six Americans visiting Dominican Republic during the past year
Date: Wed 12 Jun 2019
Source: New York Times [edited]
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/travel/dominican-republic-deaths.html>
More than two million Americans visit the Dominican Republic every year, making up about a third of the country's tourists. Six have died in the last year during their visits. Because of the seeming similarities among their deaths, their family members have suggested that they are connected and have raised suspicions about the resorts where they died. Here's what we know, and don't know, about the circumstances.
Who has died, and how?
Yvette Monique Sport, 51, died in June 2018 of a heart attack. Her sister, Felecia Nieves, has said that Ms. Sport had a drink from the minibar in her room at a Bahia Principe resort, one of a number on the island, then went to sleep and never woke up.
In July 2018, David Harrison, 45, died at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana. Mr. Harrison died of a heart attack and The Washington Post reported that his death certificate also listed "pulmonary oedema, an accumulation of fluid in the lungs that can cause respiratory failure, and atherosclerosis" as causes of death. He and his wife were in the Dominican Republic for their wedding anniversary with their son.
In April of this year, Robert Wallace became sick at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana, where he was attending a wedding and died. The 67 year old's family said that he became ill after drinking scotch from the minibar in the hotel. Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, of Allentown, Pa., was celebrating her 10th wedding anniversary when she died at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville, on May 25 of this year of a heart attack. She had been at the resort for less than 24 hours.
A few days later, Nathaniel Edward Holmes 63, and Cynthia Ann Day, 49, from Prince George's County, Md., were found dead in their room at the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana. The two had recently become engaged. An autopsy found that the couple had respiratory failure and pulmonary oedema.
Are the hotels connected?
Four of the dead were staying at Bahia Principe resorts, which are part of a group of 14 hotels in the Dominican Republic that are popular among tourists because they are all-inclusive. The Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville, where Ms. Schaup-Werner died, is less than a five-minute walk away from the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana, where Mr. Holmes and Ms. Day died. Both are near the town of San Pedro De Macoris.
The Hard Rock is across the island from the other two hotels in Punta Cana. It is not known which Bahia Principe resort Ms. Sport was staying in.
What are the hotels saying?
In a statement on Friday, Bahia Principe said reports of the deaths had been inaccurate and that the hotel was committed to "collaborating completely with the authorities and hope for a prompt resolution of their inquiries and actions." Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos said in a statement on Tuesday evening that it is waiting for official reports about the deaths and is, "Deeply saddened by these two unfortunate incidents, and we extend our sincerest sympathy to the families of Mr. Harrison and Mr. Wallace."
What are Dominican officials doing?
The Dominican Attorney General's office and the national police are investigating the deaths, but tourism officials have been downplaying them. The tourism minister, Francisco Javier Garcia, said last week that in the last five years, more than 30 million tourists have visited the country, and that these deaths are "isolated incidents" and the island is safe for tourists. "These are situations that can occur in any country, in any hotel in the world," he said. "It's regrettable but sometimes it happens." The tourism ministry said last week that hotels had 60 days to install security cameras. What are U.S. officials saying?
In a statement issued Tuesday evening, the U.S. State Department said that "Dominican authorities have asked for F.B.I. assistance for further toxicology analysis," and it could take up to a month to receive the results. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control said that the organization had not received a request for assistance from the Dominican Republic relating to these deaths. Are there any theories as to what might be causing the deaths? Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in a phone interview that the symptoms that have been reported, like pulmonary oedema, bleeding and vomiting blood, are "consistent with poisoning," perhaps accidental.
But until toxicology reports are available, he said, it is difficult and too soon to definitively say what caused the visitors' deaths. "It's rare for travellers to die of unknown causes like this, and to have a high number of them in a relatively short period of time is alarming, shocking, sad," Dr. Inglesby said. "It's something that investigators should be able to get to the bottom of." The fact that toxicology reports have not been released or completed is "unconscionable and inexplicable," he said. Have there been other incidents? Two couples have come forward to say they fell ill while staying at one of the Bahia Principe resorts where tourists have died. In January 2018, Doug Hand, 40, and his wife Susie Lauterborn, 38, were staying at the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana when, he said in a phone interview, they got sick with fevers, nausea, cold sweats, diarrhoea and fatigue. Mr. Hand said that he didn't drink alcohol on the trip, but he did notice a "mouldy, mildew smell like the A.C. or filter hadn't been cleaned."
When Mr. Hand told an employee in the hotel's lobby that his wife was sick, the employee gave him directions to a doctor, but seemed more focused on ensuring the couple attended a meeting about buying time shares, Mr. Hand said. Kaylynn Knull, 29, and Tom Schwander, 33, are suing the resort chain for $1 million, their lawyer told The Times, because the Colorado-based couple became violently ill during their stay at the Grand Bahia Principe La Romana last summer. Ms. Knull got a persistent headache and was sweating and drooling profusely, the lawyer, David Columna, said. She also had blurry vision, nausea and diarrhoea, she told CNN, and family doctors determined the couple had been exposed to organophosphates, a class of insecticides. "The hotel did nothing," said Mr. Columna, who is representing Ms. Knull and Mr. Schwander in the Dominican Republic. The couple, he said, "spent the night inhaling the chemical and they are still having side effects of the intoxication and the hotel hasn't given us any idea of what happened." [Byline: Elisabeth Malkin, Tariro Mzezewa]
Cuba is an independent island country situated in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the islands and covers 42,000sq miles. The climate is sub tropical throughout the year with most of the rainfall in Read More Show Less
the northern parts of the country. Temperatures of between 20C to 35C are fairly standard throughout the year. Generally the winter effects of the American continent only last for short periods.
Safety & Security:
The majority of tourists visiting Cuba will have no difficulty but bag snatching and other street crime appears to be increasing. The old Havana area and other major tourist resorts may be particular areas of concern in this regard. On arrival be careful to only use your recognised tour operator. If you are taking a taxi at any stage make sure it is a registered one and not a private vehicle. It is unwise to carry large quantities of money or jewellery away from your hotel and try not to flaunt wealth with your belongings. Pickpockets are too common an occurrence on buses and trains and at train stations so be careful with your essential documents and credit cards. Valuables should not be stored in suitcases when arriving in or departing from Havana as there have been a number of thefts from cases during the time the cases are coming through baggage handling. There is an airport shrink-wrap facility for those departing Havana which reduces the risk of tampering. Remember to carry a photocopy of your main documents (passport, flight tickets etc).
Road Safety:
Following a number of serious road accidents involving tourists, you are advised not to use mopeds for travelling around Cuba or in Havana. Also, if you are involved in any accident a police investigation will be required to clear you and this may significantly delay your travel plans. On unlit roads at night there have been a number of accidents associated with roaming cattle (sounds like Ireland!). The traffic moves on the right side of the roads. There is a main highway running the length of the country but many of the country roads are in poor repair.
Local Laws & Customs:
When arriving into Cuba make sure you are not carrying any items which could be considered offensive. Any illicit drug offense is treated very seriously and Cuban law allows for the death penalty to be used under these circumstances. If you require personal medication for your health, make sure it is in original packing and carry a letter from your doctor describing the medication. Never agree to carry any item for another individual and always secure your cases once they are packed. Taking photographs of military or police installations or around harbours, rail and airport facilities is strictly forbidden.
Since 1993 it is now possible to use US dollars for all transactions within Cuba. Remember, there is a 20$ airport departure tax. Certain travellers cheques and credit cards may not be acceptable within Cuba. This is particularly true of American Express cheques and cards but check your situation with the travel operator before departure.
Health Facilities:
Generally healthcare facilities outside of Havana are limited and many standard medications may not be available. It is important to carry sufficient quantities of any medications which may be required for the duration of your time in Cuba.
Food & Water:
The level of food and water hygiene varies throughout the country and between resorts. On arrival check the hotel cold water supply for the smell of chlorine. If it is not present then use sealed bottled water for both drinking and brushing your teeth throughout your stay. Cans and bottles of drinks are safe but take care to avoid pre-cut fruit. Peel it yourself to make sure it is not contaminated. Food from street vendors should be avoided in most cases. Bivalve shellfish are also a high risk food in many countries and Cuba is no exception in this regard. (Eg Mussels, Oysters, Clams etc)
Malaria & Mosquito Borne Diseases:
Malaria transmission does not occur within Cuba and so prophylaxis is not required. However, a different mosquito borne disease called Dengue has begun to reoccur in the country over the past few years. This viral disease can be very sickening and even progress to death. It is rare for tourists to become infected but avoiding mosquito bites is a wise precaution.
Swimming, Sun & Dehydration:
The extent of the Cuban sun (particular during the summer months (April to October) can be very excessive so make sure your head and shoulders are covered at all times when exposed. Watch children carefully as they will be a significant risk. Drink plenty of fluids to replace what will be lost through perspiration and, unless there is a reason not to,
take extra salt either on your food or in crisps, peanuts etc. Take care if swimming in the Caribbean to stay with others and to listen to local advice. Never swim after a heavy meal or alcohol.
Rabies Risk in Cuba:
This viral disease does occur throughout Cuba and it is essential that you avoid any contact with all warm blooded animals. Dogs, cats and monkeys are the most commonly involved in spreading the disease to humans. Don't pick up a monkey for a photograph! If bitten, wash out the wound, apply an antiseptic and seek urgent medical attention.
Vaccinations for Cuba:
There are no essential vaccines for entry / exit if coming from Ireland. However, for your own personal protection travellers are advised to have cover against the following;
Tetanus (childhood booster)
Typhoid (food & water borne disease)
Hepatitis A (food & water borne disease)
For those planning a longer or more rural trip vaccine cover against conditions like Hepatitis B and Rabies may also need to be considered.
Cuba is becoming a popular destination for tourists and generally most will stay very healthy. However commonsense care against food and water borne disease is essential at all times. Also take care with regard to sun exposure, dehydration and mosquito bites.
Update on Measles situation in Samoa
Disease Measles Samoa - 8 days ago
Date: Tue 7 Jan 2020
Source: Xinhuanet [abridged, edited]
<http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/07/c_138684971.htm>
Samoa's Ministry of Health confirmed on Tuesday [7 Jan 2020] 2 more deaths in the island nation's measles epidemic, bringing the death toll to 83 since the measles outbreak in mid-October [2019]. The Samoan Ministry of Health said that the 2 fatalities, an infant and [an] adult, died between 29 Dec last year [2019] and 5 Jan this year [2020].
A total of 5697 measles cases have been reported to the Disease Surveillance Team so far, with 30 new cases recorded during the same period. A total of 16 people with measles are currently hospitalized in the island nation, including 4 critically ill children.
Currently, there are no travel restrictions or vaccination requirement for those travelling to Samoa.
With the latest measles case, the reopening of day-care centres in Samoa has now been delayed until next week, but public schools will resume on Tuesday [7 Jan 2020] as planned. Death may occur in up to 5-10% of infected young children in developing countries.
Samoa shuts down in unprecedented battle against Measles crisis
Disease Measles Samoa - 2 months ago
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 00:51:07 +0100 (MET)
By Neil SANDS
Wellington, Dec 4, 2019 (AFP) - Samoa entered a two-day lockdown Thursday as authorities launched an unprecedented mass vaccination campaign to contain a deadly measles outbreak that has devastated the Pacific island nation. Officials ordered all businesses and non-essential government services to close, shut down inter-island ferry services and told private cars to keep off the roads.
Residents were advised to stay in their homes and display a red flag if they were not yet immunised as hundreds of vaccination teams fanned out across the nation of 200,000 in the early hours of the morning. The operation, carried out under emergency powers invoked as the epidemic took hold last month, is a desperate bid to halt an inexorably rising death toll that reached 62 on Thursday, most of them young children. "I've seen mass mobilisation campaigns before, but not over an entire country like this," UNICEF's Pacific island chief Sheldon Yett told AFP. "That's what we're doing right now. This entire country is being vaccinated."
Immunisation rates in Samoa were about 30 percent before the outbreak and have risen to more than 55 percent since a compulsory mass vaccination campaign began a fortnight ago. Yett said the aim of this week's two-day drive was to push the rate above 90 percent, which should help curb the current outbreak and stop future epidemics. He said the normally busy streets of the capital Apia were almost deserted early Thursday. "It's very, very quiet out here. I can just hear a few barking dogs. The streets are empty. There are no cars," he said. "People are staying at home waiting for the vaccination campaign. The teams are getting their supplies together and getting ready to go out." Even Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi's residence had a red flag fluttering outside it, with the leader saying his nephew had recently arrived from Australia and needed a measles shot.
Malielegaoi said he was angered by anecdotal reports that some parents were encouraging their children to hide from the vaccination teams to avoid the mandatory immunisation injection. "The message is that we have vaccinated a lot of people and they are OK," he told reporters. "The only cure for this is vaccination... having your children vaccinated is the only way." Children are the most vulnerable to measles, which typically causes a rash and fever but can also lead to brain damage and death.
The latest figures show that 54 of the 62 dead were aged four or less and infants account for most of the 4,217 cases recorded since the outbreak began in mid-October. There have also been measles epidemics in neighbouring Fiji and Tonga, but higher immunisation rates mean they have been more easily contained, with no fatalities.
WHO warns measles resurgent as Samoa deaths rise
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 06:07:45 +0100 (MET)
Wellington, Dec 3, 2019 (AFP) - The World Health Organisation warned of a "slide back" in global efforts to eliminate measles Tuesday, as the death toll from an outbreak that has killed dozens of children in Samoa continued to climb. A total of 55 people have died since the epidemic began in mid-October, 50 of them children aged four or under, officials in the Pacific nation said Tuesday. Another 18 infants are critically ill in hospital and the crisis shows no sign of slowing, with 153 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 3,881 in a population of 200,000. Emergency measures including compulsory mass immunisations and school closures have so far done little to stop the virus spreading in a country that was particularly vulnerable to measles due to low vaccination rates of about 31 percent.
World Health Organisation (WHO) medical officer for the western Pacific, Jose Hagan, said it was a grim reminder of the danger posed by "probably the most infectious disease that we know of". "Unfortunately the case (to) fatality rate of measles is much higher than people realise," he told Radio New Zealand. "This is quite a severe disease and we just aren't used to seeing it, so it comes as quite a surprise when we see how fatal it can be." He said the fatality rate in Samoa was less than two percent but had been known to reach five percent in developing countries.
Hagen said increased access to measles vaccines was estimated to have saved 21 million lives over the past 20 years. "But we are starting to have a slide back and there are outbreaks happening all over the world in all WHO regions and it's leading to the virus being exported through international travel," he said. Cases have skyrocketed in Europe, leading to Britain, Greece, the Czech Republic and Albania all losing their measles-free status in August. The United States narrowly maintained its "measles eliminated" status a few months later, despite experiencing its worst outbreak since 1992. The WHO has pointed to various reasons for declining immunisation rates including lack of access to healthcare and complacency about the need to vaccinate.
Another major factor, which has been cited by the WHO as a reason for the severity of the Samoa outbreak, is misinformation about immunisation from anti-vaccine campaigners. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi this week said vaccination was the only answer to the epidemic. He has ordered the government to cease non-essential operations on Thursday and Friday so public servants can help a mandatory vaccination campaign that aims to give anti-measles jabs to everyone aged below 60.
Government shutdown in Samoa amid 'cruel' measles outbreak
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2019 08:16:50 +0100 (MET)
Wellington, Dec 2, 2019 (AFP) - Samoa ordered a government shutdown to help combat a devastating measles outbreak Monday, as five more children succumbed to the virus, lifting the death toll in the tiny Pacific nation to 53. The government said almost 200 new measles cases had been recorded since Sunday, with the rate of infection showing no sign of slowing despite a compulsory mass vaccination programme. The scheme has so far focussed on children but Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was time to immunise everyone in the 200,000 population aged under 60.
To achieve the goal, he said government services and departments would close on Thursday and Friday this week in order to allow all public servants to assist with the mass vaccination campaign throughout the country. He said only electricity and water utility workers would be exempt and called on the nation to stand together to contain the outbreak. "In this time of crisis, and the cruel reality of the measles epidemic, let us reflect on how we can avoid recurrence in the future," Malielegaoi said in a national address.
Since the crisis began in mid-October, there have been 3,728 measles cases, accounting for almost two percent of the population. Infants are the most vulnerable and form the bulk of infections, with 48 of the fatalities aged four or less. A state of emergency was declared in mid-November, with schools closed and children banned from public gatherings, such as church services, to minimise the risk of contagion.
The outbreak has been exacerbated by Samoa's low immunisation rates, which the World Health Organisation blames on overseas-based anti-vaccine campaigners. Malielegaoi was unequivocal in his message, telling his people "vaccination is the only cure... no traditional healers or kangen (alkaline) water preparations can cure measles". "Let us work together to encourage and convince those that do not believe that vaccinations are the only answer to the epidemic," he said. "Let us not be distracted by the promise of alternative cures."
Officials say the anti-vaccination message has resonated in Samoa because of a case last year when two babies died after receiving measles immunisation shots. It resulted in the temporary suspension of the country's immunisation programme and dented parents' trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.
Measles death toll in Samoa rises to 37 amid anti-vax push
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:25:19 +0100 (MET)
By Nina LARSON
Geneva, Nov 27, 2019 (AFP) - A measles epidemic raging in Samoa has killed 37 people, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, blaming an anti-vaccine messaging campaign for leaving the Pacific island nation vulnerable to the spread of the virus. The UN health agency warned that a steep decline in vaccination rates in Samoa, a Pacific Ocean island nation halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, had paved the way for a "huge outbreak", with more than 2,500 cases in a country of just 200,000 people. The death toll has been rising steadily since the country declared a national measles epidemic in mid-October. WHO said another five people had died Wednesday, bringing the total number of deaths to 37. Measles is caused by a virus and can lead to serious complications including pneumonia and inflammation of the brain that can do permanent damage and be deadly, especially in small children.
Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's immunisation department, told reporters in Geneva that "very low coverage of measles vaccine" was to blame for allowing the highly contagious disease to rapidly spread in the country. In 2018, only 31 percent of children under five had been immunised, she said. "When measles enters a country like that, there is a huge group of people who are not immune," she said. The tragedy, she said, was that immunisation rates used to be far higher in Samoa, with coverage measured at 84 percent just four years ago.
- Misinformation taking toll -
Officials have blamed the low rates in part on fears sparked last year when two babies died after receiving measles vaccination shots. This resulted in the temporary suspension of the country's immunisation programme and dented parents' trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered. O'Brien said that an anti-vaccine group had been stoking these fears further with a social media campaign, lamenting that "this is now being measured in the lives of children who have died in the course of this outbreak." Misinformation about the safety of vaccines, she said, "has had a very remarkable impact on the immunisation programme" in Samoa. Ian Norton at WHO's Emergency Medical Team Unit meanwhile warned that the outbreak was taking a heavy toll on the small country's entire health system. "It has really spiked dramatically," he told reporters, pointing out that more than 200 new cases arrive at hospital every day.
Apia's main hospital, which normally has just four beds in its intensive care unit, currently has 14 children on ventilators, Norton said, stressing that this poses "a huge, huge burden". He said mass vaccination was the only way to rein in epidemic. The UN children's agency UNICEF has sent than 110,000 doses of measles vaccine and medical teams from Australia and New Zealand are helping administer them. Norton said Britain was also preparing to send a support medical team, adding that WHO has sent out an appeal to other countries in the region to send medical teams. Samoa is not the only place struggling with measles.
WHO data for the first six months of 2019 shows the highest number of measles cases reported worldwide since 2006, and there are currently several large outbreaks raging in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Ukraine. And the UN health agency has been sounding the alarm over vaccination rates around the globe as the anti-vaccine movement gains steam, driven mainly by fraudulent claims linking the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella to a risk of autism in children.
The Middle East is a favourite destination for many Irish holiday makers. The combination of a beautiful climate linked with such historical richness is hard to beat. Unfortunately the Read More Show Less
security situation throughout the region has led to some significant concerns over the years. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of cases those visiting the region will not encounter any particular concerns in this regard. It is a wise precaution to ensure that your passport is valid for at least a further six months beyond the time of your holiday as otherwise you may be refused entry.
Security Situation:
Security throughout the Middle East is generally tight. Carry some means of identification at all times in case you are requested to produce it by police or army personnel. In Jerusalem the city has been divided and it is sensible to remember which quarter you are in at all times.
Generally the health facilities throughout the region are excellent. However, when visiting certain rural regions you may find it difficult to obtain hospital care similar to that at home. In Israel, travellers can find information in English about emergency medical facilities and after-hours pharmacies in the "Jerusalem Post" and English language "Ha'aretz" newspapers.
Food & Water Facilities:
Again, this depends on your location and the facilities which are there at the time of the year you visit. Bottled water is easily available and food hygiene is usually excellent throughout all the main tourist destinations. However, it is generally wiser not to drink hotel tap water and only to use it for brushing your teeth if there is a clear smell of chlorine. When on organised trips tourists are sometimes offered local tea or other drinks. Generally this will be safe as the water is boiled but take care that the cup hygiene is acceptable.
The climatic conditions in the Middle East vary considerably throughout the year. Many tourists visit in late autumn or early spring. At these times the climate is much cooler and the evenings can be distinctly chilly. However, during the main tourist season (May to September) the temperatures rise high into the 80’s or 90’s and dehydration can easily occur. Increasing fluid and salt intake is important under these circumstances. It is essential that travellers are aware of the climatic conditions which should be present for their trip and that sensible clothing is used at all times.
Rabies:
Tourists should avoid all animals as this viral disease is transmitted through the bite, lick or scratch of any infected warm blooded animal. In Israel the most common animals involved are foxes and jackals and in Jordan, dogs tend to be the main culprits.
Exploring the Region:
Leaving the main tourist routes is unwise. There are a number of security risks which have to be considered and there are also significant health concerns which may be encountered. In July 2000 an 18 year old American tourist died of sunstroke when she became separated from her group in the Dead Sea region of Israel. Those exploring caves and parts of the desert areas also run the risk of diseases like Borreliosis and Rabies.
Walking & Trekking:
For many going to these countries their trip will involve visiting some of the major ruins and archeological sites. This will involve a good deal of walking and trekking. Good supporting foot wear is essential and it would be wise to carry a crepe bandage in case of a sprained ankle. Having a suitable painkiller or anti-inflammatory medication would also be advantageous. Check your health will be up to the journey.
Pools are usually very well maintained and the risk of disease is small. Those swimming in the sea should remember that the Mediterranean is home to many jelly fish. Swim with others and never alone and especially after alcohol or a heavy meal.
Anthrax:
This bacterial disease is rare in the Middle east though travellers should be aware that it can be transmitted through unprepared leather goods usually bought in the local market places. Typically the disease may then present with a black ulcerated skin lesion.
Malaria:
Fortunately this disease does not occur in Israel or Jordan. However other mosquito and sandfly diseases do occur and so protection against their bites should be used when necessary.
Hepatitis:
There are many forms of this disease but the most common is Hepatitis A, often known as Infectious Jaundice. This disease can keep an infected individual off work for many weeks and it is wise to consider vaccination cover before exposure. In Israel approx 65% of the population will have been infected before 18 years of age.
Vaccinations:
There are no essential vaccines for entry/exit however most Irish tourists are recommended to receive cover against; Poliomyelitis, Typhoid, Tetanus and Hepatitis A. Those living in these countries or planning an extended trip should also consider cover against Hepatitis B and Rabies.
Due to the unrest within Israel there are concerns regarding the safety of tourists at this time. If you are travelling to this region it is wise to ensure that your insurance policy is sufficient if your circumstances or travel plans change.
Four tourists among 8 wounded in northern Jordan stabbing at Roman ruins of Jerash
Tourism Jordan - 2 months ago
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 15:31:58 +0100 (MET)
Amman, Nov 6, 2019 (AFP) - Eight people, including four tourists, were wounded in a knife attack on Wednesday at the famed archeological site of Jerash in northern Jordan, a security spokesman told AFP. Four tourists -- three Mexicans and a Swiss woman -- were wounded, along with a Jordanian tour guide and a security officer who tried to stop the assailant, public security directorate spokesman Amer Sartawi said. The attack took place around noon (1000 GMT) at the Roman ruins of Jerash, a popular attraction 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital Amman. The health ministry confirmed that eight people had been wounded, with Sartawi saying earlier that they had "been transported to hospital for treatment". He said the assailant had been arrested but did not specify his nationality, noting that the motive was as yet unknown.
Jordanian tour guide Zouheir Zreiqat was at the scene and told AFP that the attack happened "just before midday when around 100 foreign tourists" were at the site. "A bearded man in his twenties wearing black and brandishing a knife started to stab tourists," according to Zreiqat. He said others started to shout for help and he, along with three other tour guides and three tourists managed to stop the assailant. "We chased him until we could grab him and get him on the ground," Zreiqat said. "We took the knife from him. He stayed silent, without saying a word until the police arrived and arrested him."
- Violent attacks -
It was not the first time tourist sites have been targeted by attacks in Jordan. In December 2016, in Karak, home to one of the region's biggest Crusader castles, 10 people were killed in an attack that also left 30 wounded. Seven police officers, two Jordanian civilians and a Canadian tourist were killed in the attack.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) and sparked concern over its impact on tourism, a mainstay of the Jordanian economy. Ten people were convicted of carrying out the attack, with two sentenced to death. Several violent incidents struck the country the same year, including a suicide attack in June claimed by IS that killed seven Jordanian border guards near the frontier with Syria. Amman has played a significant role in the United States-led coalition fight against IS in Syria and Iraq, both neighbouring Jordan.
- Economic troubles -
Lacking in natural resources, the country of nearly 10 million depends on tourism and the kingdom has been working to pull the key sector out of a crisis caused by regional unrest in recent years. Jordan's economy as a whole was hit hard by the combined impact of the international financial crisis, the Arab Spring uprisings that convulsed the Middle East in 2011 and the conflict in Syria.
Tourism accounts for 10 to 12 percent of gross domestic product and the government aims to double this by 2022, former tourism minister Lina Annab told AFP in an interview last year. The country boasts 21,000 archaeological and historical sites that span millennia, according to the tourism board. They include the Roman ruins of Jerash, the ancient city of Petra, the Dead Sea and Wadi al-Kharrar, or Bethany Beyond the Jordan, where some believe Jesus was baptised. Jordan welcomed seven million tourists in 2010, but arrivals plunged to around three million in each of the following two years, tourism board head Abed Al Razzaq Arabiyat said in April. Numbers have rebounded as spillover from the war in neighbouring Syria has abated, officials have said, with the government working to bring annual tourist arrivals back up to 7 million by 2020.
E coli linked to food poisoning in Jordan west of Jarash
Disease E coli Jordan - 5 months ago
Date: Mon 26 Apr 2019, 3:51 PM
Source: Roya News [edited]
<https://en.royanews.tv/news/18510/Restaurant,%20bakery%20caused%20food%20poisoning%20for%20citizens%20in%20Jerash>
The initial results of the laboratory specimens of the food poisoning cases in Raymon town, west of Jarash revealed that _E. coli_ bacteria was the cause of the poisoning. The reports indicated that the bacterium was found in samples taken from water tanks in a bakery and restaurant during inspections conducted by teams of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment and the Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).
The report said that 5 people were referred to hospital on [Sat 24 Aug 2019], where it was suspected that they have food poisoning. The Ministry of Health had then sent an investigation committee to take water samples, after it was thought that the poisoning was caused by water that people used from 2 water stations.
Water samples were also taken from houses of people who suffered poisoning, 2 restaurants and a bakery. However, the bacteria were found in one of the restaurants and the bakery.
So far, 49 cases were referred to the Comprehensive Health Center, while 22 were referred to Jarash Government Hospital, where 7 of which left the hospital.
Preliminary results of the water samples taken from the 2 stations showed that water is clear of any kind of bacteria. The restaurant and bakery were closed down.
[_E. coli_ contamination does not necessarily mean that the organism was the cause of the illnesses as the observation can just reflect human faecal contamination and other pathogens including viruses, parasites and other bacteria may be involved. - ProMED Mod.LL]
Jordan: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/91>]
Floods in Jordan kill 12 forcing locals and tourists to flee Petra
Climate Changes Jordan - 1 year ago
Amman, Nov 10, 2018 (AFP) - Flash floods killed 12 people in Jordan and forced nearly 4,000 tourists to flee the famed ancient desert city of Petra, emergency services said on Saturday. Search teams were scouring valleys near the historic hill town of Madaba for a young girl who was still missing after Friday's floods, civil defence spokesman Iyad Amru told state television.
Among those confirmed dead after torrential rains swept the south of the kingdom were six people found in the Madaba area southwest of the capital Amman. To the east, three people were killed near Dabaa on the Desert Highway, one of Jordan's three main north-south arteries, while one was killed near Maan in the south. It was not immediately clear where the other two died. Amru said two girls had gone missing in the Madaba region, later announcing that one of their bodies had been found.
Government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said authorities had found alive four Israeli tourists who had gone missing in the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan but were looking for two more. "Our embassy in Tel Aviv contacted the Israeli foreign ministry for information on the identities of the missing Israelis," Ghneimat said in statements carried by the state news agency Petra. Israel initially confirmed the report but in a later update a spokesman for the foreign ministry said that "all the Israelis in Jordan have contacted us. All of them were found".
- Tourists evacuated -
The Jordanian army deployed helicopters and all-terrain vehicles to help with search and rescue operations after floodwaters cut off the Desert Highway in both directions. A rescuer was also among the dead, the civil defence spokesman said. State television said the waters had reached as high as four metres (13 feet) in parts of the red-rock ravine city of Petra and the adjacent Wadi Musa desert.
It broadcast footage of tourists sheltering on high ground on both sides of the access road to Jordan's biggest attraction. The government spokeswoman said 3,762 tourists were evacuated. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985, Petra draws hundreds of thousands of tourists a year to its rock-hewn treasury, temples and mausoleums. Its buildings have been used as sets for several Hollywood blockbusters including "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". Wadi Rum, also a UNESCO World Heritage site, has attracted generations of tourists with its spectacular sandstone and granite rock formations. Its landscapes served as a backdrop in the filming of the Hollywood classic "Lawrence of Arabia".
The latest deaths come after October 25 flash floods in the Dead Sea region of the kingdom killed 21 people, most of them children on a school trip. Jordan's education and tourism ministers both resigned last week over failings in the government's response to those floods. The education ministry ordered schools closed nationwide on Saturday amid warnings of more heavy rains. Jordan's minister of water and irrigation, Raed Abu al-Saoud, said on Saturday that the country's 14 main dams had filled up by some 26 percent of full capacity in the past 48 hours because of the torrential rains. Jordan is a water-poor country that is 90 percent desert.
Flooding death toll in Jordan rises to 20 close to Amman
Natural Disaster Jordan - 1 year ago
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2018 11:36:00 +0200
Amman, Oct 26, 2018 (AFP) - At least 20 people, most of them school pupils, have been killed in flash floods in Jordan, the emergency services said Friday in an updated toll. A further 35 people were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, said an official from the civil defence -- Jordan's fire service -- who asked not to be named. He said rescuers were still searching for people missing in the area, a popular tourist attraction around 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Amman. "Most of the dead were schoolchildren aged 11 to 14 who were taking part in a school trip to the Dead Sea region" when their bus was swept away by floodwaters. Also among the dead were passers-by who had been picnicking in the area, he said, adding that a nearby bridge had collapsed. "Security force personnel who were taking part in the rescue operations were among the injured," he added.
The Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is surrounded by steep valleys and gullies that frequently see flash floods and landslides. Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah promised a "full inquiry" into the schoolchildren's deaths. He said the bus took a route not agreed upon by the ministry and the organiser of the trip bore full responsibility. Roads leading to the area were closed on Friday morning "to allow the continuation of search and rescue operations", the Directorate of General Security said. The Israeli military said on Thursday it was helping with the operation, sending helicopters and forces specialised in search and rescue. Jordanian television reported that King Abdullah II had cancelled a planned visit to Bahrain to monitor developments.
32 cases of Hepatitis A recorded in Mafraq Governorate of Jordan
Disease Hepatitis A Jordan - 2 years ago
Date: Tue 26 Sep 2017
Source: Jordan Times [edited]
<http://jordantimes.com/news/local/mafraq%E2%80%99s-akeider-area-records-rise-hepatitis-cases>
Following a rise in hepatitis A cases among school students in Mafraq's Akeider area, the president of the Lower House's Health Committee, Ibrahim Bani Hani, has called for more governmental attention to the area, which "has suffered negligence for so long".
The Ministry of Health has recorded 32 cases of Hepatitis A in students from the Akeider area, in Mafraq Governorate, since [22 Aug 2017]. Hepatitis A is a liver disease caused by a virus transmitted through contaminated food or water, inadequate sanitation and poor personal hygiene, the Health Ministry's spokesperson, Hatem Azrui, told The Jordan Times.
Bani Hani visited Akeider 2 months ago, along with other officials and the Lower House's Environmental Committee, to examine the impacts of the landfill in Akeider on the environment and the health of its citizens. "There is no doubt that hepatitis A has spread in the area due to a lack of hygiene in health and public facilities," he stated.
Mafraq health director at the Ministry of Health, Hani Oleimat, said that the disease is not epidemic and that the rate of [past] infection in adults amounts to over 90 percent.
Azrui said that the ministry has conducted experiments on the water sources at schools and homes and noted that no signs of the virus were found. He said that the disease is spread through sharing personal items like towels at public health facilities.
For his part, Bani Hani stressed that the area is lacking a health centre, which the ministry had promised to build, but noted that "no real measures were taken". He also said that the area suffers from other issues such as the emission of phenol gas from Akeider landfill and the increased number of stray dogs, a potential source of rabies.
Oleimat noted that since the discovery of the cases, no schools have stopped working in the area and noted that the ministry urged the school staff to direct any suspected case to the health directorate, in order to provide the infected students with a 7- to 10-day sick leave. The sickness needs no medication other than rest, Oleimat highlighted, noting that the body of the infected person naturally generates immunity against the virus. [Byline: Sawsan Tabazah]
[This is a completely preventable disease using the inactivated hepatitis A vaccine. In the developing world, it is seen primarily in children and by adulthood, almost all individuals are immune. Most infections in children are asymptomatic so a cluster of 32 cases, so far here, implies a great deal more total infections. - ProMED Mod.LL]
<http://healthmap.org/promed/p/32015>.]
Malta US Consular Information Sheet
Malta is a small, developed, democratic Mediterranean island nation, positioned as a cultural stepping-stone between Europe and North Africa.
Malta became Read More Show Less
a member of the European Union with nine other new member states on May 1, 2004, and became a full member of the Schengen area in March 2008.
Tourist facilities of all categories are widely available.
Read the Department of State Background Notes on Malta for additional information.
Malta is a party to the Schengen agreement.
As such, U.S. citizens may enter Malta for up to 90 days for tourist or business purposes without a visa.
The passport should be valid for at least three months beyond the period of stay.
For further details about travel into and within Schengen countries, please see our fact sheet.
For further information concerning entry requirements for Malta, travelers should contact the Embassy of Malta at 2017 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington DC
20008, tel.: (202) 462-3611, web site: http://www.foreign.gov.mt/default.aspx?MLEV=47&MDIS=505, or the Maltese Consulate in New York City, tel.: (212) 725-2345.
Malta remains largely free of terrorist incidents. No indigenous terrorist or extremist groups are known to be active in Malta, and no foreign terrorist organization has carried out an attack against U.S. interests in Malta in recent years.
Americans are reminded to remain vigilant with regard to their personal security and to exercise caution.
For the latest security information, Americans traveling abroad should regularly monitor the Department’s web site at http://travel.state.gov where the current Travel Warnings and Travel Alerts, including the Worldwide Caution, can be found
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the U.S. and Canada, or for callers outside the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.
Malta has a low rate of violent crime.
Theft of unattended personal property and car stereos from vehicles is a common problem.
Visitors are strongly encouraged to secure their valuables, and be aware of pickpockets and purse snatchers.
Such criminals focus on areas and establishments frequented by tourists.
Caution is particularly urged in the Paceville nightclub area, where excessive drinking and poor crowd control have led to instances of violent behavior.
Poverty, homelessness, and panhandling are almost non-existent in Malta.
All visitors to Malta should practice the same good, common sense personal security precautions that are part of everyday life in urban areas within the U.S., particularly when spending time in areas frequented by tourists.
Although the investigation and prosecution of the crime is solely the responsibility of local authorities, consular officers can help you to understand the local criminal justice process and to find an attorney if needed. The crime victim’s assistance agency is ‘APPOGG’- Support Line, tel: 179;
web site: www.appogg.gov.mt.
To learn about resources in the U.S. if you are the victim of a violent crime overseas, please also see our information on Victims of Crime.
The local equivalents to the “911” emergency line in Malta are: Police 191; Ambulance 196; Fire 199.
MEDICAL FACILITIES AND HEALTH INFORMATION: Medical care is available through public and private hospitals.
The quality of medical care in Malta is excellent.
Private hospitals generally offer a higher standard of service than the public hospitals, and the majority of the best doctors practice in private medical facilities.
Further health information for travelers is available at http://www.who.int/ith/en
The U.S. Department of State is unaware of any HIV/AIDS entry restrictions for visitors to or foreign residents of Malta.
The information below concerning Malta is provided for general reference only, and may not be totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Traffic in Malta flows on the left, requiring attentiveness and caution from visitors from right-hand drive countries such as the United States.
In addition, drivers may be erratic or undisciplined. Roads flood easily, and are often narrow, winding, and congested, with poor visibility around curves.
Traffic arteries are prone to bottlenecks and accidents.
Buses are the primary means of public transportation.
Though the bus fleet is being modernized, most buses are old, cramped, and not air-conditioned.
Taxis are safe but expensive and are not metered; it is a good practice to agree with the driver in advance on the charge.
There is a Malta Tourist Information Office located at Freedom Square Valletta, tel. 21-237-747, web site: http://www.visitmalta.com/getting-around
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of Malta’s Civil Aviation Authority as being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for oversight of Malta’s air carrier operations.
For more information, travelers may visit the FAA’s web site at http://www.faa.gov/safety/programs_initiatives/oversight/iasa
Malta customs authorities may enforce strict regulations concerning currency restrictions and temporary importation into or export from Malta of items such as firearms, antiquities, and any item that might be deemed to have resalable value.
It is advisable to contact the Embassy of Malta in Washington or the Consulate of Malta in New York City for specific information regarding customs requirements.
Malta’s customs authorities encourage the use of an ATA (Admission Temporaire/Temporary Admission) Carnet for the temporary admission of professional equipment, commercial samples, and/or goods for exhibitions and fair purposes.
ATA Carnet Headquarters located at U.S. Council for International Business, 1212 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036, issues and guarantees the ATA Carnet in the United States.
For additional information call (212) 354-4480, send an e-mail to atacarnet@uscib.org or visit http://uscib.org for details.
For more information, please see our Customs Information.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES: While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country's laws and regulations, which sometimes differ significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law.
Persons violating Malta’s laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned.
Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Malta are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines.
Engaging in illicit sexual conduct with children or using or disseminating child pornography in a foreign country is a crime prosecutable in the United States. Please see our information on Criminal Penalties.
Americans living or traveling in Malta are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration web site and to obtain updated information on travel and security within Malta.
The U.S. Embassy is on the third floor of the Development House, St. Anne Street, Floriana, Valletta, telephone (356) 2561-4000.
The Consular Section’s telephone number is (356) 2156-4115, fax: (356) 2124-3229, web site: http://malta.usembassy.gov/uscit_intro.html.
The Consular Section is open to the public Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
This replaces the Country Specific Information for Malta dated April 29, 2008, to update sections on Safety and Security and Exit and Entry Requirements.
Concern in Malta as Measles cases well above expected levels
Disease Measles Malta - 5 months ago
Date: Fri 16 Aug 2019
Source: Times of Malta [abridged, edited]
<https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/30-measles-cases-in-malta-in-first-six-months-of-the-year.728999>
The number of measles cases in Malta has soared to an unprecedented level this year [2019], with 30 cases reported in the 1st 6 months, according to the World Health Organisation.
Data recently published by the health body showed that the figures until June 2019 are in stark contrast to those for the previous years. According to the WHO data, between 2011 and 2018, there were only 11 cases reported. There were no cases reported in a number of these years, and, between 2012 and 2017, there were only 2 cases reported, one in 2013 and another 2 years later.
Earlier this year [2019], the WHO had flagged the issue [slipping vaccine rates] with a rapid increase in measles cases on a global level. At the time, preliminary figures had shown that measles cases rose 300% worldwide through the 1st 3 months of 2019 when compared to the same period last year [2018].
According to the Superintendent of Public Health, Charmaine Gauci, after a number of years with no cases of the disease, in 2018, there were 5 imported cases and one local transmission.
Most of the cases occurred in adults who were not vaccinated. "This year [2019], we have already seen over 15 locally acquired cases. Most of the cases occurred in adults who were not vaccinated," Dr Gauci said when the preliminary figures came out.
In its report on this year's [2019] data, the WHO noted a "dramatic resurgence of measles compared to previous years" in the European region, with 49 of the 53 countries in the region together having reported over 160 000 measles cases and over 100 measles-related deaths by the end of May 2019.
"High national-level coverage can mask pockets of low coverage at the local level, resulting in an accumulation of susceptible individuals that often goes unrecognised until outbreaks occur. An enhanced response is needed to protect all populations in the region from this dangerous disease," WHO said. It has set the ambitious goal of achieving measles and rubella elimination in at least 5 of its regions by 2020. [Byline: Claire Caruana]
Cases of Salmonella infection in Malta causing concern
Disease Salmonella Malta - 1 year ago
Date: Sun 29 Jul 2018 17:28 CEST
Source: Times of Malta [summ., edited]
<https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180729/local/salmonella-cases-highest-in-four-years.685537>
The number of salmonellosis cases reported to the health authorities so far in July 2018 has surpassed that in previous years, peaking at 20 cases in July alone.
Figures supplied to The Sunday Times of Malta by the health authorities showed that so far this month [July 2018], 20 cases of the food poisoning infection have been reported, up from 11 in 2017. Since the beginning of 2018, 67 cases have been brought to the authorities' attention.
Salmonellosis is a type of foodborne illness caused by bacteria and is often more common in summer. The infection is contracted when food contaminated with the bacteria is consumed, with young children, older adults, and those with impaired immune systems being more susceptible to severe infection. Symptoms include diarrhoea, fever, and abdominal cramps and usually develop 12 to 72 hours after the infection is contracted. It usually lasts 4 to 7 days.
Just this week, the health authorities confirmed _Salmonella_ had been found in eggs from St Joseph Farm [Southern region] during sampling by the veterinary authorities as part of the Veterinary National Control programme for _Salmonella_. Eggs packed by this farm have since been recalled, with the public being advised not to consume them. The Superintendent of Public Health warned that food that has been listed as recalled should not be consumed, while the general handling of eggs should also be done with caution.
Eggs, she said, should always be cooked until both the yolk and the white are firm, while egg dishes should be cooked to an internal temperature of 71 deg C [160 deg F] or hotter. The eggs used in sauces or any other items that contain raw or lightly-cooked eggs should be pasteurized, Dr Gauci said. Hands, and any implements that come in direct contact with raw eggs, should always be thoroughly washed. [Byline: Claire Caruana]
[While undercooked eggs are a common source for human salmonellosis, it is not unclear if the finding of contaminated eggs on Malta is related to the upswing of human cases. No information is given regarding the human and egg isolates to assess if they are related. - ProMED Mod. LL]
[HealthMap/ProMED-mail map of Il-Hamrun, Malta:
Austrian tourist returns home from Malta suffering with Leishmaniasis
Disease Leishmaniasis Malta - 2 years ago
Date: Mon 13 Mar 2018
From: Christian Lenart <christian@lenart.at> [edited]
We report a case of _Leishmania donovani_/_L. infantum_ in a 56-year-old man from Austria. He travelled to Malta in June 2017 and complained about itchy, partly exulcerated papules in November 2017. His wife too was suffering from the same lesions but did not consult a dermatologist, since the lesions regressed spontaneously.
The patient first contacted a dermatologist, who performed an excision showing _Leishmania_ negative granulomatous inflammation as a histological result. He was then referred to the dermatological ward of the municipal hospital. The lesions were up to 2 cm [0.8 in] in size, disseminated on all extremities.
Another excision was performed, showing plenty of amastigotes affected macrophages. He then was checked for signs of visceral manifestation, but showed no hepatosplenomegaly. The blood sample showed no conspicuity with normal haematological results and normal CRP [C-reactive protein]. The PCR test for _Leishmania_ sp. DNA was positive.
The Western blot (IgG) was positive as well, whilst immunoaffinity chromatography was negative. Skin biopsy genotyping proved a diagnosis of _Leishmania infantum_/_L.donovani_. Since the patient had multiple lesions treatment with miltefosine was initiated.
Leishmania in Malta
While especially leishmaniasis was quite common in the early 20th century in Malta, there were hardly any cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis at the end of the century. For the last years the incidence has been stable with about 3 to 4 cases of visceral leishmaniasis, VL, per year (1). In 2012, 3 VL and no CL cases were reported (2). All cases of leishmaniasis are caused by _L. infantum_ in Malta, transmitted from dogs to humans by _Phlebotomus perniciosus_. The 2 identified zymodemes in Malta are MON 1, causing visceral and MON 78, causing cutaneous leishmaniasis (3).
1. Alvar J, Vélez ID, Bern C, et al and the WHO Leishmaniasis Control Team. Leishmaniasis worldwide and global estimates of its incidence. PLoS One. 2012; 7(5): e35671. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035671; available at <http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035671>.
2. Government of Malta, Ministry for Health, the Elderly and Community Care: Annual report 2012; p. 46; available at <https://www.gov.mt/en/Government/Publications/Documents/Annual%20Reports/MHEC.pdf>.
3. Pace D, Williams TN, Grochowska A, et al. Manifestations of paediatric _Leishmania infantum_ infections in Malta. Travel Med Infect Dis. 2011; 9(1):37-46. doi: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2010.11.005; available at <http://www.travelmedicinejournal.com/article/S1477-8939(10)00196-1/fulltext>.
Dr Christian Lenart
Krankenhaus Hietzing (Municipal Hospital Vienna-Hietzing)
christian@lenart.at
[Leishmaniasis is endemic in Malta and cases imported from Malta to other countries are not unusual. _Leishmania infantum_ usually results in visceral leishmaniasis and the genotyping in this case could not distinguish between _L. donovani_/_L. infantum_. Miltefosine is the drug of choice for cutaneous leishmaniasis. - ProMED Mod.EP]
[HealthMap/ProMED-mail maps: Austria: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/63886> Malta: <http://healthmap.org/promed/p/77>]
Fire strands hundreds at Malta airport
Transport Malta - 2 years ago
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2018 18:18:07 +0100
Valletta, Feb 20, 2018 (AFP) - Malta International Airport was brought to a standstill on Tuesday by a fire that left flights suspended and hundreds of passengers stranded. Passengers were evacuated from the airport as smoke billowed through the arrivals and departure lounges, an AFP reporter at the scene said. Firefighters worked for two hours to put out the small blaze, which began at around 1:15 pm and caused no injuries.
Airport operators said 10 outbound international flights were delayed. They added later in an online statement that operations at the terminal were resuming. The airport said the blaze broke out in the pump room for the airport's small aquarium, located in the arrivals concourse. "Terminal operations are now resuming, and Malta International Airport's recovery plan has been activated," it said in a statement in the late afternoon.
Hundreds of passengers were left standing outside the airport and some even on the apron. One flight to nearby Catania in Sicily was expected to take off 11 hours later than scheduled, according to the departures timetable. Flights to Stockholm, Cyprus, Krakow, London Gatwick and Dublin were also delayed. Flights from British airports Heathrow and Gatwick were diverted to Catania.
Concern in Malta after recent death of a baby from Meningitis
Disease Meningococcal Meningitis Malta - 3 years ago
Date: Fri 24 Feb 2017
Source: Times of Malta [edited]
<http://www.com/articles/view/20170224/local/meningitis-b-vaccine-shortage-likely-to-persist.640542>
The meningitis B vaccine shortage [is] likely to persist. Malta will have to wait its turn, manufacturers say. Global demand for the vaccine outstrips supply, manufacturers say.
A one-year-old baby died of [meningococcal] meningitis [serogroup] B, a disease against which vaccines are currently unavailable, this newspaper is informed. Sources said the baby died last month [January 2017] after contracting the disease that affects the lining around the brain and spinal cord. The Central Procurement and Supplies Unit (CPSU) was informed that the local agent for the meningitis B vaccine had a stock of vaccines available in a number of local pharmacies, a Health Ministry spokeswoman said.
The representatives of international pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Malta were in liaison with their suppliers to hasten further delivery, and the CPSU was in liaison with both companies to monitor the situation, the spokeswoman added.
The ministry was also asked about the baby's death, but no reference was made to it in its reply late yesterday [23 Feb 2017] evening.
The government does not supply the vaccine against the specific strain that affected the infant, which can, however, be purchased from private hospitals and pharmacies. Paediatricians said private hospitals had purchased the vaccine from pharmacies abroad, but these too had since run out.
According to one paediatrician, the unavailability of such a vaccine in light of the baby's death was very worrying, particularly to parents. Another paediatrician, however, warned against the matter getting out of hand, saying the issue was not as worrying as parents were making it out to be. Babies who were not vaccinated were not in any immediate danger, he said.
A spokeswoman for the local representative of GSK confirmed that the vaccine was not available and it would not be for some time. She said no fixed date had yet been given as to when a supply would be made available to the local market. According to the spokeswoman, the vaccine was in high demand all over the world, and as GSK [GlaxoSmithKline] had agreements with a number of governments abroad, supplies would be shipped to these countries 1st. At present, demand exceeded the quantity manufactured.
"It's important to understand that, in these cases, we need to stock enough for boosters, so before sufficient doses are available, this will not be made available," the GSK spokeswoman said.
According to the Maltese Paediatric Association, about 10 cases of meningitis have been reported among children. The signs of meningitis are fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, vomiting, dislike of bright light and drowsiness. Infants and younger children may not always show such symptoms but, instead, feed poorly or become very lethargic. [Byline: Claire Caruana]
[Although there are at least 13 _ Neisseria meningitidis_ serogroups, based on the antigenic specificity of their capsular polysaccharides, disease due to serogroups A, B, C, Y, and W is most common. Meningococcal vaccines contain capsular polysaccharide for _Neisseria meningitidis_ serogroups A, C, Y, and W, either alone or conjugated to protein. The conjugate capsular polysaccharide vaccines are preferable, because, unlike the polysaccharide vaccines, conjugate vaccines immunize infants, reduce the carriage of meningococci in the throat and thus its transmission, as well as confer a more sustained immune response, and, therefore, longer-term protection than the polysaccharide vaccines.
Serogroup B vaccines are based upon meningococcal B outer membrane vesicle protein antigens, because group B polysaccharide is poorly immunogenic in humans and is a potential auto-antigen. At least 2 serogroup B meningococcal vaccines -- Bexsero (GlaxoSmithKline, GSK) and Trumenba (Pfizer) -- are available.
Meningococcal disease often occurs without warning and frequently progresses rapidly to death, even when it is treated appropriately. In addition, about 10-20 percent of survivors of meningococcal disease will suffer disabilities such as hearing loss, brain damage, and amputations. Vaccines are used to prevent meningococcal disease, not treat someone already ill from the disease. Immunity following use of a meningococcal vaccine is specific for the type of capsular polysaccharide the vaccine contains regarding the A, C, Y, and W polysaccharide or conjugate vaccines or the surface proteins regarding serogroup B vaccines, with no cross-protection against infection due to other meningococcal groups.
Vaccines are frequently used to prevent spread of meningococcal disease in the face of an institutional or community outbreak (<https://www.cdc.gov/meningococcal/downloads/interim-guidance.pdf>). Antibiotics are also used to prevent spread of meningococcal disease in persons who are at high risk because they have been in close contact (coughing or kissing) or lengthy contact, especially among people living in the same household.
According to the 2017 Malta National Immunization Schedule, meningococcal vaccines are not included in the series of vaccines for infants and children (<https://health.gov.mt/en/phc/pchyhi/Pages/National-Immunisation-Schedule.aspx>). In the U.S., vaccination against meningococcal disease due to serogroups A, C, Y, and W is only recommended for children aged 2 months through 10 years who are at increased risk for meningococcal disease, i.e., have complement component deficiencies, have functional or anatomic asplenia (including sickle cell disease), are in the risk group for an outbreak for which vaccination is recommended, or are traveling to or residing in regions where meningitis is epidemic or hyper-endemic (for specifics, see Table at <https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6324a2.htm#Tab>). The serogroup B vaccines Bexsero and Trumenba have been licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only for individuals aged 10 through 25 years. However, the European Medicines Agency has approved Bexsero for use in individuals of 2 months of age and older, and Bexsero has been added to the routine childhood immunization schedule in the UK and Ireland (<http://www.meningitis.org/menb-vaccine>).
Malta, a member of the EU, is a southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, 80 km (50 miles) south of Italy, with a population of just under 450,000 residents (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta>). - ProMED Mod.ML]
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Housing Finance Authority backs $20.8M Haciendas Village complex
FeaturedGovernment
April 17, 201901272
From left: Luis Burdiel and Carlos García.
The Puerto Rico Housing Finance Authority announced its support of the Haciendas Village social-interest housing complex in Caguas, to be developed at a cost of $20.8 million.
The 91-unit planned community will be located in the Tomás de Castro sector of the town and will be the first to be built with solar panels to generate enough energy for the entire project, said Carlos García, president of CCAM Developers LLC.
The Haciendas Village project will take 24 months to complete Haciendas Village is also the first project on the island to get approval from its design phase to participate in the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s net metering program, Luis Burdiel, head the Housing Finance Authority, said.
“We continue using the funding and tax credits tools available to encourage the development of new projects to increase the availability of housing for low-income residents,” he said.
The Housing Finance Authority granted $17.2 million in tax credits to the project, as well as $3.3 million in HOME Program funds. Similarly, the developer obtained short-term financing for the project from the agency.
The social-interest units will do not offer subsidized rent. Each residence will feature three bedrooms and will be equipped with appliances such as an electric stove, refrigerator, and water heater. They will also be outfitted with smoke detectors. The complex will have 112 parking spaces.
Related tags : CaguasHaciendas VillageHousing Finance Authority
UPR, Inter American Univ. ranked as ‘most affordable’ Hispanic-serving colleges
Vaquería Tres Monjitas invests $7.5M to produce world’s 1st long-lasting fresh milk
Hey Buddy!, I found this information for you: "Housing Finance Authority backs .8M Haciendas Village complex". Here is the website link: https://newsismybusiness.com/housing-finance-authority-backs-20-8m-haciendas-village-complex/. Thank you.
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Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Baptist Health South Florida Announce Partnership
MIAMI/BOCA RATON, Fla. – July 1, 2019 – Today, Baptist Health South Florida announced the completion of its partnership with Boca Raton Regional Hospital. With this, Boca Raton Regional Hospital is now operating as part of Baptist Health South Florida.
The new partnership ensures both not-for-profit organizations will continue to meet their mutual missions and commitments to elevate healthcare within the communities they serve in an area that reaches across four South Florida counties.
“Our organizations share the same calling to improve the health and well-being of individuals and to deliver compassionate healthcare to our patients at the highest standards of excellence and safety. We foresee an exciting future at Boca Raton Regional Hospital that will cement its title as the preeminent healthcare provider in the community,” said Brian E. Keeley, president and CEO of Baptist Health.
In May, Boca Raton Regional Hospital announced the appointment of Lincoln S. Mendez as its new chief executive officer to succeed Jerry Fedele when he retires in August. Mendez formerly was CEO at Baptist Health’s South Miami Hospital in Miami-Dade County.
“Today’s announcement concludes a process that will elevate our position as an advanced, tertiary academic center,” said Christine E. Lynn, Board Chair at Boca Raton Regional Hospital. “I thank everyone who participated in this process, both at Boca Regional and Baptist Health, for this exciting outcome.”
In 2017, Baptist Health merged with Bethesda Hospital East and Bethesda Hospital West in Boynton Beach. With the addition of Boca Raton Regional Hospital, it brings the number of Baptist Health hospitals to 11.
Baptist Health is the largest healthcare organization in the region situated across four counties, with nearly 23,000 employees, more than 4,000 physicians and operates more than 100 outpatient centers, urgent care facilities and physician practices. In addition, Baptist Health has centers of excellence in cancer, cardiovascular care, orthopedics and sports medicine, and neurosciences.
In December, Baptist Health and Boca Raton Regional Hospital announced they had signed a letter of intent to form a partnership. Boca Raton Regional Hospital first announced its intent to seek a strategic partner in 2017. Boca Regional narrowed its list of suitors, including some of the nation’s foremost healthcare systems, to five in the spring of 2018 and selected Baptist Health as its preferred partner.
“Establishing our partnership with Baptist Health represents an important milestone in the history of Boca Regional,” said Jerry Fedele, president and CEO of Boca Raton Regional Hospital. “It is one that continues the positive momentum and trajectory of Boca Regional as the premier healthcare provider in South Florida.”
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About Boca Raton Regional Hospital – Advancing the boundaries of medicine
Boca Raton Regional Hospital is an advanced, tertiary medical center (BRRH.com) with 400 beds, 2,800 employees and more than 800 primary and specialty physicians on staff. The Hospital is a recognized leader in Oncology, Cardiovascular Disease and Surgery, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Orthopedics, Women’s Health, Emergency Medicine and the Neurosciences, all of which offer state-of-the-art diagnostic and imaging capabilities. The Hospital is a designated Comprehensive Stroke Center by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). BRRH is recognized in U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 – 2019 Best Hospitals listing as a Top Ranked Regional Hospital, for the fourth consecutive year, and the highest ranked hospital in Palm Beach County.
About Baptist Health South Florida
Baptist Health South Florida is the largest healthcare organization in the region, with 11 hospitals, nearly 23,000 employees, more than 4,000 physicians and more than 100 outpatient centers, urgent care facilities and physician practices spanning across Miami-Dade, Monroe, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Baptist Health has internationally renowned centers of excellence in cancer, cardiovascular care, orthopedics and sports medicine, and neurosciences. In addition, it includes Baptist Health Medical Group; Baptist Health Quality Network; and Baptist Health Care On Demand, a virtual health platform. A not-for-profit organization supported by philanthropy and committed to our faith-based charitable mission of medical excellence, Baptist Health has been recognized by Fortune as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in America and by Ethisphere as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies. For more information, visit BaptistHealth.net/Newsroom and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Permits Filed for 744 Lafayette Avenue, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
6:30 am on June 7, 2018 By Andrew Nelson
Permits have been filed for a four-story residential building at 744 Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The neighborhood has had a parade of new permits this year, with this being the 20th covered by YIMBY in 2018. Shai Birenzweig is listed as behind the applications.
Permits Filed for 952 Bushwick Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
6:30 am on April 16, 2018 By Andrew Nelson
Permits have been filed for a six-story residential building at 952 Bushwick Avenue, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The site is six blocks away from the Gates Avenue subway station, serviced by the J, M, and Z trains. Jacob Scherman of Home Land Property group is listed as responsible for the development.
Permits Filed for 499 & 503 Evergreen Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
6:30 am on February 19, 2018 By Jordan Beeche
Two sets of permits have been filed for 499 and 503 Evergreen Avenue, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Both projects are under development by Urban View Realty.
Permits Filed for 1084 Decatur Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn
6:00 am on February 2, 2018 By Andrew Nelson
Permits have been filed for a four-story residential building at 1084 Decatur Street, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The site is four blocks away from the Chauncey Street Subway Station, serviced by the J, M, and Z trains, and one stop away from the central Broadway Junction Subway Stations, serviced by the A, C, and L trains. An Anonymous LLC will be responsible for the development.
Permits Filed: 301 Covert Street, Bushwick
7:00 am on February 5, 2016 By Rebecca Baird-Remba
A cluster of cemeteries at the eastern edge of Bushwick has marked the border of gentrified Brooklyn for years, but development in the area is starting to push that border closer to East New York. A developer based in South Williamsburg has submitted plans for a five-story building at 301 Covert Street, mid-block between Irving and Knickerbocker avenues.
Permits Filed: 1219 Putnam Avenue, Bushwick
6:30 am on January 12, 2016 By Rebecca Baird-Remba
Eastern Bushwick is flush with construction sites and dramatic gut renovations, and yesterday YIMBY spotted building applications for yet another new residential development at 1219 Putnam Avenue, between Evergreen and Central Avenues.
Permits Filed: 32 Residential Units Coming To 26 East 19th Street, 730 East 32nd Street, Flatbush
7:00 am on November 5, 2015 By Evan Bindelglass
Permits have been filed to build two new residential buildings in Flatbush, Brooklyn. They are at 26 East 19th Street and 730 East 32nd Street.
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Progressive culture since 1954
Our prizes
copyrights and wrongs
By Jeff Sparrow
16.Jun.09
Lynne Spender’s essay on Google books and copyright in the latest Meanjin spurred one of the more feisty sessions at the Sydney Writers Festival, with the attendees divided between those who passionately agreed and those who vehemently opposed.. ABC Radio’s Book Show staged a return bout, with Lynne debating author Morris Gleitzman. The whole thing is worth reading but here’s a couple of snippets.
Lynne Spender: Well, I think the principle of copyright and of creators having some sort of protection of their work is just as valid as it ever was, but copyright was a system that was based on print and on fixed physical products of books. We now have literary creativity in a whole lot of areas that aren’t in fixed form anymore, they are digital, and I think that we need to rethink copyright in order to cope with these exciting new digital opportunities for knowledge, information and creativity. [snip]
Morris Gleitzman: I am, I’m hugely optimistic about all these wonderful new opportunities. I think what the internet, as Lynne says, offers us all is fantastic new possibilities to share the products of creative endeavour as well as ideas and information in all sorts of wonderful ways. But because the internet provides such wonderful opportunities for sharing, what I’m sensing in the commentary of some of the people who want to rebuild concepts of copyright is that copyright is underlying lots of these ideas. I think it’s a notion that isn’t related only to print, it’s that we should be able to own and derive income from our labours is a really basic sort of principle that is part of a tradition of social justice in human society that really transcends the whole world of communication. We are of course free as a society to reinvent ourselves and to say that yes, we will share everything. But at the moment I sense possibly an ideologically driven inclination in a lot of this commentary which says that sharing should maybe now be compulsory because it is so possible. This is selectively applied only to the products of creative and intellectual endeavour. I quite like the idea of sharing everything in our lives but let’s do it across the board, not just single out the people who are going to supply content for this new digital age.
[Update: the Meanjin kids have now made Lynne Spender’s essay available on the intertubes]
Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places.
If you like this piece, or support Overland ’s work in general, please subscribe or donate.
Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland.
More by Jeff Sparrow
From Mike_Beggs on 16 June 2009 at 11.12 am
Easy digital reproducability is an accomplished fact, whatever you think of it. The question so far as the artist/writer/whatever's livelihood is concerned is whether to push for police action, which is doomed to be arbitrarily punitive and ineffective, or to push for some alternative way to support the creator of reproducible works.
As for who's making a living off whose creativity: everyone's dependent on other people's creative labour. Even artists eat, live in houses, wear clothes, travel in trains, and so on. The issue here is a breakdown in how capitalism manages that interdependence so far as artists etc. are concerned. And anyway, as Jeff pointed out, the vast majority of them have never got that great a deal from their "fundamental right to ownership and control of the work".
From A loyal commentor on 17 June 2009 at 9.49 am
Carpenters own their work, train drivers own theirs, that's why they get paid for it which is why they can eat and feed their families. Why should writers be any different. The fact that they have had trouble making a decent deal for it in the past is no reason to give it away for nothing. That article ends, "But if we want to move more quickly to prevent literary property…from being locked into private ownership for extended periods of time, we need to change the law." Why should we want to stop private ownership of literary works? And not private ownership of your car or your house?
-1 on the intense debate meter and getting lower.
From Jeff on 17 June 2009 at 10.32 am
Re: A loyal commentor commented on copyrights and wrongs Most carpenters today don't own their work. Certainly, train drivers don't. You're working with a model of society based on small commodity production, something that hasn't existed since the middle ages. It's purely ideological — a fantasy of writers as solitary craftsmen working in ye olde village or something. Actually, professional writers are small cogs in a big industry — and that's why the fact that most of them have trouble 'making a decent deal' is not some minor point but is central to the argument.
As Lynne Spender's essay points out, copyright isn't some eternal law but a relatively recent invention. It's one model as to how these matters might be governed. It's not the only one — and I can't see why it's not possible to come up with a way of mediating such issues that makes use of the possibilities of new technologies rather than trying to shut them down.
You ask: 'Why should we want to stop private ownership of literary works?'
In another reply I gave the example of TS Eliot's poetry. I actually had to remove a quote from Eliot from a book I published because his heirs are notoriously tetchy about their copyright. To me, that's kinda obscene, actually. Do you really want great literary works locked up like that?
You ask: 'and not private ownership of your car or your house?'
Um…if you're arguing for existing copyright on the basis on an analogy with what private car ownership has done to the roads (or the environment), well, I rest my case. I'm for public transport and I'm for public housing for similar reasons as to why I'm for changing the copyright law. The privatisation of such basic services benefits the wealthy and the privileged. It's the same with information.
From Paul Squires on 17 June 2009 at 9.13 pm
Well I certainly look forward to this 'new model' that the people who have been twittering on about this for the last five years keep talking about but never actually come up with. As soon as you figure out a way to have professional creative writers in an environment in which they don't own the fruits of their labour so that they have something to sell, get back to me.
From Sophiec on 16 June 2009 at 1.19 am
Lynne's essay will be up on line tomorrow also.
From Paul on 16 June 2009 at 2.57 am
"It does leave me wondering just how thoroughly one needs to think things through to hold down a tenured academic position." Yayaya, go Morris! Does this remind you of one of my first comments here, Jeff, when this issue was first raised in your blog? Let me go dig out my podcast, "Submission to Overland".
From Jeff on 16 June 2009 at 3.13 am
It does indeed, Paul – and that’s why I think your position is so strange. Morris Gleitzman is one of Australia’s most successful writers. The copyright on his books is worth something. Most writers, however, don’t make very much from their work under current arrangements. That’s one reason why I’m interested in alternatives to the current model of copyright, which works much better if you are a big-selling author or a very successful publisher than if you are an emerging author publishing with a tiny press.
I can see why the bigger publishers defend the current situation. Don’t understand at all why you do.
I don't see why Morris' success has any impact of the efficacy of his argument nor how the size of his income can reduce the accuracy of his observations.
Then you are missing the point.
The Cory Doctorow argument on this – which I think is largely convincing – is that the biggest problem most writers have is not that someone else uses their work without attribution but that the world ignores them. If you are struggling to get a readership but someone puts a PDF of yours on Pirate Bay, well, you are better off, not worse off, since people are now at least reading you. If, on the other hand, you are already widely-published and well-read, the situation is quite different, since you’ll be losing royalties that otherwise you would have earned.
That’s why the debate is not as simple as you think it is.
From Kalinda on 16 June 2009 at 4.33 am
It's quite curious how unreflexively many authors defend copyright when in other contexts – say, the music industry – there's an acknowedgement that copyright largely serves the big record labels rather than the artists. Of course things are a little different in the literary world but I think this issue brings out the contradictions in artists as producers – on the one hand, there's a sense of pushing against the tide for a notion of value that goes beyond the profit-margins of the market, of collectivity and sometimes a sympathy with mass action and struggle, on the other, the whole 'business' of being a writer – the ABNs, the invoices, the fiddly tax returns – continue to emphasise an identity as an independent contractor who has to look after their own individual interests. But I *do* think that a radical reinterpretation of copyright (which I'd be keen on) would require massive changes to a whole range of other things as well…
There is no reason why current copyright laws would stop that from happening. If there was an advantage in being on Pirate Bay I would be happy to have my work on it. I would put it on there myself or I would thank the person who did. I would give my consent and the copyright law would no longer be in effect. The current laws don't stop copying with consent.
But of course most of the time the getting and giving of permission is not so simple, is it? How would someone know how to contact you? What if you were dead? Anyone who wanted to share the work would have to track down your estate. Most people are not going to do that — and so, unless they break the law, they don't share the work.
Even if you think the existing alternatives to copyright are problematic, do you really want to defend the status quo? At present, anyone who wants to quote a couple of lines from TS Eliot needs to jump through a million hoops getting permission from the person who controls his rights. How is that a good thing?
In any case, the internet makes violation of copyright almost inevitable. Most bloggers casually use slabs of material without authorisation. Should they be prosecuted?
The fact that consent can be difficult to get is hardly a reason to do away with it. All of the push for this is coming from academics (and a few others) who don't have to rely on their creativity for a living, who in fact make a living off of the creativity of others. You are never going to be able to construct a coherent argument that it is in the artist's advantage to give away their fundamental right to ownership and control of the work. And that is what this is about.
From Mike_Beggs on 16 June 2009 at 6.18 am
There is an interesting difference between academic and non-academic writers (and it's not the one Gleitzman implies): academic salaries are not really related to book sales. The (very high) pricing of their books is based on the fact that libraries are the market. The professional motivation to publish books relates to influence/citations rather than sales. Consequently, academics generally aren't much fussed about piracy of their works, and are often the source of the pdfs that turn up on the web. (Another contributing factor is the ease of access to scanners in postgrad centres.)____The academic model might actually point a way forward for publishing in general in a world where the commodity form fails to allocate resources to reproduce the labour involved in production (writing, editing, typesetting).
Re. Academic publishing, my understanding is that fewer publishing houses are doing it, because it is so uncommercial, and are consequently turning to digital libraries, ebooks etc, to allow them to continue to make work available. They are really on the cutting edge of many of the problems print publishing is facing. So, in that sense I am not sure academic publishers are a useful model – well, the pricing of their print product isn't useful, anyway.
A copyright issue that seems to be coming up at the moment is that cafes are being expected to pay ever increasing amounts for the right to play music. I"m going to get the figures wrong but it use to be something modest, like a couple of hundred bucks, but now record companies are attempting to demand thousands. I assume this is so absurd, that, with the exception of big chain cafes, people will simply ignore them and hope they don't get caught – or not play the music owned by that music company. I've been looking for a link that elaborates on this – when I find one I'll post it.
Yeah, I didn't mean academic publishing companies, they're getting pushed out of the loop and that's a good thing. I mean the separation of pay to the author from book sales. Of course there's no way for non-academic writers/artists/musicians/editors/designers etc. to replicate that on their own – there would have to be some socialised way of paying the workers – as discussed in the thread last time this came up.
From BradFrederiksen on 16 June 2009 at 2.12 pm
It is quite right to argue against the apparent position "that sharing should maybe now be compulsory because it is so possible", though that position should not be attributed to Lynne Spender. The copyright laws are designed for those people who wish to protect their creative work from plagiarism, not to encourage open access. There is an open access movement doing that, and I have to admit that I lean toward that particular ethic. That is my choice and I choose it from a position in which I don't expect to earn any proceeeds from my writing. One day I am going to write something worth protecting (for financial or personal reasons) and I sure as hell will be disappointed if the copyright laws have been subsumed into a free for all open access Google matrix. Lynne Spender and Morris Gleitzman both agree that "the principle of copyright and of creators having some sort of protection of their work is just as valid as it ever was". Since it is Lynne Spender's argument that copyright laws shoud be re-thought to incorporate the challenges of the digital age, it is Lynne Spender's argument that must demonstrate precisely how that will be achieved whilst retaining the legal protections that have been afforded to the old 'print' school. Until then, it is not unreasonable for the likes of Google to face legal challenges, since it is those legal challenges that represent the search for a model on the Gleitzman side of the debate.
From Jeff on 16 June 2009 at 9.27 pm
Re: BradFrederiksen commented on copyrights and wrongs
I think that’s fair enough. Obviously artistic creators should have some protection as to what happens to their work, for aesthetic as much as financial reasons. But as Brad suggests, that protection needn’t — and IMO shouldn’t — take the form of traditional copyright.
My memory of Spender’s article is she argued that the Google digitalisation project was only going to make one or two lines from each work available to searchers, sufficient that they could see whether a book contained a passage they wanted. If that’s true, then they publishers’ objection to it seems utterly counterproductive, since nothing could be more likely to encourage people to buy the book.
To me, that’s a really important point that often gets completely turned on its head: the spreading of information is good for artists; the hoarding of information is bad for them. OK, that doesn’t end the debate. But it seems really strange for writers, whose occupation is based on communication, to bearguing so vigorously for ways to prevent communication taking place.
I don't think Spender is saying there should be no copyright. She is talking about the extent of it – how broad it's reach should be and over how many years. As a novelist who got charged 300 pounds for using one line from Kerouac's On The Road
. . . (oops) I would say that the issue isn't just the rights of living author's and their right to an income, it's to do with dead authors and the rights of their estates.
From Sophiec on 21 June 2009 at 11.08 pm
Kids?
From Jeff on 21 June 2009 at 11.17 pm
It’s about attitude, not chronology.
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Debate on the \'Situation in Afghanistan\' - by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative, on December 17, 2013
Debate on Security Council Working Methods - by Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Member of Parliament & Member of the Indian Delegation, on October 29, 2013
Debate on \'The Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question\' - by Mrs. Preneet Kaur, Minister of State for External Affairs, on October 22, 2013
Debate on \'Women and Peace and Security\' by Mr. M. Krishnasswamy, Member of Parliament & Member of Indian Delegation, on October 18, 2013
Debate on \'UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan\' by Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, Deputy Permanent Representative, on September 19, 2013
\'Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict\' - by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative, on August 19, 2013
Open Debate on \"Cooperation between the United Nations and regional and sub-regional organizations in maintaining international peace and security\" by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative, on August 06, 2013
Open Debate on \'Situation in the Middle East, including Palestinian Question\' by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative, on July 23, 2013
Open Debate on Protection of Civilians: Protection of Journalists in Conflict Situations - by Amb. Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative on July 17, 2013
Debate on \"Sexual Violence in Conflict\" under Agenda Item on \"Women and Peace and Security\" - by Amb. Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative on June 24, 2013
Debate on UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan - by Amb. M.S. Puri, Deputy Permanent Representative on June 20, 2013
Debate on \"Maintenance of international peace and security: conflict prevention and natural resources\" - by Amb. M.S. Puri, Deputy Permanent Representative on June 19, 2013
Debate on Agenda Item \"Children and Armed Conflict\" - by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative on June 17, 2013
The Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question - by Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji, Permanent Representative, on April 24, 2013
Debate on Women & Peace and Security - by Mr. Amit Kumar, Counsellor, on April 17, 2013
The Situation in Afghanistan - by Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, Acting Permanent Representative, on March 19, 2013
The Security Dimensions of Climate Change - by Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, Deputy Permanent Representative, on February 15, 2013
Debate on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict - by Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative, on February 12, 2013
Debate on \'The Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question - by Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative, on January 23, 2013
Debate on United Nations Peacekeeping - A Multidimensional Approach - by Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative, on January 21, 2013
Debate on Threats to the International Peace & Security caused by Terrorist Acts: Comprehensive approach to Counter-Terrorism - by Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative, on January 15, 2013
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« REAL HISTORY: WORLD WAR ONE INCEPTION From Plutocracy Unchained
Art As Devil Currency, & Clinton’s Fading Worth »
Brexit, A Dream For True Europeans
Brexit, An Ongoing Soap Opera
Brexit = British Exit (from the European Union, EU).
The EU is just one of dozens of important, entangled European institutions. For some (complicated psychological) reasons the UK Prime Minister decided to submit British EU membership to referendum. Thus he impaled himself on his own stupidity, because he knows how bad Brexit would be, and that enrages him.
Europe is beset with serious problems, and most have to do with the non existence of a United States of Europe. Whereas the USA’s mighty union insures the stability of its environment enough to keep serious war far from its shores, this is not the case of Europe.
And here comes an angry Prime Minister Cameron, asking for less Europe. Does that means he wants more USA?
In the last decade or so, Great Britain made it very easy to move to, and work in, Britain, and bring (often very dirty) wealth to the country, no questions asked. This made the UK much bigger, demographically and economically. It also made the British very angry, as the gain in (global) wealth was paid by a loss in (English) soul.
PM Cameron Barking About Europe, An Angry Fish Gulping For Air
[Detailed demographic studies support this: the entire growth of the population is from immigration and first generation immigrants, bringing a feeling of dilution of the English soul. The original English population of 40 million has not grown; the entire UK is up to 63 million, thanks to recent immigration; whereas the more than 70 million holders of French passports are older French stock, mostly]
Cameron himself incarnates this anger, making entire discourses about immigration looking positively enraged.
Hundreds of thousands of French people live in London alone (as London’s freewheeling ways suck out the wealth from the more regulated rest of Europe). Some say London is France’s fourth largest city.
Great Britain spent much of the Twentieth Century, paying debts to the USA. But it is against a non-existing “United States of Europe” that it wants to contend in vain. Meanwhile the UK is getting major weapon systems from the USA: Trident nuclear missiles, and the corrupt and ineffective F35, the most expensive weapons program, ever (a massive subvention of Britain to the USA).
Europe does not need brainless cockroaches as friends. Britain, whether it realizes it, or not, is within Europe.
The much heralded English democracy started when the Duke of Normandy, at the head of a large French army, freed the slaves of England (more than 20% of the population, the French evaluated in a census). Later the French Barons imposed their own rights to the monarch: after all, they had started as an association. Still later, Simon de Monfort, from Toulouse, trying to be elected king, transported the Roman Republican ways of South France (Narbonensis) to the English Parliament, making it stronger.
So much of what is supposedly deeply English was imported (starting with Britannia herself!). Richard the Lion Hearted, proudly riding in front of Westminster, was born, married and died in France. That Frenchman spent less than three years of his life in England.
So now we hear that Britain wants to do like Switzerland, which has more than 600 treaties with the European Union. Fine. I guess, it makes sense, as Britain is used to take its orders from Washington and especially Wall Street. All what Franco-Germania needs is good soldiers used to follow orders.
Paradoxically, Brexit would reinforce Europe. Instead of taking its orders from Washington, London will have to start taking orders from the Paris-Berlin axis, as Switzerland presently does. It will finally eradicate 260 years of English interference between the two capitals.
And let me tell you what. Franco-Germania does not need friends apparently just keen to behave like angry cockroaches. If Britain did not want immigration, it should have done like France (which has very little). But accusing the EU is grotesque.
To the preceding a Euro hater in The Economist replied that the French and Germans hated each other, so Franco-German governance was not going to happen. In truth, it has long been happening. The same character pointed out that the USA was a nation.
I replied:
The USA had the worst civil war known. 3% of the population killed in combat.
Yes, that’s a surprising statement. That observation was about wars within European regimes, not some obscure war in China; or European wars which involved foreign states, of which there were many. No, the “30 year war” in Germany does not count: many foreign powers, including France and Sweden were involved. Also it was between different states. Similarly the seven religious wars in France at the end of the 16C don’t count, as Spain was bankrolling and exciting the Catholic League. The United States of America is just that: an Union. Several states had independent existence for generations, at least two were independent republics (Texas, for ten years, California).
The USA is more a World Union than really a nation, held together by a rather curious philosophy. Truly a Republic such as California is semi-independent and Washington has neither the will nor the power to impose its ways, it prefers to follow.
Surely, then, if 320 million Americans follow 40 million strong California, then 50 million something England will follow 180 million strong Franco-Germania (I reincorporated the Benelux inside Franco-Germania, of course; after all the Franks were Dutch, and the Belgiae a famous tribe of Gaul).
Switzerland follows scrupulously the orders it gets from Paris and Berlin. It has to. Power speaks.
To the preceding, again, irate commenters suggested that both Europe and the USA were on the decline.
However, this declinist desire is not valid for the USA. The power of the USA has never been greater. Just to give you an idea, the decision was announced today to build 20,000 Megawatts of solar and wind power in Southern California public lands, in a collaboration between the USA and the California Republic. That’s the equivalent of 20 nuclear power plants. Timescale? Before 2020: five years.
Make no mistake: China is mighty. Because it’s the factory of the USA.
Brexit is a good thing, let’s have it. It’s going to be a pleasure to break the back of English-London fostered world plutocracy (remember the “Non-Doms?). First by yanking out of London so much trading that should happen in the Eurozone, rather than London.
Cameron knows this, hence his rage. But he can’t get out of it because he has neither the intelligence nor the character. So what does he do? He reduces his demands.
He may as well, because he will get no concession. And he will get no concessions because the French and the German know it is best if the people who rule in Westminster cannot interfere anymore in European decision making.
This entry was posted on November 11, 2015 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
12 Responses to “Brexit, A Dream For True Europeans”
botnot Says:
botnot
in reply to Tyranosopher
Nov 11th,
Franco-Germania was the idea behind this latter-day dual monarchy in this archaic pre-democratic imperialist experiment calling itself a “union”, which is collapsing acrimoniously.
Franco-Germania does not exist. Try working alongside French and German colleagues and you will witness a pretty poisonous apartheid, such that it takes a Brit who speaks both languages to act as a mollifying go-between.
They are “oil and water”. A non-starter, like the EU.
BTW how you can compare a treaty organisation like this ‘EU’ of yours with a nation, the USA?
Happy to hear you believe the French and the Germans hate each other. Seen from the USA on French and German TV, it sure does not look that way.
indravaruna Says:
The US establishment wants the UK in the EU, its their mole distubing Continental Europe, keeping it divided.
The only way to save the EU is to expel Britain and get rid of NATO, created EU exclusive Defense.
The Zionist-Anglo-American Elite has only comtentp for Europe, they want WWIII with Russia, just look at Nuland, Kagan and their “reporters” like Anne Applebaum who is married to a Polish politician.
For once, I think you are right big I! England has just been a tool to make Europe slave to American capitalists. It is bad for true middle class Americans too.
Never underestimate the power of unanticipated consequences!
Steverino Says:
Too bad that’s almost always the case. The potential consequences aren’t considered at all, or are underestimated, if they even are considered.
Yes, the action of the Parliament in Westminster, pushed by London plutocrats, have antagonized everybody, from the Scots, to the rest of the Europeans (the UK boast of its huge GDP, but then has a rebate for indigence on its EU contribution, while profiting handsomely, starting with Prince Charles!!!)… to I guess you Paul, who left England, too, same as many intellectuals I have met in universities in the USA.
In truth, I left England ( with Pharaoh) for the sole reason of wanting to be with Jean, not out of any distaste for my home country.
However, despite a dislike for much of what the USA gets up to, especially overseas, there is something remarkably refreshing about being a resident. I have every intention of applying for my citizenship next Spring, when I will have been a resident for five years, and fully expect to spend the rest of my days in America.
My view of my old country from afar is one of increasing sadness.
You also live in Oregon, a temperate paradise:
US State
Oregon is a coastal U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest region known for its diverse landscape of farms, forests, mountains and beaches. Metro Portland is famous for its quirky, avant-garde culture and is home to iconic coffee shops, boutiques, farm-to-table restaurants and microbreweries. It lies in the Willamette Valley, a renowned red-wine-producing area. Snow-capped Mt. Hood, to the east, offers hiking and skiing.
Ranked 9th
98,381 sq mi (255,026 km2)
• Width 400 miles (640 km) • Length 360 miles (580 km) Lakes: 2.4%
• Latitude 42° N to 46° 18′ N
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. The Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from France by a ridiculously narrow channel: the two countries are in full sight of each other.
Population: 53.01 million (2011)
Area: 50,346 sq miles (130,395 km²)
GDP: $2 trillion USD (2011)
So Oregon is around twice the area of England, and the density of population in England is around 27 times that of Oregon. Thus, indeed, a fresh state. There is no reason to be sad about England. The choices the governments have made, starting with Thatcher was to put PLUTOCRACY FIRST, in the hope it would make BRITAIN FIRST. It sort-of-worked. However, it’s now out of control, and injuring not just Europe, but the world (the branch of AIG that went down in 2008 was based in London).
Fascinating, as always. Always learning! Thanks.
Short story: having annihilated the Natives, the USA is a paradise… The story would have been different, had the French kept “Louisiana” (as the detailed story of Colorado shows)
It is hilarious how all enraged Cameron is, each he talks about Europe. What a clown. He says Brits are ‘natural debunkers’,but then why does not he proposes stuff that makes sense? Because England has become the lair of global bandits, oligarchs, tax evaders, etc.
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Service Showrooms Bizerte
An excursion into the world of international design
Early May 2008, bathroom manufacturer Duravit acquired a majority interest in MTC. In the same month, the new partners presented themselves for the first time with a joint stand at "Salon International du Bâtiment Carthage’". The partnership is now showing the first signs of success: Duravit Tunisia has opened its own showroom in Bizerte. The new showroom displays a representative cross-section of the broad range of this manufacturer who has made a name for itself at an international level with high-grade design solutions for the bathroom. Managing Director Lassaad Kilani at the official opening in September 2009: "For over 20 years, the Duravit brand has been closely connected with a consistent innovation policy and bold design". Over 40 projects have been realized through cooperation with high-profile designers such as Philippe Starck, Sieger Design, Norman Foster, Phoenix Design or EOOS. Numerous national and international design awards are testimony to Duravit’s performance in terms of product design and designer cooperation. Kilani: "Visitors will therefore experience their visit to the showroom as an excursion through the world of international design".
The bathroom – a modern living space
All in all, the concept illustrates the latest trends from the international bathroom and design world. According to Kilani the bathroom is evolving into a modern living space "where modern people can take refuge from the complex demands of day-to-day life". For this reason, the bathroom manufacturer no longer regards itself simply as a supplier of high-quality design products, but increasingly as a supplier of unique bathroom experiences and wellness bathrooms which create a pleasant and harmonious atmosphere: "the right mix of elegant designer products, select materials, light, colour and diverse functions". Exemplary in this respect are the four completely furnished bathrooms which include a bathtub with whirl functions and light program. Kilani believes that this area offers great growth potential for the future.
Professional target group approach
When designing the new showroom, Duravit did not only focus on the requirements of the end customers, however, but also provides professional training on site for specialist dealers, wholesalers and fitters. Accordingly, a lifting bathtub, sectional models and material overviews have been integrated into the exhibition. Model overviews and specifications are also available to support architects and planners in a "complex subject such as the bathroom". With the production of sanitary ceramics, bathroom furniture and the Bathtubs & Wellness division, Duravit covers the whole range of bathroom fittings with the result that planning and selection is also a lot easier as the ability to combine the individual items from a design perspective is already guaranteed. Kilani: "In this context, we also profit from the international project management of Duravit. Many international architects are already familiar with the Duravit brand. And this proves to be an advantage, particularly where foreign investors are involved."
DURAVIT Showrooms
Duravit Design Center
Duravit Technology Center
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News | Good Business › Social enterprise
Electronic Waste Brings Social Outcomes
Wednesday, 3rd June 2015 at 12:15 pm
A Queensland social enterprise is tackling burgeoning waste from the consumer electronics industry using social enterprise in its “purest” form. Nadia Boyce speaks to a 2015 Social Enterprise Awards nominee in this week's Spotlight.
Wednesday, 3rd June 2015
Substation33 disassembles electronic waste and redirects recovered materials back into the manufacturing stream, diverting it from landfill. It doubles as a community resource offering practical volunteering, work experience and job placement opportunities for residents of the Queensland city of Logan.
The organisation, a social enterprise of YFS, is a Not for Profit delivering a range of social programs to people in Logan who are disadvantaged or vulnerable.
In the past year, Substation33 has managed to disassemble 90,000 kilograms of eWaste and provide 19,300 hours of volunteer employment spread across of 287 people, along with 7,800 hours of additional paid employment.
Pro Bono Australia News spoke to Tony Sharp, the Social Enterprise Development Manager at YFS, who explained the model he has developed, his plans for social franchising and why he believes Substation33 is “true blue”.
Shaping the Model
Sharp had a landscaping business in Logan for 20 years, but quit seven years ago to retrain as a youth worker. With a passion for trying to get young people into work or getting them the skills for work, he joined YFS’s youth team, where he restarted his landscaping work as a social enterprise stream for the organisation.
“The biggest problem I found in the youth team was that young people didn’t know how to work, but wanted to work,” Sharp says.
“In late 2012, YFS came to me and asked if I wanted to do something more in the social enterprise field.
“I had around about the same time, asked myself what happens to all the electronic waste around Logan, and that answer to that question was that most of it goes to landfill. It didn’t take long to put one and one together – and then we had Substation33.”
Substation33 opened its doors in January 2013 as an electronic waste recycling centre aiming to provide a workplace where volunteers and employees could gain confidence and skills for the transition to sustainable employment.
“It operates through the collection, decommissioning, sorting, and selling of electronic waste,” Sharp says. “Some of it is upsold – refurbished and sold – some of it, we break down into its individual components, and they become a commodity, a sellable product. Even plastic, for example, is a sellable product.
“All money goes back into keeping Substation33 alive”
“We’ve got five full time paid employees, and every one of those, bar myself, came through the ‘system’ – for want of a better word. They started here as a volunteer, have grown and developed and now have paid employment with us.
“They don’t necessarily have a disability, but they were unemployed. Everyone who works here has been unemployed for at least five years…We have guys who are long-term unemployed, people with a disability, people with youth justice issues and commitments, people from disability schools, kids from behavioural units in schools.
“We’ve just put on, a couple of days a week, a transition to employment officer. So that role is purely to talk to the guys on the floor who are the volunteers working for the dole, find out what they really want to do, and help them with their background [details] before moving them into employment that way. [It’s] what a job search officer usually does, but more boutique.”
Substation33 has also expanded its work to schools.
“We have impact in eight schools. We have eight substations,some in special education and some in mainstream education. At those mini substations, we get electronic waste, we drop it to the kids to disassemble, and they drop it back to us and put it in bins to recycle,” Sharp says.
“When kids get to year 11 and 12, they turn up here and they do their real work experience in a real work experience, because they already know the job and how to do the job, and when they finish school they come and volunteer here.”
Tackling eWaste ?
Electronic waste (eWaste) is the fastest growing waste stream to landfill in Australia.
“Australia is among the top five highest consumers of electronics in the world, but interestingly, we also have the highest turnover of electronics in the world,” Sharp says.
“We keep mobile phones for an average of 18 months, in most countries it’s two or three years.
“In Australia we have a national stewardship arrangement to help control the levels of electronic waste, but that stewardship only pertains to televisions and computers and things that plug into them. It doesn’t pertain to dishwashers, microwaves, kettles, jugs and DVD players all that other stuff.”
In response, Substation 33 recycles computers, monitors, servers, office equipment, televisions, household appliances and any other obsolete or unwanted electronic equipment.However, Sharp says that is still barely making a dent on the eWaste problem.,
“Currently we only disassemble about 50 per cent [of eWaste], and from that only 30 per cent [of disassembled material] is being recycled and the rest is still going to landfill. So, 70 per cent of our electronic waste is still going to landfill,” he says.
“You can see that there’s potential for these types of operations to expand, which is great..
“At the moment, we’re at about 30 percent [diverted from landfill], but in Europe, it’s 95 per cent. In Europe and America, they do what we do here, manual disassembly. They don’t put it through a machine either.
Awareness is key, Sharp says.
“Electronic waste currently in Australia, it’s amazing, you go into a computer shop and ask them what they do with their eWaste and they say ‘isn’t that landfill?’. So we definitely need to be able to increase awareness of eWaste,” he explains.
“People need to be able to recycle with confidence. For example, I believe, and I hear it all the time here at Substation33, that a lot of people don’t trust, for example, the local council who’s going to recycle it. [The public] thinks it’s going to be recycled and it goes to landfill.
“I think what needs to happen is they need to have substations scattered all over the country where people can get some social return on investment, can get rid of electronic waste, but they can also create a job out of it.”
He says many large electronics firms already have standing arrangements with large corporations who disassemble their waste – but using machines.
“There’s one man or one woman punching buttons on a machine,” he says. “There’s no jobs.”
Funding for Sustainability
Asked how he ensures his organisation has ongoing financial sustainability, Sharp’s response is suitably tongue-in-cheek.
“Through not getting much sleep at night!” is all he initially offers, before more seriously acknowledging the need to expand operations to the top end of town.
“We’re bottom feeders with our electronic waste, we get a lot of our stuff from the locals,” he says. “We need to improve our profile, and go for the larger end of town, the top end of town where the bigger businesses are. That’s where a high level of electronic waste is.”
Currently the organisation receives no Government funding. Roughly 70 per cent is derived from trading, and the rest from philanthropy.
“Constantly financials have been a challenge, plus there are growing pains,” Sharp says. “Make sure you have a good, robust business model, that’s not reliant on funding…grant or philanthropic funding it’s not going to be there forever.
“I didn’t expect it to be what it is today, I’ll be very honest with you. I expected to have a couple of tables running, a couple of days a week maybe. It’s like we’ve created the ultimate storm.
“There’s a tsunami of electronic waste coming through the doors, and waves and waves of volunteers pulling it apart. On a Wednesday we’ll disassemble between three and four thousand kilos of electronic waste in a day.”
Sharp says social franchising may be in the future for Substation 33.
“I’d like to franchise it. Not for money, but I think it’s one way to increase the impact, which is what it’s about, I suppose.
“If you want to increase the impact, this business here is maxed out. We’ve got most of the electronic waste in the Logan area coming through here now. So we’ve got maximum flow and we cannot get any bigger, we’re maxed out for size. So the increased impact would be to duplicate, in the western suburbs of Sydney for example, and get the electronic waste coming through there.
Sharp is a strong advocate for what he describes as “pure” social enterprises.
“I think some social enterprises could be classed as programs of organisations, but I think Substation 33 is definitely true blue,” he says.
“It’s the purest form of social enterprise…because look how many people we’ve had impact on in the last financial year, and as well as that we’re also having an environmental impact. It’s very unusual for a social enterprise to have both social and environmental impact.
“I think that a lot of people are on the bandwagon in a way. I’m hoping that people do the right thing and promote true social enterprises, ones that are not programs of community organisations.
“Providing we keep ourselves honest as a sector and we have social enterprises blasting away…then I think we’re on a pathway to somewhere.
“We also need to change our mindset a bit. We can’t constantly have a hand out wanting money to prop up a social enterprise.
“We need to sell our soul.”
Tags : Spotlight, Spotlight article,
Meet the enterprise fighting e-waste and the disability employment crisis in one
The shirts bringing colour and mental health conversations to Australian construction sites
Wednesday, 6th November 2019 at 8:40 am
The enterprise fighting to save lives in the water
Wednesday, 2nd October 2019 at 8:34 am
The production house shaping the stories of the future
Wednesday, 4th September 2019 at 8:32 am
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Format: MS WORD :: Chapters: 1-5 :: Pages: 65 :: Attributes: Secondary data, Data Analysis,Abstract :: 6,456 people found this useful
The article on this topic (impact of tax on government capital expenditure and economic growth in Nigeria) is an extract from literature review of the project material. The complete project work would be made available when you subscribe for the full material.
A Tax is a fee charged or levied by a government on a product, income, or activity. If it is levied directly on personal or corporate income, it is called a direct tax. If it is levied on the price of a good or service, then it is called an indirect tax. The main reason for taxation is to finance government expenditure and to redistribute wealth which translates to financing development of the country (Ola, 2001 Jhingan, 2004, Musgrave and Musgrave, 2004. Bhartia, 2009). Whether the taxes collected are enough to finance the development of the country will depend on the needs of the country and. countries can seek alternative sources of revenue to finance sustainable development (Unegbu and Irefin. 2011).
Government collects taxes in order lo provide an efficient and steadily expanding non-revenue yielding services, such as infrastructure-education, health, communications system etc, employment opportunities and essential public services (such as the maintenance of laws and order) irrespective of the prevailing ideology or the political system of a particular nation.
Tax is also the nexus between state and its citizens, and tax revenues are the lifeblood of the social contract. The very act of taxation has profoundly beneficial effects in fostering better and more accountable government (Tax Justice Network (TJN)S revenue 2012). Musgrave and Musgrave (2004) also stated that the economic effects of tax include micro effects on the distribution of income and efficiency of resource use as well as macro effect on the level of capacity output, employment, prices, and growth.
However, the use of tax us an instrument of fiscal policy to achieve economic growth in most less develops countries cannot be reliable because of dwindling level of revenue generation.
Consequent upon this, changing or fine-tuning tax rates has been used to influence or achieve macroeconomic stability, A critical examples of governments that have influenced their economic development through revenue from tax are; Canada. United States, Nethcriand. United Kingdom. They derive substantial revenue from Company Income tax. Value Added Tax. Import Duties and have used same to create prosperity (Qluba 2008),
A significant share of the tax revenue increase in Africa stems from natural resource taxes. This included income from production sharing, royalties, and corporate income tax on oil and mining companies (Pfister, 2009). Nigeria is a developing country whose major export is mainly crude oil. Also endow with other natural resources such as; natural gas, lin. iron ore. coal, limestone, lead, zinc and arable land (Economy Watch, 2011). A& a sovereign nation, Nigeria has a land mass that covers about 923. 768 £q km and have a population of about 149,229,090.
According to Tran (200K), emerging economies are nations that have large territories and populations; and they are undertaking extraordinary development projects that call for new infrastructure, such as power-generating plants and telecommunications systems. Also, United Nations (20(15) asserts that, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)} for instance, low-income countries (LICs) arc required to increase their domestic revenues by around 4 percent of the GDP. Also, to meet the MDGs, OECD countries have been urged to raise their level of aid to LICs to about 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income - but this is as nothing when compared to potential tax revenues. The infrastructural developments demand a lot of resources and funding. In many rich countries, tax constitutes 30-40 percent of the GDP (Golit. 2008 and TIN, 2012). Nigeria with a budget of N4,97 trillion for the year 2011, representing 12% increase of 2010 annual budget ( Uneghu and Irefin, 2011) shows that taxation is one of the ways of funding infrastructural developments specified in the budget.
The tax base in Nigeria since had been on the increase in order to mobilize the resources needed to execute infrastructure project. According lo Kaldor (3963), those who believe that insufficient growth and investment is mainly a consequence of a lack of resources arc chiefly concerned with increasing the resources available for investment through additional taxation. The availability and mobilization of tax is the fundamental factor on which an economic development is sustained and managed. As noted by TIN (3012), tax is the most important, the most beneficial, and the most sustainable source of finance for development. Tax in Africa, for example, is worth ten limes the value of foreign aid. The long-term goal of poor countries must be to replace foreign aid dependency with tax self-reliance. However, in Nigeria the contribution of tax has not been encouraging, thus expectations of government are being cm short.
Corruption, evasion, avoidance and lax haven indicators arc strongly associated with low revenue (Attila, Chambas, and Combes, 2U08) and indeed, corruption functions like a tax itself.
According to Adegbie and Fakile. 2C11), the more citizens lack knowledge or education about taxation in the country, the greater the desire and the opportunities for tax evasion, avoidance and non-compliance with relevant lax laws. In this respect, the country will be more adversely affected because of absence of tax conscience on the part of individuals and the companies and the (allure of tax administration to recognize the importance of communication and dialogue between the government and the citizens in matters relating to taxation.
In the face of resource deficiency in financing long term development, Nigeria has heavily resorted to foreign capital, such loans and aid as the primary means to achieve rapid economic growth. Thereby accumulate huge external debt in relation to gross domestic product and serious debt servicing problems in terms of foreign exchange flow and, as such majority of the populace live in abject poverty. Government has expressed concern over these and has vowed to expand taxation in order to meeting its mandate. Kiabel and Nvokah (2009) argue that the increasing cost of running government coupled with the dwindling revenue has left all tiers of government in Nigeria with formulating strategies to improve taxation, Also, Ndekwu (1991) noted that, more than ever before, there is now a great demand for the optimization of revenue from various tax sources in Nigeria. This probably influenced the decision of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN), which in 1991 set up a Study Group on the Review of the Nigerian Tax System and Administration.
Also, that an accurate estimation of the optimal level of expenditure requires knowledge of the productivity of the tax system and that it will assist in identifying a sustainable revenue profile for the country. As noted by IMF (cited in TJM, 2012): ''Developing countries must be able to raise the revenues required to finance the services demanded by their citizens and the infrastructure (physical and social) that will enable them to move out of poverty. Taxation will play the key role in this revenue mobilization
THE IMPACT OF BANK RECAPITALIZATION ON THE ECONOMY OF NIGERIA
ABSTRACT The resultant impact of financial liberalization opened up the Nigerian economy to global financial markets, which has generated increasing apprehension in the economy and has exposed the fra...Continue reading »
Attributes: Secondary data, Data Analysis,Abstract
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edgar laprade, 1950: how’s it look to you, doc?
October 10, 2019 October 10, 2019 / puckstruck / 1 Comment
Tell Me Where It Hurts: New York Rangers’ doctor Dr. Vincent Nardiello gives Edgar Laprade’s wounded knee a once-over ahead of the Stanley Cup finals in April of 1950.
Born in Mine Centre up on Ontario’s Lakehead on a Friday of this date in 1919, Edgar Laprade was a reluctant NHLer. The Montreal Canadiens tried hard to sign him in the 1940s, after he’d led the Port Arthur Bearcats to an Allan Cup championship, but he joined the Canadian Army instead. He resisted the advances of the New York Rangers for a while, too, before eventually signing in 1945. Living in New York was “a headache,” he said in 1947, but that didn’t keep him from excelling on its ice: Laprade won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s best rookie in 1945-46, as well as a Lady Byng, for peacefulness, in 1949-50, when he served one two-minute penalty through 60 games. That a was a relatively raucous year, for him: three times in his 10-year NHL career he made it through an entire season without taking a penalty. Laprade was a four-time All Star. Better late than never, Hockey’s Hall of Fame finally got around to welcoming him in 1993.
The closest he came to winning a Stanley Cup was in 1950, when the Rangers slipped into the playoffs and upset Montreal to earn the right to meet the Detroit Red Wings in the finals. Laprade was the Rangers’ top scorer that year, but in a late-February game against the Chicago Black Hawks, he tore a ligament in his left knee. He returned to action as the regular season wound down in late March, only to re-hurt the knee in another meeting with Chicago when Bill Gadsby tripped him.
“Laprade attempted to take his place on the Rangers’ offensive but quickly withdrew to the dressing room,” The New York Times reported of that incident. “There he was examined by Dr. Vincent A. Nardiello who stated that the player had suffered a torn lateral ligament in his left knee ‘and definitely would be unavailable for the Stanley Cup games.’”
Sporting a bulky brace, Laprade played in all 12 of the Rangers playoff games, finishing among the team’s top scorers. The Rangers couldn’t quite finish the job, losing in double overtime in Game 7 in Detroit, scuttled by Pete Babando’s definitive goal.
Funny Pages: Laprade’s knee injury immortalized in a 1951 comic.
jack walker, hook-check artist (can get a little tiresome)
November 29, 2018 December 4, 2018 / puckstruck
Sultan of Swish: Jack Walker, at the ready, in Seattle Metropolitans’ stripes, circa 1917.
If you want to talk hook-checks, as you well might, the man you need to know about is Jack Walker, born on this date in 1888, when it was a Tuesday, in Silver Mountain, Ontario, up on the Lakehead, not far from what was then Port Arthur — modern-day Thunder Bay. He died in 1950, aged 61.
If he’s not now a household name, he was in his day, a century or so ago. Three times teams he skated for won the Stanley Cup: the Toronto Blueshirts in 1914, the Seattle Metropolitans in 1917, and the Victoria Cougars in 1925. Mostly Walker played on the west coast, in the PCHA; his NHL career was a slender one, lasting 80 regular-season games over two seasons in the mid-1920s when he joined the Detroit Cougars.
Walker did ascend to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1960, which is to say he was voted in. Hard to know from here how much of the case for his place in the pantheon has to do with the hook-check, but as a hook-check enthusiast I’m going to err on the side of a lot.
I wrote about the hook-check in my 2014 book Puckstruck— also over here, where I did some explaining about definitions and techniques. While Frank Nighbor is sometimes credited with having been the first to ply it on a regular and efficient basis, it seems clear that Walker was in fact the progenitor, and that when Nighbor joined Port Arthur in 1911, the Pembroke Peach learned if from him. Nighbor said as much himself, later on, sort of, talking about Walker’s poke-check, which is related but different, though they’re often conflated, even by the Hall-of-Famers who used them to best effect.
You don’t see much mention of hook-checking in accounts of that earliest Cup, but by 1917, Walker’s name was synonymous with it. Hook check star is an epithet you’ll see in the weeks leading up to the championship series. That came in March, when the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens travelled west to play for all the hockey marbles with a roster that featured Georges Vézina, Harry Mummery, Newsy Lalonde, and Didier Pitre.
Lining up Hap Holmes, Cully Wilson, and Frank Foyston, Seattle prevailed in four games, with Montreal’s only victory coming in the opening game. The score therein, 8-4, doesn’t exactly have the ring of a defensive struggle, but Walker was said to have stood out. This from the wire report in The Ottawa Citizen:
In purely defensive play, Jack Walker, with his clever hook-check, was [sic] the Seattle’s star. Walker took the puck away from the best stick handlers the Flying Frenchmen could produce as easily [as] taking off his hat and it was his work that spilled most of the offensive hopes of the Canadiens.
It was apparently contagious: all the Mets were hooking the second game. After Seattle won that one 6-1, The Vancouver Sun’s Royal Brougham opened his dispatch this way:
“Beaten by the Hookcheck,” might be an appropriate title of tonight’s struggle because it was the clever of this bit of hockey strategy combined with sheer speed and aggressiveness that put the Mets on an even basis with the invaders for the Stanley Cup.
“Every time,” he continued, “a visiting forward got the puck and ankled up the ice, swish, some local skater would slide along and hook the elusive pill from the Canadiens stick leaving the duped player bewildered.”
Seattle won the third game by a score of 4-1. It was the same story. “Jack worked his old hook-check so well and so frequently,” was the word in Vancouver’s Daily World, “that he checked the very life out of the Frenchmen’s offence.”
Going into what was the final game, Royal Brougham was already handing out laurels. “If Seattle wins the Stanley Cup, the glory should go to Jack Walker, the hook-check artist of the Metropolitans who, during the last two games has practically stopped every Frenchmen’s rush.”
Seattle went out in style, taking the decisive game and the Cup with a 9-1 win. Let’s leave the Daily World to give the man his due, if that’s what this does:
Jack Walker’s work has been an outstanding feature of the entire series, and Jack was up to all his tricks last night. He kept the hook-checking working with such monotonous regularity that it almost got tiresome, and he finally succeeded in making one of his shots good and broke through for a goal.
winterspiele 1936: golden britain
February 24, 2018 May 20, 2019 / puckstruck
The hockey tournament at the 1936 Winter Olympics wasn’t without controversy. For Canada, it was very much with controversy, and long before the team from (mostly) Port Arthur ever arrived in Germany. The trouble they got into in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was complicated, but it boiled down to this: on February 11, Canada lost its first ever Olympic hockey game by a score of 2-1 to … Great Britain. Subsequent Canadian thwackings of Hungary (by 15-0) and the hosts from Germany (6-2) weren’t enough to shift the standings in Canada’s favour, which meant that they went home with silver medals, while the Great British won gold, and the right (above) to skate triumphantly towards a photographer on the ice at Lake Riesser.
feeling fine, he said; forgot to duck
April 11, 2016 April 11, 2016 / puckstruck
Gaye Stewart was the last Toronto Maple Leaf to lead the NHL in goalscoring: in 1945-46 he finished the season with 37 goals. Maybe that’s how you know the name. He was also the first NHLer to win a Stanley Cup before he won the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie, long before Danny Grant, Tony Esposito, or Ken Dryden got around to doing it. The Cup came in the spring of 1942, when he was 18; the Calder came the following year. He won a second Cup with the Leafs in 1947, then later the same year found himself on his way to Chicago in the big trade that brought Max Bentley to Toronto.
Stewart did fine for himself in Chicago, even as the team struggled. He was named captain of the Black Hawks for the 1948-49 season. It was in January of ’49 that he was photographed, above, with his goaltender’s son: Tom Henry was Sugar Jim’s two-and-a-half-year-old.
Stewart, 25, was only just back in Chicago following a hospital stay in Toronto. Struck by another puck, not the one depicted here, he’d left the Hawks’ January 8 game, a 3-3 tie with the Leafs, a few days earlier. Jim Vipond of The Globe and Mail was on hand to watch. In the second period, as he told it,
The ex-Leaf left winger was struck over the right eye by a puck lifted by Garth Boesch as the Toronto defenseman attempted to clear down the ice.
Stewart returned to action after a brief rest but collapsed in the shower after the game. After being removed to the Gardens hospital, his condition became so serious that a rush call was put in for an ambulance and arrangements made for an emergency operation.
Fortunately the player rallied soon after reaching Toronto General Hospital and surgery was not necessary. His condition was much improved last night [January 9], with the injury diagnosed as a bruise on the brain.
“I forgot to duck,” he was joshing by the time he was back in Chicago, as hockey players did, and do. Brain bruises, The Globe was reporting now. “I’m feeling fine,” Stewart said. “The accident was just one of those things. I expect I’ll start skating next week.” The Associated Press called it a concussion, and had the player’s side of the story to offer:
Stewart said that he when he returned to action in the game he felt tired. He remembered his mates coming into the dressing after the game, but then blacked out until he woke up in hospital.
There wasn’t much news, after that, of Stewart’s head or his recovery — not that made it into the newspapers, anyway. It was three weeks or so before he returned to play, back in Toronto again at the end of January, having missed six games. The two teams tied this time, too, 4-4. They met again in Chicago the following day. The Black Hawks won that one, 4-2, with Stewart scoring the winning goal.
All in all, it was ended up another fruitless year for Chicago. When the playoffs rolled around in March, they were on the outside looking in for the third consecutive season. When Tribune reporter Charles Bartlett buttonholed coach Charlie Conacher before he departed for Toronto, he asked him how he felt about his players.
“I’m not satisfied with any of them,” he answered. “It never pays to be satisfied with any team in sports. Creates a weak attitude. What I am pleased with, however, is the morale of the Hawks. I think their fifth place finish, and the fact that they won only won game less than Toronto will mean a lot when we start training at North Bay in September.”
He thought the team had played pretty well through December. But then Doug Bentley got sick and Stewart concussed, and Bill Mosienko and Metro Prystai had played that stretch of games with their wonky shoulders …
Conacher was headed home to his summer job — his oil business, Bartlett reported. A couple of Hawks were staying in Chicago for the duration, Ralph Nattrass to work in real estate and Jim Conacher at an auto agency. The rundown on their teammates as went their separate ways looked like this:
Goalie Jim Henry will join with his Ranger rival, Chuck Rayner, in operating their summer camp in Kenora, Ont. Red Hamill will go a talent scouting tour of northern Ontario. Doug Bentley and brother Max of the Leafs will play baseball and run their ice locker plant in De Lisle, Sask. Mosienko will return to Winnipeg, where he owns a bowling center with Joe Cooper, former Hawk defenseman.
Roy Conacher, who received a substantial bonus from the Hawks for winning the league’s scoring title, is headed for Midland, Ont., where he plans to open a sporting goods store. Gaye Stewart will run a soft drink agency in Port Arthur, Ont. A fish business will occupy Ernie Dickens in Bowmanville. Doug McCaig is enrolled in a Detroit accounting school. Adam Brown will assist his dad in their Hamilton filling station.
winterspiele 1936: wolverines, royals, and bearcats
February 16, 2016 February 17, 2016 / puckstruck
Wolverine-free: (Back, left to right) Gus Saxberg, Bill Thomson, Pud Kitchen, Herman Murray, Dave Neville, Hugh Farquharson, Ralph St. Germain, Num Friday, Ray Milton, (inset) Kenny Farmer (Front, left to right) Dinty Moore, Arnold Deacon, coach Albert Pudas, manager Malcolm Cochrane, CAHA secretary Fred Marples, trainer Scotty Stewart, Alex Sinclair, Jakie Nash.
It should have been Wolverines at the Olympics in 1936 playing for Canada, winning gold on the national behalf, but when the time came to sail for Europe, no, instead of Wolverines it was Bearcats.
Mostly Bearcats. The story of how that happened has its vivid moments that may be briefly superseded by this pressing question: when was the last time anyone in Ontario actually saw an actual bearcat and knew it?
April of 1935 is where we’ll start here, nearly a year before the Olympics got going, in Halifax. The best teams from Canada’s amateur senior hockey leagues were gathered there to decide the season’s national championship, vying for the venerable Allan Cup. By surprise, the local Halifax Wolverines had made the final, and by further surprise, on the efforts of Mickey McGlashen, Owen Lennon, Chummie Lawlor, Daddy Bubar, and the rest of the Wolverines, they defeated the team from Port Arthur, Ontario, the Bearcats.
The final game ended with a 4-3 Halifax win. Five thousand fans cheered as E.A. Gilroy, president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, handed the old silver trophy and the Dominion senior title to Wolverine captain Ernie Mosher. The team’s further (delayed) reward was on locals minds that evening, too: as Allan Cup champions, the Wolverines had booked themselves a ticket to represent Canada at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany.
So that was exciting.
Then, next — well, a lot of the drama that saw the Wolverines shoved aside was administrative, hard to enliven for the page. Decisions were made in offices and (possibly) southbound trains, behind closed doors, under clouded brows, far from rinks. The background featured a dispute over just how amateur the senior hockey was in the Maritimes. This had been brewing for months. A CAHA ruling on player eligibility had torn apart the eastern Big Four League before the Wolverines lifted their Allan Cup.
When the cheering stopped and the team looked ahead to the fall of 1935, they found themselves with a league to play in. Players did what they had to do: for six of them, that meant signing for other teams, elsewhere. The coach left, too, exchanging the Wolverines of Halifax for the Wolves of Sudbury. As early as July, there was a rumour that the CAHA was considering options beyond sending a diminished Halifax team to the Olympics. Though W.A. Hewitt, CAHA registrar, denied it: “Unless the club itself refuses the trip,” he said, “the Wolverines will go to Germany.”
November. With no league to play in, no coach, little cash, and not enough players, Wolverines manager Jack Conn was doing his best to keep the team’s Olympic project alive. Maybe other senior teams could lend him players, and if someone with a generous heart, and/or the Canadian Olympic Committee, could spot him $5,000, he could launch a tour of Canada and the U.S. to get the team ready for competition.
That money didn’t materialize, and there was no such tour. There were meetings, finally, in Halifax. Port Arthur had made it known that they were willing to step in, and that seemed to be the answer that the CAHA’s E.A. Gilroy and P.J. Mulqueen of the COC were banking on. Gilroy had handed the Allan Cup to the Wolverines but now he was the one revoking their trip to Germany. Unless — there was also a late report that all the Wolverines who’d left were returning to the roost and the team would go.
Wrong. Maritimers thought it was treachery, but Jack Conn conceded that he couldn’t get his team together. Out went the invitation to Port Arthur, who wired back a quick acceptance. There was some small solace for Halifax fans: four Wolverines would go along to boost the Bearcats.
Beyond the upset in the east, there was some hue, too, from Quebec, where it was thought that the Montreal Royals should be the ones to go. They’d been the favourites, after all, going into the ’35 Allan Cup playoffs and had actually come closer to beating Halifax than Port Arthur had. Maybe the right thing to do would to organize a further playoff, let the best team prevail.
But Gilroy and the CAHA weren’t having any of that. Also, when in early December, Jack Conn told Gilroy that because Halifax was willing to contribute just as many players as Port Arthur to the “all-star” team, it should be called the Halifax Wolverines and he, Conn, should be the man to manage it, Gilroy sent a sharp reply back to the effect that, no, it wasn’t an all-star team, and if the Halifax players that Port Arthur was accommodating didn’t want to join in the fun, well, fine, they could stay home.
Conn backed off. The team, then, would be coached by Port Arthur’s Albert Pudas, with Malcolm Cochrane as the manager. They’d have 13 players in their charge: seven Bearcats, four Wolverines and two Royals — a fast, experienced squad, as the papers were soon reporting, that Pudas would have a month-and-a-half to build into a machine.
Heading into the new year, the component parts were these:
Daddy Bubar (Halifax); Jakie Nash (Port Arthur)
Ray Milton (Port Arthur); Herman Murray (Montreal)
Ernie Mosher, Vince Ferguson (Halifax); Alex Sinclair (Port Arthur)
Bill Thomson, Arnold Deacon (Port Arthur); Dave Neville (Montreal)
Left Wing
Chummie Lawlor, (Halifax); Num Friday, Gus Saxberg (Port Arthur)
The team started practicing in Port Arthur on December 20. Scrimmaging, Pudas had Sinclair, Thompson, and Friday playing on a line against Neville, Lawlor, and Deacon. Murray and Milton were one pair on defence, Mosher and Ferguson another. The coach wasn’t worried that he only had two regular defencemen: the problem, he said, would adjust itself. Another day, he ran three lines: Saxberg/Sinclair/Thompson; Deacon/Mosher/Lawlor; Ferguson/Lawlor/Neville.
On Christmas Day, they left for Winnipeg, where they played their exhibition, beating the local senior team 1-0 at the Amphitheatre. Smart second-period combination work by Neville and Sinclair got the puck to Lawlor, who scored on the powerplay. In goal, Daddy Bubar’s goaltending was superlative. Dignified patrons, said a local paper, cheered themselves hoarse. When the referee disallowed what would have been the tying goal, they littered the ice with programs and paper bags. Dunc Cheyne and Cam Shewan played well for the home team. High-stick sparring with the Winnipeg rearguard sent both Milton and Murray, Olympic defencemen, to the dressing room for stitches.
The Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association gave the team a banquet at the Fort Garry Hotel while they were in Winnipeg. Members of the 1932 Olympic team were on hand to wish them well, conveying sincere Good Luck greetings and urging the talented Canadians to bring back the flag.
The Winnipegs played a second game with the Olympics the following night, beating them this time, 5-4. High in the stands, protesters unfurled a 30-foot banner
Fair Play Demands Removal of Olympics From Fascist Berlin
that few in the rink noticed before policemen took it down.
The Bearcats played a pair of games against Fort William next, losing the first, 2-1, following up with a 5-1 win. They’d added another forward from Montreal, Ralph St. Germain. Bill Thomson scored a pair of goals, with Gus Saxberg, Vince Ferguson, and Dave Neville notching the others. One free-for-all showed the sincerity of the effort on the part of both teams but no one was hurt although Murray played most of the game with a big patch over his right eye, result of a collision with Konderka of Fort William, who was also hurt when the two heads bumped.
I’d be pleased to keep on writing the name Daddy Bubar indefinitely, but it’s here — which is to say, there, in Toronto, early January — that he departs — departed — the scene. Just what happened isn’t easy to decipher. Al Pudas was telling the papers that the team was rounding into top form, while Gilroy enthused that it was powerful in every position. There was nothing to the rumour, said manager Malcolm Cochrane, that they’d be adding a former Bearcat now playing in England, centre Jimmy Haggerty, to the mix: this was the team that was going to Germany.
“The squad is fifty per cent more powerful than the Bearcats of last season,” Cochrane was saying. “The added players have bolstered us defensively and offensively. Murray has fitted in like a charm with Milton on the defence while up front we have two lines who can go both ways with plenty of speed and scoring punch.” Bubar, he said, was one of the finest goaltenders he’d ever seen in amateur hockey. A man from The Toronto Daily Star watched the team practice at Maple Leaf Gardens as they prepared for a game against the Toronto Dukes: “Goals scored against this combination are going to be well and truly earned.”
And yet by the time the team skated out to play, it was without its four Halifax players: they’d been summarily excised from the roster. Continue reading →
old bulwarks
October 10, 2014 June 25, 2019 / puckstruck
On this day in 1946 Lorne Chabot died in Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital at the age of 46, “his fighting heart finally stopped” (tolled The Globe) “by a lingering illness that had kept him bed-ridden for more than a year.”
His NHL career started in 1926 with the New York Rangers and he went on to play for Toronto, Chicago, and Montreal’s Canadiens and Maroons before his playing days came to an end in 1937 with the New York Americans. He won two Stanley Cups and a Vézina Trophy.
“Poison from osteo-arthritis and progressive nephritis, a chronic disease, had infiltrated his whole system,” The Globe reported, “and although Chabot had stoutly maintained he would recover, his friends have known for many months that he was a dying man.”
Frank Selke was manager of the Leafs during Chabot’s time in Toronto. He volunteered that the goaltender’s mechanical ability was exceeded only by his inspirational qualities. He was liked, Selke said, by all the players behind whom he had ever guarded a net.
edgar laprade, 1919–2014
May 6, 2014 October 10, 2019 / puckstruck
Bearcats of the Lakehead: The Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Laprades (left) catch a train with the Mr. and Mrs. Bert Laprades in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1938. (Thunder Bay Public Library)
If it were anyone else, we might be able to swing players around to fill the gap. But the loss of Laprade is serious trouble.
• Frank Boucher in January of 1951
Edgar Laprade was 94 when he died last Monday at home in Thunder Bay, Ontario. A revered New York Ranger, the closest he came to winning a Stanley Cup was in 1950, when the Rangers lost in Game-7 double overtime to Detroit. He was a four-time All Star and won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s best rookie in 1945-46 and the Lady Byng, for peacefulness, in 1949-50. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993 as a Veteran. That, he said at the time, was his biggest hockey thrill. Richard Goldstein has a good obituary in The New York Times. Otherwise, a few further notes on a quietly outstanding career:
1. Mine Centre, Ontario, was where he was born, in October of 1919, at the Lakehead, 190 miles west of Port Arthur on the Canadian Northern Railway. “There’s some good fishing there,” Laprade told Kevin Shea at the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2006.
2. Prospectors had struck copper in May of 1916. A year later the Port Arthur Copper Company was selling shares on the property at 30 cents apiece. “This is the great time in the world’s history for mining,” one of their ads crowed. “Metal is King. Copper is at the highest point in years.”
3. Playing in Port Arthur, Laprade was a Bruin before he graduated to the mighty Bearcats, for whom he starred with his brother Bert, a defenceman. They won the Allan Cup in 1939, beating the Montreal Royals, and would have gone on to represent Canada at the 1940 Winter Olympics if war hadn’t swept it off the calendar. In February of 1941, local fans organized Laprade Night ahead of a game with the Fort William Hurricanes where they presented the boys with silver tea services. Actually, no, just the one: it was wartime, after all, and they would have to be content to share.
4. He was the best senior hockey player in the country in those years. The New York Rangers held his rights and twice the manager there, Lester Patrick, invited him to training camp and each time Laprade said no. “We tried again this fall,” Rangers’ PR man Jersey Jones was saying in 1941, when Laprade was 22, “but it doesn’t look very promising. Lester’s raised the ante several times, I understand, but still no go. Probably when he makes up his mind to give the Rangers a break — if he ever does — he’ll have to make the trip in a wheelchair.”
5. After Elmer Lach broke his arm in the fall of 1941, Canadiens’ manager Tommy Gorman tried to lure Laprade to Montreal, and it looked like he might be lured, too, until Patrick said nyah-uh, refused to cede his rights.
6. As Don MacEachern has written in his review of western Canadian service hockey, the Port Arthur hockey team bifurcated in 1942, creating a new team, Shipbuilders, to compete against the Bearcats. Edgar and Bert stuck with the latter while a third Laprade brother, Remi, suited up for the new team. A hybrid version of the two ended up in the Allan Cup Final in the spring of 1942 where they lost to a powerhouse RCAF Flyer team boosted by the talents of recent Boston Bruins Woody Dumart, Milt Schmidt, and Bobby Bauer.
By the fall of 1943 Bert was on the ice for the RCAF. Edgar went to Ottawa to enlist in the Army’s Ordnance Corps. For the rest of the war he served, on the ice and off, in Winnipeg and Kingston.
7. That’s where Frank Boucher, who was coaching the Rangers, went to work, in the summer of 1945. Through a friend he found out that Laprade was worried about a $5000 payment on a house in Fort William. He got an old Kingston pal, former Ranger great Bill Cook, to arrange a dinner. Boucher’s offer was a two-year contract worth $15,000 along with a $5000 signing bonus. Laprade agreed. According to Boucher, he then had to convince Lester Patrick to go along with the deal. Which he did, eventually, grudgingly.
8. The Rangers weren’t sorry. At 26, Laprade won the Calder decisively, well ahead of Chicago’s George Gee and Montreal’s Jim Peters.
9. He impressed Lloyd Percival as the shiftiest puck-carrier in the NHL. And when the author of The Hockey Handbook (1951) asked veteran hockey writers who were the best skaters they’d seen, the list included Syl Apps, Eddie Shore, Howie Morenz, Max Bentley, Maurice Richard, Frank Mahovlich, Bill Mosienko, Gordie Howe, and Laprade.
10. He liked a nine lie on his stick, noteworthy because it’s unheard of. The lie, you’ll recall, is the angle between the shaft and the blade, and most players opt for a five or a six. This is from a Ranger teammate, Danny Lewicki:
He was very difficult to check as the lie of his stick meant he could keep the puck very close to his feet. I believe ‘Teeder’ Kennedy of the Leafs was the only other player of that era to also use the same lie stick.
11. The elusive little centre was a phrase used to describe him. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: “His all-around ability and sparkling play made him the keyman of the team.” Around the Garden, there was a saying, apparently, in those years: “As Laprade goes, so go the Rangers.”
12. In 1949, he was said to be the hardest-working Ranger. It wasn’t a good team. In Laprade’s ten New York years, they only made the playoffs twice. It was his most potent weapon, his quickness. It helped him avoid some terrific smashes and even topped his superb ability as a stickhandler, a department in which he was as good as Detroit’s Sid Abel, “a real clever gent with a hockey stick.” This is all from Ralph Trost of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “That quickness,” he said, “is almost as sharp as that of a mongoose, the animal kingdom’s quickest operator in the clutches.” Just imagine if Laprade played between wingers like Howe and Lindsay. Which was more or less the point of the piece, headlined “Laprade’s Skill Lost With Rangers.”
13. A hard man to please, Ralph Trost. Here he is in 1951:
Few men in hockey have been better than Edgar. Between the blue lines, few have been his equal at puck control. Edgar and some other lad can dash in that center ice and both get spun around. But usually it is Laprade who comes up with the puck.
Yet, the same fellow within 15 feet hasn’t anywhere near the same control. His shots, when he gets them, are fluffy. The fastest man on balance at center ice seems to be the last one to get it down near the goal. How Laprade gets into that position where he has no shot but a futile backhander is a real puzzle.
Maybe if they could change that line around the goal from red to blue, nothing will stop him.
14. He never was a prolific scorer, it’s true. His best year, 1949-50, when he won the Lady Byng, he had 22 goals. In the 500 NHL games he played in his career, he notched 280 points, with another 13 in the playoffs.
15. Gentlemanly is an adjective he wears, and earned, no doubt. He went whole seasons, as the obituaries remind us, without incurring a single minute of penalty punishment. And yet he did what he had to do: in that tea-service game in 1941, the Laprades were front and centre in the game’s only fight, a double date in which they teamed up to trade punches with Fort William’s Stan Robertson and Joe Konderka.
16. “Like all peaceful guys,” wrote Tommy Holmes in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “he had the sins of the savage brought down upon him.” Which is to say that for all his lawfulness — because of it? — he seems to have been under constant attack. Here’s an erstwhile Red Wing, Benny Woit, from Rich Kincaid’s The Gods of Olympia Stadium: Legends of the Detroit Red Wings (2003):
Teddy Lindsay just nailed him this one time. You know, I still remember when he hit him. Oh, jeez, the blood all over the place.
That’s the only guy Ted Lindsay ever went back to and said he was sorry. He kind of looked at Edgar and he almost apologized. But I don’t think he did. Pretty close, yes.
17. “I never liked Gordie,” Laprade told The Globe and Mail’s Allan Maki in 2011. “Even his own linemates, like Ted Lindsay, didn’t like him. He wasn’t that clean of a player. He was a good player; you can’t take that away from him. But he elbowed me once for no reason.” Continue reading →
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November 26, 2011 | The New York Times
The Famine Next Time
Sam Loewenberg, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Millions of people are starving unnecessarily in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. The world knows how to prevent drought-induced famine. So why doesn’t it?
August 22, 2011 | The New York Times
Dimming the Red Lights in Turkey
Anna Louie Sussman
Istanbul's licensed red-light districts have fallen from favor under the rule of Turkey's moderate Islamists, but tens of thousands of women still work illegally in the city's thriving sex industry.
The Black Hole of North Korea
Isaac Stone Fish
Isaac Stone Fish traveled to the North Korean border to report on the underground drug trade, and realized after returning the country possesses secrets journalists may never uncover.
June 24, 2011 | The New York Times
Crisis in Sudan: Allegations of Ethnic Cleansing in the Nuba Mountains
Eyewitnesses in the Southern Kordofan region say people living in the Nuba Mountains are being targeted by heavy shelling and aerial attacks while responding to the humanitarian crisis.
Recovering from the Red Flood
More than 350 homes were damaged in the 2010 Ajka Alumina plant disaster. Eight months later, the victims are still struggling to start new lives.
Earning the Trust of Haitians with HIV
Lisa Armstrong and Andre Lambertson, for the Pulitzer Center
Photographing and telling the stories of HIV positive Haitians after the earthquake requires sensitivity, earning the trust of the subject and allowing their common humanity to show through.
December 08, 2009 | The New York Times
Showcase: Shifting Sands
JAMES ESTRIN, for the New York Times
View the slideshow as it appears in The New York Times.
Sean Gallagher tasted sand as he focused his camera lens on a masked man who had emerged suddenly from the bright orange cloud that enveloped both of them. Unable to see more than a few yards in front of himself, Mr. Gallagher pressed the shutter and the man disappeared into the sandstorm, as if he had been an apparition.
September 22, 2009 | The New York Times
From Birth, Death
Standing in the only operating room in the only medical hospital in all of Guinea-Bissau, Marco Vernaschi watched a nurse take an unsterile needle out of her pocket and, without anesthetic, suture a woman's vagina after a difficult childbirth. The woman screamed. Mr. Vernaschi took a photograph. Moments later, she was required to walk out of the filthy room and go home.
She was actually fortunate. So few women have any medical care in the west African country of Guinea-Bissau that the United Nations regards it as one of the world's most dangerous places to be pregnant.
October 09, 2008 | The New York Times
Afghanistan's Disability Crisis
Don Duncan and Jessica Wanke
A disabled Afghan refugee returns to Afghanistan to advocate for greater services for the country's disabled population. Produced by Elsa Butler of the New York Times.
See the video at New York Times.com.
Through the Forest, a Clearer View of the Needs of a People
In A Luoi Valley, Vietnam, Dioxin left from Agent Orange destroyed large swaths of ecosystem during the Vietnam War. While effects of Agent Orange remain pervasive, Phung Tuu Boi works to repair the forests by first addressing the needs of local tribes.
Video and podcast of Phung Tuu Boi featured on The New York Times' site
Botanist Phung Tuu Boi has been restoring the forests of Vietnam that were destroyed during the war. Christie and George shot a video of Phung touring the highlands of central Vietnam. The video, "Replanting Vietnam's War Zones," as well as a podcast, are both available on The New York Times' website.
To watch the video, click here.
The Toll of Small Arms Op-Chart
Despite the presence of the world's largest peacekeeping mission, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains in the grip of civil war. The reason is clear. A flood of small arms and light weapons undermines the 17,000 United Nations troops' mandate to protect civilians.
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Albie Casino finally reveals why he never sued Andi Eigenmann
“The Escort” star talks about vindication after proving he had never fathered a child.
After years of being accused of being the father of Andi Eigenmann’s daughter Ellie, the rumors have finally been put to rest with the recent revelation of Max Eigenmann clearing his name.
READ: Max Eigenmann confirms Jake Ejercito is the father of sister Andi’s daughter
"Medyo relieved is like a super understatement. I was super relieved (laughs) not medyo relieved. (I first found out when) I was asleep. Someone woke me up and said, ‘Hey I got good news for you. Check this out.’ She showed me I think it was Fashionpulis on Twitter. I don’t have a Twitter account so I don’t know. I read it lang and then I went back to sleep. I like to sleep,” he shared during Regal Films’ The Escort blogcon held last October 20 at Valencia Events Place in Quezon City.
The 23-year-old actor said that he was happier to finally give his mom Rina peace of mind after having his name cleared from the issue.
"Lahat naman ng nanay defender eh. She was just so happy. Because we all knew it di ba? That’s why everyone’s asking me, ‘How do you feel now that the truth is out?’ I knew this. It’s not new to me. I already knew it. She was super happy about it. I never really understood how much that ordeal affected her until I think it was a Pep article she did. Only when I read that did I realize how much it affected her. Because for me when that issue came out I brushed it off eh. I’m very good at shoving bad experiences out. I try to not let it affect me. But then I realized that eventually that’s going to come up and that’s going to do more damage to you,” he explained.
Albie also shared how the whole experience changed his views on life. "I learned those lessons a while back when it all hit the fan. Just listen to your parents. They know what’s best for you when it comes to girls. If something seems too good to be true it probably is too good to be true. Just stuff like that. Lessons I learned from the (recent) revelation like nothing naman. I don’t think you can learn anything from that,” he added.
With everything that has happened, Albie finally revealed why he never pursued any kind of legal case even after he was wrongly accused of being the Ellie’s father.
"Hahaba pa yung proseso eh. You know what I mean? Like I’m just so happy to be done with it na. I don’t have to see them. I don’t have to think about them. I don’t have to worry about them. My name’s not associated with them anymore di ba? I think that was the worst thing for me is when people heard my name they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s the dad of the kid.’ You know what I mean? Pero now no one thinks that anymore. I hope no one thinks that anymore. Parang lagi lang akong bitbit sa issue na yun. I’m happy that people can talk about the issue and not talk about me anymore. I don’t give a bleep, sorry (laughs),” he mused.
Albie said he also did not want to burn bridges with Andi for the welfare of the child.
"Okay real talk? I just wanted to be civil with her, of course I was never sure. I asked for a DNA test. I didn’t get a DNA test. But I had a feeling it wasn’t my ba-by. I was never sure. So I just wanted to be nice. I’m just a nice guy in general. I wanted to build a good relationship just in case, like just a plan B, like just in case it was actually my kid. So we would be on good terms and stuff. Everyone was asking me about lukso ng dugo. Like I never had any of that. None of that. But like now I don’t have to worry about that. it’s not my kid. Career is doing well,” he further explained.
When asked if he feels vindicated by the revelation of Ellie’s real father, Albie chose to give a neutral answer.
"I don’t think anyone can win in that situation. Like there’s no winner there di ba? It’s just whatever happens now bahala na sila dun. Ayoko na makialam dun.”
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On Face Value
Politics in a Broken Age
A Level Ideas
La Edición Española
Guest Pieces
What would be the Brexit Utopia?
The UK is in a political crisis. From here, what would form the top three perfect endings?
by Joshua Guillen
Everyone must be scratching their eyes sore about the state of British politics at the minute- it’s truly extraordinary. The Supreme Court ruled Johnson’s advice to the Queen as unlawful, the Government has lost 7/7 votes; and there is no clear yellow brick road to Brexit paradise to follow. Even the Her Majesty’s Opposition are at odds with each other; Corbyn wants a neutral Brexit campaign- whatever that means. Like me, you must be thinking that the world has gone insane. You’d be unequivocally correct.
It’s November 1st, 2019. What would be the ideal scenario to follow such a rumble in the Brexit jungle?
AN ELECTION: CONTESTED BY NEW LEADERS
An election looks likely, even in a political world of disproportionate unpredictability. There are certain ways that this can be achieved, even in a time of deadlock. If Johnson rallies his troops to vote against his own government, and manages to gain traction from the other parties, there could be an election within 14 days of such an event. This may not be possible, as the immediate aftermath could result in temporary pact-sharing nonsense. I don’t even think Corbyn trusts himself to lead a minority government, let alone other opposition MPs- essentially ruling this plan of action out. Labour can’t even unite under one Brexit policy, let alone gain sufficient consensus to from government.
According to the latest polls, The Tories are enjoying a strong lead over Corbyn’s neutral position. The Conservatives are on 32% and Labour on 23%. The Lib Dems sit on 19%. YouGov/Times
In an ideal world, either Boris or Corbyn win a majority that can be suitably used in the Commons, to half-end the stalemate of leave/ remain shenanigans. What would be superb, is if the Lib Dems were to fail on their anti-Brexit campaigning, to which has helped no one in this political crisis. No one needs the Lib Dems anyway. Flip-flopping, Brexit-denying; MP nabbing liberals. We wouldn’t want a hokey-cokey government made-up by the Lib Dems- it’d probably take them a whole year to work out where to sit. Yes, they’re strongly anti-Brexit, but like many of the other parties; they offer no unifying plan.
It’d be perfect if Corbyn and Boris stepped-down, that’d happen in my Utopia. In reality, there’s no one better to lead each respective party, so we’re stuck on this stage. Politics at the moment is truly screwed. And no, Jo Swinson definitely isn’t the answer.
A BREXIT WITH AN AGREEABLE DEAL
The upcoming EU summit between the 17th and the 18th of October may offer up a genuine chance for Britain to avoid a no-deal Brexit, although the chances of such an agreeable deal passing through Parliament is low; considering the government effectively the minority body in the House of Commons. Rees-Mogg once noted that simply removing the backstop would not be consequential enough of a change to warrant a good deal. The problem the government has is that their own backbenchers are ardent leavers and the House is undoubtedly anti-Brexit. If you were to bang the heads of Mark Francois and Steve Baker together, you’d get nothing but rhetoric and a story about British exceptionalism.
Clowning around: A man with a funny hat filming a 21st century clown.
This makes a deal agreeable through majority in Parliament low; and with a No-deal now practically illegal, Boris wouldn’t dare resign himself to ignoring this statute. He’s already been ruled by the Supreme Court to have wrongly advised the Queen, so it surely wouldn’t be in his interest to run against an actual piece of legally binding legislation, this time.
Therefore, my Brexit deal utopia would be this: an agreeable deal that ensures economic stability of sorts, without impeding on the rights of legally documented workers in this country. Whether this is possible, who knows? That’s why it’s so easy to write with ifs, buts; maybes. You can hide behind the facade of idealism.
FARAGE FINALLY FADES
Farage is getting boring, for me anyway. Yeah he wants Brexit delivered, fair enough. It’s just that I’ve had enough of Nigel this decade; dare I say it, but more boring politicians will do. Farage has ridden the coattails of populism for the best part this decade, playing a key role in the 2016 Brexit campaign. History will not remember Farage as the guy that pressured Cameron into calling a referendum- but the guy that won it. This political turmoil can’t be pushed onto one person, but rather the system as a whole, yet Farage’s refusal to be recognised as apart of the political class is somewhat baffling. He is. He leads a party. He sits in the European Parliament. C’mon Nige!
Every politician has their pinnacle. If we can ever move on from Brexit, let it be that we move on from Nigel Farage too. Oh, and his millionaire friend Arron Banks.
That’s enough of silly utopian thought. Here’s to the next month or so. Let’s just hope politics isn’t broken enough not to be mended again.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed the blog, why not email subscribe on the right? It would be a great help as an A-Level student. Thanks!
Why not open up the discussion?
TagsBrexit • Opinion • Politics
About Joshua Guillen
Studying, but writing.
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Brexit Deadline
Brexit Deadline31st October 2019
The US at the polls3rd November 2020
Our Pieces:
Our Pieces: Select Month December 2019 (3) November 2019 (1) October 2019 (1) September 2019 (7) August 2019 (11)
The Populist Tirade.
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Feud Over? Drake And Chris Brown Follow Each Other On Instagram
September 8, 2018 13:18PM
It happened hours after news broke of Mac Miller's sudden passing.
One of the biggest feuds in the hip-hop world for several years has been between Drake and Chris Brown… but is that finally over? The Grammy-winning artists followed each other on Friday night, and Mac Miller’s sudden passing may have something to do with it.
A popular Instagram account found that they both hit the follow button on each other's respective pages yesterday.
The social media activity happened only hours after Mac's sudden passing at the age of 26 from an apparent drug overdose.
No word on if Mac's death was what prompted this to happen between Drake and Chris, but now fans are hopeful that they might come together and do a track.
There was an indication earlier this summer that the feud between them was over, as Chris praised Drake's latest effort called Scorpion.
Drake and Chris started out as friends in the industry, but that went sour after romance rumors began between the Canadian rapper and Breezy's ex Rihanna. It led to them having physical altercation at a nightclub in June of 2012 as a result, and they've publicly bashed each other many times over the past couple of years.
Do you think Mac's death had anything to do with Chris and Drake following each other on IG? Sound off in the comments.
Want to stay on top of Drake news? Sign up for OK INSIDER!
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Archive. Blog. / March 18, 2011
Happy fifth birthday Twitter!
Wow, Twitter is five years old! Anyone else with us in saying it really doesn’t feel that long?
It’s been a successful first five years with some impressive stats achieved – there’s an estimated 200 billion accounts and still growing at a ‘record rate’ (Evans Williams, Twitter co-founder). So it was only a matter of time before ways of generating revenue from the site here in the UK came up for discussion.
Twitter has already started selling promoted tweets and accounts in America, with brands such as Virgin America testament to the power of 140 characters after it recorded its fifth highest sales day in the airline’s history when it launched its promoted tweets campaign recently.
Via its ‘Twitter Mentionhose’ all mentions, replies and re-tweets can be recorded, providing businesses with invaluable information about who is influencing, engaging with and ‘trending’ about your brand. Then there’s the Analytics service in development, which will show you the types of tweets that cause people to un-follow you compared to which ones are the most successful.
It’s going to be interesting to watch the situation unfold in the States and, from it, predict the effect it will have on UK businesses over the next few months. It’s pretty safe to say it’s going to give us a huge amount of viral marketing opportunities, with engagement rates predicted to be higher than the average cost per click and CPM advertising techniques.
It’s like marketing gold dust and apparently due here in the UK by the end of the year. Watch this space and we’ll make sure you know all you need to know.
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iWoz
by Steve Wozniak
The mastermind behind Apple sheds his low profile and steps forward to tell his story for the first time.
Before cell phones that fit in the palm of your hand and slim laptops that fit snugly into briefcases, computers were like strange, alien vending machines. They had cryptic switches, punch cards and pages of encoded output. But in 1975, a young engineering wizard named Steve Wozniak had an idea: What if you combined computer circuitry with a regular typewriter keyboard and a video screen? The result was the first true personal computer, the Apple I, a widely affordable machine that anyone could understand and figure out how to use.
Wozniak’s lifebefore and after Appleis a “home-brew” mix of brilliant discovery and adventure, as an engineer, a concert promoter, a fifth-grade teacher, a philanthropist, and an irrepressible prankster. From the invention of the first personal computer to the rise of Apple as an industry giant, iWoz presents a no-holds-barred, rollicking, firsthand account of the humanist inventor who ignited the computer revolution.
Author: Steve Wozniak
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IT Pros List Coolest Security Jobs
By Wyatt Kash
Looking for the coolest jobs in IT? A new survey of information technology and network security specialists suggests that the place to look is on the front lines of cyberspace -- and that the variety of work is greater than many might suspect.
The survey was conducted by the SANS Institute, the IT security training and research organization. The results will be published later this year in the form of an information booklet aimed at interesting students to consider a career in IT security.
The institute asked information security practitioners in government and non-government positions to describe their jobs and the most interesting aspects about working in them. It also asked security specialists to select which jobs they thought were "very cool."
The top-ranking "coolest" IT security jobs according to government security employees:
1. Information security crime investigator/forensics expert.
Why it's cool: "The thrill of the hunt! You never encounter the same crime twice!"
2. System, network and/or Web penetration tester.
Why it's cool: "You can be a hacker, but do it legally and get paid a lot of money!" "The power to understand how systems can be penetrated and misused is something less than 1 percent of people in the entire security industry know, let alone the average citizen."
3. Forensics analyst
Why it's cool: "It's CSI for cyber geeks!" "It's like being one of the good spies on James Bond." "Trying to find evidence without altering the system and maintaining the chain of evidence is challenging."
4. (Tie) Incident response, incident handler
Why it's cool: "This may be the top of the 'top gun' jobs because it lets you move into a cooler, analytical environment where you can go deep with your knowledge." "You get visibility with your organization when they happen." "Like the secret agent of tech geekdom."
4. (Tie) Security architect
Why it's cool: "You get to design the solution, and not just for the perimeter." "You get to work with all the tech experts as a team, to plan the technology directions." "You get to research and play with new 'toys' all the time."
6. Vulnerability researcher
Why it's cool: "You get to tear apart malware and find out how it ticks." "Reverse engineers take a deep look into code segments to determine what is really happening under the hood." "It's a very exclusive club."
7. (Tie) Network security engineer
Why it's cool: "If there's one person indispensable, it's the network person." "This is where the action is and where everything is in a state of flux with newer and newer technology."
7. (Tie) Security analyst
Why it's cool: "This job has influence at the top of the organization." "If you want to make a difference but don't necessarily want all the managerial BS, this is the job for you." "It is the only clear path to the real top gun of security: chief information security officer."
7. (Tie) Sworn law enforcement officer specializing in information security crime
Why it's cool: "Ability to catch the bad guys ... the end result is a rush." "This is where the geeks among us can really show up the jocks." "Security specialist and you get to carry a gun!"
10. (Tie) CISO/ISO or director of security
Why it's cool: "I can get a lot done with little to no push back." "You get to decide where to build the 'watch towers,' how many rangers are stationed in the park, where fires can be safely built, and the rules of engagement."
10. (Tie) Application penetration tester
Why it's cool: "You're an 'ethical hacker.'" "It takes equal parts technical ability and creativity," "Combines applying different thought processes to system analysis with exploration tools, and a sort of dangerous level of knowledge."
The next highest ranking positions:
Prosecutor specializing in information security crime
Technical director and deputy CISO
Firewall/IPS administrator
Security evangelist
Vulnerability assessment analyst
Security assessment consultant
Technical security teacher
Security savvy software developer
Security maven in the application developer organization
Disaster recovery/business continuity analyst/manager
"Of particular interest to me," observed Alan Paller, the SANS Institute's Director of Research, "are the low rankings that government people give the CISOs." The chief information security officer position "ranked much higher in the non-government world."
He also noted the high ranking that non-government people give application penetration testing, "illuminating the fact that the government hasn't yet focused [as much as commercial organizations] on the critical new attack vector of application-based attacks," he said.
The top-ranking "coolest" IT security jobs according to non-government security employees:
1. (Tie) System, Network, and/or Web penetration tester
1. (Tie) Information security crime investigator/forensics expert
5. Application penetration tester
6. Security architect
7. CISO/ISO or director of security
10. Security evangelist
Wyatt Kash is the editor in chief of Government Computer News (GCN.com).
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HIDDEN ROME: PASSETTO DEL BISCIONE
Written by Glocal Insider 1
Category: Culture
Half-hidden a few meters away from Campo de’ Fiori is a small street that connects Piazza del Biscione with Via di Grottapinta: Il Passetto del Biscione.
This covered walkway has seen over 2000 years of history.
In fact, the Theater of Pompey, which was built between 61 and 55 BC by Pompey the Great, was located in this area.
Pompey was a mercenary captain who, thanks to his many military victories in the Middle East, became famous and later became a consul.
It was here that Julius Caesar, a once ally and eventual adversary of Pompey, was killed at the foot of his statue.
Pompey circumvented the laws of the time, which forbade the construction of permanent theaters, by instead building a temple dedicated to Venus Victrix at the top of a large semi-circle set of stairs.
With this layout, the stairs formed the seats of the enormous theater, that had a diameter of 150 meters and could hold up to 30,000 people.
The shape of the theater can still be found today, with Via Grottapinta following the shape of the inner part of the stadium, and Via del Biscione and Via dei Gubbonari following the shape of the outer part.
In the Middle Ages, like many other Ancient Roman buildings, the theater became a quarry for construction material and other buildings were constructed on its foundations.
Among these was the house of the Orsini family and even two churches: Santa Barbara dei Librai and San Salvatore in Arco, which would later be renamed as Santa Maria in Grottapinta.
The latter was built from one of the many corridors and rooms that made up the theater and that were decorated with ancient frescoes.
The church was annexed onto the Palazzo built by the Orsini family on top of the exact location of the Temple of Venus.
Therefore, it was possible to access the church directly from the Palazzo where many guests from noble families often stayed, including the famous Lucrezia Borgia.
The church held a painting depicting The Madonna of Divine Providence by Scipione Pulzone from Gaeta.
It was later moved to a shrine in a recess in the wall next to the gallery named Passetto del Biscione, that connected the arena of the Theater of Pompey with the outside in ancient Roman times.
The 9th of July, 1796, the eyes of the Madonna moved as if it was suddenly awake, opening and closing, and following the people in the crowd which had gathered with great excitement at the announcement of the miracle.
This continued for a while and then she closed her eyes and it stopped.
However, it seemed that her skin had a bit more color to it than before. In fact, in those days, this happened to many other sacred representations of the Virgin Mary and not only in Rome.
To provide a more dignified setting for the shrine which held the painting, one of the two entrances of the Passetto was partially closed, which is how you find it today.
Following a bloody incident in Santa Maria in Grottapinta, the church was deconsecrated.
The original sacred painting was brought from the Passetto to the church of San Carlo ai Catinari and in its place many other sacred images were installed that were eventually damaged or stolen.
The Passetto itself became a dark and dirty place.
Today the old church has been given to the Orsini Chapel Study Center, which is a cultural center and a school for the arts and anthropological research.
The façade of the church has been under restoration for quite a while now, but is not yet finished.
In 2013, the director of the Orsini Chapel Study Center, Roberto Lucifero, asked for permission to restore the Passetto del Biscione at the expense of the Center.
In 2014, the head of the Artistic and Anthropological Heritage for the city of Rome approved the work.
The construction was carried out by a team of six people and was directed by Lucifero.
It lasted about two years and was recently completed.
The pathway was completely restored, cleaned, and the plaster and frescoes were redone as well.
The painting of the Madonna has been revived thanks to a copy made in great detail by the artist Raffaella Curti.
It is also important to remember that a Roman saying is connected to the Passetto del Biscione: “Go look for Mary throughout Rome” because the devotees of the sacred image of the Madonna had to go on a complicated search through the streets of the historic center to find this hidden passageway.
There is one last question regarding the name “Biscione”, which has been the name of this area since the 15th century and means “big snake”.
It seems that there are two possible reasons for the name.
The first is the sigil of the Orsini family, which features an eel, and since their palace was located there, the neighborhood adopted that name.
The second suggests that there was a Hosteria run by a family from Milan in that area.
On their signs they put a big snake which was the symbol of the Visconti family, who had been the rulers in Milan since 1277.
In conclusion, we are very happy that thanks to this restoration project promoting cultural traditions of the city, it is now possible to rediscover a place, which is also the site of great popular interest and devotion.
Directions contained in the article.
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Royal LePage State Realty: A Name that Stands for High Quality Service
Since 1977, Royal LePage State Realty has been helping consumers across The Greater Hamilton Area buy and sell their homes.
To us, real estate is as much a passion as it is a business. That’s why we have continually led the industry in offering high quality real estate services.
Royal LePage State Realty unites more than 300 REALTORS® and Staff working in 3 locations across the city. Our vision is clear, one family working together, innovative, cutting edge and ahead of the curve. We set the bar high for both ourselves as a company and our REALTORS® to ensure the highest level of service and professionalism to those who are about to make the biggest decision of their lives.
Helping You Is What We Do is something that we live and breathe at every level. It’s as true today as it was when we adopted the Royal LePage Brand years ago. And we’re proud to say this philosophy will continue to drive us forward in the years and decades to come.
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Justin Haley Tyler Reddick Harrison Burton Cole Custer Christopher Bell Chris Quinten Garrett Smithley Jeb Burton Ross Chastain David Starr Ryan Sieg Stephen Leicht Jeremy Clements Brandon Brown Austin Cindric Noah Gragson Josh Williams
Justin Haley Tyler Reddick Harrison Burton Cole Custer Christopher Bell Garrett Smithley Jeb Burton Ross Chastain David Starr Ryan Sieg Stephen Leicht Jeremy Clements Brandon Brown Austin Cindric Noah Gragson Josh Williams
NASCAR Xfinity Series at Texas
Justin Haley heads down pit road after crashing during qualifying for the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick stands in Victory Lane after winning the pole for the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick heads down the front stretch during qualifying for the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick stands in Victory Lane after earning the pole for the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Harrison Burton heads down the front stretch during qualifying for an NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Cole Custer heads down the front stretch during qualifying for an NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell heads down the front stretch during qualifying for an NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Pole-sitter Tyler Reddick, right, front, leads the field into Turn 1 at the start of the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick, left, and Christopher Bell, right, lead the field into Turn 1 during a restart of the NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick makes a pit stop during the NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell makes a pit stop during the NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell (20) and Tyler Reddick (2) head into Turn 1 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell heads into Turn 1 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick heads into Turn 1 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Garrett Smithley (0) and Justin Haley (11) head into Turn 1 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Jeb Burton heads into Turn 1 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Ross Chastain heads into Turn 1 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
David Starr (52) comes to a rest on the grass after crashing in Turn 4 as Tyler Reddick (2) heads into Turn 1 during the NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Christopher Bell comes out of Turn 4 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick (2) and Christopher Bell (20) come out of Turn 4 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick comes out of Turn 4 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick (2) and Christopher Bell, rear, come out of Turn 4 during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Ray Black II heads into the front stretch during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Ryan Sieg heads into the front stretch during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Stephen Leicht heads into the front stretch during NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick makes a pit stop during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell makes a pit stop during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Noah Grayson has his car pushed down pit road after Grayson wrecked coming out of Turn 4 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell leaves pit road after having his vehicle serviced during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Jeremy Clements has his vehicle serviced during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick (2) leads Christopher Bell, right, onto pit road during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Brandon Brown leads his damaged vehicle down pit road during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick (2) and Cole Custer head into the front stretch during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Austin Cindric heads into the front stretch during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Cole Custer heads into the front stretch during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Jeb Burton head into the front stretch during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Tyler Reddick's car is towed to the garage area after Reddick crashed late in the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Austin Cindric (22) heads into the front stretch during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Noah Gragson (9) wrecks coming out of Turn 4 and onto the front stretch as Harrison Burton, rear, passes by during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Austin Cindric makes a pit stop during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Noah Gragson wrecks coming out of Turn 4 during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Ross Chastain heads into Turn 1 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Noah Gragson (9) wrecks coming out of Turn 4 and onto the front stretch during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Fans look on as Ross Chastain speeds down the front stretch during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
David Starr plows through the infield after crashing in Turn 4 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (David Kent/Star-Telegram via AP)
Christopher Bell holds the trophy in Victory Lane as he celebrates his win in the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell (20) takes the checkered flag as he prepares to pass the lapped vehicle of Josh Williams during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Nov. 03, 2019 12:04 AM EDT
Christopher Bell celebrates his win in the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Christopher Bell celebrates his win in a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Ross Chastain heads down the front stretch during a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Christopher Bell and his fiancé Morgan Kemenah celebrate in Victory Lane after Bell won a NASCAR Xfinity auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
Christopher Bell stands on his car celebrating his win in the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Larry Papke)
Tyler Reddick (2) and Cole Custer (00) head into the front stretch during the NASCAR Xfinity Series auto race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Randy Holt)
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Reconsidering Desert Solitaire
By Doug Fabrizio • Apr 11, 2019
https://goo.gl/b1bj38
Thomas Jundt / Flickr CC
Edward Abbey’s love letter to redrock country, Desert Solitaire, is 50 years old now. But a lot has changed in that time. The writer Amy Irvine joins us to offer a different take on Abbey’s season in the wilderness.
Thursday, we’re taking a different look at Edward Abbey. His love letter to redrock country, Desert Solitaire, is 50 years old now. It has inspired a lot of people through the years, including the writer Amy Irvine. In her latest book, she offers a tribute and a challenge to Abbey and his work, from his thoughts on solitude and his passion for the land, to his misogyny and misrepresentation. Irvine joins us to talk about Abbey’s season in the wilderness, and her own. (Rebroadcast)
On Wednesday, April 17, 7:00 p.m., Amy Irvine will take part in a panel discussion about the work of Utah writer Ellen Meloy. She'll be joined by KUER's Elaine Clark and by writer and journalist Zak Podmore. The event is in conjunction with the publication of Meloy's KUER radio essays and takes place at the Bears Ears Education Center in Bluff, Utah. [Event information]
Irvine will also join a panel about Meloy at Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City on May 1. [Event Information]
Amy Irvine is a writer, public lands activist, and a sixth-generation Utahn. Her writing has appeared in Orion, High Desert Journal, and Climbing. She's the author of the memoir Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land. Her latest book is called Desert Cabal [Indie bookstores|Amazon]
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A gap year can help shape your future, so do something that matters
With many students considering their gap year options ahead of this year’s A-level results, sustainable development charity Raleigh International is encouraging young people and their parents to ditch the usual ‘backpacker’ trips in favour of an adventure that matters.
A good gap year is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for young people to develop personally, experience career paths they never thought possible, and to gain a greater understanding of the world. However, many young people worry that they could waste both time and money on a year spent travelling when they could be gaining academic qualifications or professional experience.
Unlike an ordinary gap year, volunteering overseas with a reputable, experienced development organisation offers young people the opportunity to not only travel the world while making a difference, but to build skills for future careers or study that will help them stand out from the crowd.
Ben Robinson, 24, who volunteered with Raleigh during his own gap year in 2013 and has since completed a master’s degree, started a PhD in International Development, created his own business and become a youth Trustee at Raleigh, advises: “What you do on your gap year can change the direction of your life, it certainly did for me. It can really help you stand out from the crowd. I’d encourage young people thinking about taking a gap year to go on an adventure but to do something that matters as well. International volunteering through an organisation like Raleigh benefits everyone: you can gain valuable career and life skills on your gap year while also making a real difference to disadvantaged communities.”
A Raleigh Expedition is a life-changing programme for 17-24 year olds that combines sustainable travel and volunteering in Costa Rica, Nepal and Tanzania. Young people live and engage with remote communities not visited by tourists, and work on meaningful projects that create lasting change and protect natural resources.
Ben said: “Young people and their parents should look closely at the organisations offering overseas gap year opportunities. Raleigh sets itself apart from other gap year travel companies as it is a respected development charity with over 30 years’ experience of working with young volunteers. Raleigh focus is on ensuring programmes are safe, that young people develop personally, and that the work they do will be making a sustainable difference.”
Raleigh believe that organisations who work through young volunteers to make an impact should also be committed to helping their volunteers develop personally. Skills such as team work, communication, adaptability and the passion to become active citizens back home, will benefit young people greatly throughout their personal and working lives.
Ben commented: “When volunteering with Raleigh you get an experience which benefits your academic or working life in the long term, while also traveling to some of the world’s most inspiring places and making a real contribution towards changing our world for the better. There is something that happens on a Raleigh Expedition which cannot be measured or explained. The feeling of being part of something bigger, part of something life changing and sharing all that with people you have only known for a few weeks but feel like you’ve known for a lifetime. What more could you ask for in a gap year?”
Raleigh International alumni and Youth Trustee, Ben Richardson
• Case studies of gap year volunteers are attached with this press release. High resolution photos are also available with all case studies – please contact Sean O’Brien on s.obrien@raleighinternational.org.
About Raleigh International:
We’re a sustainable development charity working through, for and with young people to create meaningful and long-lasting development impact. Our programmes focus on youth in civil society, livelihoods, natural resource management, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). We work in partnership with communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and governments. Our way of working to achieve impact in all of these areas is by engaging young volunteers. We develop national youth led programmes and run two delivery projects for international volunteers: Raleigh Expedition and Raleigh International Citizen Service (ICS) – funded by the UK government.
Since our foundation as a charity in 1984, more than 45,000 people from over 90 countries have volunteered with Raleigh and have become part of a global community committed to building a sustainable future. For more information visit: www.raleighinternational.org
About Raleigh Expedition (incl. countries, ages, fundraising and our bursary programme):
We run Expeditions to Costa Rica, Nicaragua [currently we are not operating in this country due to political unrest], Nepal, and Tanzania throughout the year for either 4, 5, 7 or 10 weeks. Our most popular 10-week Expedition is designed so you can “do it all” and take part in three projects in one programme but of course you can go for less time to accommodate your needs. Young people between the ages of 17-24 can apply. Those over 25 can apply to lead groups and projects as a volunteer manager.
As a charity we talk about fundraising rather than costs for volunteers. Fundraising targets for most volunteers range from £3,450 for a 10-week Expedition, £3,050 for a 7-week Expedition, £2,350 for a 5-week Expedition, and £2,050 for a 4-week Expedition.
With Raleigh there are no hidden or extra costs. We include much more than other providers because over the last 30 years we have learnt that a high-quality programme, including safety, in-country support, and working with communities as real partners has better outcomes for all of us. We appreciate fundraising can be overwhelming but we are here to help you every step of the way. Don’t be daunted! We’ve supported thousands of young people to reach their target.
We are also committed to ensuring that our Expedition programme is accessible to young people from a range of backgrounds. We have established a Bursary Fund to help support young people who might otherwise find it difficult to fundraise the full cost of a 10-week Expedition. Find out if you’re eligible for our Bursary Fund.
Why should you choose Raleigh for your gap year?
Impact. Work at the heart of sustainable development projects in rural communities and national parks. You could be working to bring clean water to a rural village in Costa Rica, constructing school toilets in Tanzania, or building handwashing stations in Nepal.
Teamwork. Join an international team, make lifelong friendships and become part of a global community making a difference in the world.
Adventure. Develop your resilience and leadership skills on an exhilarating trek through unique and stunning landscapes. Live in a homestay with a local family. Eat traditional home cooked meals and form remarkable relationships with incredible people.
Fun. Let’s face it, as well as making a difference you want to have a good time on your gap year. Your Expedition will be an amazing adventure full of new experiences, friends and memories.
Safety. Ensuring the safety of our young volunteers, the communities we work with, and our staff, is at the heart of everything we do. We have robust, transparent systems in place, we’re fully accredited and have over 30 years’ experience delivering international expeditions.
Raleigh International’s ‘Top 5 Tips’ for making the most of volunteering on your gap year:
1. Do something you’re passionate about. Think about your reason for doing this on a personal level. If you see the true purpose – and there will likely be more than one reason – behind wanting to volunteer, you can narrow down your search a lot. Do you want to make a real difference to people’s lives in developing countries? Do you want to challenge yourself or get out of your comfort zone? Do you want to gain employability skills? Do I want a physical challenge? Do I want to learn a new language? Do I want to develop leadership skills? You will get the most out of a volunteering placement which you’re passionate about and are excited to do. It will also help you to narrow down the organisations you might volunteer with. Research why the organisation exists in the first place. What are its aims and values? Do you share the same ethos?
2. What will your role be and how will you develop? Ask why the organisation needs youth volunteers. Does it feel you can make a lasting difference? Are local young people involved? Will you be actively involved in projects or simply a bystander? How have others found the experience? Speak to people who have been away with the organisation before and are enthusiastic ambassadors for the programme.
3. Have realistic expectations before committing to travelling. What will you be doing? Where will you be living? Do you want to immerse yourself in one community or volunteer in a variety of environments – a community, a rainforest, a national park, or trekking across diverse landscapes? How long will you be away for? Will you be on your own or in a group? What’s the age range of volunteers? Do you want to volunteer with a team of people from all over the world? Would you like to travel independently before or after your project? Do you want to lead a team? However, it’s important to remain adaptable. If you want to make a genuine difference then you need to be committed and adaptable. Yes, you will also benefit from volunteering but the main reason you are doing it is to make a difference to others.
4. Ensure you’ll be working on a project that matters. Projects should be designed in collaboration with local partners, who understand the needs of local communities. How does this project fit into a longer-term programme of work that helps meet local and national development plans? Will your volunteering really make a difference to people? Find out where your money goes. Is the organisation a charity providing public benefit or a private company making profit?
5. Know your safety, support and training options. Will you receive full training and support both before the programme and when you are there? Your safety should be a priority. Make sure the volunteering programme has been audited to conform to the British Safety Standard BS8848, the standard for organising and managing visits, fieldwork, expeditions, and adventurous activities outside the UK. If it isn’t accredited, then what is the organisation’s safety management system?
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A Superior Vision
27 Apr, 2016 by Walter Williams
Last month, I celebrated the beginning of my 81st year of life. For nearly half that time, I have been writing a nationally syndicated column on many topics generating reader responses that go from supportive to quite ugly. So I thought a column making my vision, values and views explicit might settle some of the controversy.
My initial premise, when looking at all human issues, is that each of us owns himself. I am my private property, and you are your private property. If you agree with that premise, then certain human actions are moral and others immoral. The reason murder is immoral is that it violates private property. Similarly, rape and theft are immoral, for they, too, violate private property. Most Americans will agree that murder and rape violate people’s property rights and are hence immoral. But there may not be so much agreement about theft. Let’s look at it.
Theft is when a person’s property is taken from him — through stealth, force, intimidation, threats or coercion — and given to another to whom it does not belong. If a person took your property — even to help another person who is in need — it would be called theft. Suppose three people agreed to that taking. Would it be deemed theft? What if 100,000 or several hundred million people agreed to do so? Would that be deemed theft? Another way to ask these questions is: Does a consensus establish morality?
Self-ownership can offer solutions to many seemingly moral/ethical dilemmas. One is the sale of human organs. There is a severe shortage of organs for transplantation. Most people in need of an organ die or become very ill while they await an organ donation. Many more organs would become available if there were a market for them. Through the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, Congress has made organ sales illegal. Congress clearly has the power to prevent organ sales, but does it have a right? The answer to that question comes by asking: Who owns your organs? One test of ownership is whether you have the right to sell something. In the case of organs, if it is Congress that owns our organs, then we have no right to sell them. That would be stealing from Congress.
People have the right to take chances with their own lives. People do not have a right to take chances with the lives of others. That is why laws that mandate that cars have brakes are consistent with liberty and seat belt laws are not. You might say, “Aha, Williams, we’ve got you there because if you don’t wear a seat belt and you have an accident and turn into a vegetable, society is burdened with taking care of you!” That’s not a problem of liberty. It’s a problem of socialism. Nobody should be forced to take care of me for any reason. If government assumes the job of taking care of us, then Congress can control just about every aspect of our lives. When I was a rebellious teenager, my mother frequently told me, “As long as you’re living in my house and I’m paying the bills, you’re going to do as I say.” That kind of thinking is OK for children, but not for emancipated adults.
I have only touched the surface of ideas of self-ownership. The immorality associated with violation of the principle of self-ownership lies at the root of problems that could lead to our doom as a great nation. In fiscal 2015, total government spending — federal, state and local — was about $6.41 trillion. That’s about 36 percent of our gross domestic product. The federal government spent $3.69 trillion. At least two-thirds of that spending can be described as government’s taking the property of one American and giving it to another. That’s our moral tragedy: We’ve become a nation of people endeavoring to live at the expense of others — in a word, a nation of thieves.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
Attacking Our Nation’s Founders
More articles by Walter Williams
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A Man’s View of 50 Shades Of Grey
14 Feb, 2015 by John Hawkins
Last week I was at a dinner with about 20 people and I happened to be surrounded by 7 women. One of them mentioned 50 Shades of Grey and as it turned out, every last one of them had read the book (Incidentally, two said it is “disgusting” and the other five like it).
It might surprise you that so many women have read the book – well, until you find out that 100 million copies have been sold. When you consider that you can supposedly hit the New York Times Best Seller List with a few hundred copies moved per week, you start to realize how much of a cultural phenomenon this book has become.
Unlike a lot of other men, I do occasionally like to consume books, movies and TV shows that seem unappealing just because they really strike a chord with women. Sometimes they’re surprisingly tolerable. For example, despite the fact that all the characters were shallow and not very likable, Sex and the City was a fun show…well, for the first three seasons when the characters were engaged in funny dating hijinks. As a single man, watching the show almost made me feel like I was getting tapes from behind enemy lines that let me know how women think. Then, all of the women got into relationships and the show started focusing on their friendships and it turned so excruciatingly bad that I never finished watching the series. Also, don’t tell anybody, but I “kind of” like The Notebook — not enough to watch it again or anything, but it was tolerable for a romantic movie. On the other hand,Twilight was “keep your head away from the noose lest you’re tempted to end your suffering” bad.
So 50 Shades of Grey was my latest foray into the female psyche and the book was just what I expected it to be: porn for women. Some men look at porn. Some women read romance novels. Both are designed to arouse, neither is very realistic and neither is probably very healthy. I’m not advocating it, but people have powerful instinctual drives and are going to do what they’re going to do.
As a man, reading the book was probably as dull as looking at the pictures in aPlayboy magazine would be for most women – and that’s not just because the writing is bad. The 21 year old heroine, Anastasia Steele, is not a particularly interesting person and her constant talk about how her “inner goddess” feels is annoying. Ironically, that’s probably a big part of why the book is so appealing to so many women. Anastasia is generally attractive and a little puckish, but she’s not so exceptional that women couldn’t imagine themselves being in her shoes.
On the other hand, as you read about Christian Grey, despite the fact that the book describes him as an almost surreally attractive billionaire, you can’t help but think, “That guy has severe issues.” Granted they’re explained by his background, but as you’re reading about his “Red Room of Pain” and the long, weird dominance/submissive contract he gives to Anastasia, you just want to tell her to run.
Of course she doesn’t run because the issues are part of the point. Christian Grey has to be screwed up or there’s no drama for the heroine and no opportunity for her to “heal” him by, well, liking him and having sex with him a lot. In fact, and this may surprise a lot of fans of both series, but Twilight and 50 Shades of Greyare a lot more alike than people may realize.
In both cases you have an extraordinarily attractive, powerful, yet dangerous and damaged man becoming almost obsessive over a young girl he hardly knows because she stimulates so much desire in him. From the outside, neither relationship looks healthy, but the woman is determined to save her man with the power of her intense devotion and love. In other words, they have the same underlying theme, even though one features sparkly vampires and the other has light bondage.
As a man, I can tell you that the book was torturous to read and, no, I won’t be going to the movie. I endured the first Sex and the City film so I could write about it and I feel as if that’s enough suffering for my art to endure in one lifetime.
John Hawkins runs Right Wing News and Linkiest. You can see more of John Hawkins on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+,You Tube, and at PJ Media.
Conservatives Like Me Are Not The Stereotypes Liberals Say We Are
More articles by John Hawkins
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Tag Archives: Polo Traditions
A Polo Family Legacy
Since the San Diego Polo Club opened its doors in 1986, our fields have welcomed four generations of polo players from the Allen & Collins families and needless to say, they have been an integral part of this club. The family legacy of polo started with Willis Allen, who along with his son-in-law Harry Collins, played an instrumental role in the formation of the San Diego Polo Club. Over the years, Willis Allen, his son-in-law Harry, his grandson Chris and his great-grandson Chris Jr. have all played polo on our fields.
A Horseman Like No Other
Allen was a talented horseman and he had a deep connection to polo. He was first introduced to the sport in the early 1920’s while visiting family in San Angelo, Texas. His uncle was a polo player and gave Willis his first lesson. After Willis returned home to Connecticut, his uncle sent him his first horse, which he named Concho.
By the age of 13, Willis started regularly playing in Connecticut and when he moved to California, he continued with the sport, playing arena polo at the Coronado Country Club. He carried polo with him through the many chapters of life and even played when he was stationed in New Caledonia during WWII. His family fondly shared stories of how even during those difficult years of war, he was able to put together a polo field and bring in horses to play. Allen was truly a man like no other and it was often said, “they broke the mold when they made Willis.” A true benefactor of the sport, he fostered the development and growth of polo on the west coast and always sought to cultivate the skills of aspiring players. He had an egalitarian view of the game and never thought of polo as a sport that should be exclusively reserved for the wealthy. Throughout his life, he encouraged everyone to play. For Allen, polo was never about title or status but instead about passion for the game and his connection to the horses.
In addition to the San Diego Polo Club, Willis was one of the original founding members of the Eldorado Polo Club in Indio, California. Willis also served as a USPA Governor from 1969-1974 and played on numerous national and international teams. Throughout his life, he raised award-winning polo ponies and many people credit his polo talent to his deep connection with the horses. He loved his animals and one of his greatest joys and passions was breeding ponies. For the majority of his polo career, he worked as his own groom and only hired one later in life, when he physically required the assistance. Until that point, he had always taken care of his ponies, believing that it was important to develop a deep connection to the animal. Willis’ passion and enthusiasm for polo was infectious and he continued playing until the age of 93, participating in his final polo match just two weeks before he passed. He died on June 13th, 2004 at his home in La Jolla, surrounded by family and friends.
The Willis Allen Cup
Each year, a special tournament is held in Willis Allen’s name, to recognize sportsmanship, horsemanship, and teamwork amongst young players within the San Diego Polo community. This summer, The Willis Allen Memorial Cup will take place on July 7th, 2013 and the proceeds will benefit the REINS Therapeutic Riding Program (www.reinsprogram.org). The REINS Therapeutic Riding Program is a non-profit organization, located in Fallbrook, California, and their mission is to provide physical and emotional therapy to a wide range of disabled children and adults through the use of carefully supervised horseback riding. They currently serve over 200 students each week, coming from all over southern California and ranging in age from 2 – 83. The students have a variety of disabilities including: Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, seizure disorders, developmental delays and other mental and physical challenges. The benefits of this therapy are both mental and physical and include normalization of muscle tone, increased balance and coordination, developments of speech and language, and improvements in body awareness and self-esteem. Harry Collins participates in therapeutic riding and his family credits this program for the tremendous improvements he’s made since his 2003 polo accident. The Collins family is a huge supporter of the work that the REINS Therapeutic Riding Program is doing and they are thrilled to partner with them for the 2013 Willis Allen Memorial Cup.
Throughout his life, Willis Allen exhibited passion, energy, enthusiasm and most importantly, a generosity of spirit. It was an honor to sit down with the remaining three generations of his family and hear their first hand stories and memories of Willis and learn more about their family’s long and rich history with the sport of polo and the San Diego Polo Club.
HARRY & JUDY COLLINS
How would you describe Willis Allen as a person? As a player?
He was a wonderful father and father-in-law and overall just a really genuine and honest man. People loved him because he was a really kind and fun person to be around. He was Harry’s best friend and he taught Harry everything that he knows about horses and polo. Before Harry and I had met, he had hardly been around horses but my father introduced him. Eventually, they started breeding and raising ponies together. It was my father’s passion and he loved his horses so much. He had a connection to the animals and he loved to watch them grow. And he just loved polo! It was his life.
What is a special memory you have with the SD Polo Club?
While Harry was a regular player at the San Diego Polo Club, I never got seriously into the sport. I played with my father as a child but back then women weren’t competitively playing polo like they are today. I always rode horses though. Harry on the other hand, fell in love with the sport and he loved to play, especially at the San Diego Polo Club. Over the years, our family has had so many wonderful memories that it’s hard to pinpoint just one. Anytime Harry could play with Chris and Chris Jr. it was special for him.
Where would you like to see the sport head in the next 10 years?
That’s an interesting question and I’d probably have to reflect back on my father when answering. See, Dad was not big on huge tournaments, and he preferred the low-key nature of clubs like Lakeside. He also never had grooms, though I will say that when I was a kid, he would sometimes pay me 0.25 cents a weekend to walk his horses. He didn’t really believe in hiring pros either and he never thought polo should be a sport that was just for the wealthy. His view of polo was pretty simple. He loved the game, he loved and respected the animals and he valued teamwork, horsemanship and sportsmanship, and I think that’s the direction he’d want to see the sport move in.
For Willis, polo was only about one thing – the horses. If you ever asked Willis about polo he would start by telling you about the horses. He bred ponies for almost 70 years, many from the same original bloodline. He also never hired a groom because he enjoyed doing everything with the horse. As a player, Willis was always the happiest guy on the field. He played every week and competed with some of the best players in the world. At the height of his game, he reached a 3 goal ranking. He was always running with the ball and one of his signature moves was dribbling the ball down the field between his horse’s front legs. Willis also really enjoyed teaching people the game, firmly believing that everyone should have the opportunity to play polo. He really wanted the sport to be accessible to everyone.
Our family has so many wonderful memories with polo but one that stands out was the four-generation match we competed in. Playing with my grandfather, my father and my son is a very special memory for me. I also remember a time when Harry was injured and so Chris Jr. had to fill in for him. He was only 13 years old at the time but it was amazing to get to play together.
Lately, it seems like only the very wealthy play polo and Willis would never have thought that was right. He really believed that you needed a cross-section of people to play and that the sport should be accessible to everyone. I think we need to get back to that. The number of players is decreasing every year and so I think that we need to do something to bring more people into the sport. Polo needs to be revitalized and we really need to start encouraging younger kids to play. It’s important that we introduce them to polo at an early age and then foster their development and growth. It’s the only way our future generations of polo players are going to have a true competitive edge.
CHRIS COLLINS JR.
Strong!! I don’t know that many people who can play polo well into their 90’s. Willis was an inspirational man, not only to me, but to my entire family. His patience gave him a connection with the horses that most people will never have. As a polo player, I think everyone who had the pleasure of playing with or against him, knew that he could hit a tail shot 100% of the time. You would have never known he was ninety-two years old when he got on a horse and got into the line-up. You don’t meet very many legends in your life and my great grandfather was certainly one!
Having the opportunity to play with my Dad, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, is de”nitely one of my best memories at the San Diego Polo Club. I was only 11 years old but I can still remember how nervous I was before the game. Another great memory is winning the Spreckels Cup for the “rst time in 2010 with my dad. Finally, even though I’m not sure how much of this I actually remember, one of my best memories was attending my “rst polo match just two days after I was born. I was in a stroller on the sidelines for the very “rst game at the San Diego Polo Club.
We need to keep the sport growing and continue to get more people involved, informed and in love with this amazing game. I want to see more people taking lessons and I strongly encourage everyone to do so. I think the USPA has done a great job with Team USPA in farming young American players and giving
them opportunities they would have never had 5 years ago. If we can keep improving young polo players we will improve the sport here in the U.S. and make us even more competitive on a global scale.
Written by Vanessa ShapiroPhotos by Topher Riley & courtesy of The Collins Family
Posted in Just For Fun, News
Tagged A Polo Family Legacy, Chris Collins, Christopher Collins, Founding Family, Founding Member, Harry Collins, Interview, La Jolla, La Valencia, Polo Magazine, Polo Traditions, Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Valencia, San Diego Polo Magazine, Willis Allen, Willis Allen Memorial Cup
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What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Readings Selected and Introduced by David J. Weber
In 1598, Spaniards came north from Mexico to plant a permanent colony in what is today New Mexico in the heart of the American Southwest. Eight decades later, Pueblo Indians destroyed the colony and drove Spaniards out of their lands. The conquered became the conquerors. That turn of events was so unusual that it continues not only to intrigue us but to demand explanation. This site and the accompany book make it easy for students to compare the work of historians, to raise their own questions, and provide their own answers about the Pueblo Revolt and its causes.
In 1680, in a swift and bloody revolt, Pueblo Indians overthrew the Spaniards who had occupied their lands for more than eighty years. Since 1598, when Juan de Onate brought a small group of colonists into the mesa and canyon country of northern New Mexico, Spain had asserted its sovereignty over the Pueblo peoples. Spanish officials had demanded that Pueblos pay tribute to the Spanish Crown by working for encomenderos, a small number of privileged Spaniards to whom Spanish officials entrusted the Pueblos and their labor. At the same time, Spanish priests established missions in the Pueblos’ farming villages and demanded that the Indians abandon their religion in favor of Christianity. Pueblo Indians, who vastly outnumbered their Spanish overlords, tolerated this arrangement for several generations.
The Pueblos, whose own cultural tradition went back at least to the time that Europeans believed the son of their god, Jesus Christ, walked on the earth, seemed ideal subjects for conversion. Like the Iberians, the Pueblos lived in towns, farmed nearby fields, and wore what Spaniards recognized as clothing. Although they were not a homogeneous people and spoke several discrete languages, Spaniards named these Indians “Pueblos” because they lived in permanent towns (pueblos) of stone or adobe, in contrast to the nomads and seminomads whose lands Spaniards traversed to reach New Mexico. For Franciscans, who insisted that Indians lived like Spaniards and tried to congregate them into towns if they did not, the apartment-dwelling Pueblos seemed a godsend. Although Franciscans failed to plant missions among Apaches, Navajos, and other seminomads who surrounded the Pueblo country, they succeeded among the Pueblos.
Until 1680, Pueblos tolerated the outsiders. An agricultural people, rooted to fertile valleys in a high desert land of little rain, Pueblos had no other place to go. Some tried to rebel, but revolts remained isolated affairs easily quashed by Spaniards. The autonomous Pueblo towns, separated by several hundred miles and at least six different languages and countless dialects, had no central government to unify them. Moreover, Pueblos knew that rebellion invited hideous retaliations. How could Pueblos forget the burning of the Pueblo of °coma when it offered resistance in 1598 and the punishments meted out to the survivors by Spaniards with swords of steel? Treating Indian miscreants as brutally as they treated one another, Spaniards cut the right foot off every male °coman over twenty-five years of age.
Then, in a few weeks in the late summer of 1680, Pueblos destroyed the Spanish colony of New Mexico. Coordinating their efforts as they had never done before, Pueblos launched a well-planned surprise attack. From the kiva at Taos, Pueblo messengers secretly carried calendars in the form of knotted cords to participating pueblos. Each knot marked a day until the Pueblos would take up arms. The last knot was to be united on August 11, but the rebellion exploded a day early. Tipped off by sympathetic Pueblos, Spaniards had captured two of the rebel messengers on August 9. When leaders of the revolt learned that they had been betrayed, they moved the attack up a day. Despite the warning, the revolt caught Spaniards off guard. They could not imagine the magnitude of the planned assault. Scattered in isolated farms and ranches along the Rio Grande and its tributaries, Spaniards were easy prey for the rebels÷.Governor OtermÃn estimated that the Pueblos had killed more than four hundred of New Mexico’s Hispanic residents, whose total numbers did not exceed three thousand. The rebels desecrated the churches and killed twenty-one of the province’s thirty-three Franciscans, in many cases humiliating, tormenting, and beating them before taking their lives.
Although scholars of American history have slighted Pueblos and Spaniards, historians who study southwestern America or Latin America have long regarded the Pueblo Revolt as an important event: one of the most successful uprisings against Europeans in the New World. The Pueblo Revolt pales next to the more enduring victory of the Araucanians, who maintained autonomy for two centuries after destroying seven substantial Spanish towns in south-central Chile in 1598-1603, but the Pueblos’ achievement was significant and unusual. It marked one of the rare moments in more than three hundred years of colonial rule in the Americas that Spaniards suffered a thorough defeat by natives whom they had long subjected. Moreover, most scholars believe that the Pueblos’ act of defiance assured them of a measure of freedom from future Spanish efforts to eradicate their culture.
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No Escape: The neverending online threats to female journalists
Illustration by Franziska Barczyk It was 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. Jane Lytvynenko was at her desk monitoring…
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female journalists,
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Illustration by Franziska Barczyk
It was 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. Jane Lytvynenko was at her desk monitoring the news and flipping through her online feeds when a notification popped up on her screen alerting her to a personalized tweet.
When she clicked on it, a photograph jumped up at her. Lytvynenko flinched. The image on her screen was children, all of them dead and laid out on hard asphalt, their clothes soaked in blood from open wounds. Below the photo was a message for Lytvynenko: “Ukrainians kill children,” it read. “You are stupid hooker, whore. Your hands in blood!” Lytvynenko flinched again, feeling the blood drain from her face, her heartbeat accelerating.
She knew why she had been targeted. Lytvynenko, a Toronto-based news reporter at BuzzFeed News, had penned a piece taking apart and questioning the veracity of a Twitter thread going viral online. The thread, posted by user LauraSession10, speculated the reason behind the killing of four American soldiers in Niger and called attention to the unpreparedness of the entire operation. But Lytvynenko’s journalistic instincts kicked in and she focused on the problematic source who published the viral Twitter thread that was shared across the internet by thousands of people, including celebrities, even though the Twitter user had no credentials to be claiming the story as truth. Lytvynenko’s piece was published on Friday, debunking the story by going through the thread piece by piece and pointing out inaccuracies. LauraSession10 then spent the entire weekend harassing her on Twitter, shifting the attention off Lytvynenko’s story and onto the journalist herself. With much of the global media focus on the murky Russian influence on the U.S. election process, LauraSession10 began a focused effort to discredit Lytvynenko, claiming she was Russian and could not be trusted. In fact, Lytvynenko is of Ukrainian descent. But as the political tension and coverage of Russian influence grew, Lytvynenko became a target.
The Tuesday morning message—in particular, the image of the murdered children from a different Twitter user—threw Lytvynenko so off balance that she left her desk and took a walk around the block to refocus. Afterwards, she reported it to Twitter, which took it down quickly, but the damage had been done. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. “It wasn’t a good feeling,” she says.
Stories of online harassment—like Lytvynenko’s—are more commonly the norm than the exception today. Journalists—especially those who are women and members of marginalized communities—increasingly find themselves targets of online rage. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) surveyed 400 female journalists across the globe, including Canada, and its report published in November 2017 found that 44 percent of respondents had experienced online abuse. Michelle Shephard, the Toronto Star’s national security reporter, has been working on the Omar Khadr story, writing about the young Canadian who spent 10 years detained at Guantanamo Bay. In the summer of 2017, when Khadr received a $10.5-million settlement from the Canadian federal government, Shephard received an anonymous envelope in the mail that was addressed directly to her. When she opened the envelope she discovered a print copy of her article, “Ottawa to offer Khadr an apology.” The article was slightly crumpled with a streak of what appeared to be feces on it. Shephard responded to the personalized note with humour. She tweeted out a photo of the letter with the following caption: “1. Subscriber! 2. Environmental. 3. Glad they spelled my name correctly.”
Online harassment isn’t exclusive to women in the media industry. Gender-based online harassment is common in the public sphere, from threats of violence to demeaning comments. Last year, employees from far-right website The Rebel took to calling Canada’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, “Climate Barbie,” and Conservative politicians and social media users followed suit. The internet has become an increasingly threatening place to be—even more so for female reporters and people of colour who could be deterred from pursuing important stories because of personal attacks or physical threats. A 2017 Pew Research Center study on online harassment found that 21 percent of women aged 18 to 29 reported being sexually harassed online, as opposed to only nine percent of men. Paired with the recent trend of false information going viral and the lack of real change from the companies hosting social media platforms, online harassment poses a threat to how journalism is conducted, and to the lives and mental health of the journalists coming into work each day.
Veteran female journalists have a long lens on modern-day harassment, having lived through several eras of technological change before the advent of social media platforms, even the internet. Kim Bolan, a crime reporter for the Vancouver Sun, recalls receiving her first death threat in 1997, around the time when Sun reporters were given personal email addresses. Bolan’s death threat arrived in the form of an anonymous letter.
In the pre-internet era when readers had a bone to pick with a reporter, they had to ink a letter,
buy a stamp, locate a physical address, and mail it in a post box. The series of steps acted as a deterrent, says Elizabeth Renzetti of The Globe and Mail, who has seen a spike in hate mail over the years, especially as social media platforms have replaced many other modes of traditional communication. By all accounts, online hate is different. It takes minutes—sometimes seconds—to find someone’s contact information and fire something off. The stages in the process of mailing a letter that would provide a cooling-off period no longer exist.
In the internet era, differences of opinion on individual stories moved to online comment sections. But with the large-scale adoption of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, journalists like Bolan and Renzetti feel a shift in both the nature and volume of responses. Today, Bolan marshals a staff blog called Real Scoop, sorting through threats to separate the serious from the toothless and reporting the former to police on occasion. “I leave the threats on the blog. It’s there for the whole world to see, and that person is going to have to live with that being up there,” Bolan says.
In Canada, comment sections have been changing with increased moderation or are sometimes completely shuttered, leaving journalists at the mercy of one-on-one communication with their haters through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The Toronto Star shut down its online comments sections, and others like The Huffington Post and CBC have added regulations to control content, like moderating or removing comment sections on stories about controversial issues. The Toronto Sun published a statement when it shut down comment sections in 2015 that read: “The increasing use of Sun comment boards for anonymous, negative, even malicious personal attacks, albeit by a minority, has led us to conclude our current commenting system is not serving the interests of the majority of our readers.” The Sun has since reopened its comment sections, which now use a posting forum through Facebook where commenters are identified by their personal profiles. Even though there is no option for a poster to be anonymous, there is still a loophole to get around being linked to an aggressive comment if a user is committed enough to create a false account.
Opinion writers are often at the receiving end of these personalized hate messages, and Renzetti, whose column often focuses on women’s issues, says she no longer reads comments. But as some comment sections have shuttered or tried to add moderation, she says the culture of the comment space has morphed into something ugly and more personal. She likens comment sections to live online theatre, where commenters perform for each other, while she says social media messaging is more uninhibited, public, and personal.
If there is a singular event that has heightened the intensity of online hate toward journalists, Renzetti says it’s the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House. When Renzetti writes about him, she gets personally attacked; she’s either too old or ugly to be harassed by Trump, she’s told.
While Renzetti regularly receives insults of that kind, the Star’s Shree Paradkar often receives messages like, “Go back to your shitty country,” or “Hope your husband rapes you tonight.” She likens social media responses to columns to a chronic, unrelenting pain. And because she writes about gender, race, and identity, and is a person of colour, the barbs and attacks are particularly vicious. When a journalist is parachuted into a war-torn region for a couple weeks, or publishes a controversial story, the personal toll from the reporting and the public backlash might be severe, she says, but it’s still temporary. But opinion writers—especially those like Paradkar—are at the receiving end of hate all the time.
Just as Renzetti sees Trump’s election as a defining moment for targeting journalists online, Lytvynenko believes it was Gamergate that released the flood of online hate toward women. More than a century after women began to establish themselves in newsrooms around the world and venture beyond the women’s sections, they remain unwelcome in niche spaces, including the gaming world. In 2013, Zoë Quinn, an independent game developer, created a text-based game on mental health called Depression Quest. The game received a host of positive reviews and quickly gained popularity amongst new gamers. But just as things began to take off, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend published a series of blogs posts accusing her of cheating on him with five other men who worked in the video game industry or covered it as journalists. He accused her of gaining biased media and industry support. What ensued was a veritable witch hunt. Quinn was presumed guilty, and a deep and enduring anti-woman movement raged across the online gaming space, with support from then-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who took up the cause after online haters started the hashtag #gamergate. All of that was accompanied by a months-long orchestrated online campaign against Quinn, wherein she ended up being “doxxed”—her personal phone number and her family’s address were released, resulting in an onslaught of phone calls and messages threatening her and her family. Exposed to an angry and misogynist public, Quinn was forced to leave her home and live with friends, often sleeping on couches until the fervour died down. The Gamergaters, also known simply as “trolls,” backed off when Quinn published messages from a private chat on Twitter between members of the group—“I think she tried killing herself before,” one poster wrote, and another responded, “She should try that again.” The Gamergaters retreated when Quinn published their chats exposing that they were not a movement for games journalism like they had posed themselves, but just sexist and misogynistic.
The perpetrators attacked and sent online death threats to other women such as Anita Sarkeesian, a media critic, and Brianna Wu, a software engineer and video game developer. The Gamergaters convinced other users not to trust the information coming from news outlets, and created posts with false information that went viral. Writing in The Guardian, Matt Lees identified striking similarities between Gamergate and the modern alt-right hate groups—especially in the ways they attack their critics and create false facts. “This hashtag was the canary in the coalmine, and we ignored it,” he wrote.
She just wanted to know if her children would be safe. She contacted the police, and an officer told her, “Just stay off the internet, love.”
Gamergaters also targeted other media personalities. In a 2014 talk, Sarkeesian revealed she received death threats from fake social media accounts because she used feminist perspectives and criticisms to talk about video games, and that her name and identity were hijacked to create content to intentionally stir angry internet trolls. Images of her wearing horns and looking like the devil were shared virally amongst the community online. Back then, she called it an “information cascade.” New information was coming in at such a pace, she says, and was shared so quickly, it was difficult to verify if it was real.
“In terms of coordinated campaigns, I think that Gamergate is what started all of this in a way,” Lytvynenko says. “It’s shown people that you can do these coordinated harassment campaigns and sometimes they work.”
In 2010, when Ginger Gorman was a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), she worked on a series of stories about LGBTQ+ issues around Queensland. One story profiled Mark Newton and Peter Truong, a gay couple struggling through paperwork to get their son from Russia. Gorman reported on the couple’s story: Newton was the boy’s biological father, but his son was born through a surrogate. After the interview was over and she clicked a “happy snap” of the couple with their son, Gorman and the child chased chickens around the couple’s property. The photograph and the story were published shortly after.
But two years later, a joint investigation by the United States Postal Inspection Service and Queensland Police revealed Newton and Truong weren’t really the boy’s adoptive parents but pedophiles who purchased him for $8,000 (U.S.) while in Russia. The child had been abused by the two men since he was weeks old and Newton and Truong would bring the boy with them to be sexually exploited as they travelled. Newton, an American, was sentenced to 40 years in a U.S. prison, and Truong, an Australian, was sentenced to 30. “I spent a lot of time with that little boy,” Gorman says. “They duped me like they had duped everyone else.” The photo she took was used in just about every story about the men’s arrests, with the child’s face blurred out. But the photo’s credit was rightly assigned to Gorman.
What followed was a troll bombardment. Gorman’s 2010 piece was shared online, depicting her as part of the problem. On personal blogs and on Twitter, people started calling her a “pedophile lover.” Things got more personal when the now-defunct Nazi website Iron March published a photograph of her family, a brutal blow for Gorman, whose maternal grandparents had survived the Holocaust.
Gorman and Quinn’s experiences illustrate the shift in audience engagement with women online. As the “orchestrated online hate campaign” against Gorman grew she realized just how vulnerable she was. “It came at me like a tsunami,” she says.
Location services were activated on her phone, making it possible to track her movements, including when she was at her Queensland home. One day she received this tweet, “Your life is over.” She then began to fear for the safety of her children, especially since a family photograph had been widely shared online. “Is someone really coming for us?” she remembers thinking. “Is someone really going to harm my children? It was terrifying.”
Gorman’s specific challenge was that the threat followed her everywhere. It hadn’t happened in a supermarket or another public space she could have exit and leave behind. Wherever she went, wherever her kids went, fear from the digital threats followed. “The threat is omnipresent.”
At one point she reached out to ABC, but her employer wasn’t sure what to do and offered her psychological counselling. Gorman declined, saying she just wanted to know if her children would be safe. She contacted the police, and an officer told her, “Just stay off the internet, love.”
For young journalists entering the field receiving abusive emails and online messages can be rattling. Toronto Star reporter Fatima Syed says she receives weekly abuse. When she entered the media industry through the Star, Syed heard other journalists of colour talk about harassment as a regular feature of their work experiences.
Even though she knew it could happen, Syed was not prepared for the personalized hate mail she receives. A recent message from a reader came via email, calling her a “Burmese slut” after she wrote about human rights crimes committed against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma.
One day she received this tweet, “Your life is over.” She then began to fear for the safety of her children, especially since a family photograph had been widely shared online. “Is someone really coming for us?”
“Theoretically, you know you’re going to get it, and you know how bad it’s going to be,” Syed says. “But you’re not prepared with the emotional whammy that comes with receiving it.”
There’s also the added pressure that comes from her own community. The coverage of minority groups from mainstream media organizations can be spotty, and reporters can make a lot of mistakes that could paint a community in the wrong light. As a Muslim, Syed knows her reporting of issues pertaining to Muslims will be held to a higher standard by the community. But community responses aren’t always constructive.
After covering a court case involving a Muslim defendant, a man—Syed says she can’t recall an attack coming from a woman—called her and told her she was worthless, and that he hated that she was a Muslim journalist “because [she was] giving Muslims a bad name.” Considering the work she puts in making sure her stories are fair and accurate, this type of feedback rattles her.
Experienced journalists provide support, though. “Sometimes all you need is someone else saying, ‘Man, what an idiot.’”
Journalists have responded to the troll problem in different ways. When she was hit with a wave of hate, Gorman tried to understand the mindset. She interviewed as many online trolls as she could. “I don’t know if that was brave or stupid. I’m not quite sure,” Gorman says. “It just seemed like an online emergency.” All of them were men. She also found they had developed orchestrated strategies, often working together in groups to perform coordinated attacks. They were overwhelmingly white and middle class, and some had girlfriends. The men told Gorman they felt discriminated against, their identities threatened by women and minority groups. Lashing out was a response.
In 2014, researchers from the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, and the University of British Columbia published a joint study titled, “Trolls Just Want to Have
Fun,” defining “trolling” as “the practice of behaving in a deceptive, destructive, or disruptive manner in a social setting on the internet with no apparent instrumental purpose.” Researchers interviewed over 1,200 Americans online and found trolling was strongly related to personality traits that correlated with sadism, psychopathy and narcissism. The study found these people spent between one and two hours a day commenting on posts online. “Our research suggests that, for those with sadistic personalities, that ideal self may be a villain of chaos and mayhem,” the authors stated in the report.
One man told Gorman that women, those women in positions of power, are easy to attack—trolls threaten these women with sexual violence or violence against their children and families. “That’s why they choose female journalists as targets,” Gorman says. “It’s a great threat to them. It’s so incredibly sad. [Trolls] are not able to accept a more inclusive society.”
A pressing concern is the impact online attacks have on female journalists’ ability to do their jobs. Duncan Pike, co-director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, a group that monitors issues of free expression and access to information, says social media platforms—especially Twitter—are an integral part of a journalist’s career. They can connect with potential sources, share their stories and even start their own publications. For readers, it’s a way to make their voices heard in an unprecedented way. But harassment and doxxing are an always-present concern for reporters looking to tell important stories. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, he says, it will always have an impact on you. That strain on their lives can cause journalists to think twice about reporting on unpopular topics, and it has a ripple effect on their coworkers and sources as well.
“Their colleagues will look at that and think, ‘Oh God, they had to leave social media for a month or a year and just never came back. Do I want to speak out on this issue and get the same thing?’” Pike asks. “It does have a real silencing effect.”
When Gorman reached out to her media company for help, they offered emotional support but couldn’t offer physical protection. She set out to do something about it by understanding troll culture. In March 2017, Renzetti and some coworkers heard Globe reporter Janet McFarland, Star columnist Heather Mallick and Vice Canada senior writer Manisha Krishnan discuss the hazards of being a female journalist online at a Canadian Journalism Foundation J-Talk panel. After the talk, Renzetti realized how little of her experience with harassment she had shared with her colleagues, and vice versa. “You just end up internalizing this stuff,” Renzetti says. “But it’s not your fault that someone is calling you a bitch on Twitter.”
The event was a catalyst for a new support group at the Globe. The meetings started small, but in time, grew to include up to 12 women at a time, including members of management. The group conducted research on other newsrooms’ policies but has yet to come up with a conclusive plan of action.
Beyond the policies they hope to produce, Renzetti says discussing and speaking about the attacks they face in a public space helps take the power back from anonymous trolls.
Paradkar, who has been at the Star for a over decade, says the key—for her—is to motor on. Even though the threats and abuse is ever present, being at the receiving end has only emboldened her’s resolve. “I feel like it’s allowing them to win if I take a day off and lick my wounds, so to speak. The best revenge is if I keep going.”
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Home > News and Stories > A Family Just Like Any Other
A Family Just Like Any Other
After spending 17 years together as a couple, Thomas Ecks and Terry Grogan felt something was missing in their lives. There was some sort of a void they didn’t quite know how to fill. Then they realized the missing piece was children.
Both had come from strong, sturdy families with siblings, and it just seemed natural to want kids. But as gay men, they knew that would take some extra work. So, Terry began researching, and the couple decided the way to go was to foster then adopt children.
“We looked at all the options and we saw a need in the community,” Terry said. “This just seemed like the best fit for us … I had always wanted kids, so I told Thomas, ‘Don’t give me the green light if you’re not ready for this!”
Thomas’ initial hesitation was about children moving into then out of their home. And, in fact, the first two children they had, 2- and 3-year-old siblings, stayed with them for only six months. But through the classes they attended, they accepted that foster homes most often are temporary.
“We learned we can do this successfully,” Thomas said. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, but we gave these children the foundation for a lifetime.”
Then in January of 2012, Asia, who is now 4, and Ace, now 5, came into their lives. Between the other foster homes they’d been in, plus being briefly reunified with their biological family – who later became homeless – this became the children’s fifth home.
One of those foster homes included another sibling, Antonio, who is now 13. For months, he would visit Ace and Asia at the home of Terry and Thomas.
“We established a relationship with him,” Terry said.
“He was a good kid and we could see he really loved his brother and sister,” Thomas added.
Then Antonio asked Terry if he would be able to stay with them. Terry thought he meant overnight. Then Antonio brought it up again.
“I mean like all the time!”
The couple told him that a lot of people would be involved in the decision and that “it has to be right for you, Ace and Asia, and us for that to happen,” Thomas said. “But from our perspective, there really was no reason to say no.”
Then things got a bit strange. A former foster mother and father were walking in front of Terry and Thomas’ home, on July 4th, saw the kids, and told them they wanted to get re-licensed so as to adopt Antonio. This was the same day he had asked to stay with Terry and Thomas. His current foster parents also were willing to adopt.
“With three families involved, I think he felt a bit empowered!” Thomas said with a laugh. “But he really wanted and needed to be with his siblings. There was a very strong connection there, so we went back to the licensing person, and ultimately Antonio was placed with us and his brother and sister.”
During the process of formalizing the adoption of the three children, Terry and Thomas maintained their relationship with their biological father. And he still sees the kids weekly.
“We can’t be strong enough advocates to have biological families part of the decisions about kids’ lives when appropriate” Thomas said. When they first went to court for the children’s father’s termination of parental rights, the judge noted that the man was deferring to Terry and Thomas, so he delayed final action for 30 days.
The couple felt that it was important for the biological father to explain to Antonio why he was going to give up his rights. He did, and ultimately everything worked out just fine, in great part because Thomas and Terry stressed they were committed to keeping the dad’s connection with his children.
“People who saw Antonio within that 30 days said he was a different kid, happy smiling, interacting. We could see there really was a weight lifted off of him,” Thomas said.
Terry and Thomas wanted to be sure that Antonio understood they were a gay couple, so they sat him down and talked to him.
“We said, ‘We’re a couple, we love each other, and we’re in a relationship,’” Terry said. Antonio told a kid at school they were brothers. “So, we tried again. We said, ‘We’re not brothers; we’re not related. Do you understand what a gay relationship is?’”
“Yeah, I just don’t like to say it,” Antonio answered. Although he apparently was concerned about the kind of reaction he might get at school, teachers and fellow students have been great, and there have been no problems at all, Terry said. It really has become a non-issue.
“We’re seeing a rapid change in our society, beyond the question of whether this is an appropriate home,” Thomas said. “We’re simply living our lives in front of everybody and we’re not worried about their perspective.”
But the love and normalcy the family exhibits has changed perspectives, including some firmly held beliefs. The children’s biological grandmother, who lives in Texas, is very religious and thought this home was wrong. Because Terry and Thomas felt she was a vital part of the children’s lives, they were committed to keeping the lines of communication open. Eventually, when she was in town for a visit, she and her husband took the family out for dinner. Now she calls weekly, really wanting a connection with her grandchildren.
And the family has received much welcomed, yet unexpected, support from their community. People have stopped them in the park across from their home and thanked them for being in the lives of these children. They have left packages on their doorstep.
“They’ve really recognized that raising children successfully is a community effort,” Thomas said.
“And SaintA has been extremely welcoming and supportive,” he said. “They have embraced us as a family. They’re doing great things without any concern for the color of our skin, nationality, our relationship. None of that is important. Nothing has held us back at all.”
In fact, the couple have grown closer with each other, they said, supporting one another in child rearing, complementing each other’s personalities. Recently they went to dinner and Thomas asked, “How’s this going?”
“I think we’re doing really good,” Terry answered. “I can’t imagine our lives without them. Actually, I barely remember our lives without them.
“Except we had better television!”
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Home / People / Senior Living Community Names Executive Director
People January 15, 2020
ESCONDIDO, CA–Las Villas del Norte, an Integral Senior Living community, has named Jolene M. Farish as its executive director.
A San Diego native, Farish comes from a family with a rich professional background in social services, which helped her shape her view of the world and empowered her to become a leader in the service industry, specifically to the elderly population.
In pursuit of a career that aligned with her passion to serve others, Farish earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social work from San Diego State University. She began her career as a social worker; director of resident and family services at a 122-bed assisted living community for the memory-impaired, later moving into the executive director then senior executive director position of an assisted living home.
As a result of her work there, Farish received the Rising Star, Community of the Year and Administrator of the Year awards.
“I truly believe it is my purpose and passion to provide the best quality of life for my residents and their families,” Farish said. “My intention is to continue to provide enriching experiences for my residents, alongside my talented team members.”
Her primary responsibilities as the executive director include managing the community’s day-to-day operations, providing oversight to various teams and working with the management company, Integral Senior Living. In addition, she will supervise and oversee hiring all department leads and staff.
“Jolene’s passion for serving others is evident through the many accomplishments and accolades she has received during her long-standing, successful career,” said Jeffery Smith, senior vice president of Sales and Marketing at Integral Senior Living. “Her extensive experience and innovative thinking will be incredible assets to the Las Villas del Norte community.”
Located in the Hidden Valley of San Diego at 1325 Las Villas Way, Las Villas del Norte is a premier senior living community. This community offers independent living, assisted living, memory care and respite care.
Integral Senior Living, headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, manages a progressive selection of independent, assisted living and memory care properties throughout 18 states. It is ranked among the nation’s largest senior living providers.
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Home / Happy Holidays with Frank & Bing + Vintage Sinatra DVD
Happy Holidays with Frank & Bing + Vintage Sinatra DVD
The Frank Sinatra Collection brings together some of Frank Sinatra’s finest performances on television and in concert. This release combines a classic Christmas special from 1957 with a compilation from his 1950s TV shows.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS WITH FRANK & BING – First aired on December 20, 1957, this is a timeless Christmas favorite featuring the magical combination of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in an early color television special. The two legends swap Christmas carols, songs and stories, pay a musical visit to Victorian England and duet on some Christmas classics. The show finishes in inimitable fashion with “The Christmas Song” and “White Christmas” for pure festive perfection.
VINTAGE SINATRA – This compilation DVD brings together black and white footage taken from Frank Sinatra’s television shows in the 1950s with color commentary and reminiscences from his three children: Nancy, Tina and Frank Sinatra Jr. It features performances of many of Sinatra’s most popular songs including: “Come Fly With Me,” “I Get A Kick Out Of You,” “My Funny Valentine,” which he sings to a young Nancy, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “The House I Live In” and many more, all set into context by the anecdotes of Nancy, Tina and Frank Jr.
Click here for full tracklist
All or Nothing At All Deluxe Version Import DVD/CD
Live from Caesars Palace + The First 40 Years DVD
At The Royal Festival Hall + Sinatra In Japan DVD
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Characteristics & Behaviors of the Giant Panda
••• Hung_Chung_Chih/iStock/GettyImages
Animals That Live in the Tropical Forest That Are Omnivores
By Brenda Priddy
The giant panda is an interesting and beautiful creature. The panda has a striking coat and mild temperament that sometimes translates as lazy. Pandas are an endangered species due to poaching and loss of habitat. Many conservationist organizations are working hard to keep pandas from going extinct so that future generations can enjoy the majestic creatures.
Appearance and Size
The giant panda is from 3 to 4 feet tall when standing on all fours, and can grow to over 6 feet long. The pandas weigh between 150 and 250 pounds. Female pandas are slightly smaller, and rarely grow larger than 220 pounds. The fur on the panda is a striking color block of black and white. The head is mostly white, the arms and front half of the body are black, the hindquarters are white and the back legs are black.
Characteristics and Behaviors
The disposition of the panda is surprisingly mild for a bear. While the teeth are similar to that of carnivorous bears, the panda only eats plants, such as bamboo shoots. Pandas are loners, but sometimes they will communicate and interact with other adult pandas. Female pandas ovulate once a year in the spring for two or three days. This short ovulation time is one of the reasons why the species is endangered. Baby pandas stay with their mothers for one and a half to three years. Pandas do not hibernate and spend most of their time searching for food and resting. Pandas live about 30 years.
Panda Diet
Pandas eat a diet that consists of 99 percent bamboo in the wild. In a zoo, the zookeepers will often give the pandas dietary supplements, such as sugar cane, sweet potatoes and other items. Pandas eat around 40 pounds of food each day, which can take up to 16 hours to find. Pandas drink fresh water from streams and rivers to supplement the water that they get from bamboo shoots, which can contain up to 90 percent water.
Where to Find Pandas
About 1,600 pandas are living in the wild, according to Animal Info, and an additional 300 pandas are in zoos. Pandas live in Southwest China and in the temperate forests of China. The giant panda has a limited native region. Pandas live in high altitudes around 8,000 to 12,000 feet. The giant panda lives in forests with dense foliage and a large amount of natural bamboo plants. In zoos, the natural habitat of the panda is copied for the bears' comfort.
Animal Info: Giant Panda
National Zoo: Giant Panda Facts
Brenda Priddy has more than 10 years of crafting and design experience, as well as more than six years of professional writing experience. Her work appears in online publications such as Donna Rae at Home, Five Minutes for Going Green and Daily Mayo. Priddy also writes for Archstone Business Solutions and holds an Associate of Arts in English from McLennan Community College.
The Complete Life Cycle of the Giant Panda
How Do Elephants Give Birth?
Facts About Baby Giraffes
Life Cycle of a Manatee
Facts About Animals of West Africa
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I'm Eunice!
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Some of Halifax’s most haunted
By Sydney Jones
October 23, 2016, 7:24 am ASTLast Updated: October 23, 2016, 7:24 am
Halifax is nearly 270 years old.
It has connections to two world wars, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and had one of the biggest man-made explosions prior to the testing of the first atomic bomb.
Rich in maritime history, the city is also full of spooky tales, and some would argue, the spirits that go with them.
Here is a list of five of the most haunted places in Halifax:
No tricks, all treat: 6 ways to celebrate Halloween in Halifax (October 28, 2016)
1) The Five Fishermen Restaurant
Wallace Fraser tells the story of the tapping ghost at The Five Fishermen Restaurant. Sydney Jones
Some people visit The Five Fishermen restaurant for its food, others for its history and a few for its creepy atmosphere.
“We are considered one of the most haunted places in town,” says Wallace Fraser, managing partner of the restaurant.
Before it was converted into a seafood restaurant in 1975, the Argyle Street building served as a schoolhouse, mortuary and warehouse.
When the liner Titanic sank in 1912 off the coast of Newfoundland, more than 200 bodies came through the mortuary, says Fraser.
He has only been working at the restaurant for about four months, but has already experienced what appears to be paranormal activity:
http://signalhfx.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Fraser-Voice.mp3
2) Alexander Keith’s Nova Scotia Brewery
The entrance to Alexander Keith’s Nova Scotia Brewery. Sydney Jones
Dating back almost two centuries, this ironstone and granite building on Hollis Street has seen a lot of foot traffic.
The building, three-stories high with a flat roof, was bought in 1820 by brewmaster Alexander Keith, who was looking to expand his business. Keith passed away in 1873, but his spirit is said to have stayed behind.
“I always say, ‘Good morning Mr. Keith,’” says brewery Creative Director Jennette White. “I don’t want to insult the man when I go in.”
But Keith isn’t the only spirit said to roam the halls.
Last year, a young man was alone in the basement doing some cleaning. He was whistling to himself while he worked, when he heard someone, or something, whistle back.
“He thought, ‘OK, someone must be playing a trick on me’,’ says White. She explains that when the man looked up he saw a flash of a woman in green and purple, with her hair piled loosely on her head.
He then looked away for a second to see if anyone else was around. When he looked back, she had disappeared.
3) Shirreff Hall
A student leaves Shirreff Hall. Sydney Jones
Located at the corner of Oxford and South Streets, Shirreff Hall is the oldest residence at Dalhousie University.
And some would argue, the most haunted.
Dating to 1923, the building has seen thousands of students come and go. Operating as an exclusively female residence until 2005, the now co-ed residence welcomes 440 students each academic year.
Many people claim to have witnessed inexplicable things while living there.
In 2013, 18-year-old Brittany Wilson moved into Shirreff Hall. Her stay started off smoothly, but soon little things started to happen, she says.
Papers would suddenly fall from her desk to the floor, untouched. Lights would often flicker by themselves.
One evening, Wilson and a friend had set their alarms to go off at the same time so they could wake up a friend for his birthday.
They wanted to surprise him by jumping into his bed at “the exact moment he was born,” says Wilson.
“We got out into the stairwell and there’s really loud organ music (playing) at four in the morning,” she says. “Shirreff didn’t have an organ and we couldn’t locate one.”
Wilson describes the organ music as “surround-sound loud” and says it was only playing in the stairwell.
Wilson lived in the Old Eddy portion of the residence, which she believes is the most haunted part of the building.
4) Old Burying Ground
The Old Burying Ground is located at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Barrington Street. Sydney Jones
Located at the corner of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road, the Old Burying Ground is another one of Halifax’s spooky hot spots.
Now a national historic site, the lot was laid out in the summer of 1749 and held burials for approximately 12,000 bodies before it closed in 1844.
A typhoid fever epidemic in the winter of 1749-1750 killed more than 1,000 settlers and tested the limits of the cemetery, which expanded from one acre to two and one-quarter acres.
Andy Smith runs Tattle Tours Nova Scotia, a touring company that takes visitors around the city for informative historical tours. He also offers ghost tours.
The Old Burying Ground is one of his favourite places to stop.
“One evening I brought a group in and we all saw a man appear about 30 feet in front of us and cross the path we were walking up,” says Smith. “He disappeared 30 to 35 feet in front of us.”
5) Stoddard House
Stoddard House is located at the corner of Bishop and Barrington streets. Sydney Jones
At 1361 Barrington St., Stoddard House is only a stone’s throw away from the Old Burying Ground and may be just as haunted.
A registered historic landmark, the stone and brick building was constructed in 1828 and is among the oldest on the street.
Rumour has it that a young woman and her baby, who can be heard crying from the second floor, haunt this building after a botched surgery, says Smith of Tattle Tours.
Stoddard House is now the home of the Nova Scotia Association of Architects.
“I have heard that ‘old tale’ before, but never experienced it myself,” the association’s membership coordinator, Jeremy Martell, said in an e-mail.
Records from the Nova Scotia Archives say five people killed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion were registered as occupants of the house. The list included 22-year-old Edna Shaw and three-year-old Mary Agnes Shaw.
Have a story idea? Let us know
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Portrait of Leonardo by Melzi
Verrocchio
Notable work
Lady with an Ermine
Virgin of the Rocks
The Vitruvian Man
Patron(s)
King of France
Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian man who lived in the time of the Renaissance. He is famous for his paintings,[1] but he was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and a writer. Leonardo wanted to know everything about nature. He wanted to know how everything worked. He was very good at studying, designing and making all sorts of interesting things.[2]
Many people think that Leonardo was one of the greatest painters of all time. Other people think that he was the most talented person ever to have lived.[1] The art historian Helen Gardner said that no-one has ever been quite like him because he was interested in so many things that he seems to have had the mind of a giant, and yet what he was like as a person is still a mystery.[3]
Leonardo was born at Vinci which is a small town near Florence, Italy. He was trained to be an artist by the sculptor and painter Verrocchio. He spent most of his life working for rich Italian noblemen. In his last years, he lived in a beautiful home given to him by the King of France.
Two of his pictures are among the best-known paintings in the world: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He did many drawings. The best-known drawing is Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was often thinking of new inventions. He kept notebooks with notes and drawings of these ideas. Most of his inventions were never made. Some of his ideas were a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, a parachute, a robot, a telephone, evolution, and solar power.[source?]
A simple video presentation of Leonardo da Vinci.
1.1 Childhood, 1452–1466
1.2 Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476
1.3 Working life 1476–1499
1.3.1 Gran Cavallo
1.3.2 The Virgin of the Rocks
1.3.3 The Last Supper
1.4.1 The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist
1.4.2 The Battle of Anghiari
1.4.3 Mona Lisa
1.5 Working life, 1506–1516
1.6 Old age, 1516–1519
1.7 Drawings
2 Leonardo's notebooks
2.1 Studies
2.2 Designs and inventions
3 Leonardo's studies, designs and inventions
6 More reading
Life[change | change source]
Childhood, 1452–1466[change | change source]
Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley, 1473. It is in the Uffizi Gallery.
Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452,[4] in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the valley of the Arno River. His grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, wrote down the details of the birth. Leonardo's parents were not married. His father was a Notary, Ser Piero da Vinci.[5][6] His mother, Caterina, was a servant. She may have been a slave from the Middle East.[7][8] or from China.[9] His father later on took custody of Leonardo and his mother remarried and had 5 more children.[10] Leonardo's full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, the son of Messer (Mister) Pierdaom Vinci".
Leonardo spent his first five years living in a farm house with his mother. Then he lived at Vinci with his father, his father's new wife Albiera, his grandparents and uncle, Francesco.[11] When Leonardo grew up, he only wrote down two memories from his childhood. He remembered that when he was lying outside in his cradle a large bird flew from the sky and hovered over him. Its tail feathers brushed his face.[11] Leonardo's other important memory was how he found a cave while exploring in the mountains. He was terrified that some great monster might be hiding there. But he was also very excited and wanted to find out what was inside.[11]
Leonardo started painting while he was still a boy. Giorgio Vasari wrote about Leonardo's life shortly after his death. He tells many interesting stories about how clever Leonardo was. He says that Leonardo painted a round wooden shield with a picture of snakes spitting fire. Messer Piero took his son's painting to Florence and sold it to an art dealer.[12]
The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo
Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476[change | change source]
In 1466, when Leonardo was fourteen, his father took him to Florence, to be an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio.
Florence was a very exciting place for a young person who wanted to be an artist. Many famous artists had lived in Florence, starting with Cimabue and Giotto in the 1200s. Everywhere a person looked there were famous and beautiful artworks. The huge cathedral had an enormous new dome. The church of St John had doors that gleamed with gold and were said to be the most beautiful doors in the world. Another church had statues all around it by the most famous sculptors, including one by Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio.
If an artist was lucky, they would find a rich patron who would buy lots of their paintings. The richest family in Florence were the Medici. They had built themselves the finest palace in Florence, and liked buying paintings, statues and other beautiful things. They were also interested in the study of literature and philosophy. Many young artists hoped to get work from the Medici and their friends.
Verrocchio had a big workshop that was one of the busiest in Florence. Leonardo was learning to be an artist, so he had to learn drawing, painting, sculpting and model making. While he was at the workshop, he was able to learn all sorts of other useful skills: chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry.[13][14][15]
Leonardo was not the only young painter at Verrocchio's workshop. Many other painters were trained there, or often visited. Some of them later became famous: Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Botticelli. These artists were all just a few years older than Leonardo.[11][16]
Giorgio Vasari tells an interesting story from this time of Leonardo's life. Verrocchio was painting a large picture of the Baptism of Christ. He gave Leonardo the job of painting one of the angels holding Jesus' robe on the left side of the picture. Vasari said that Leonardo painted the angel so beautifully that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.[12] When the painting is examined closely it is possible to see that many other parts of the picture, such as the rocks, the brown stream and the background may have been painted by Leonardo as well.[6] Verrocchio made a bronze statue of David at this time. It is believed that he used Leonardo as his model.[6]
In about 1472, when he was twenty, Leonardo joined the Guild of St Luke, an organisation of artists and doctors of medicine. Even after his father set him up in his own workshop, Leonardo still enjoyed working at Verrocchio's workshop.[11] Leonardo's earliest known work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno River valley. It has the date 5 August 1473. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery.[16]
Working life 1476–1499[change | change source]
The Adoration of the Magi, (1481) in the Uffizil Gallery
When Vasari writes about Leonardo, he uses words like "noble", "generous", "graceful" and "beautiful". Vasari tells us that as an adult Leonardo was a tall handsome man. He was so strong that he could bend horseshoes with his bare hands. His voice was so beautiful that it charmed everyone that heard it. Almost everyone wanted to be his friend. He loved animals, was a vegetarian and would buy birds at the market and set them free.[17]
Very little is known about Leonardo's life and work between 1472 and 1481. He was probably busy in Florence.[6] In 1478, he had an important commission to paint an altarpiece for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. The painting was to be the Adoration of the Magi (The Three Wise Men). The painting was never finished because Leonardo was sent away to Milan.
Leonardo was a very talented musician.[18] In 1482, he made a silver lyre (a musical instrument) in the shape of a horse's head. At that time there was a new ruler in the city of Milan, in the north of Italy. Duke Ludovico il Moro was making other rulers nervous. Lorenzo Medici sent Leonardo to Milan as an ambassador. Lorenzo de' Medici wanted Leonardo to give Ludovico the lyre as a present from him.[19] Leonardo wrote a letter to the Duke of Milan, telling him about all the clever and useful things that he could do, like making war machines. He wrote in the letter that he could "also paint". Leonardo did not know at the time that it was for painting that he would be mostly remembered.[16][20] Leonardo stayed in Milan and worked for the Duke between 1482 and 1499. Part of his work was to design festivals and carnival processions. In Leonardo's note books are drawings of theatre costumes, amazing helmets and scenes that might be for the theatre.
Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, possibly 1505–1508.
Leonardo, like most other well-known artists of his time, had servants, young students and older assistants in his workshop. One of his young students was a boy whose name was Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno. He was a handsome boy with beautiful long golden curls. He looked perfect as an artist's model for an angel. But he was such a difficult and dishonest boy that Leonardo called him "Salai" or "Salaino" which means "the little devil". Leonardo wrote in his notebook that Salai was very greedy, that he was a liar and that he had stolen things from the house at least five times.[21] Salai stayed in Leonardo's household for thirty years as a pupil and a servant.
Gran Cavallo[change | change source]
Leonardo's most important work for Duke Ludovico was to make a huge statue of the previous ruler, Francesco Sforza, on horseback. He started with the horse. After studying horses and drawing designs, he made a huge horse of clay. It was called the "Gran Cavallo". It was going to be cast in bronze. It was going to be the biggest bronze horse that had been made for more than a thousand years. Unfortunately, the bronze horse was never made. In 1494, Ludovico gave the bronze to be made into cannons because the French army was invading Milan.[16] The huge clay horse was still standing when the French army invaded again in 1499. This time it was used for target practice and was completely destroyed.[16]
The Virgin of the Rocks[change | change source]
While Leonardo was working for Duke Ludovico, he had two important painting commissions. One was to do an oil painting to go in a big altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. Leonardo did the painting twice. He left one with the monks in Milan, and took the other painting to France where it is now in the Louvre Museum. The paintings are both called the Virgin of the Rocks. They show a scene of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus in a rocky mysterious landscape. Mary and Jesus are meeting with John the Baptist. There is a story (which is not in the Bible but is part of Christian tradition) about how the baby John and the baby Jesus met on the road to Egypt. In this scene John is praying and the baby Jesus raises his hand to bless John. The paintings have a strange eerie light with soft deep shadows. In the background is a lake and mountains in the mist. No painting like this had ever been done before.[16]
Reconstruction of Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks
The Last Supper[change | change source]
The Last Supper (1498). Milan, Italy.
Leonardo's other important painting in Milan is even more famous. It is the Last Supper. The painting shows the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples, before his capture and death. Leonardo chose to paint the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me". Leonardo tells the story of the surprise and upset that this caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.[16] He tells the story through the actions and faces of the people in the painting. Some of them are talking, some of them have stood up, some are raising their hands in horror.
The novelist Matteo Bandello saw Leonardo at work. Bandello wrote that on some days he would paint from morning till night without stopping to eat. Then for three or four days he would not paint at all. He would often just stand and look at the painting.[22] Vasari said that the prior of the convent was very annoyed. He asked Ludovico to tell Leonardo to work faster. Vasari said that Leonardo was worried because he did not think that he could paint the face of Jesus well enough. Leonardo told the Duke that he might use the face of the prior as his model for Judas, the traitor.[12]
When it was finished, everyone that saw it said that the painting was a masterpiece.[12] But Leonardo had not used proper fresco for the painting. He had used tempera over gesso, which is not usually used for wall painting. Soon the painting started to grow mold and flake off the wall. In a hundred years it was "completely ruined".[6] Even though in some places the paint has fallen right off the wall, the painting is so popular that it is printed and copied more that any other religious painting in the world.
In 1499, Ludovico il Moro was overthrown. Leonardo left Milan with his servant Salai and a friend, Luca Pacioli, who was a mathematician. They went to Venice. Leonardo worked as a military architect and engineer. Because Venice is a city on many islands, Leonardo tried to think of ways to defend the city from a naval attack.[6][11]
In 1500, Leonardo went back to Florence, taking his "household" of servants and apprentices with him. The monks from the monastery of The Holy Annunciation gave Leonardo a home and a large workshop. In 2005, some buildings which were used by the Department of Military Geography were being restored. The restorers discovered that part of the building was Leonardo's studio.[23]
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London
The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist[change | change source]
Leonardo started work on a new painting. He drew a large "cartoon". (This means a drawing that is a plan for the painting.) The cartoon showed the Virgin Mary sitting on the knee of her mother, St Anne. Mary holds the baby Jesus in her arms. Jesus stretches out his hands to his young cousin John the Baptist. Vasari says that everyone was so amazed by the beautiful drawing that "men and women, young and old" came in large groups to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".[12] The drawing is now in the National Gallery, London. Even though it is old and faded and is kept in a dark room, people go to the gallery to sit in front of it every day. Like many of Leonardo's projects, the painting was never done.
The Battle of Anghiari[change | change source]
This is a copy of Leonardo's painting of The Battle of Anghiari which was damaged and then covered by a wall around 1560; possibly this is a copy of the "Cartoon' {outline} of the painting
This is possibly a copy of Leonardo's work The Battle of Anghiari that was painted but unfinished
In 1502 and 1503, Leonardo worked for Cesare Borgia, a powerful noble who was the son of Pope Alexander VI. Leonardo travelled around Italy with Borgia, as a military architect and engineer.[6] Late in 1503, Leonardo returned to Florence. He rejoined the Guild of St Luke.
He was given a very important commission. The Signoria (Town Council) of the City of Florence wanted two large frescos painted on the walls of the most important room of the Signoria Palace. Michelangelo was to paint The Battle of Cascina and Leonardo was to paint The Battle of Anghiari.[6] Leonardo began the project by studying and drawing the faces of angry men and fighting horses. These drawings can still be seen in his notebooks. But unfortunately, this was to be another failure for Leonardo. When he painted the picture on the wall, instead of using fresco, he mixed the paints with oil. The paint would not dry. Leonardo lit some fires to dry it, and the painting melted. Peter Paul Rubens drew a copy of the middle part. After a time, the town council covered it up and got somebody else to paint the wall. Michelangelo did not finish his painting either, because the Pope called him to Rome.[6]
Mona Lisa[change | change source]
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1519)—Louvre, Paris, France
In about 1503 Leonardo began painting the a portrait of a woman known as Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait that has ever been painted. He continued working on it for many years. It is a small picture, painted in oil on a wooden panel. It shows the face, upper body and hands of a woman. She is very plainly dressed. For a portrait, a woman would usually put on her best clothes and jewellery. Mona Lisa has a dark dress and a fine black veil over her head. Leonardo often left symbols in his paintings that give clues about the person. The unusual thing about this picture is the smile. The smile is the clue to her name: Mona Lisa Giacondo. Giacondo means "the joking one". (Mona is short for Madonna which means "My Lady".)
The reason why the painting is so famous is that it seems to be full of mystery. Mona Lisa's eyes look out at the viewer. But no-one can guess what she is thinking. Her eyes and her mouth seem to be smiling. This is very unusual in a portrait painting. Most people in portraits look very serious. It is hard to tell what Mona Lisa's exact expression is. When a person wants to read another person's feelings, they look at the corners of their mouth and eyes. But Leonardo has painted soft shadows in the corners of Mona Lisa's mouth and eyes, to disguise her expression. The soft shadows are also found on the sides of her face, her neck and hands. The way that Leonardo uses shadow is called "sfumato" (which is an Italian word for "smoke"). Vasari said that the picture was so beautifully painted that every other artist who looked at it thought that they could never paint so well.[12]
Working life, 1506–1516[change | change source]
In 1506, Leonardo went back to Milan with his pupils, and lived in his own house in Porta Orientale. Some of the pupils became painters: Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione.[11] D'Oggione made several copies of the Last Supper. Luini made a copy of the Virgin of the Rocks. Boltraffio (and the others) painted many Madonna and Child pictures which can still be seen in art galleries and churches. One of pupils was a young nobleman called Count Francesco Melzi. Melzi never became a very good painter, but he loved Leonardo and stayed with him until the day he died.
In September 1513 Leonardo went to Rome and lived there until 1516. He lived in the Vatican. The three greatest painters of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were all working in Rome at the same time.[6] Even though their names are often said together as if they were friends, they were not. Leonardo at this time was in his sixties, Michelangelo was middle-aged. He was not friendly to either Leonardo or Raphael. Raphael was a very clever young painter who learnt a lot by looking at the pictures painted by Leonardo and Michelangelo. But neither of them was ever his teacher.
In October 1515, King Francis I of France captured Milan.[22] On December 19, there was a meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, in Bologna. Leonardo went to the meeting with Pope Leo.[11][24][25] Leonardo made an amazing toy to entertain King Francis. It was a life-sized mechanical lion that could walk. It had doors in its chest which opened, and a bunch of lilies came out. Lilies were the royal symbol of the French Kings.[12]
Old age, 1516–1519[change | change source]
Clos Lucé in France, where Leonardo lived from 1516 to 1519
In 1516, Francis I invited Leonardo to go to France with him. He gave Leonardo a beautiful house called Clos Lucé (sometimes called "Cloux"). It is near the king's palace, Chateau Amboise. Leonardo spent the last three years of his life at Clos Lucé, with his faithful friend and apprentice, Count Melzi. The king gave Leonardo a pension of 10,000 scudi.[6] One of the last paintings that Leonardo did was a picture of John the Baptist. His model was Salai, with his beautiful long curling hair.
When Leonardo was dying, he asked for a priest to come, so that he could make his confession and receive Holy Communion.[12] Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, on May 2, 1519. King Francis had become a close friend. Vasari says that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died. In his will, he asked that sixty beggars should follow his casket in procession. He was buried in the Chapel of the Chateau Amboise.
Leonardo had never married and had no children of his own. In his will, he left his money, his books and most of his paintings to Count Melzi. Leonardo also remembered his other pupil Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards near Milan. Leonardo's left to his serving woman a black cloak with a fur edge.[26] Salai was the owner of Leonardo's most famous oil painting, the Mona Lisa. He still owned it a few years later when he died, after fighting in a duel.[27]
King Francis said: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."[28][29]
Drawings[change | change source]
Leonardo did not paint very many pictures. But he drew hundreds of quick sketches, plans, maps and detailed drawings. This is the way that he recorded all the interesting things that he saw, studied and thought about.
Some of Leonardo's drawings are "studies" for paintings. In these drawings Leonardo planned the things he was going to paint. Some studies are plans for whole paintings. One of these paintings is the large beautiful drawing of the Madonna and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist that is now in the National Gallery, London.
Many of the studies show "details" that Leonardo wanted to get just right. One study shows a very detailed perspective drawing of the ruined buildings in the background of the painting of the Magi. Other studies show hands, faces, drapery, plants, horses and babies.[30] The earliest drawing by Leonardo that has a date on it, is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.[11][30]
Leonardo's notebooks[change | change source]
Leonardo da Vinci studied the Flight of birds and tried to make a flying machine based on his discoveries.
The Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice
A page from Leonardo's journal showing his study of a foetus in the womb (c. 1510) Royal Library, Windsor Castle
Leonardo studied things all his life. He did not go to university to study. He studied by looking at things in the world around him. He looked at things to see how they were made and how they worked. He drew the things that he saw and the discoveries that he made into his notebooks, and made notes about them. Many of his notebooks are now in museums. There are 13,000 pages of notes and drawings. Many of these are scientific studies.[16]
Leonardo's notebooks are hard to read because he wrote backwards in "mirror writing". Some people think that perhaps he was trying to keep his work secret. This is not true. Leonardo wrote (and sometimes drew) with his left hand. In those days pens were made from a quill (a large feather) that was cut with a pen-knife on the end. It is hard for a left-handed person to write with a quill in the ordinary way, but quite easy to write backwards.
It is likely that Leonardo planned to publish the studies in his notebooks. He organized many pages carefully, with one study taking up the front and back of each page. There is a page with drawings and writing about the human heart and a page about the womb and the fetus.[31] One page shows drawings of the muscles of a shoulder and another page shows how an arm works.[32]
The notebooks were not published in Leonardo's lifetime. After he died, they were divided between different people who had known him. They are nearly all in museums or libraries such as Windsor Castle, the Louvre, and the British Library. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana (a library) in Milan has the twelve-volume Codex Atlanticus.[16]
Studies[change | change source]
Some of the things that Leonardo studied are:[2]
The geology of the Earth, with its mountains, valleys, rivers and rocks.
The anatomy of the human body with its skeleton, muscles, veins and internal organs. Leonardo was given dead bodies by a hospital. He "dissected" (cut up) thirty dead bodies and carefully drew many of the parts. His drawings of bones and muscles were to help other artists to paint the human body properly.
The anatomy of horses, cows, dogs, and bears.
The expressions on human faces.
The flight of birds .
The weather and its phenomena.
The way that water flows.
The botany of plants.
Light, shadows, mirrors and lenses.
Perspective and the way to make things look near or far.
The geometry of solid objects. He drew many careful pictures which were used by the mathematician Luca Pacioli in a book called De Divina Proportione.
Designs and inventions[change | change source]
Many of the drawings and notes in Leonardo's notebooks are designs, plans and inventions.
Some of the things that Leonardo designed are:[2]
Costumes for parades, carnivals and theatre. These were probably for Duke Federico's court. They include armour, and a ferocious dragon.
War machines such as an armour-plated tank, an enormous cross bow and a horrible horse-driven leg-chopper. None of these things were ever made in Leonardo's lifetime.
Dams and canals for rivers.
A wooden bridge that could be carried flat on wagons and unfolded and put together at the river.
Flying things with wings that flapped, a helicopter, a parachute and a hang glider. One of Leonardo's servants was injured, trying out the hang glider. The parachute has been made and tested in modern times, and it does work.
Churches and castles. It is possible that the Castle of Locarno, in the south of Switzerland was designed by Leonardo.[33] No other building that he designed was built.
Leonardo's studies, designs and inventions[change | change source]
Study of a skull
Study of a horse for the Duke's statue
Study of a sedge plant
Rhombicuboctahedron published in Pacioli's book
A parabolic compass.
A Helicopter.
Cannons.
Walking on water.
Modern model of Leonardo's parachute.
Modern model of a bridge designed by Leonardo.
Modern model of a tank by Leonardo
Modern model of a flywheel
Italian Renaissance art
List of Renaissance artists
↑ 1.0 1.1 Vasari, Boltraffio, Castiglione, "Anonimo" Gaddiano, Berensen, Taine, Fuseli, Rio, Bortolon, etc as quoted in della Chiesa, see Bibliography
↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Gardner, Helen (1970), Art through the Ages, Harcourt, Brace and World
↑ "...His mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". (Helen Gardner)
↑ Leonardo da Vinci Biography,[1] accessdate: December 26, 2015
↑ Vezzosi, Alessandro, Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man
↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 Angela Ottino della Chiesa, The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci
↑ According to Alessandro Vezzosi, Head of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, Piero may have owned a Middle Eastern slave called Caterina. A study of Leonardo's fingerprint suggests that he may have had Middle Eastern blood.Experts Reconstruct Leonardo Fingerprint" December 12, 2001
↑ Experts Reconstruct Leonardo Fingerprint, The Associated Press, retrieved 2007-12-14
↑ Angelo Paratico Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy Lascar Publishing, Hong Kong, 2015.ISBN 9881419808
↑ "Renaissance Man". legacy.mos.org.
↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 Bortolon, Liana (1967), The Life and Times of Leonardo, London: Paul Hamlyn
↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 1568; this edition Penguin Classics, trans. George Bull 1965, ISBN 0-14-044164-6
↑ Martindale, Andrew, The Rise of the Artist, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-56006-4
↑ Theophilus On Divers Arts, translators:J.G.Hawthorne and C.S. Smith, University of Chicago Press, 1963; reprinted New York: Dover Publications 1979. This is a Medieval practical handbook of skills for the artisan, and includes a brief instruction for mixing oil paint.
↑ Cennino d’A. Cennini Il Libro dell’ Arte, ed. D. V. Thompson Jr. (1933) New Haven: Yale University Press. A practical handbook of painting written in the early 15th century.
↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 16.8 Arasse, Daniel (1997), Leonardo da Vinci, Konecky & Konecky, ISBN 1 56852 1987
↑ Eugene Muntz, Leonardo da Vinci Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science (1898), quoted at Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism
↑ Winternitz, Emanuel and Libin, Laurence "Leonardo da Vinci." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, (subscription required), accessed December 26, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/16426
↑ Rossi, Paolo (2001). The Birth of Modern Science. Blackwell Publishing. p. 33. ISBN 0631227113.
↑ "Leonardo's Letter to Ludovico Sforza". Leonardo-history. Retrieved 2007-09-28.
↑ Leonardo, Codex C. 15v, Institut of France. Trans. Richter
↑ 22.0 22.1 Jack Wasserman, Leonardo da Vinci
↑ Owen, Richard (2005-01-12). "Found: the studio where Leonardo met Mona Lisa". The Times. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
↑ Georges Goyau, François I, Transcribed by Gerald Rossi. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved on 2007-10-04
↑ Miranda, Salvador (1998–2007), The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Antoine du Prat, retrieved 2007-10-04 CS1 maint: date format (link)
↑ "Leonardo's will". Leonardo-history. Retrieved 2007-09-28.
↑ Rossiter, Nick (2003-07-04). "Could this be the secret of her smile?". Telegraph.co.UK. Retrieved 2007-10-03.
↑ Mario Lucertini, Ana Millan Gasca, Fernando Nicolo (2004). Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems. Birkhauser. ISBN 376436940X. Retrieved 2007-10-03. CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
↑ Berti, Luciano (1971), The Uffizi, Scala
↑ 30.0 30.1 Popham, A.E. (1946), The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0 224 60462 7
↑ Windsor Castle, Royal Library, sheets RL 19073v-19074v and RL 19102 respectively.
↑ O'Malley; Saunders (1982), Leonardo on the Human Body, New York: Dover Publications
↑ Locarno Castle, accessed 14-02-1020
More reading[change | change source]
Daniel Arasse (1997). Leonardo da Vinci. Konecky & Konecky. ISBN 1 56852 1987.
Liana Bortolon (1967). The life and times of Leonardo. Paul Hamlyn, London. ISBN 075251587X.
Hugh Brigstoke (2001). The Oxford Companion to Western Art. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198662033.
Angela Ottino della Chiesa (1967). The complete paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Penguin Classics of World Art series. ISBN 0-14-00-8649-8.
Charles D. O'Malley and J. B. de C. M. Sounders (1952). Leonardo on the human body: the anatomical, physiological, and embryological drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. With translations, emendations and a biographical introduction. Henry Schuman, New York.
A.E. Popham (1946). The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0 224 60462 7.
Jean Paul Richter (1970). The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Dover. ISBN 0-486-22572-0. ISBN 0-486-22573-9. 2 volumes. A reprint of the original 1883 edition.
Paolo Rossi (2001). The Birth of Modern Science. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0631227113.
Bruno Santi (1990). Leonardo da Vinci. Scala / Riverside.
Jack Wasserman (1975). Leonardo da Vinci. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-0262-1.
Silvia e Luca Guagliumi, "Leonardo e l'architettura", Silvia Editrice, Aprile 2015
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"Leonardo da Vinci" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design (review)
Works by Leonardo da Vinci at Project Gutenberg
Leonardo da Vinci by Maurice Walter Brockwell at Project Gutenberg
Complete text & images of Richter's translation of the Notebooks
Vasari Life of Leonardo: in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
Web Gallery of Leonardo Paintings
Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
Da Vinci Decoded Article from The Guardian
The true face of Leonardo Da Vinci?
Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism
Science and inventions
The Madonna of the Carnation
Ginevra de' Benci
Benois Madonna
Madonna Litta
Portrait of a Musician
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
The Holy Infants Embracing
La Belle Ferronnière
Madonna of the Yarnwinder
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
Isleworth Mona Lisa
Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata)
Sala delle Asse
The Battle of Anghiari
Sforza monument (unexecuted)
Horse and Rider
Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior
Study for the Madonna of the Cat
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
Vitruvian Man
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist
Studies of the Fetus in the Womb
Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk
Codex Arundel
Codex Atlanticus
Codex on the Flight of Birds
Codex Leicester
Codex Madrid
Codex Trivulzianus
A Treatise on Painting
Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Milan)
Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci)
Divina proportione
Architonnerre
Leonardo's crossbow
Leonardo's fighting vehicle
Leonardo's self-propelled cart
Octant projection
Viola organista
Leonardeschi
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Cesare da Sesto
Giampietrino
Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
Bernardino Luini
Cesare Magni
Marco d'Oggiono
Francesco Melzi
Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis
Salaì
Andrea Solari
Portraits of Leonardo da Vinci
The Death of Leonardo da Vinci (1818 painting)
The Life of Leonardo da Vinci (1971 miniseries)
Homage to Leonardo (1982 sculpture)
Leonardo (2011 series)
Da Vinci's Demons (2013 series)
Cultural references
Conservation-restoration of The Last Supper
Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations
Leonardo da Vinci Airport
Doing DaVinci (2009 series)
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Blair's gang wants this regime for all workers
Published Wed 27 Mar 2002
Tony Blair has formed an unholy alliance with the two most right wing leaders in Europe to drive through an assault on workers' rights across Europe. Blair's friends-Spain's leader Jose Maria Aznar and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi – want to push through privatisation, deregulation, more flexibility and attacks on trade unions.
Britain already has the longest working hours, the toughest anti trade union laws and the most deregulated economy in Europe. Now Blair wants to bring the worst of Aznar and Berlusconi's regimes to Britain. There is massive job insecurity in Aznar's Spain. Over one third of Spanish workers are in precarious jobs, where bosses can hire and fire at will.
Spain also has the highest number of workers on 'fixed term contracts', where workers have no job security and few rights. In Italy there are over three and a half million 'irregular workers'. Berlusconi is trying to ram new labour laws through to make it easier for bosses to sack workers.
Blair is not satisfied that workers in Britain work themselves into the ground just to be able to scrape by. He wants to sweep away 'labour market rigidities, restrictive practices or role demarcations'. That means forcing workers to be at the beck and call of the boss 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It means attacking trade unions, and stamping on the rights we've won for things like paid holidays or sickness pay. It means more workers on short term contracts and unsociable shifts, and to hell with our health, relationships and social lives. This has created a storm of outrage among trade union leaders in Britain. But we need more than fighting talk. We need a massive revolt.
In France the government was forced to promise and implement legislation for a 35-hour week after a wave of protests and strikes over welfare. Today in France there is a wave of strikes by young workers in insecure jobs in Disney, Virgin and a host of other shops. Workers sacked by McDonald's won their jobs back after 115 days on strike.
In Italy Berlusconi's first government was ousted in 1994 after a wave of protest against 'pension reform', including a demo of one and a half million people. Last Saturday three million people took to the streets against Berlusconi (see page 5).
In Spain hatred at Aznar's neo-liberal assault spurred hundreds of thousands to join the magnificent half a million strong anti-capitalist march in Barcelona. It is time our union leaders opened up a third front against the Blair-Aznar-Berlusconi axis and mobilised the anger which is simmering in every area of Britain.
Millions forced to do overtime
FOUR MILLION workers in Britain still work over 48 hours a week, a new survey by the TUC reports . This is despite the fact that New Labour is supposed to have implemented the European Union's working time limit of 48 hours a week.
Workers in Britain work longer hours than those in every other country in the European Union. An incredible one and a half million workers do more than 55 hours a week, and over half a million work more than 60 hours a week.
Nearly half of all companies (47 percent) use opt-outs from the 48-hour working time limit for at least some of their workforce. And the biggest companies are the worst. In firms with between 500 and 5,000 workers some 71 percent use the opt-out.
The opt-out is used by 61 percent of engineering firms, and 50 percent of employers in the print industry, the NHS and retail. A majority of us have to do some kind of overtime. Some two thirds of all workers work extra hours every week.
Nearly half the people who work overtime say they do so because they need the extra money just to get a decent standard of living. Some 34 percent of those doing overtime do so without pay just to be able to cope with 'unmanageable workloads'.
The CBI bosses' club may howl for more flexibility. But they are totally inflexible when it comes to workers' needs. Some 41 percent of workers are not allowed free time off for vital activities such as doctors' appointments or for domestic emergencies.
And 42 percent of workers have no flexibility at all over altering their working hours. All figures are from the TUC survey 'About Time'.
Life on 'rubbish contracts'
'I WORK about 53 hours a week in a warehouse with a staff of about 30. Some people work even more than me. We're involved in storage-forklift truck driving, loading and unloading. For our basic working week of 40 hours we get about £195 after tax. The people who have families have to work overtime just to get by.
If we had decent pay we wouldn't spend so much time at work. The amount of hours I work means at the end of the day I'm almost comatose. It's very difficult to do anything in the evening except fall asleep. I get up at 5am for six days a week. Saturday night is the only night I get a good night's sleep. The management put a lot of pressure on people to work overtime. If you refuse you might not get it in the future when you really need it.'
WAREHOUSE WORKER, Home Counties
'I'M A bus driver and I have a basic working week of 38 hours but I try to work between 52 and 60 hours a week. For 52 hours a week you take home £250. Very few bus drivers do less than 50 hours a week by choice.
I'm a single bloke but a lot of the other drivers are the main income earners for their families. They've got mortgages, kids, rents, and if you just do 38 hours a week you take home £183. You can start as early as 4am. There's a high turnover of staff because of the hours, the pay, the conditions. I had a week off at the end of January and it took me three to four days just to wind down.'
MIKE WILLIAMS, Bristol bus driver
'IN SPAIN many workers are on what are called 'rubbish contracts'-short term temporary contracts with no rights and usually miserable wages. There is a high level of insecurity for those in work, and bosses try to sack people at will. Half the unemployed get no benefits at all. At Sintel, a telecoms firm, we went on strike for six months against the bosses' plans to sack us, and we won back our jobs. At the firm we are 90 percent unionised, but in the whole of Spain unionisation is just 12 percent.
The fact we were organised made all the difference. We camped out in the centre of Madrid in front of a government ministry. We built a shanty town. We even took electricity and water from the street cables so we could survive. We organised protests, meetings and a host of activities. We won after 183 days. We were only able to stick it out because of the magnificent solidarity we received all around Europe-from workers, from the unemployed and from pensioners.'
FREDERICO DOMINGUEZ, telecoms worker, Spain
Wed 27 Mar 2002, 00:00 GMT
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Spire makes wash and wear wearables
Spire’s new washable wearable.
During my first trip to a B8ta store a little over a year ago I bought a device that claimed it would track my breathing and tell me if I was stressing out. If I was, it would help me relax. Spire was backed by breathing rate science from the Stanford Sleep Lab. It didn’t actually work for me. It kept telling me I was relaxed when I was most definitely stressed.
However, after selling it on eBay, I discovered from Spire’s CEO that my breathing rate is apparently on the low end, which confused the sensor. He told me if I had held onto it a bit longer, it would have learned and started to be more of a help. That’s a key reason I’m interested in the newest product Spire has made.
This device measures breathing rate, heartbeat, activity and sleep. But the most exciting thing is that it does this in a tiny sensor designed to stick inside your underwear or bra for a year or so. Because it’s a semi-permanent sensor for clothing it’s also designed to go through the wash hundreds of times.
Building a health tracking device that’s low-powered enough to track activity, sleep, breathing rate, etc. for more than a year, while also protecting the electronic components from the wash, is tremendously impressive. Spire adds one more thing to its electronics, though: sustainability.
Jonathan Palley, CEO and co-founder of Spire says that the company used glues and packaging that’s designed to be taken apart and recycled when the device’s battery runs out.
When that happens, consumers send the tags back to Spire and presumably order a new one. This business model is very similar to that of Tile’s trackers.
I’m not sure how many people are going to like spending $100 on a three pack or $299 on a 15-pack only to have the devices die in a year or two. Even if they do accept this, I’m not sure how many will ship the defunct tags back.
However, I’m impressed by the way that Palley and his team have taken their vision and found a way to create it with available electronic components. Palley says that many of his suppliers, which include Maxim and Ambiq Micro, love that he’s showcasing new ways to use traditional components and using their most advanced silicon.
I’ve been covering Ambiq for at least six years. The company started with a new way to make a timing component and has since made a microcontroller that uses 10x less power than a traditional MCU. When I last covered the firm in 2015 people didn’t understand why such a low powered MCU mattered since things like displays used most of the power in a wearable.
Spire’s health tag is an excellent example of why I cared. Not everything will need a display. And by having an MCU that can use more power for computing while sipping on the battery, the tags can take in less data and make inferences from the smaller sample size by using more complex algorithms. These sorts of tradeoffs are always happening in computing, and now they can happen in a device that you wear in your underwear and can be washed.
The future is cool, and I’m excited there are companies pushing the limits on what’s possible to make real innovation happen.
Filed Under: Featured, Startups Tagged With: Ambiq Micro, innovation, Maxim, Spire
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Archive for the old one
MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL By Larry Correia – Reviewed
Posted in Reviews with tags accountant, action, action fantasy, b-movie, book, books, british fantasy society, brutal, characters, death, entertaining, exciting, fantasy, fiction, film, former bare-knuckle fighter, fulfil the role of entertainment, funs and action, george rr martin, group of master vampires, horror, horror novel, Larry Correia, magazine, mass market audience, MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL, Monster Hunter International series, murder, mysterious figure, nova awards, novel, novels, oscar, Owen Zastava Pitt, pages, plot, politics, powerhouse of a novel, puppies, quick boot-camp, read, reading, review, reviewed, reviewer, reviews, sad puppies, series, SF, story, supplement, the old one, thriller, urban fantasy, vampire, werewolf, write, writer, writers, writing on August 10, 2017 by stanleyriiks
I came across Correia’s name on social media in regard to the Puppies and the Nova awards. I didn’t particularly take much interest in the goings on, Correia may have had a point, but George RR Martin also wrote very eloquently about it. In the end I wasn’t bothered one way or another; that awards can be manipulated, or unfairly given to cronies isn’t a surprise to a former member of the British Fantasy Society.
Whatever politics were involved didn’t particularly interest me. I like to read lots of different types of books, different types of SF and fantasy, and I was looking for something action-packed and I remembered something I’d read about Correia’s novels and thought I’d give him a try.
This is the first book in the Monster Hunter International series, and here we meet Owen Zastava Pitt, a former bare-knuckle fighter and now accountant, whose life is turned upside down when his ass of a boss turns into a werewolf and tries to eat him.
As Owen recovers from his injuries, having managed to fight off and kill the werewolf, he’s offered a job as a mercenary monster hunter and that’s when the real fun begins. What follows is a quick boot-camp and then a race to save the world from a group of master vampires and a mysterious figure known only as the Old One…
If you like guns and action and urban fantasy set in a B-movie then you’ll love this. It’s straight-up action, no holds barred, but with decent characters, enough attention to detail to make it realistic, and a few twists and turns to keep things extra interesting. I liked this book. Is it likely to be award winning? In the same way that if it were a film it wouldn’t get an Oscar, no it’s not likely to win awards, but does it fulfil the role of entertainment, will it appeal to a mass market audience (like Fast and the Furious or Star Wars), damn it, yes it will!
Correia may be as well known for the wrong reasons, but try his books. Monster Hunter International is a powerhouse of a novel, it’s exciting, it’s intelligent, it’s fun.
Great stuff and I’ve already bought the second book in the series.
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1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
Third Sunday of Lent
St Barbara’s 24.03.2019
The events of the massacre in the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, have shaken the world. Muslims gathering peacefully to worship, gunned down in cold blood. To add to the heinous, callousness of the crime, all streamed live on the internet. When one feels that our human capacity to be inhumane to other human beings cannot get lower, we show yet further evidence of our propensity to delve the depths of evil.
This act does not stand alone, however. Take just one country – Pakistan – and one religious minority – in this case, Pakistani Christians. In the last six years, a twin suicide bomb attack at a church in Peshawar left over 80 people dead, two bomb blasts at churches in Lahore killed 14 people and injured more than 70; at Easter two years ago, a suicide attack killed 70 people and wounded 340 others; and in 2017 another nine people were killed and a further 57 injured following an attack on a church in Quetta.
Pakistan is just one example. Look around the world and we see state-sponsored religious persecution in countries such as Saudi Arabia, military-driven genocide of religious minorities such as in Myanmar and Tibet, and extremist acts of terrorism in countries as diverse as the United States, New Zealand, Kenya and India.
In this morning’s Gospel reading we hear of a similar act of massacre and religious outrage being reported to Jesus. Some people come up to Jesus and report that a massacre of Galilean worshippers has just occurred in the Temple in Jerusalem under the orders of Pilate. Pilate had a track record of stamping all over religious sensibilities. He brought his Roman standards with their pagan symbols into the streets of Jerusalem. He seized money from the Temple treasury to fund the building of an aqueduct. On both occasions, the demonstrations and riots that arose were brutally crushed. Maybe Pilate was fearing another riot, but for whatever reason, he sends his troops into the Temple to slaughter those who had come on pilgrimage and were offering sacrifices. To add to the human misery, is the religious affront – the Temple has been polluted with the shedding of human blood.
Two thousand years on, our world does not seem so dissimilar to the world Christ lived in. So what is Jesus’ response to this tragic news, and what can we learn from it?
The first thing he says is to say that just because these people died such horrific deaths, this does not mean they were any more sinful than anyone else. Nor are those unlucky enough to be crushed by the falling tower in Siloam any more deserving of death than those who escaped. Life cannot be reduced to such simplistic terms. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. When hatred and cruelty raises its head, all people are vulnerable.
The second thing that Jesus says that continues to resonate with us two thousand years on, is that the world will continue to experience such horrific acts until we renounce the way of power, might and violence and embrace Christ’s way of love and peace.
Jesus says: “Unless you repent, unless you turn from your current trajectory, unless you turn away from your belief that human might can overcome and and solve your problems, unless you do that, you too will perish in the same way.” As we saw last week, as Jesus headed towards Jerusalem his thoughts were ever more caught up with the future of that city. He could see ahead to where the Jewish people’s longing for a military victory over the Romans would take it – to calamity and destruction. Unless they turned from their way, they too would die at the point of Roman swords; they too would be crushed under falling buildings, burnt to the ground as the city was sacked and destroyed.
Two thousand years on, and we know, the way of violence, the way of asserting our rights over and above those of others, the way of doing down others and exalting ourselves, does not work. Violence begets violence; the abuse of power begets yet further and escalating abuses of power. Our world must embrace a different way, a way of love and grace. It is interesting to note the words of praise for New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who has sought to articulate such a view this week.
Our world, indeed our own individual life contexts, cry out for a different way, a way that reaches out to the stranger, that embraces difference, that seeks to understand rather than judge, to empathise rather than stereotype, to search for common ground rather than seek personal gain. Christ rejected the temptations of wealth, power and fame, to live a life of humility, of willing service, of compassion. These are the markers of what our life should be like.
But the third note of resonance to us from Christ’s words is that this road to peace starts with confession and repentance. Its why so central to our own cathedral’s commitment to the work of peace and reconciliation is the Coventry litany. The acknowledgment that we cannot be peace-builders unless we are prepared to seek God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of others. Its why in Lent, we give particular emphasis to repentance. It is crucial that we acknowledge our natural inclination to hatred, greed, envy, indifference and pride – all that lead to divisions in our world – seek God’s forgiveness and ask for his empowering to live a different life.
And that brings us to a final point made by Jesus here. God is a loving and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love. He patiently longs for us to turn to him. But there are consequences to our tardiness to repent, to change, to seek a different way. Consequences for ourselves and also for others
The people of Israel, our first reading reminded us, had opportunity after opportunity to follow God’s way, to live lives of faithfulness and love, but instead they chose to grumble at God’s goodness and reject his faithfulness to them. Eventually God allowed the direction of travel they had chosen, a direction consistently away from him, to become permanent.
In his parable, Jesus speaks of an owner of a vineyard willing to wait to see if a fig-tree, a symbol of Israel, will bear fruit. He is willing to let his gardener dig round it and fertilise it, and give it every chance to flourish, but at some point a line will be drawn.
It is a warning against complacency – “if you are thinking you are standing firm, be careful you don’t fall”, Paul warns us. The state of our world is such, the state of our own lives is such, that there is no value in procrastinating. The events in New Zealand, just as the events in the Jerusalem temple, are a reminder of that. We are called to turn, to repent, to seek love rather than hate, humility rather than power, and to do it now. Our world, and our lives, will be a better place if we do so.
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Saint Michaels Knights of Columbus – Poway, CA
Become a Knight
Bishop Flores Scholarship Fund
Forms and Fliers
Events and Volunteer
Volunteer for Events
The Knights of Columbus was founded by Father Michael J. McGivney, assistant pastor of St. Mary’s Church and some of his parishioners in New Haven, Ct. in 1881. The Connecticut state legislature on March 29, 1882, officially chartered the Knights of Columbus as a fraternal benefit society. These men were bound together by the ideal of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the Americas, the one whose hand brought Christianity to the New World. The Order is still true to its founding principles of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism. They sought strength in solidarity, and security through unity of purpose and devotion to a holy cause: they vowed to be defenders of their country, their families and their faith. Father McGivney and these men formed a fraternal society that would one day become the world’s largest Catholic family fraternal service organization.
The Knights was formed to render financial aid to members and their families. Mutual aid and assistance are offered to sick, disabled and needy members and their families. Social and intellectual fellowship is promoted among members and their families through educational, charitable, religious, social welfare, war relief and public relief works. Father McGivney’s founding vision for the Order also included a life insurance program to provide for the widows and orphans of deceased members. The Order has helped families obtain economic security and stability through its life insurance, annuity and long-term care programs, and has contributed time and energy worldwide to service in communities.
The Knights of Columbus has grown from several members in one council to more than 14,000 councils and 1.8 million members throughout the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, Poland, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Cuba, Guatemala, Guam and Saipan.
When you say the Pledge of Allegiance to Our Flag, please remember that the Knights of Columbus was instrumental, along with other patriotic and religious groups, in getting the phrase “Under God” added to the Pledge. This was signed into law by President Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.
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SubGenre:Islam / Sufi
Grand Masters of Sufism, Abdul Qadir Geylani and Ahmed er Rifai (Annotated)
Secret of Secrets and Guidance to Mysticism
by Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Taner Ansari
Grand Masters of Sufism brings together in one volume two paramount texts from two of the most influential shaykhs in the history of Sufism. Abdul Qadir Geylani's Secret of Secrets and Ahmed er Rifai's Guidance to Mysticism present key concepts of the Sufi path in profound detail, and can each stand alone as a work of unparalleled authority. Together they comprise a very veritable textbook for students of Sufism and all who would seek a deeper understanding of the mysteries of spiritual life. In the English translations of Secret of Secrets and Guidance to Mysticism, Shaykh Taner Ansari provided rich commentary that preserves the original text, while at the same time making it relevant to modern readers. As Pir of the Ansari Tariqa of Qadiri Rifai Sufi Tariqa, Shaykh Taner draws on the lineage of his venerable and beloved masters for a unique and authentic translation of these texts. The result of his endeavor is Grand Masters of Sufism, a book wrought in reverence and love.
Grand Masters of Sufism brings together in one volume two paramount texts from two of the most influential shaykhs in the history of Sufism. Abdul Qadir Geylani and Ahmed er Rifai were cousins who lived contemporaneously. They separately embraced personal missions to teach tasawwuf, a method of spiritual purification that leads to the opening up of a direct line of communication with the Supreme Being, Allah. This process is known today in the western world as Sufism. Masters Geylani and Rifai founded tariqas, or schools, of tasawwuf that have borne their names since their inception in the 12th century C.E. They each wrote texts that captured the unique flavor of their respective tariqas. Abdul Qadir Geylani's Secret of Secrets and Ahmed er Rifai's Guidance to Mysticism present concepts of the Sufi path in profound detail, and can each stand alone as a work of unparalleled authority. Together they comprise a veritable textbook for students of Sufism and all who would seek a deeper understanding of the mysteries of spiritual life. While Abdul Qadir Geylani's Secret of Secrets has been widely disseminated, the present translation is remarkable in that it combines the interpretation of ancient spiritual concepts in terms of modern English usage with the use of key words in transliterated Arabic. These key terms, translated once in each chapter, have no simple English equivalents. The translator's intention is to encourage the understanding of these terms and the concepts they represent as the text is being read. A careful reading of the text in simple English with a sprinkling of these key terms will broaden the modern reader's understanding of ancient spiritual concepts and practices, thus adapted to a twenty-first century mindset. Ahmed er Rifai's Guidance to Mysticism has never before been translated into the English language. This ground-breaking translation uses the same technique described above, with important additions. It was first disseminated over the Internet with the translator, Shaykh Taner Ansari, during his weekly talks with students. During these talks, Shaykh Taner gave explanation of the text by way of commentary and answers to questions from the students. These commentaries and some of the dialogue from these sessions have been incorporated into the chapters of the book, the result being an excellent study guide for those who are interested in a deep understanding of Sufism from the point of view of this great Sufi master and the tariqa that bears his name. Contextual understanding of terminology and some personages mentioned in the volume is enhanced by historical data found in the biographies of the two authors and in occasional footnotes throughout the volume. As Pir of the Ansari Tariqa of Qadiri Rifai Sufi Tariqa, Shaykh Taner is uniquely poised to bring his interpretation of these two works to the modern readership. His Sufi training in the traditions of both Abdul Qadir Geylani and Ahmed er Rifai under the auspices of the tariqa that combines both teachings and methodologies lends him a singular authority in this regard. Shaykh Taner's deep spiritual connection to these Sufi masters comes through the unbroken lineage of shaykhs, from the two masters to his own Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari, who charged him with the task of bringing these books in fresh and true translation to the modern spiritual seeker. The result of his endeavor is Grand Masters of Sufism, a book wrought in reverence and love.
Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Taner Mustafa Ansari Tarsusi er Rifai el Qadiri was born in Tarsus, Turkey, to a devout Muslim family of Seyyids (descendants of Prophet Muhammad). He completed his university studies in Michigan, where he helped found the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada. He was initiated into the Qadiri Rifai Tariqa in Istanbul under Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari, from whom he received his license to teach Sufism. His spiritual lineage also includes the Naqshbandi, Mevlevi, and Bektashi orders. Under his Shaykh’s orders, Shaykh Taner founded a new order of the Ansari Tariqa of the Qadiri Rifai Tariqa. Shaykh Taner and his wife Es-Sharifa Es-Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari travel to and have established centers of the order in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Tanzania, Mauritius, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Shaykh Taner teaches Sufism and the Holy Quran and gives weekly talks internationally through live classes on the Internet. He also holds regular lectures and congregational zikr. He has spoken about Islam and Sufism, alternative healing, and sustainable living in radio interviews, at churches, synagogues, schools and universities, among them Harvard University, Humboldt State University, Napa Valley College, Boston University and has given several presentations at the Annual Sufism Symposium. Shaykh Taner is also a healer. Along with his wife Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari, he has presented healing workshops worldwide for healers and health professionals and anyone else interested in the healing arts. He is the author of several books in print and e-books. • His book on Sufism, The Sun Will Rise in the West: The Holy Trail (Ansari Publications, October 2000 explains in clear, concise language the mysteries of the Sufi path. • His book What About My Wood: 101 Sufi Stories (Ansari Publications 2003) is a collection of Sufi teaching stories, many of which are based on real life experiences of his students and former shaykhs. • His latest book, Grand Masters of Sufism (Ansari Publications 2008, e-book 2013) contains his translations of Abdul Qadir Geylani’s Secret of Secrets and Ahmed er Rifai’s Guidance to Mysticism. • His Alternative Healing: The Sufi Way (Ansari Publications 2007, revised second edition 2012, e-book of second edition 2012) has remedies and health tips for those interested in spiritual healing. • His commitment to the environment and self-sustainability resulted in a book he compiled titled Surviving 2012 & Beyond: A Must Have Survival Book (Ansari Publications 2010). • He is currently translating the Holy Quran into modern English from the Sufi perspective. The first sura to be published as a booklet in 2013 is Ya Sin. Shaykh Taner is presently engaged in the building of the main center of the Tariqa in upstate New York. Plans are for the center to be an environmentally friendly model of sustainability. He and his family reside at the main center in upstate New York.
eBook - $10.99 (AZW, EPub, PDF)
Alternative Healing: The Sufi Way, 2nd Edition by Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Taner Ansari
Surviving 2012 & Beyond by Taner Ansari
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Ivanka to Carry on Trump Legacy? Lookahead Poll Shows Who Republican Voters Would Support in 2024
© AP Photo / Alex Brandon
by Svetlana Ekimenko
Svetlana Ekimenko. Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/us/202001051077948491-ivanka-to-carry-on-trump-legacy-lookahead-poll-shows-who-republican-voters-would-support-in-2024/
As the US gears up for the 2020 presidential election, a new poll decided to skip straight to 2024 to find out which would be the top picks by Republican voters for president in four years’ time.
Two of US President Donald Trump's children, White House Advisor Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., would have support from some Republicans if they were to run for president in 2024, according to a new survey.
The SurveyMonkey poll for Axios released on Saturday, 4 December, found that 29 percent of Republicans and leaners said they would consider voting for Donald Trump Jr. and that 16 per cent said they would consider voting for Ivanka Trump.
Among a list of potential candidates in the 2024 contest, both Trumps were placed among the top four.
American businessman and former reality television personality, Donald Trump Jr. is the eldest child of US President Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana.
© AP Photo / Manish Swarup
Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of US President Donald Trump, speaks at a Global Business Summit in New Delhi, India, Friday, Feb. 23, 2018
A fourth-generation businessman, he currently serves as a trustee and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, running the company alongside his younger brother Eric.
Trump Jr. has emerged as one of the most prominent defenders of his father, frequently going after the left on Twitter, where he has 4.2 million followers, and serving as a popular warm-up act for presidential rallies.
His book, "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us," released in November, reached No. 1 on the NY Times nonfiction bestseller list.
© Photo : Declan Meaney
Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump visit locals in Doonbeg town
In October, at a rally in San Antonio for President Trump's re-election, the crowd chanted "2024!" as Don Jr. spoke.
The President’s eldest daughter Ivanka Trump's work within the administration as "Advisor to the President" would be hugely in her favour if she wanted to carry on the Trump legacy, claims the poll, citing her portfolio that includes “education and economic empowerment of women and families, plus job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship”.
© AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump's children Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., check on their phones during the second day session of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Tuesday, July 19, 2016.
According to the SurveyMonkey survey of 1,854 adults who lean Republican, Vice President Mike Pence tops the 2024 list, and Donald Trump Jr. is second.
Vice President Pence had 40 per cent of respondents saying they would consider a vote for him – as mostly older voters chose him while Donald Trump Jr. was the top choice among young voters, according to Axios.
Twenty-six per cent said they would consider voting for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), and 15 percent said they would consider a vote for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
Between 14 – 17 December, 1,854 Republicans and leaners were surveyed.
The poll's modelled error estimate is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Netizens Divided Over Donald Trump Jr’s Attack on Critics of His Father
‘Terrible Choice’: CES Chooses Ivanka Trump to Keynote at Major US Tech Expo
Donald Trump Jr. Says in His Book That Instagram, Twitter Are ‘Shadow Banning’ Him
Netizens Tear Into Ivanka Trump for Praising Donald Jr.'s Book Success
‘Princess Nepotism': Public in Rage as ‘Bimbo’ Ivanka Trump Tapped to Speak at Big Tech Event
Ivanka Sparkles at Trump’s Estate on New Year’s Eve After Skipping Father’s Christmas Event
Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, GOP, 2020, Mike Pence, Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump
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July 9, 2019 July 18, 2019 ahosierLeave a comment
Image by Gerhard Bögner from Pixabay
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler was a book I hadn’t heard of before finding it on this list, but I had heard of (and read) The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, which the ideas in this book are largely based on/adapted from.
This is where things with this series of posts are going to get a little timey wimey because even though I’m posting my entries on these books in the order they appeared on the original list, I didn’t read them that way. So even though The Writer’s Journey is near the top of the list, it was actually the last one I read. And if I’m being really honest, I was feeling a bit burned out on writing advice and wasn’t expecting this book to be as long as it was. But there were aspects of this book I ended up really appreciating, even though it didn’t have much/anything to say about research. Below are some thoughts.
Addressing the shortcomings
My copy of the book happens to be the third edition, so there are some forewords and prefaces that Vogler added that I almost skipped over. I’m glad I didn’t. In these areas, Vogler really takes the time to reflect on and address some of the feedback he’s gotten about the book over the years, including that the “hero’s journey” concept that he borrows from Joseph Campbell has traditionally been very male-focused and that it also privileges Western styles of storytelling. None of that feedback seems to have changed his mind about anything but it’s nice that he has taken the time to actually grapple with these issues in a thoughtful way rather than ignoring them or dismissing them out of hand.
Storytelling versus writing
This book is less about writing than it is about storytelling. Rather, a specific storytelling template based on the work of Joseph Campbell. That’s an interesting distinction that I hadn’t thought about before. Other writing advice books have chapters on things like how to write dialogue or description. This book is more getting you to think what your main character’s goals are, what challenges they will face along the way, who will help them, who will hinder them, and what happens at the end.
No surprise, then, that research doesn’t really make an appearance except in the form of studying other works to notice the ways in which they follow (or break from) the recommended template. Although in this case, the recommended works are more likely to be movies than books.
Sometimes, the book falls a little too much into plot summary as Vogler demonstrates how the idea of the hero’s journey can be applied to different existing stories. For that reason, I mostly skimmed the parts of the epilogue where he examines different iterations of the hero’s journey in detail in a handful of films, including stuff like Titanic and Pulp Fiction even though I think it’s really effective to show the very different ways this framework can manifest itself in very different stories.
Then I came to Vogler’s discussion of the original version of The Lion King, which he consulted on. He has a lot to say about how the finished film compared to his own ideas about how the story should have gone and while I think his version would have been too dark for my child self when the movie first came out, it’s really interesting to read his take on this in part because it shows that there are a lot of different paths a story can take and that the final product is often the result of a series of choices based on factors like intended audience. The story you end up with may not actually have much resemblance to the spark that started the process in the first place.
He also has some interesting thoughts on the Star Wars prequels as well as some ideas about the sequel trilogy that are turning to be pretty prophetic. I’m not a fan of the Star Wars prequels, necessarily, but I’ve always thought they were an interesting subversion of the typical Chosen One story, one where things go terribly wrong. As Vogler points out, this puts the audience in the awkward position of having to identify with a character they know will turn evil by the end.
Balanced examples
In one of the prefaces, Vogler is clear that, in his view, the word “hero” is not limited to men. I expected this to be kind of a token gesture but this is something he really does seem to follow through on throughout the book. For example, he uses the generic “he” and “she” equally and he seems to make a point of finding examples of character archetypes that are both men and women. I liked that, especially after Zen in the Art of Writing (#8 on the list—post coming soon!) which is a product of its time but also seems only to use the generic “he” when referring to writers while reserving “she” for muses. (Which, I recently found out, is actually much more in-line with Campbell’s own take on gender and the hero’s journey than Vogler’s view. Campbell pretty much said that the heroes can only be men because women have to be the prizes the men are trying to win. I don’t have any context for that quote, so there might have been more to his thinking than that. Also: product of the time blah blah blah. Still. Not great.)
I also liked that in choosing examples to illustrate his various points, Vogler did not just draw from Great Cinema or Great Literature. He also used examples from comedies or children’s movies or other works that probably wouldn’t be considered Required Reading in a college film class. Whether by design or by accident, he also uses movies by female directors as examples every now and then, too. A League of Their Own, for example, comes up a lot in some of the suggested exercises. I wouldn’t exactly call the book woke since it could use more examples of works by non-white people, but of the books on the list I was working from, it probably comes the closest.
Vogler obviously has a lot of admiration for Joseph Campbell and his work. He writes glowingly of how Campbell’s achievement was in identifying a common structure in storytelling that spanned across (Western) cultures and centuries but which no one before had recognized. Campbell told us “this is how stories work.”
As I read, I wondered what an even more updated version of this book would look like, with examples from more recent film and literature could fit the template that Vogler discusses. There must be dozens of examples!
But then I realized: of course there are.
The reason for this is that Vogler’s work, as he mentions in the preface, has become some kind of manual for movie studios (or at least it was at the time). In other words, those who write movies for big studios literally use this is a template to map out stories. I imagine this is even more true now that we live in the age of big franchises.
So while Campbell was identifying a pattern that already existed and probably happened largely by accident, Vogler’s work is being used to prescribe that same pattern to storytellers.
I say “Vogler’s work is being used” because I don’t get the impression based on what’s written here that Vogler himself believed that stories have to work this way in order to be interesting or successful. In a way, I think this might even be one of the least prescriptive books in the lot because while Vogler is giving you a template to use, there are a lot of different options within the template (a reluctant hero versus a noble hero, for instance) and there is some reference to the value of breaking the template in interesting ways. So while movie studios might use this information to create stories on an assembly line, it doesn’t seem like that’s how Vogler meant for it to be applied. His tone is much more “isn’t this interesting?” than “this is how it should be done.”
Honestly, I wish more writing-related books had a tone like that.
10 books project, Research in fiction writing
Defining research
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Home / Fantasy / The Urban Fantasy Anthology
The Urban Fantasy Anthology
Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, eds.
Urban fantasy is finally showcased in this star-studded collection, representing all three of its distinct styles, including the playful new mythologies of Charles de Lint, the sexy paranormal romances of Patricia Briggs, and the gritty urban noir of Neil Gaiman.
The Urban Fantasy Anthology quantity
by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, eds.
ISBN: Print: 9781616960186; Digital: 9781616960629
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and eBooks
Whether featuring tattooed demon hunters, angst-y vampires, supernatural gumshoes, or pixelated pixies, Urban Fantasy mashes up old-school tales with pop culture, creating iconic characters, diverging moralities, and complex settings. Urban fantasy is finally showcased in this star-studded collection, representing all three of its distinct styles, including the playful new mythologies of Charles de Lint, the sexy paranormal romances of Patricia Briggs, and the gritty urban noir of Neil Gaiman.
Praise for The Urban Fantasy Anthology
“As the genre is presented here, we see a rich, full, experimental and long-lasting contribution to the ecology of fantasy. It’s perfectly arranged and intentionally diverse, and there are no duds here like there are in some other anthologies. If you’re new to the genre, this is an ideal place to start, so you begin with the multitude of ideas that count here. If you’re a fan of the genre, this is like a reacquaintance, a reminder that there’s more to urban fantasy than the vast numbers of women on motorcycles who kill bad things.”
“An essential book not only for longtime followers of such intriguing stories but those who thought fantasy only took place in the completely imagined worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien.”
“An excellent collection of stories that showcases the best of urban fantasy (however you define it). Definitely a must-read!”
“Every single story in this collection has been well chosen and polished brightly…. I highly recommend those with even a vague interest in urban fantasy add The Urban Fantasy Anthology to their collection.”
“As thought-provoking as it was enjoyable.”
“This is one of the best reprint anthologies of the year in terms of literary value, and you certainly get more than your money’s worth of good fiction.”
Peter S. Beagle is the best-selling author of The Last Unicorn, which has sold a reported five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His other novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has been collected in four volumes by Tachyon Publications, including The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, The Line Between, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Sleight of Hand. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards as well as the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Edgar Award–winning Hap and Leonard mystery series (Mucho Mojo, Two Bear Mambo) and the New York Times Notable Book The Bottoms. More than two hundred of his stories have appeared in such outlets as Tales From the Crypt and Pulphouse, and his work has been adapted for The Twilight Zone and Masters of Horror. Lansdale has written several graphic novels, including Batman and Fantastic Four. He is a tenth-degree black belt and the founder of the Shen Chuan martial art.
Praise for The Secret History of Fantasy
“All 17 stories eschew all or most of the conventions of commercial fantasy…. Start reading and expect to enjoy.” —Booklist
“…set[s] out to rewrite our concept of fantasy and, with the help of some of the world’s best writers, succeeds admirably.”
—The Agony Column
“This is a very well-done collection: The stories are all, in many different ways, pleasures to read.”
—The Civilian Reader
Praise for Crucified Dreams
“…prime pieces by respected genre writers. Readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror will find something within their respective (or overlapping) tastes to enjoy.”
“Spanning more than 35 years, and pulled from a wide variety of horror, fantasy, mystery, and science-fiction publications, [the stories] reflect a uniform standard of excellence by which any writer would want to measure his own work.”
“…this is one of those rare anthologies where you’ll want to read each and every contribution…. [P]ut yourself in the capable hands of Lansdale as he guides you through his wonderfully twisted sensibilities and tastes in reading.”
Visit the Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale websites.
Introduction by Peter S. Beagle
Mythic Fiction
Introduction: “A Personal Journey Into Mythic Fiction” by Charles de Lint
“A Bird That Whistles” by Emma Bull
“Make a Joyful Noise” by Charles de Lint
“The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories” by Neil Gaiman
“On the Road to New Egypt” by Jeffrey Ford
“Julie’s Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle
Introduction: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Urban Fantasy” by Paula Guran
“Companions to the Moon” by Charles de Lint
“A Haunted House of Her Own” by Kelley Armstrong
“She’s My Witch” by Norman Partridge
“Kitty’s Zombie New Year” by Carrie Vaughn
“Seeing Eye” by Patricia Briggs
“Hit” by Bruce McAllister
“Boobs” by Suzy McKee Charnas
“Farewell, My Zombie” by Francesca Lia Block
Noir Fantasy
Introduction: “We Are Not a Club, but We Sometimes Share a Room” by Joe R. Lansdale
“The White Man” by Thomas M. Disch
“Gestella” by Susan Palwick
“Talking Back to the Moon” by Steven R. Boyett
“On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks” by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Bible Repairman” by Tim Powers
“Father Dear” by Al Sarrantonio
Crucified Dreams
Joe R. Lansdale, ed.
Deadman’s Road
The Secret History of Fantasy
Peter S. Beagle, ed.
Medicine Road
Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal
The Line Between
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backTOI
Fast, insight-rich analysis of news that matters to you | long-reads that outlive the news cycle
Crime rate drops, but not for women, kids
Jan 13, 2020, 16:57 IST
2018 saw a significant increase in crimes against children with Delhi topping the list, according to NCRB data
Compared to 2017, India appeared slightly safer in 2018 with the crime rate (incidents per lakh population) for IPC (Indian Penal Code) crimes declining to 236.7 from 237.7 in 2017, the country's highest-ever crime rate. With the exception of 2016 and 2009, when it declined, crime rate had been steadily increasing since 2005.
Analysis of data from the past three decades shows that the rate peaked in 1991, after which it largely declined till 2005, and has been increasing since then.
Copyright © 2020 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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HOME»Press Room»Blog»Press»“Ring” in the Week with Tony Roma’s World-Famous Onion Loaf Celebration
“Ring” in the Week with Tony Roma’s World-Famous Onion Loaf Celebration
Three Limited Time Flavors and Special Pricing Will Have Tony Roma’s Fans Crying for More
ORLANDO, Fla. – June 16, 2017 – Romacorp, parent company of Tony Roma’s®, celebrates National Onion Rings Day this week with its second annual Onion Loaf Flavor Extravaganza! The ringleader of make-you-cry-tears-of-joy flavor pays homage to their world-famous Onion Loaf by offering three limited-time bold flavors and dipping sauces in addition to the signature Onion Loaf served with Tony Roma’s Original™ BBQ sauce. From June 19 – 25, participating U.S. Tony Roma’s restaurants will offer these mouthwatering Onion Loaf flavors at just $5 for the first one, and $3 for each additional Onion Loaf.
“The only thing that’s as iconic as our world-famous Baby Back Ribs is our Onion Loaf – it’s one of those menu items that has been proven to stand the test of time,” said Jim Rogers, Chief Marketing Officer for Romacorp, Inc. “Here at Tony Roma’s, we love shaking things up, and when we introduced the Cajun Onion Loaf two years ago, our guests loved it and we were inspired to have a little fun with a few new flavor profiles. We sure aren’t loafing around this year!”
A staple on the menu for more than 40 years, the world-famous Onion Loaf is one of Tony Roma’s most craveable menu items. Tony Roma’s Onion Loaf is made from giant Spanish onions that are hand cut and breaded in the restaurant throughout the day for fresh flavor that will make you want to ‘put a ring on it’. During the celebration week, fans can enjoy the Original Onion Loaf and try three exciting new flavors including Ranch, Honey BBQ, and Cajun. At a price this special, try all four!
“Our Onion Loaf is one of our most iconic dishes at Tony Roma’s, and it’s always fun to introduce our fans to new takes on a classic,” said Chef Bob Gallagher, Senior Vice President of Food and Beverage for Romacorp, Inc. “We have never altered the original recipe, so it’s fun to experiment with innovative flavor combinations that pack a punch – the Honey BBQ Onion Loaf is probably my favorite.”
Romacorp, Inc., is the parent company of Tony Roma’s restaurants, the world’s largest casual dining concept specializing in ribs. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Romacorp, Inc. has more than 150 restaurant locations in more than 30 countries and is one of the most globally recognizable names in the industry. The first Tony Roma’s restaurant opened 45 years ago in North Miami, Florida. Tony Roma’s is also proud to partner with the Make-A-Wish Foundation (www.cnfl.wish.org), one of the world’s leading children’s charities, in an effort to help grant the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses across Central and Northern Florida. For more information about Romacorp, Inc. and Tony Roma’s, visit www.tonyromas.com.
Esther McIlvain
emcilvain@uproarpr.com
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HOME»Press Room»Blog»Press»Tony Roma’s Plans Accelerated Growth in Mexico
Tony Roma’s Plans Accelerated Growth in Mexico
Iconic restaurant signs agreement to bring new restaurants to the Yucatan and Mexico City
Orlando, Florida – April 02, 2015
Romacorp Inc., the parent company of Tony Roma’s and TR Fire Grill, announces they have signed a new development agreement for the Tony Roma’s brand to bring an additional five restaurants to Mexico. As part of the agreement, franchisee partner Desarollo De Franquicias Industriales, which currently operates the Tony Roma’s in Merida Mexico, will develop two new locations in the Yucatan Peninsula and three additional locations in Mexico City.
“We’re excited to build upon an already successful business relationship with our franchise partner Daniel Reisman and extend our reach even further throughout Mexico,” said Ken Myres, President of Romacorp, Inc. “Our existing Mexican locations are very popular, and we believe these new restaurants will see great success, allowing more guests to enjoy the world-famous Tony Roma’s experience.”
There are currently five Tony Roma’s restaurants in Mexico, located in Merida, San Luis Potosi, Torreon, Queretaro and the Polanco area of Mexico City. Development of the new restaurants will begin with two locations in the Yucatan Peninsula and follow with three locations in Mexico City.
“The positive guest response to the launch of our Tony Roma’s restaurant in Merida last year has been fantastic, and we are excited to continue building the Tony Roma’s brand with new restaurants in Mexico City and the Yucatan Peninsula,” said Daniel Reisman, Owner of Desarollo De Franquicias Industriales. “Partnering with Romacorp has been a wonderful experience, and I’m excited to bring Tony Roma’s world-famous ribs and signature food and beverages to our fans throughout Mexico.”
Romacorp, Inc., is the parent company of Tony Roma’s restaurants, the world’s largest casual dining concept specializing in ribs. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Romacorp, Inc. has more than 150 restaurant locations in more than 30 countries and is one of the most globally recognizable names in the industry. The first Tony Roma’s restaurant opened more than 40 years ago in North Miami, Florida.
Romacorp, Inc. also operates their new TR Fire Grill concept, a chef-inspired American bistro in Orlando, Florida with an additional location planned the summer of 2015 in Winter Park, Florida. For more information about Romacorp, Inc. and Tony Roma’s, visit http://www.tonyromas.com/. For information about our new TR Fire Grill concept, visit http://www.trfiregrill.com/.
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